EYESHOT: The most gripping suspense thriller you will ever read

by TAYLOR ADAMS

  “You can stay here if you’d like.”

  “I’m just saying, man, there’s problems.”

  James was well aware of that. He turned to Elle, breathless. “You and I will be in the front seats. We just . . . we have to clear room in the back for Roy.”

  “What’s the plan when we get to the gully?” she asked.

  He swung open the other door. “We’ll make it up as we go.”

  “Not funny.”

  “That literally is the plan.”

  “Still not funny.”

  James looked over his shoulder and squinted. The Soviet was fifty yards out now, a hunched silhouette half-obscured by wiregrass. He took a lurching step and his arm came into view with at least two pieces of his gun clasped underhand. Two to go.

  “And him,” Elle said. “He’ll be behind us. Chasing us.”

  “Yep.”

  “And shooting at us.”

  “Probably.” He grabbed a swollen cardboard box with both hands – their desktop Mac, purchased on credit after graduation. The hard drive contained Elle’s demo reel, her thesis, and thousands of hours of raw work. “Roy! How’s it going down there?”

  “Got the cable.” His foot jerked. “Give me thirty seconds.”

  “Tell us when you put it in neutral. So we can hold the car if it rolls.” James braced a foot to the door, wrenched the computer box free, and let it crash to the road. Something broke inside with a pressurized pop and the monitor rolled out like a hubcap.

  Elle winced.

  “It’s just stuff, Elle. It’s not us.”

  “I know.”

  He tore out the bookcase next, dumping crispy hardcovers and yellowed paperbacks, and then their maroon bedding. Electric candles. A juicer. A cardboard box of Snow Village models – painted glass houses and sledding children – slid out and crunched. Did they belong to Elle’s mother or aunt? He couldn’t remember. He wiped sweat from his eyes and realized that if they died today, these relics would be the only physical evidence they’d existed at all. He felt like he was willfully vanishing, shoveling dirt over his own grave.

  It’s just stuff, he had to remind himself.

  He had cleared almost enough room for Roy in the back seats, if he lay on his belly in the floor space. All that needed go now was Elle’s grandmother’s crib, that hulking eyesore that had survived the Nazi occupation of Poland and a house fire. It was a slab of dark chocolate oak as dense as cement. Your grandmother could have left it in Lublin, he’d told her once. The Nazis would have mistaken it for the Ark of the Covenant.

  She watched him pull the creaking beast free and dump it on the side of the road to join the rest of their junked things, heaped indifferently like trash. “Tell me we’re going to make it out of this,” she said faintly. “And we’re going to have kids.”

  “We’re going to have kids.”

  She swallowed. “Okay.”

  “I promise—”

  “Say it again.”

  “We’re going to have kids, Elle.” He grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her, feeling the tremor in her breaths, while a bullet sliced through the air somewhere above them, flushing a warm breeze and quivering her hair.

  * * *

  Tapp threw the bolt and let out a hot breath. He was better than this. He shouldn’t be firing at half-discerned shapes like some runny-nosed Walmart shopper with a deer rifle. In the jittery glass of his spotting scope he saw – or thought he saw – two blurred scalps skimming over the Toyota’s hood, so he rolled over to his rifle, guestimated, and fired off a dumb luck Hail Mary of a shot. Why did he do that?

  He made those shots sometimes, often late in the afternoon when he was growing fanciful and bored. They were almost always misses, embarrassing misses, and he loathed himself for the wasted handload and worse, the sloppiness.

  He was fatiguing and he knew it. His eyes were drying, spider-webbing with blood vessels, and his eyelids made a squish with every blink, like a grapefruit crushed under a boot. The muscles in his right wrist, his index finger, and his inner forearms were throbbing. Worst of all, he was out of Cheetos – a grand total of one hundred and twenty-seven in that bag.

  He knew what was happening – he had reached that unpleasant point where his heart simply wasn’t in it. He was shooting for a result, not enjoyment. He had to knuckle down on his wandering mind and force himself to remember that this was still happening, that the heat and sweat and burnt gunpowder was real, and hadn’t gotten any less real in last three hours. Staying in the zone was exhausting.

