Free The Hunted by Dave Zeltserman

for his man to show up. No more than three minutes. The man was about his age, a few inches shorter, stockier, and with the hardness of a killer showing around his mouth and eyes. He wasn’t Barry, Willis was certain of that, but then again he still hadn’t made his call to Barry, and even if he had, he’d never expect Barry to show.
    The man who did show up moved cautiously as he consulted a device that must have been a GPS tracker. He kept close to the buildings so he wouldn’t be seen easily from the coffee shop, and he ended up passing within two feet of Willis without realizing it. As the man moved on, he kept consulting his GPS tracker. He stopped three doors away from the coffee shop and flattened himself in another building’s doorway. Willis texted Barry providing the coffee shop’s name and address, and telling Barry he had fifteen minutes to get there. Barry must’ve immediately texted the same information to his other man because Willis could hear the buzz of a phone that had been put on vibrate. He watched as the man took a cell phone from his jacket pocket and studied it as if he were reading a text message. The man put the cell phone away, then stepped out from the doorway and continued on. Before he entered the coffee shop he slipped his hand inside his jacket. Willis knew the man was keeping his fingers inches from a gun that he had holstered. He didn’t want to take it out yet, but he wanted quick access to it.
    Willis used a pair of field glasses to watch as the man moved quickly into the shop ready to start shooting if necessary. Most likely he would’ve used the gun to force Willis out of the shop so he could be taken care of someplace less public, but maybe not. Maybe the plan was to end things there and expect the witnesses to be too shocked to give the police an accurate identification of the shooter. Willis could see the man scanning the shop, his eyes narrowing and his mouth pinched. Indecision marred his expression for several heartbeats as he looked for Willis. He noticed the unisex bathroom in the corner of the shop and made his way over to it. When he tried the door handle he must’ve found it locked. A grimness tightened his mouth. He had to be figuring that Willis was hiding in there. Moving slowly to the counter he bought himself a coffee and then settled down to wait. He again reached inside his jacket as the door opened, then dejection contorted his face as a young woman stepped out of the bathroom. It was only then that the man spotted Willis’s Factory badge on the floor.
    He got up from his table, walked to where the badge had been left and picked it up. After a quick look at it he brought it to the girl working behind the counter and showed it to her to see if she had seen the man in the photo. She shook her head. The man waved over the other kid working behind the counter. This kid looked at the badge and also shook his head.
    The man left the coffee shop after that. He moved cautiously, not quite sure what to do next. He stood for a moment making a face as if he were caught if the middle of a sneeze, then looked up and down the street searching for Willis. He must’ve decided that Willis got spooked and bailed on the meeting because his mouth tightened into an angry slash and he moved quickly then to go back to his car. His eyes were little more than dull black dots as he strode past the doorway where Willis was hiding, too sure that Willis was gone and too absorbed in his thoughts to bother looking anywhere but straight ahead.
    Like Willis, the man had ignored the available on-street parking and instead chose to park illegally on a side street so that it would’ve been less likely for his car to be spotted. The man moved with a single-minded purpose. When he reached his car, he used his remote to unlock it and reached for his cell phone, probably so he could call Barry. Up until then he hadn’t realized that Willis had been following him. It was only at the last second