Jagged Truth by Emily Kimelman

Author:Emily Kimelman [Kimelman, Emily]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Emily Kimelman

Chapter Thirty-One

Distant mountains make the horizon jagged. A storm to the east swirls over the open desert miles away. A plume of dust marks Sniper’s location, his tire tracks clear in the undisturbed terrain. It looks like we could keep riding out here forever.

Sniper changes course, angling toward a craggy hill—not so much a hill as a pile of rocks. The rough terrain slows him down; he has to use his feet to keep steady as he drives up the unsure surface. I close the distance between us, racing across the desert at seventy miles an hour, the rough ground made smooth by the dirt bike’s loose suspension. I’m forced to slow when I reach the bottom of the hillock. Sniper disappears over the top.

Loose rocks shift under my tires. I use my feet for balance, lurching up, and sliding side to side, stones falling away behind me. My breathing grows labored, my legs burn and my hands ache.

This could be leading to an ambush.

As I close in on the summit, I pause. The rumble of my bike’s engine and the pounding of my own heart are the only sounds. Just because I can’t hear Sniper’s bike doesn’t mean he is waiting to ambush me—he could be at the bottom of the hillock, racing across the flatlands again, too far for the sound to reach me. Instinct tells me he’s not, though. If our roles were reversed, I’d hunker down on the other side of this ridge and use that rifle from a safe distance.

I climb off the bike and push it a little higher—so that I’m just below the sightline of anyone on the other side. This next move could be stupid. But I’d rather be stranded in the desert than dead in the desert.

“Sorry,” I tell the bike. Then I open the throttle, release the clutch and jump back. The bike leaps forward, making it the few feet to the summit, then disappearing down the other side. A single shot cracks. The crunch of metal against rock comes seconds later.

The gun Consuela gave me in my right hand, I stay low, careful on the loose rocks, and scramble higher, lying down to peek over the summit.

The hillock slants sharply down, the same rounded, coconut-size rocks sloping to the sandy flatlands. A cluster of larger boulders is the only cover Sniper could be using, though I don’t see him now. My bike lies twenty feet down the incline, the front wheel still spinning, the engine grumbling.

Consuela’s gun is a 40 caliber Sig P229. A good handgun, but not great at this range. If Sniper showed himself, I’d have a chance of hitting him. With his rifle, he’d have a kill shot.

I just can’t let him see me coming.

Thunder rumbles and I glance at the advancing storm to the east—it’s turning the desert gray, sheets of rain moving across the barren landscape. There are channels in the rocks marking the path of the last deluge. The sun, low in the west, casts long shadows across the desert.

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