The Hunters Read Online Free PDF Page B

it would tie Kozlov to a murder.
    His mind raced at the possibilities.
    ‘No, not dead,’ Koontz informed him. ‘Just really messed up. There’s a lot of commotion, but I think someone said he broke his hip.’
    ‘Shit!’ Callahan blurted. His vision of storming the mansion was replaced by thoughts of an old man slipping on an ice cube.
    Koontz continued to listen. ‘Now they’re talking about killing someone.’
    ‘Killing who?’ Callahan demanded.
    He paused for a moment. ‘You.’
    ‘
Me?
They’re talking about killing
me
?’
    Koontz laughed. ‘Nah, I’m just messing with you. They’re looking for some intruder. They think he’s in the vault, and they’re gathering the troops to find him.’
    ‘What intruder? What vault?’
    ‘How the hell should I know? I can only translate so many things at once - especially since I’m flying solo. It might be nice if I had some help.’

    * * *

    Compared to traditional elevators, the dumb waiter shaft was dark and cramped, but it felt downright spacious compared to the chimneys, crawlspaces, and ventilation ducts Sarah had shimmied through over the years. And since the dumb waiter car had been removed long ago, she had plenty of room to maneuver.
    Splaying her legs to the sides, she climbed the chute with relative ease. All she had to do was maintain enough side-to-side pressure with her arms and legs to support her bodyweight while she crawled vertically toward the roof. She wasn’t sure if the top of the shaft would offer an exit or if she would have to create one herself. For the time being, her only goal was to avoid a messy confrontation in the basement.
    When she reached the pulleys that had once held the support ropes in place, Sarah realized she had come to the end of the line. The exit door to the third floor had long since been covered by plasterboard, but it wasn’t all bad news in her mind since they hadn’t reset the studs in the wall. She knew she could punch through drywall, but two-inch-thick boards would have been a different matter.
    Before she did anything drastic, Sarah pressed her ear against the shaft and listened for any signs of life on the other side of the wall. Guards scurried on the floors below, desperately searching for the evil ninja who had defeated the giant ogre they kept locked in the basement, but she heard nothing but silence outside the chute.
    It was now or never.
    She walked her feet around the perimeter of the shaft and planted her shoes firmly against the frame of the opening. Holding onto the pulley above, she curled her legs against her chest and swung out from the wall with all her might. As gravity reversed her course, she combined her momentum with a violent thrust of her legs.
    The wall splintered on contact as she drove her feet through the drywall. Chunks of plaster flew into the hallway and clanked down the shaft to the basement below, but she knew the noise was worth the risk. She repeated the process again and again, widening the hole until she could slip through the narrow gap.
    She looked like a gopher searching for hawks when she peeked her head through the hole. She turned left, then right, then left again, making sure the coast was clear before she fully emerged from the wall. Satisfied with her surroundings, she dove through the small fissure, launching all but her lower legs into the hallway beyond. She quickly pulled her calves, ankles, and feet through the wall and rose to one knee.
    She listened, wondering if her breach had been detected.
    ‘You’re good,’ Garcia said in her ear. ‘The mass of guards hasn’t moved from the lower floors. I think you’re clear unless …’
    ‘Unless what?’ she whispered.
    ‘Hold on! We have movement. One person, heading your—’
    ‘Shit,’ she blurted.
    Not thirty feet in front of her, Kozlov himself emerged from a room at the end of the hallway. He stared at her, consumed with rage. Although he was unarmed, she half expected fireballs to burst forth