  Snipers – true military snipers – were machines. Tapp had been in their presence before at gun shows. Ironically (given their particular skill set) he could spot them from across a crowded fairground building every damn time. Even in flannel and jeans with their all-American blonde wives hooked on their arms, these men never took a false step. He could see it behind their eyes – this subconscious situational alertness – as they processed the license plates of every parked vehicle outside and quietly tallied the number of bodies in the room and exits available. In the field, these men would lie motionless for days with every cell in their bodies perfectly trained and waiting for a single window, suspended uneasily on a single chancy moment, to then take a single shot. Or most impressive of all, to recognize that this correct moment never materialized – the wind flared, the morning mist never burned off, the Sudanese general walked his Labrador behind the barracks instead of beside them, whatever – and then quietly cancel the mission and extract without a shot fired.

  Tapp knew he never could have been a Marine Scout Sniper or an Army sniper, and he was too old and too fat to even be a designated marksman. He didn’t possess the discipline or mental hardness for the role, even if his raw talent placed him among the best shooters currently alive. His mind wandered. He was prone to fantasy, distraction, and curious little impulses. And most damning of all, he was deeply impatient. He knew this. He had long known all of these things, so it didn’t sting now as it had when he was twenty-two. But it still ached somewhere dark inside him, where he forever knew that ‘sniper’ was a term that would only apply to him in uninformed civilian shorthand. The way they call magazines ‘clips.’

  You’re a demon, said Sergei Koal.

  You just don’t know it yet.

  He dialed his spotting scope down to 80x to brighten the image and nudged it a few jittery millimeters right to find Svatomir wading in scrub brush. He had the Mac-11’s upper, lower, and recoil spring in his oven mitt hands. All he needed now was the skinny little bolt, about the size of a cigar, hidden somewhere in the low grass. He would find it eventually. Might take seconds, might take minutes, might take until after sundown. Tapp wanted, and wanted badly, to simply radio him and tell him to forget about his stupid little subgun and just tow the damn Toyota. But that resourceful bastard James had Svatomir’s radio now.

  Which gave Tapp another idea.

  “Roy Burke,” he said into his headset. “Kill James. Or your family dies.”

  * * *

  Everyone froze.

  James sighed tiredly. “Of course.”

  “What?” Roy slid out from under the car. “What did he say?”

  “How did he know your last name?” Elle asked.

  No static. Silence.

  The Soviet’s radio lay in the packed soil at the edge of the Toyota’s shadow. James reached for it but Roy snatched it with both hands and clasped it, squirrel-like. He turned it over and over, searching busily for the PUSH TO TALK button. “I’m serious,” he snarled. “What the hell did he say about me?”

  Elle chewed her lip.

  “Roy Burk,” James said placidly, testing it on his tongue. He looked up at Roy, who had suddenly become a stranger again. “He knows you.”

  He swallowed. “I don’t know how.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “Why would I lie?”

  “He’s lying,” Elle hissed.

  “Fuck you.” Roy spat a little. “I’m not—�
�

  “Roy, this offer will only stand once.” Tapp’s voice came dribbling through the radio and Roy’s fingers parted as if it was corrosive. “And you can’t save yourself. So we’re clear, I will kill you today and nothing will change that.”

  Roy tried to speak but had no words.

  “I hate him,” Elle whispered. “I hate him so much.”

  James listened thoughtfully.

  “Roy Burke, here’s my offer.” Tapp paused for half a breath and let it sink in. “If you kill James, I’ll . . . kill you and our business is done. If you don’t kill James, I still kill you. But then our business isn’t done. I go after your family.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Elle said. “He’s playing you.”

  Roy winced. “Shut up.”

  “He’s trying to turn us on each other. He’s afraid of James—”

  “Your house, Roy-boy, is on 126 Tyler Road in the town of Prim. Sixty miles down the Plainsway, give or take.” Tapp’s voice came in startlingly clear, like he was crouched among them. “I don’t know what you were doing with those two girls, but it’s not my business. Your wife Liza is . . . ah, twenty-three. Your daughter is almost two. I’ll come in tonight, after dark, when things have settled and Emma is in her crib. I’ll kick in the back door and I’ll come in with a suppressed pistol. I’ll go room by room, inch by inch, and I will kill everyone I find with two shots to the sternum and one to the forehead. Young. Old. Awake. Sleeping. Nothing in that house will survive. Do you have a dog or cat? I’ll kill them, too. I’ll . . . I’ll pour bleach in the fucking fish tank. Do you hear me, Roy Burke? Is this getting to you?”

