The Dragon Pool: The Dragon Pool Read Online Free PDF Page A

posted guards around the camp, and at the entrance to the temple, which had been freshly cleared just before sundown. In the morning, she'd planned to take a small detachment from the camp and travel to the nearby village to see if the locals could tell them anything about who might want to sabotage their dig and find out what they knew about a little girl gone missing.
    But morning hadn't arrived yet. Gunshots could only mean one thing: The saboteur had returned.
    She slid her pistol from the holster she'd hung on a hook jutting from the tent pole and stepped out into the chilly night air, the gun's weight a comfort in her hand. The crescent moon cast an otherworldly glow upon the land, and the surface of the lake glinted with a million points of light. The mountain loomed to her right, cranes and pulleys silhouetted mantislike against the night sky. For a moment, she heard nothing but the wind.
    Then another shot came, the crack of a rifle. Anastasia bolted in the direction of the shooter, boots kicking up dirt. She didn't want to end up with a bullet in the face, but if the bastard who'd been causing them so much trouble was in her camp, she wasn't going to hide from him.
    Voices carried on the wind ahead of her. Someone was shouting.
    "That way!" she heard. "Son of a bitch went that way!"
    Danovich. Chances were he was the shooter as well. Frank was a dead shot with a rifle. Other people had begun to emerge from their tents at the base of the mountain, but she ignored them, starting up the slope, pistol clutched in her right hand. The dig sprawled across the face of the mountain just above her, excavations gaping shadowlike craters on the moon. None of the machinery ran. Not a single engine rumbled. There wasn't even the sound of buckets being filled, shovels turning soil, or pulleys turning. That was to be expected in the middle of the night, but with the knowledge that someone or something prowled the abandoned dig site, looking to do them harm, the quiet made her shiver.
    Her grip on the gun tightened.
    More shouts sounded. She heard boots pounding dirt and saw several figures crest an outcropping of rock above her. They were familiar shadows, and one of them could only have been Han Kyichu. The moonlight made a halo of his white hair, though the rest of him was in darkness.
    "Han!" Anastasia shouted, more to make sure that Danovich didn't shoot her than anything else.
    "Dr. Bransfield!" Kyichu called down to her. "He's there with you! We just saw him!"
    Anastasia stopped and lowered herself into a half crouch. She gripped the pistol in both hands and spun around, scanning the slope around her. Shadows loomed beneath jagged outcroppings and behind rows of low, stunted bushes. Nothing moved. From up on the ridge she heard the cocking of a rifle and knew Danovich must have run up to join the others. A spark of panic ignited in her.
    Her chest rose and fell, and she could feel the throb of her pulse in her temple. Anastasia listened to the wind and her own breath, and she hated this silent, invisible figure more than she'd ever hated anyone in her life. She hated him for making her afraid, and she hated him for the way her finger tightened even further on the trigger, for making her willing to shoot him.
    "Stacie, there!" Danovich shouted from above.
    The rifle cracked. A divot of earth erupted twenty feet to her right, behind a scree of low, tangled brush. A shadow lunged away. The moonlight seemed to slip around him, as though he existed just beyond its reach, but the silhouette was real enough. His running footfalls were heavy on dirt and stone--as though his weight was far greater than the thin, wiry figure ought to have carried. Again, Danovich took a shot, and again, the bullet struck the rocky slope.
    Fast, Anastasia thought. The bastard's fast .
    But he wasn't heading for camp. Why would he? Too many people, too much attention. Sabotage was about sneaking around. He'd been trying to ruin the dig, not kill the