He pulled a handful of bullets from his pocket and reloaded the Glock’s magazine. The second man had a shotgun. With a range of maybe fifty yards, it was no match for a nine-millimeter. All Reed had to do was stay out of range. The bigger question was whether the second man would attempt to cross the river.

Reed lifted his binoculars out and glassed the far shore. In the waning light of day the long shadows moved like mirages, but no man with a shotgun. He looked downstream for Lyle’s body. Was that bastard still clinging to life somewhere along the bank? Reed thought about working his way down to the river to see, but shook that thought off. If Lyle was in the water, the cold would take care of him soon enough. The greater threat was the second man.

Reed scanned the woods again, and this time he saw something that definitely wasn’t a shadow. He held the glasses against a nearby tree to steady them and saw movement. Before he could figure out exactly what he was looking at, the shape bolted from the woods and the second man leapt into the river.

Reed dropped the binoculars and raised the Glock, but the man was already beneath the cover of the near bank. Reed was out of position. He no longer had a firing lane into the clearing. He started making his way back to his first nest, and was almost there when Lyle stood and fired blindly at Reed’s last position. Reed fired back automatically, shooting before he had acquired his target, the bullet missing badly and giving away his new position.

The second man came up out of the river and charged into the clearing. Reed fired at the moving target but the man kept running. Lyle fired again from the river, sending a spray of dead bark into Reed’s face. Reed dove for cover behind a large rock, firing a shot back at Lyle while in midair.

Behind the rock, he rose to his knees and looked to the clearing. The second man was gone.

Damn it!

Reed took two deep breaths to settle down. He had to think. If he stayed where he was, the second man would take the high ground behind him and set up crossfire. If Reed left his cover to flank Lyle, he’d be pinned down against the river. His fingers shook with adrenaline as he listened to the second man crash his way up the hill, no more than seventy yards away. Then the crashing sound stopped.

Reed tried to think strategically. Lyle had at least two bullets in him and was in a freezing river. He was no longer a threat. Even if Lyle was too stubborn to die, he didn’t have enough life in him to keep up the fight.

As for the second man, he would try to get behind Reed, stay uphill, where he would have the advantage. Reed needed to get around the back side of the hill, grab his son, and leave the battlefield. He would let his pursuer come to him—one on one. As Reed saw it, he had won this skirmish, and now it was time to set up the field for the next one.