  Roy shuddered.

  Elle pressed her hands to her mouth. “How does he know this?”

  “Kill James Eversman.” Tapp sniffed and spat. “Kill him now.”

  Silence.

  Roy quietly set the radio down.

  “I . . .” James hesitated. What can you possibly say to that?

  Roy stared at the radio on the ground for a long moment, broad shoulders sloped, eyelids fluttering, and then he slowly crawled his eyes up to find James. His palms were flat on his knees but his knuckles had subtly tightened. Gears were turning behind his eyes.

  “Trust me,” James said unconvincingly. “Just . . . trust me.”

  He tried to put himself in Roy’s shoes but couldn’t. A small part of him wondered if maybe this was the preferable outcome. By getting killed here by Roy he could potentially save two lives. Viewed from another angle, wasn’t that the morally correct choice? Sacrifice of self for strangers? Maybe the old James would have bought that. This new James sure didn’t. In fact, new James was just getting pissed off.

  “Trust me,” he said again with more force. “I’ll get us out.”

  “No,” Roy said airily. “I don’t think you will.”

  James realized the screwdriver – the flathead screwdriver from his tool bag – was in Roy’s left hand, tucked in such a way that his wrist almost concealed it. Without question, that was deliberate. The bladed edge caught a gleam of sunlight, looking quite sharp. In twenty-twenty hindsight, it would have been a much more effective weapon against the Soviet than that stupid Korean multitool. And now here it was, in the hands of a man much bigger and stronger than James.

  “Kill him,” the radio crackled between them. “Roy, what are you waiting for?”

  “Roy, I’m asking you a question.” James looked at him bluntly, feeling Elle’s fingertips digging protectively into his shoulders. “Do you want to kill me? Or him? Because we’re not escaping the sniper anymore. We’re charging him. We’re going to trick him, and lure him, and you and I – we’re going to kill the bastard. And I need you on my side to pull it off.”

  “You’re a dangerous optimist,” Roy said grimly.

  “You’re goddamn right I’m dangerous.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Are you with me or not?”

  But big, tough, tattooed Roy had no fight in his eyes. They were just melancholy pools. “We’re dead. I’m sorry, but we don’t stand a—”

  “He’s coming back!” Elle pointed hard. “He has his gun and he’s coming back.”

  “Help me push the car.” James shoved past Roy, scraping his heels, and braced both palms flat to the hot tailgate, half-expecting to feel a screwdriver plunge into his back. “You’ll just have to kill me later.”

  * * *

  “Go. Go. Go.”

  In the disconnected silence of the scope, Tapp watched Svatomir race back to Shady Slope Road, kicking his knees high in the grass. The Mac-11 was reassembled, back in play on today’s chessboard, and carried now over his head, barrel up, his sausage finger curled stupidly around the trigger like the amateur he was. His free hand clamped to his gut like a runner fending off a hellish side cramp. He was certainly wounded from that earlier scuffle with James, but how badly?

  The Toyota bumped a few inches forward.

  Tapp blinked – squish.

  He rolled into his rifle scope and glided his black razor lines over the vehicle, its suspension now rocking back to stillness. He waited for it to happen again and didn’t have to wait long. The yellow car budged again, harder, like an invisible fault line had shifted the ground beneath it. The rear end lifted, the front tires sank and dug into earth, and a wave of accumulated dust slid down the windshield.

  Squish-squish. He didn’t know what to make of this.

  Svatomir saw it too and hesitated. He was still fifty meters east with the falling sun in his eyes. Even if he took a knee and a firm two-hand hold, taking them out with his squirmy little .380 was unlikely. More so, given his refusal to pick up even the most basic principles of marksmanship. He was a hip-shooter through and through, preferring to spit lead and fire with his back arched and his teeth bared. He used automatic pistols and automatic shotguns, close-quarters, spray-and-pray, quantity over quality, all of it. He had no respect for the nuance of the rifle, and right now, Tapp was wishing he did.

