BEVERLY BARTON - The Watcher

BEVERLY BARTON

The Watcher

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain as The Murder Game by HarperCollins 2008

This eBook edition published 2018

Copyright © Beverly Barton 2008

Cover design © Diane Meacham Design 2018

Cover photograph © Shutterstock

Beverly Barton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9781847560599

Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780007281824

Version: 2018-06-04

In loving memory of my mother, Doris Marie.

Many thanks to my friend Marilyn Puett for putting me in touch with a retired FBI agent who generously agreed to help me with research.

Thank you, Former Special Agent William C. Rasmussen. Your assistance proved invaluable during the course of writing this book. Any mistakes are mine, probably because I assumed I knew something or I either misunderstood the answer to a question or simply asked the wrong question.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Epilogue

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by Beverly Barton

About the Publisher

I am not going to die! Damn it, I refuse to give up, to let him win this evil competition.

Kendall Moore pulled herself up off the ground where she had fallen, face-down, as she ran from her tormentor. Breathless and exhausted, she managed to bring herself to her knees. Every muscle ached. Her head throbbed. Fresh blood trickled from the cuts on her legs and the gashes in the bottoms of her callused feet.

The blistering August sun beat down on her like hot, heavy tendrils reaching out from a relentless monster in the sky. The sun was her enemy, blistering her skin, parching her lips, dehydrating her tired, weak body.

Garnering what little strength she had left, Kendall forced herself to stand. She had to find cover, a place where she had an advantage over her pursuer. If he caught up with her while she was out in the open, he would kill her. The game would be over. He would win.

He’s not going to win! 1 Her mind screamed orders—run, hide, live to fight another day. But her legs managed only a few trembling steps before she faltered and fell again. She needed food and water. She hadn’t eaten in three days and hadn’t had any water since day before yesterday. He had been pursuing her from sunup to sunset for the past few days, apparently moving in for the kill. After weeks of tormenting her.

The roar of his dirt bike alerted her to the fact that he was nearby, on the narrow, rutted path to the west of her present location. Soon, he would come deeper into the woods on foot, tracking her as he would track an animal.

At first she had been puzzled by the fact that he had kidnapped her but then set her free. But it hadn’t taken her long—only a matter of hours—before she realized that she was in the middle of nowhere and that she wasn’t free, no more than a captive animal in a game reserve was actually free.

Day after day, he stalked her, hunted her down, and taught her how to play the game by his rules. He’d had more than one opportunity to kill her, but he had allowed her to live, and he’d even given her an occasional day of rest. But she never knew which day it would be, so she was forced to stay alert at all times, to be prepared for yet another long, tiring match in what seemed like a never-ending game.

Pudge parked his dirt bike, straightened the cord holding the small binoculars around his neck and the leather strap that held the rifle cover across his back. Kendall didn’t know it, but today was the day she would die. He had brought her here to this isolated area three weeks ago today. She would be his fifth kill in this brand-new game that he had devised after several months of meticulous planning. Only recently had he decided that he would hunt his prey for three weeks, then go in for the actual kill on the twenty-first day.

After his cousin Ruddy’s death on April first of last year, he had discovered that he missed his one-time opponent and lifelong best friend more than he’d thought he would. But Ruddy’s death had been inevitable. After all, he been the loser in their “Dying Game” and the consequences of losing was forfeiting one’s life.

You’d love this new game, dear cousin. I am choosing only the finest female specimens, women with physical prowess and mental cunning. Only worthy adversaries.

Kendall Moore holds an Olympic silver medal in longdistance running. Her slender, five ten frame is all lean muscle. In a fair fight, she might actually win the game we’re playing, but whenever did I fight fair?

Pudge chuckled to himself as he dismounted from the dirt bike.

I’m coming for you. Run. Hide. I’ll find you. And then I’ll kill you.

As he stomped through the woods, Pudge felt a surge of adrenaline rush through his body, heightening his senses. He had missed the thrill of taking a human life, of watching with delight the look of horror in a woman’s eyes when she knew she was going to die.

Soon, he told himself. The next victim in The Murder Game is only a few yards away. Waiting for you. Waiting for death.

Kendall knew that if her captor chose to kill her, her chances of escape were nil. He had proven to her several times that she was powerless to stop him from tracking her and finding her. He had pointed his rifle at her, dead center at her heart, more than once, then grinned with evil glee, turned, and walked away. But the time would come when he would not walk away. Was today that day?

She heard his footsteps as he crunched through the underbrush, drawing closer and closer. He wasn’t trying to sneak up on her. In fact, he seemed to want her to know that he was approaching.

You have to keep moving, she told herself. Even if you can’t get away, you have to try. Don’t give up. Not now.

Kendall ran for what seemed like hours but probably wasn’t more than ten minutes. Her muscles ached, her heart raced. Out of breath and drained of what little energy she had left, she paused behind a huge, towering tree—and waited.