Predator and Prey Prowlers 3 (7 page)

Her lips pressed together and she cringed, shook her head slowly. Forced the tears to stay away.

“No. I’ve got nothing to say to you right now.”

“You must have a ton of questions.”

At last she turned to glare up at him, the hurt so deep in her that it felt as though it was almost blocking the words from coming out. She swallowed and her stomach hurt. “Not now, Jack. I can’t talk to you right now.” He shook his head, lifted his hands as if they might heal her. “You knew. You can’t tell me you didn’t.”

Molly glanced away. “Maybe I suspected. But I asked you, Jack. And you put me off. You told me no. You said he was gone! Then . . . we kissed. I feel things I already felt horrible for feeling, but now . . . what am I supposed to do now, Jack?” She spun away from him and stormed away up the sand toward the pavement and the shops and restaurants. People stared openly, but Molly didn’t care. Who were these people anyway? Certainly no one she would ever see again. She didn’t know them.

At the moment she wondered if there was anyone she really knew.

The long August day was only beginning to wane, dusk still several hours off. The sun angled down with a golden hue only found this time of day, this time of year. Arm in arm, Dallas and Valerie wandered through Quincy Market, suffused with the good feeling of the people all around them. Balloon sellers in clownface did a stellar business. In the Cityside restaurant, its patio open to the cobblestone walk, a lanky scarecrow of a man played Billy Joel songs on the piano.

Dallas knew that his current employer, Jasmine, had been part of Owen Tanzer’s movement to draw together the scattered Prowlers of the world, to try to take over. He thought it was pretty funny, actually, the idea that a tribal culture whose members were disseminated across the face of the earth could come together and usurp the planet’s dominant species, a species with a sense of unity the Prowlers lacked, a species that outnumbered them twenty-five thousand to one.

Tanzer had been a zealot, and zealots always ended up dead.

For his part, Dallas liked the world just the way it was. He enjoyed the company of humans, particularly females. He loved the music of humans, their food, and their literature. When he killed them, it was rarely out of bloodlust. Most of the time, in fact, it was for money. Jasmine was only the latest in a long line of employers, including various governments and corporations, who had utilized his skills. He was always up to a challenge. But it wasn’t often he was hired to kill one of his own.

As they turned down a side street and began to move away from Quincy Market, past a bistro and a gourmet coffee shop, Valerie bumped him to get his attention.

“Hey. You’re so far away. What’s on your mind?”

Dallas smiled. She really was beautiful in her human face, with that rich lipstick the color of dried blood. He suspected he was one of few among his kind who could have appreciated the beauty of her façade as well as that of her true countenance.

“Just thinking how much I missed you,” he said. “I stayed away too long.”

Almost demure, she glanced away. The reaction made the lie worthwhile.

At the end of the street, on the corner, stood a threestory building whose architecture was an elegant testament to the Boston of a bygone age. The sign on the front of the building identified it as Bridget’s Irish Rose Pub. Dallas paused, touched Valerie on the arm and nodded toward the restaurant.

“That’s the place.”

She glanced at it. “Looks nice. Too bad we can’t eat dinner there.”

He laughed. “Maybe when this is all over, if I do my job right. It looks busy, too, which is helpful.”

Valerie turned into him, pressed herself against him, kissed his bristly jaw, then his throat, nipped him there with her teeth.

“When you do it, I want to be there.”

“Of course,” Dallas promised easily.

But she stared at him then, expecting some other response from him.

“What?” he asked.

Her hand tightened on his arm. “I missed you, too, Dallas. Don’t let it go to your head. I let you in. I gave up my toy for you. And, yes, I’m hoping we can have some fun, add a little spice to my life. As long as you realize that I’m not going to be
your
toy. If you want to play with me, that’s all right, but if I’m with you, I’m in it. I’ve never been any good at being a bystander.” A thrill went through Dallas. The truth was, he had forgotten just what it was about Valerie that had entranced him all along. Beauty was hardly sufficient. Now he remembered. Charm didn’t work on her.

“No argument,” he replied.

Valerie nodded once, then glanced at the pub again. “The bartender?”

