The Hunted

28

Hung Jin brought the Navigator to a stop ten feet from the cabin. His heart was banging so hard that he felt as if it would rise up through his throat.

But as he slammed his car door shut and approached the cabin, he realized that something was wrong. Blood spatter in the snow, stretching a few feet across the threshold…

He stepped closer and saw Cody’s body. The dumbstruck look on his face, the bare feet. The broken chair.

The empty cabin.

His howl rattled the woods. Though muffled slightly by the snow-covered mountains, the shrill noise numbed his ears.

He stepped into the cabin, howled again, then threw himself down and pounded his fists into the floor until pain shot up to his elbows. He was on all fours, his knees beside his fallen colleague’s bare feet.

He grabbed a broken chair slat off the floor and began beating Cody’s torso, the dead thumping sound drowned out by his fury.

“No!” he screamed. “No, no, no!”

It was a plaintive wail of great pain. Deep emotional pain. Not because his colleague was dead, but because he had been looking forward to the challenge, to the intense satisfaction Lauren Chambers’s death was going to bring him.

His hunger raged; he felt cheated.

Again.

He jumped to his feet, grabbed the door, and tore it off its hinges. Then he strode to his car and set off in search of his prey.