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First published in Great Britain as The Murder Game by HarperCollins 2008
This eBook edition published 2018
Copyright © Beverly Barton 2008
Cover design © Diane Meacham Design 2018
Cover photograph © Shutterstock
Beverly Barton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9781847560599
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780007281824
Version: 2018-06-04
I am not going to die! Damn it, I refuse to give up, to let him win this evil competition.
Kendall Moore pulled herself up off the ground where she had fallen, face-down, as she ran from her tormentor. Breathless and exhausted, she managed to bring herself to her knees. Every muscle ached. Her head throbbed. Fresh blood trickled from the cuts on her legs and the gashes in the bottoms of her callused feet.
The blistering August sun beat down on her like hot, heavy tendrils reaching out from a relentless monster in the sky. The sun was her enemy, blistering her skin, parching her lips, dehydrating her tired, weak body.
Garnering what little strength she had left, Kendall forced herself to stand. She had to find cover, a place where she had an advantage over her pursuer. If he caught up with her while she was out in the open, he would kill her. The game would be over. He would win.
He’s not going to win!1 Her mind screamed orders—run, hide, live to fight another day. But her legs managed only a few trembling steps before she faltered and fell again. She needed food and water. She hadn’t eaten in three days and hadn’t had any water since day before yesterday. He had been pursuing her from sunup to sunset for the past few days, apparently moving in for the kill. After weeks of tormenting her.
The roar of his dirt bike alerted her to the fact that he was nearby, on the narrow, rutted path to the west of her present location. Soon, he would come deeper into the woods on foot, tracking her as he would track an animal.
At first she had been puzzled by the fact that he had kidnapped her but then set her free. But it hadn’t taken her long—only a matter of hours—before she realized that she was in the middle of nowhere and that she wasn’t free, no more than a captive animal in a game reserve was actually free.
Day after day, he stalked her, hunted her down, and taught her how to play the game by his rules. He’d had more than one opportunity to kill her, but he had allowed her to live, and he’d even given her an occasional day of rest. But she never knew which day it would be, so she was forced to stay alert at all times, to be prepared for yet another long, tiring match in what seemed like a never-ending game.
Pudge parked his dirt bike, straightened the cord holding the small binoculars around his neck and the leather strap that held the rifle cover across his back. Kendall didn’t know it, but today was the day she would die. He had brought her here to this isolated area three weeks ago today. She would be his fifth kill in this brand-new game that he had devised after several months of meticulous planning. Only recently had he decided that he would hunt his prey for three weeks, then go in for the actual kill on the twenty-first day.