Shadow Tyrants (Oregon Files 13)

Lyla rushed at him and grabbed for the rifle. She yanked it off his shoulder before he realized what was happening, but the larger guard countered quickly. He elbowed her arm, and the rifle flew onto the beach. She tried to go after it, but he clasped a strong hand around her wrist.

A vague recollection of her self-defense training came back, and she kneed the guard in the groin. He doubled over in pain, letting her go in the process. She dove for the gun, but she’d only fired a pistol on the gun range a couple of times with an old boyfriend, never a rifle of any kind. Even if she got it, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to use it.

She stopped scrambling when she heard the click of a hammer being pulled back. She rolled over and saw the furious guard pointing his sidearm at her. The barrel of the semiautomatic pistol in her face looked huge.

“Enough of that!” the guard yelled. He slowly circled around and picked up the assault rifle, his aim never wavering. “I should kill you right here.”

She got to her feet and sighed in resignation over her fate.

“Then why don’t you? I know what Bedtime means. You’re going to destroy the whole place and murder us all, aren’t you?”

His eyes flickered in surprise.

“Then go ahead!” Lyla shouted. “Shoot me!”

He smiled and shook his head. “And lug your dead body all the way back? Too much work.”

“I’m not moving, so you might as well pull the trigger.” Lyla stared at him in defiance and steeled herself for the shot.

The guard shrugged and walked toward her, the pistol right in her face. “If that’s the way you want to do this.”

He never got to pull the trigger. A crossbow bolt zinged past Lyla’s head and pierced the guard’s eye. He went down so fast it was like he’d been switched off.

At first, Lyla thought she’d been saved from certain death, but then she realized how crazy that idea was. Nobody knew they were there except for the people who’d ordered the Bedtime protocol.

They weren’t just wiping out the prisoners. They were going to kill everyone on the island, the guards included.

To her right, she saw movement. A tall, blond man in combat gear emerged from the jungle holding an automatic weapon. He smiled at her and said, “Hi there. My name’s Juan. And I’m here to—”

He didn’t finish speaking because Lyla bent down and picked up the guard’s pistol. Without waiting to hear more, she aimed it at this guy called Juan and fired three quick shots in his direction.

Juan went down, and Lyla didn’t wait to see if there were more peop

le with him who’d been sent to kill her.

She turned and ran.

TWENTY-ONE

JHOOTHA ISLAND

Raven Malloy watched Juan fall to the ground from the trio of shots, but she let Eddie and Linc tend to him. She needed to go after the woman with MacD. His crossbow was already reloaded.

They took off down the beach and then into the jungle, where the woman’s footprints disappeared into the trees. The dense foliage provided cover for her, but it would also make it difficult for her to move quickly and silently.

Raven stopped and put up her hand. They both listened for the sound of crunching foliage, but everything was quiet.

“Ah saved her life,” MacD whispered. “Why did she shoot the Chairman?”

Raven thought about the plain jumpsuit the woman wore. “She might have been a passenger on that plane, which puts her here for a year and half. She doesn’t know who her enemies are anymore.”

“Or who her friends are.”

“We need to find her before she runs into her real enemies.”

MacD nodded to her right. “She stopped about a hundred yards that way.”

Raven looked in that direction, but she couldn’t see anything. “How do you know?”