CASTILLO RIDGE
FRIDAY NIGHT
THE NIGHTSCOPE MAKES IT EASY. GOOD THING, THE COLD IS TAKING THE FEELING out of my hands, and the wind…
The wind was always a rifleman's enemy.
The sniper watched through the scope as Carly and Dan left the house. They got into his truck, but instead of heading toward the road leading back to Taos, the truck turned toward the outbuildings.
Now what?
The headlights would blow out the nightscope, so the sniper tracked them with binoculars. They drove past the barn and out the pasture road to the graveyard.
Well, damn. I had my spot all picked out and they're going in the other direction.
Cold, stiff, cursing silently, the sniper watched the truck pull up to the Quintrell family graveyard. As soon as the lights went off, he switched back to watching his target through the nightscope mounted on his rifle barrel. It was more for practice than anything else. The graveyard was just under a mile from the main house, but that wasn't the real problem.
The eight-foot-tall wrought-iron fence made shooting really dicey.
The angle wasn't great enough for him to shoot over the fence unless the target stood tall and straight away from the fence instead of bent over grubbing around the gravestones on perimeter, right next to the fence. The gravestones themselves were another shooting hazard Not to mention the trees that had been planted on or near some graves.
The faint sound of voices lifted on the fitful wind. A flashlight turned on below.
The sniper went back to night-vision binoculars.
Finish whatever you came for, get on the road, and circle hack around the other side of the ridge to get to the highway.
He ached with cold. It was time to get it done and move on.
Come on, come on, hurry up. Make it any harder on me and I'll kill both of you.