Page 43 of Bulletproof Jack: Hunting Lee Child's Jack Reacher

Sporadic fireworks illuminated the sky and revealed the ground ahead.

Her quarry landed in mud and slipped on the grass. More than once, he went down on one knee and struggled to stand again.

Relentlessly, steadily, slowly, she closed the gap.

The crowds at the observation deck behind her and along the pedestrian walkway to her left, still watching the fireworks at the Rainbow Bridge, seemed oblivious to the desperately slow chase.

Kim was barely winded by the exercise. She was a runner. She lived in Detroit. Where she trained in inclement weather most of the year. Snow, wind, rain, bone-chilling cold. She was used to it.

She could beat this guy.

She knew it as well as she knew anything.

All she had to do was outlast him. She wasn’t even breathing heavily.

Kim shoved her awareness of the roaring falls, exploding fireworks, and cheering crowds out of mind.

She focused solely on two things.

The runner.

The precarious terrain.

Nothing else entered her consciousness as she reduced the distance between them.

Near the middle of the long distance, the running man slipped again and went down. This time he landed on both hands and knees.

He stayed down for a couple of seconds. Kim was gaining on him.

Her focus was disturbed by Russell’s voice calling behind her. She kept running carefully over the rocky ground, not even casting a quick look over her shoulder. Russell could see her. There was no reason to look toward him.

Russell’s longer legs and heavier bulk carried him faster and more securely forward. “I’ve got this,” he said as he sailed past her.

Kim kept her steady pace.

Russell was half a block ahead.

The shooter must have heard Russell calling out. He jumped up from the darkness and sprinted forward. He turned when he landed on a patch of flat grassy earth, holding a handgun.

As the fireworks shot up from the stand, he set his stance and waited for the flash to perfect his aim.

“Russell! He’s got a gun!” Kim shouted a moment later, looking for cover.

Russell saw the shooter’s intention a split second later. He stopped and dropped to the ground, rolling down the hill toward the frigid Niagara River below.

Russell scrambled behind a boulder outcropping for cover.

When the burst of bright fireworks lit the sky and the ground below, the shooter aimed toward Russell and released two quick rounds under cover of the explosions.

The blinding flash of the fireworks imprinted on Kim’s retinas. She squeezed her eyes closed and opened them again. Nothing helped.

She returned fire, trusting her memory to pinpoint the shooter’s location.

Unnatural quiet between the fiery bursts settled over the scene.

When the next rounds whistled upward and exploded the night, Kim’s vision had cleared enough to see that the runner had made good use of his time. Somehow, he had disappeared. Where had he gone?

She whipped around in all directions, peering into the crowd above and the river below. Another break in the fireworks display had plunged the hillside into darkness again.

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