Sure enough, the sniper was taking a position higher on the bulge, angling down onto the patch of pines directly up from where he’d last spotted Evan. The sniper crawled over an outcrop, at one point rising to full height.

The average man is one meter from crown to crotch, a useful measurement for optically determining distance to target. To gauge the sniper’s position, Evan fitted him between the horizontal lines of the stadia. Five hundred meters out. The man pushed on upslope, diminishing another notch. Five twenty-five.

Evan consulted the range card taped to the butt stock. The laminated square of paper noted the specific ballistics for the hand load of the rifle. How much the bullet dropped per hundred yards. Range solutions. The exterior trajectory of the projectile.

Bracing the rifle on a flat patch of shale, he dialed an elevation into the scope to correct the aim for the ballistic arc at 525 meters. When he focused again, the sniper was gone.

Closing his right eye, Evan pressed his left to the rubber cup and sighted on a thicket of trees next to the outcrop.

Nothing. The guy had vanished.

A whip-poor-will called from the treetops, the agitated warble scoring Evan’s mounting uneasiness.

He’d set up for an ambush. Not a firefight. Under close scrutiny he’d be visible through the patchwork of branches and leaves. But if he repositioned now, his movement could draw the sniper’s eye.

The sniper had been focused eastward; he had no reason to search in Evan’s direction. Unless something else had grabbed his focus. Something that had made him seek cover from anyone along the very sight line on which Evan had situated himself.

Very slowly, Evan shifted from his belly onto his side and peered down through the woods to the valley floor. Way below, a few slivers of the chalet were visible between the trunks. Something darted across one of the slim gaps, trailing blond hair.

Candy McClure. A moment later there was a second flash, lower to the ground.

The Orphans had drawn the sniper’s attention. The shooter had reoriented to face this way.

Which meant that he was facing Evan.

Evan’s stomach clenched. Rolling back into position, he placed his eye on the scope in time to see a muzzle flare between two of the tree trunks in the thicket. An instant later the shale at his side kicked up, rocks embedding in the trunks behind him forcefully enough to sway the tips of the pines overhead.

Twelve inches to the left and he’d be missing an arm. He had to squeeze off a shot fast before the sniper got off a second round.

Evan zeroed in on the afterglow of that muzzle flare in the shadows of the thicket. He aimed a hair to the right on the assumption that the sniper was right-handed and lying on the left side of the rifle.

He pulled the trigger.