“If it’s the right one. He’s supposed to be big, broad-shouldered, with a graying beard. Cantwell is the name he uses.”

One corner of her mouth lifted in a lopsided, mischievous grin and she crossed the street between cars. As Dallas watched, she went into the pub after a quartet of humans. Though many people did not eat until later when the summer days were so long, Bridget’s seemed quite busy. Dallas turned and went back up the sidewalk to a pair of pay phones. He picked one up, leaned against the kiosk, and watched the front door without even pretending to speak.

Perhaps three minutes after she had entered, Valerie pushed out the front door of the pub and darted across the street and into the flower shop. Seconds later the door opened again and a big, bearded man stepped out.
Cantwell,
Dallas thought. It had to be, though he could not see the man’s face. The bartender tilted his head back slightly and sniffed at the air. For a full minute he lingered on the sidewalk in front of the pub, and then his gaze settled upon the flower shop.

Dallas stiffened.

Then the door to Bridget’s swung open again and a waitress stuck her head out, said something to Cantwell. The bartender nodded and grabbed the open door. Before going inside, he looked around one last time, and Dallas got a good look at his face.

“Aw, no,” he whispered.

The door closed behind him. A minute or so later Valerie appeared on the sidewalk beside Dallas.

“He caught my scent right off,” she said excitedly. “But there were so many people in there, I don’t think he got a look at me. So what do you think?”

Dallas shook his head and started walking away from the pub. Valerie sniffed in annoyance and followed.

“Don’t give me attitude, now, Dallas. I did exactly what you asked me to do. You wanted to size up your target, now you’ve had your chance.”

“You did great,” he said flatly.

“So when are you going to do it?”

Dallas paused, but did not look up at her. His thoughts were astir. “I’m not,” he admitted.

“What do you mean? Why not?” Valerie asked.

He looked up at her with a smile that had no humor in it. “His name isn’t Cantwell. Or it wasn’t always.”

Valerie gaped at him. “You know him?”

Images flashed in the assassin’s mind of his daughter, Olivia, whom he had not seen in years. After her mother’s death—or truth be told, since long before then—he had made no effort to connect with her. Yet when word reached him from her pack that she had not been heard of in quite some time, he had begun to poke around. Olivia had last been seen in the New York area, where Jasmine was forming her new pack in the aftermath of Tanzer’s death. Dallas had known her since before the dawn of the twentieth century, and so it was only natural that he should ask for her help in locating the girl.

But Jasmine had never been one for sentiment. She agreed to help find Olivia but only if Dallas would take this job. In addition, she would pay him his usual fee. In the end, he really had no choice. While he harbored some resentment toward Jasmine for capitalizing on his daughter’s disappearance, he had begun to get carried away, as he always did, with the stalking of his prey.

Now, though?

“Hell,” Dallas muttered. “Small world, huh? Cruel irony. I can’t kill him.”

Silence descended between them, and both of them turned to look back along the street at the pub in the distance.

“So, what are you going to do, then?” she asked.

Dallas thought about it, then ran his hands through his long hair, pushed it away from his face.

“Well, the whole point of killing him, drawing him out, is to make sure he can’t protect the others. I get the feeling it’s them, this Dwyer guy and his girlfriend, that Jasmine really wants dead. So I guess I’ll just have to find another way to get Cantwell out of the picture.” C H A P T E R 3

The music seemed loud in Bridget’s Irish Rose, though the volume had not been turned up. It was simply that the pub was quiet and almost empty save for the staff, and so Sarah Mclachlan’s voice filled the restaurant and bar areas as though she were standing in the middle of the room.

Courtney Dwyer loved this time of day at Bridget’s. It was just after four o’clock, half an hour or so before the early dinner crowd would begin to trickle in. The wait staff pulled double duty between three and five o’clock, polishing the brass handrails, vacuuming, wiping down seats and tabletops. The same sort of thing was going on back in the kitchen, where the cooks were preparing for the evening onslaught, during which they would not have a moment to spare. Anything they could do now to cut down on the amount of cleanup at the end of the night would get them off work that much sooner.

