“I will. We’re teammates.”
“You got it. Now watch this,” Sawyer told her as he carefully lifted a vial from the satchel, set it on the stony ground.
It lay a moment, then sank out of sight as if into water.
Annika said, “Ahh. Bran has such a gift. But is it safe for others? Innocents?”
Though she caught at his hand, Sawyer deliberately stepped on the spot where the vial had been. “Evildoers only. Mr. Wizard strik
es again. Okay, next about fifty paces southeast.”
He looked at her as they veered off the narrow track. “I know this is hard for you. You have the sweetest heart. But you’re right that Doyle’s right. You need to look at it in a hard light, Anni. Nerezza chose to take this direction, and the men she’s using as weapons against us? They have a choice, too. Those choices take ours off the table. They’ll end us, and more, end any chance of keeping the stars out of Nerezza’s hands.”
She said nothing as he placed the next vial.
“Once Malmon’s on the hunt, he won’t stop. And he’s good. He has almost unlimited resources to keep looking. And maybe, at some point, even to find the Fire Star Bran’s already secured.”
“He would kill you.”
“In a New York minute. Like that,” he said, snapped his fingers. “He doesn’t value life, unless it’s his own. Me, I’d just be dead—not that I’d be happy about it. But you, especially you, Riley, and Doyle, it would be worse for you.”
“How for Doyle? He’s an immortal.”
“That’s just the point.” Sawyer gestured, and they headed toward the next spot. “He can’t die, but he can feel pain. Malmon could and would give him pain for years.”
“I know there is cruelty.”
“But you don’t understand it.”
“I never want to. But I understand, even though it’s hard, we have to stop these men just as we stopped her creatures. We protect each other, and the stars. It’s our duty. You said you don’t want to take a life, but would to protect others.”
“That’s right.”
“And our others, I know, would do the same. I can’t do less. Let me place the next vial.”
Slowly, they worked their way down, with the breathtaking view spread before them. The sun splashed onto the sea, shimmered on white rock, and baked the green.
At one point Sawyer crouched down, then lay on his belly.
“Doyle had it right, this is the perfect sniper’s nest.” When Annika lay beside him, he pointed. “See? That’s our villa.”
“Yes, yes, I see. It’s still a very long way.”
“They’ll have a scope, a high-powered rifle, and you can bet a lot of skill. Here.” He scooted back, squatted to take a pair of small field glasses out of his pack. “Look through these.”
She studied them a moment, then put them up to her eyes. Gasped and jolted. “Oh! Everything jumped close.” She lowered them. “But nothing moved.”
“Binoculars—it’s the lenses, the special glass. It— Easiest to say magnifies. A sniper would have something like this, something called a scope, attached to the rifle.”
“And it would bring us close,” she murmured as she looked through the glasses again. “I see. A miraculous tool used for evil.”
“In this case, yeah.”
“Then we place a vial here.”
Once they had, she turned to him, rose up to kiss him. “This is the good, to balance the bad.”
“Then let’s make it even better.”