EYESHOT: The most gripping suspense thriller you will ever read by TAYLOR ADAMS Page A

shadow against a scorched world, racing toward them.
    “Hey, Elle!” Ash shouted.
    “Yeah?”
    “What were your two snakes named?”
    His wife forced a smile. “Gray and Iris.”
    The girl sighed airily. “I like their names.”

7
    “Weapons,” James said. “What do we have?”
    “Same as before.”
    Pepper spray and a crappy multitool.
    The black jeep skidded into a handbrake turn and an abrupt halt twenty yards down the road, throwing a wave of rocks and passing out of James’ view. He groaned with frustration. He couldn’t lean any further around the Toyota’s headlight without exposing himself. He heard the jeep’s driver door open with a velociraptor scream that echoed to the distant cliffs and back.
    “Your pepper spray.”
    She plucked it from her purse and tossed it to him.
    The jeep’s door slammed shut and the echo cracked on the prairie. Then, crunching footsteps. Elle, lying prone by the rear tire, could see the Soviet – or at least his legs and feet. James, kneeling to her left, could not. The canister slipped in his sweaty hands. He snapped off the protective cap. “Which way is he walking?”
    “He’s circling to the back of his jeep.” She exhaled, creating a puff of copper dust. “He’s . . . he’s doing something with the back end.”
    A rhythmic squeal. Faint at first, but growing in shrillness and intensity like rigging cables drawn tight. Hot friction. Metal on metal. James shuddered.
    “What’s he doing?” Roy yelled.
    “I can’t see,” Elle shouted back.
    James held the pepper spray with both hands and squinted to read the fine print. His eyes weren’t focusing. He saw shadowed doubles and blinked – Blink, damn it – until they slipped together and he could read: 10% OLEORESIN CAPSICUM. A standard lachrymatory agent. Tears, snot, coughing, itching, burning, the usual good stuff. But his heart sank hard when he read the directions for use.
    “What?” Elle asked.
    “Effective range of six feet.” He squeezed it. “I can piss farther than that.”
    “You bought it for me.”
    He pulled the Leatherman knockoff from his back pocket, retracted the two-inch paring knife, and locked the blade into place with a crisp click. “So our arsenal is . . . eye irritant and a butter knife.”
    Elle nodded tiredly.
    “When he’s close, you get his eyes.” He passed the pepper spray back to her and closed her fingers around it. “And I’ll use the knife.”
    “He’ll need to be really close.”
    “I know. Hopefully he’s made of warm butter, too.” James tucked the blade underhand and flattened the handle against his right thumb. He remembered once seeing on TV that there was a proper and an improper way to wield a fighting knife. He recalled something called a Filipino grip and a handful of cutting stances to avoid because they branded you as an amateur, which of course he was. He wished he’d paid attention. He couldn’t imagine stabbing another person with it anyway. With a tiny blade like this one, where the hell did you even stab? Two inches wouldn’t penetrate the stomach or chest far enough for immediate results. The throat or the windpipe, definitely. Maybe the forehead. Or the eyes.
    The eyes?
    From the Soviet’s jeep came a final snap of tortured metal, and then brisk footsteps.
    “He’s walking again.” He tapped Elle’s shoulder. “Which way?”
    “He turned around,” she whispered. She scooted beside the tire on her elbows, craning her neck to follow the man. Her shoe scraped gravel. “He’s . . . he’s walking to Roy and Ash’s car.”
    James hit his belly beside her. He saw black trail boots and recognized them from the gas station, caked with dust and creaking as they paced up the road toward the Acura’s rear. Every calm step was somehow mechanically identical – the same stride, the same height, the same heel-first stomp on the crumbling dirt road.
    “Ash! Roy!” Elle shouted, her voice quivering with fear. “He’s coming to