  “Svatomir, hurry.”

  The Toyota lurched again and again in rhythmic shocks. Drawn tight across the badlands, three shadows huddled into one. The front tires fought their ruts and pushed, exhumed waves of stubborn earth, and tore fresh gashes in the road. Under a growing cloud of dust he saw flashes of motion, arms and legs and fingers a few inches behind the tailgate, but nothing to fire at. Just images, half-drawn shapes, uncertainties, and teases. Each motion wrested the rubber a few inches from the quicksand soil, and a few more, and suddenly the vehicle was moving. Rolling.

  They were pushing the car.

  Toward him.

  His heart solidified into lead, his nerves tightened, and his rifle discharged without permission.

  * * *

  “Get inside, Elle.”

  “Now?”

  “Get inside. We’ll keep pushing.”

  She broke away from James and Roy and sprinted along the Rav4’s safe side. She went for the driver door, which was hanging open clumsily, framing the far wall of the valley with jagged glass teeth. It was oddly beautiful – distant cliffs shadowed in firelight against a graying sky – and for a sad second her mind darted to her destroyed cameras, her ruined portfolio on the side of the road, her failures.

  Molten pain stabbed in her chest. She couldn’t breathe quite right, nor run quite as fast as she knew she could. Her body felt wrong. Her legs were spaghetti and for a sickening moment, she nearly lost balance and fell under the back tire. Wouldn’t that be great? Here lies Elle Eversman: Ran herself over, somehow.

  She reached for the driver door but it was just beyond her fingertips.

  The vehicle was rolling fast beside her now, grinding along the beveled edge of the road. It was eerily quiet. No driver, no loping engine, only the rush of wind in her ears and the gentle crumble of packed earth beneath tires. Every sound scattered into the desert without an echo.

  “Almost fast enough!” James shouted behind her.

  Roy said something else. She didn’t he
ar what it was.

  She was reaching for the driver door a second time when it whipped shut and a hail of glass fragments exploded in her face. She flinched, blocking crunchy shards with her elbow. Something exploded into the ground behind her and pelted her back with rock chips. She lowered her arm and told herself to keep running for that door.

  Tapp missed.

  I’m okay. Keep running. She lunged for the door handle (third attempt) but missed again, stumbled, and lost a few paces. Her chest throbbed with every breath, filling her mind with red. God, it hurt. She couldn’t keep up.

  “Fast enough!” Roy yelled. “Everyone in.”

  “No.” It was James again. “No, not yet.”

  “It’s fine—”

  “Not fast enough.”

  Elle dove for the door handle and caught it. The car seemed plenty fast to her. She swung the door open and hurled herself inside, bruising both shins on the frame and landing directly on the shifter. The metal knob jammed into her breast like a dagger. She gasped.

  “It’s off the road!” Roy panted somewhere behind her. “Elle, steer us.”

  She slipped her legs inside, tucked her knees to the pedals and grabbed the wheel. No power steering. The familiar contours barely budged. James screamed something behind her, lost in the noise. She knuckled both hands on the steering wheel, braced herself to the floor, and threw her stomach and spine into it until . . . yes, yes, she forced it to give and heard the crunching gravel change pitch. The tires rediscovered Shady Slope Road – first the right, then the left.

  “Great!” Roy opened the side door and she felt the Toyota rock as he crashed into the back seats. “Great job, Elle.”

  “James!” She lost track of him. “Where is he?”

  “I . . .” Roy gasped. “Oh, shit.”

  “Did we leave him?”

  “Shit.”

  Panic rose inside her. “Did you leave him?”

  “I don’t—”

  She pivoted on her knees and raised her head, craned her neck to see over and around the driver headrest, blinking in the amber warmth of the setting sun. Then a hand grabbed a fistful of her hair and slammed her face-down into the seat, her teeth clicking against shards of glass and plastic, and she recognized her husband’s voice, calm but urgent, in her left ear: