“Any last words?” Greg Vansen asked, wagging his finger at Percy Sledger. Sledger stood at the edge of a precipice that overlooked the Columbia River and Interstate 85 several hundred feet below. Greg figured that in daytime it was probably a stunning natural overlook, for those who were interested in such things.
For his purposes, though, Greg saw only its utility as a perfect place to corner the running man in front of him.
A light breeze rustled the trees around them in the cool, Oregon night. Rain was in the air, but Greg hoped he would be on his way home before it started coming down. May rains in Oregon were not typically very warm affairs, and while Greg did have a poncho secreted away on him, he had no interest in deploying it and working around the rifle clutched in his arms. He had it pointed carefully at Percy Sledger’s heart, and Sledger had his hands raised high, his thinness making him look like a particularly wretched scarecrow.
Greg had looked him over carefully; unless Sledger was hiding a secret like Greg’s—which Greg felt calmly assured that he wasn’t—the man had no weapons on him, and was thus no threat at all. He was just a man standing cliffside, his mop of brown hair drenched with sweat from his run, a look of fear twisting his long, skinny face as he pondered the drop ahead or the bullet that had his name on it as surely as if it had been carved into the lead.
