Page 59 of Collateral Damage
I drop behind the nearest trunk, bark biting into my shoulder. My breath comes out in visible puffs.
The shape moves through the trees ahead, and everything in me goes still.
Upright. The right height. Moving between the pines with purpose.
My weapon clears the holster before I consciously decide to draw it. My pulse hammers in my ears, drowning out the wind.
It’s visible through the falling snow, weaving between trunks. Moving slow but steady, and the direction is what’s making my pulse speed. It's angling toward the cabin.
Toward her.
I bring the weapon up, sighting down the barrel. My hands are rock steady, even as my heart tries to punch through my chest. Twenty yards out, maybe less in this white. The snow makes everything blur together, but the shape is there. Real. Moving.
It pauses, and I can't make out any details through the curtain of white. Just the silhouette. Just the movement.
He found us.
The shot cracks through the air. My finger squeezed the trigger, and I didn't even feel it.
The figure drops hard into the snow.
My boots break through drifts, snow flying up around my knees. My breath tears from my lungs in white bursts. Fifteen yards. Ten.
Get to him before he gets up. Before he moves. Before?—
The shape doesn't move.
Five yards now, and I can see the sprawl of limbs, the dark stain spreading across white.
My brain catches up too slow. Eyes processing what doesn’t make sense.
Antlers.
Attached to a bull elk twisted on its side. Steam rises from the bullet wound in its neck. Dark eyes, wide and vacant, tongue lolling.
Not a man.
I stand there, weapon still raised, snow falling on my shoulders.
The elk was browsing, moving tree to tree, and through the blizzard it looked?—
I lower my weapon. Every breath feels like a jagged tear, my lungs burning as if the air itself is too thin to hold.
I fired without confirming my target. Without proper identification. Training I've had drilled into my skull for over two decades, and I threw it away in half a second.
Because I thought he was here. Thought he'd found her.
The tightness in my chest doesn't ease. If anything, it gets worse.
I holster my weapon with hands that won't stop trembling. The cold has nothing to do with it.
I've taken shots in combat. Made split-second decisions that meant life or death. Never lost sleep over any of them because they were clean. Justified. By the book.
This wasn't.
I look back toward the cabin. I can barely see it through the snow, just the dark outline of the structure and the faint glow of firelight in the window.
She's in there. Safe. Warm.