Most days Courtney used the time to make certain the kitchen was properly stocked and to figure out what she would need from the fish market the following morning. But that was second nature to her now, and no real effort. The rest of the time was spent eating an early dinner—something she would not have time to do once the crowd began to roll in.

That afternoon she sat at a table at the back of the restaurant, not far from the kitchen, and worked in a small notebook on the food orders and inventory. Courtney never looked at receipts until after Bridget’s was closed for the night.

Her dinner, lamb tips with mashed potatoes and mixed vegetables, cooled half-eaten on a plate she had shoved aside. It was not uncommon for her to become distracted by work and drift away from her meal, and she had grown used to eating cold food.

Gazing at the inventory in her notebook, she nibbled the top of her pen and then set it down. Courtney scanned the restaurant and was pleased to see that six tables were taken, even at this time of day. Up at the bar, a few regulars hovered, eyes on the television bolted to the back wall. Bill was the head bartender, and he looked good back there, confident.
Master of all he surveys,
she thought, and allowed herself a small chuckle.

Her guy saw her looking at him and smiled, and Courtney lifted her hand in a small wave that was uncommonly girly and coquettish for her. His hair and beard were sprayed with white, but she found that salt-and pepper look to be very dignified and handsome.

“Courtney? You got a second?”

She glanced up to find Janis Kelso standing on the other side of the table, fidgeting with her hands. Courtney could not remember if Janis was twenty or twenty-one, but it always amazed her that the girl was even that old, given that she looked about fifteen. She had black hair that fell in a stylish swoop down across one side of her face, a tiny waist, and a brightness to her features that only added to the teenage aura that always surrounded her. Or almost always, because at the moment, flush with emotion, the enthusiasm that usually emanated from the girl was gone.

Courtney was concerned, but she forced a benevolent smile onto her face. “Sure. Do you want to sit down?”

Janis hesitated, then shook her head. “No, no, that’s all right. Look, I just wanted to tell you I’m . . . I know I was on from two to close, but I’ve got to go home now.”

“What do you mean?” Courtney asked, growing annoyed. “Are you sick?”

The waitress nervously smoothed down the front of her blouse and glanced away, unwilling to meet Courtney’s gaze. “No, no. I’m all right. I just . . . I can’t work with Dougie anymore.”

Courtney frowned. Where her employees were concerned, she did not like to pry unless they had problems that were work related. If Janis was seeing Dougie Roos, one of the cooks, and things had gone sour, Courtney just did not want to know. On the other hand, if there was some other reason, she certainly could not ignore that.

“What’s the issue between you two?”

Janis shifted uncomfortably and put her hands on the back of one of the chairs as if to keep her balance. “He’s been . . . he’s just all over me. Every time I go in the kitchen, it’s like he’s waiting for me. Telling me how good I look, asking me to go home with him. Last night, a couple of times he started feeling me up and I had to send one of the other waitresses back to pick up my orders. And now he just did it again, like ten minutes ago.”

Courtney stared at her. She could feel the heat of her anger burning on her face, and a tightening in her chest. With a sigh she shook her head and started toward the kitchen.

“Anybody see Dougie do this?”

Janis stiffened, drawing Courtney’s attention again.

“It happened,” the waitress said, an edge to her voice.

Now Courtney softened. She realized that the girl might have misunderstood her anger, and she met Janis’s gaze evenly. “I believe you. I just want to know if anyone else saw it. Anyone who did should have stepped in.” A shudder of relief went through Janis and she smiled before shaking her head. “Pretty much everybody’s heard the things he’s said to me. But I don’t know for sure if anybody saw him grabbing at me.”

Courtney closed her notebook and stood up, reaching for her cane. Her fingers closed on the silver lion’s head that topped the walking stick, and she squeezed tight, its contours jutting into the soft skin of her hand. The urge to hit someone with it was strong.

“When are you scheduled to work again?” she asked, standing face to face with Janis.

“Not until Wednesday.”

“All right,” Courtney said. “I’ll see you on Wednesday. You won’t have to work with Dougie anymore.”

“Oh,” Janis replied in a small voice. “Well, but what are you going to do tonight? I hate to leave you shorthanded.”