The Watchers Read Online Free PDF Page A

only reflected great risk but the opportunity of a lifetime. True, the pleasure of harvesting someone this coveted might prove the sensation of a lifetime, but far more important, this go-ahead reflected enormous trust in his skill and ruthlessness. When he succeeded at the kill, he would single-handedly leapfrog whole ranks of his fellow Scythians and forgo years of ordinary, unremarkable slaughter. Surely that would vault him high into the Scythe’s upper echelons, obscure and secret as they might be.
    Reassured, he breathed in again and forced his sluggish thoughts to plod through the steps ahead. Despite the honor of the moment, he could hardly afford to get a single thing wrong. The triumvirate had spoken. The order had been issued. Completion now had to be a mere formality.
    Sedate with three pumps of the mist bottle. Then remove the needle, expose forearm, and inject. . . .
    ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI —THAT MOMENT
    In near-total darkness, long fingers lowered and tightened around the faded photograph of a smiling, luminous little girl. With the economy of a long-familiar motion, they slowly, meticulously traced the creases in its paper and folded their sides together.
    Finally the picture was restored to a tightly folded square. The fingers clasped the paper to a bony, thinly clad breast. A woman’s torso began to rock forward, ever so gradually, then backward again. And again.
    A faint mumble broke the silence of the tiny room, echoed through the gloom, across the antiseptic tiles, the bare white walls, the thick locked door.
    â€œDear Jesus, I beg you to protect my precious one. . . .”
    Patient 64 launched into her familiar ritual. The one she performed several hundred times a day and every night before succumbing to sleep, for over thirty-five hundred evenings to date.
    This night, her prayers did not end until dawn.
    PACIFIC PALISADES —THAT MOMENT
    The assassin’s hand moved toward the syringe in his breast pocket, but in the millisecond that followed, something in the air before him slowed his motion. It was a force he could hardly distinguish from a tangible, physical resistance. Nothing large and unmovable, like furniture, but more like a body, a strong one, unseen yet pushing resolutely against his hands and face.
    He gritted his teeth and flexed through the motion. His eyebrows furrowed. Was fear clogging up his brain? Nervous tension short-circuiting his muscles?
    He fought for control and began to sense an almost palpable opposition against every twitch of his body. He scowled. He hadn’t been warned of this. He served the ultimate power in the universe— surely at such a time as this it would come to his aid. What was happening?
    Panic screamed through his thoughts. He had never encountered anything like this. Several times before he had felt twinges of something odd, but never outright force. He could almost sense a personality in the space just ahead of him, invisibly grappling with him.
    His left arm was now trapped in the vise of an invisible hand. His right wrist felt paralyzed; the syringe quivered in his fingers as though an iron grip was trying to wrest it from him. A thousand panicked thoughts hammered his mind. He pushed them away to concentrate on the struggle. He was now being pushed physically back by a force so powerful he wondered if he could stay afoot.
    He grunted audibly, for now even his will was beginning to falter. Usually unwavering, his resolve began to flicker like a tungsten filament losing contact with its current. A voice inside him cried, Quit! Run now while you still can. This one’s off-limits. Keep trying to harm her and you will pay!
    His mind quailed at the renewed warning that he could pay for failure with his life. Desperation seared his senses. He strained forward with every ounce of his strength, straining to push the needle closer to her arm. Forget the sedation at this point. . . .
    Then he remembered his briefing data. If the poison