The Shadow Hunter (38 page)

She switched her attention to the house, which looked empty. She made a show of studying the for sale sign, her performance for the benefit of anyone watching from a neighboring residence. Having established her bona fides as a prospective buyer, she approached the front door.

The short, curved walkway allowed her to pass close to the bay window.

The curtains were open, and although the living room was dark, she could see well enough in the glow of the streetlights to know that the furniture was gone. Whoever was selling the place had already moved out. So why was there a car in the carport?

She rang the doorbell. No answer. She rang again without result, then entered the carport, her purse open, her index finger on the trigger of her Smith & Wesson.

These precautions were unnecessary. The carport was empty.

She checked out the car. It was indeed a Chevrolet Impala of the right age and color, and the rear license plate matched the number on the BOLO sheet. Hickle had parked here, off the street, and had removed the front plate to reduce the risk of the car’s discovery.

The possibility that Hickle had stolen one of the other cars on the list, and that this one had been ditched by some other thief, wasn’t worth considering.

She had learned not to think in terms of coincidences where her safety was concerned. The Lincoln had made its way from Sylmar to a carport within a few blocks of her home. That meant Hickle had left it here.

He knew where she lived, and he had come for her.

Abby went around to the side and rear of the house, inspecting every door and window. She found no sign of entry. Hickle must have used the house only to ditch the car. He, was hiding somewhere else. In her condo, maybe, or in the condo building’s garage. Security at the Wilshire Royal was tight, but the same could be said of Malibu Reserve.

Hickle had penetrated that compound. He could get inside the condominium building if he wanted to. He might have been there since early this morning, lying in ambush for more than twenty hours by now.

It seemed just plain rude to keep him waiting any longer.

Headlights.

They splashed into the ramp that fed into the Royal’s underground garage. A small white car paused at the gate, and an arm extended out the driver’s side to feed a pass card into the slot.

Hickle leaned close to the window. The car was a white subcompact, not new. It looked out of place in this neighborhood. He peered through the rifle’s scope and glimpsed dark hair, a pale forearm. It could be Abby. He wasn’t sure. Her car had not been parked near his at the Gainford Arms, and he’d never seen it.

The gate lifted. The white subcompact rolled down the ramp into the garage.

He had a funny feeling it was Abby. The car was too beat-up to belong to the typical resident of the Wilshire Royal. It could have been a maid’s car, but why would a maid be arriving for work at 8 p.m. on Saturday? And the driver’s dark hair had looked familiar.

It had to be Abby. Just had to be.

“She’s home,” Hickle whispered.

Abby guided the Dodge up to the access gate to the Wilshire Royal’s underground garage. She knew there was a fair chance Hickle was lying in wait nearby, ready to open fire with the shotgun when she stopped to use her pass card Though she could try to return fire, she would be in a vulnerable position—and her Dodge, unlike Travis’s staff car, wasn’t armored.

She fed the pass card into the slot with her left hand, while her right hand gripped the .38 Smith. She almost wanted him to try something.

The gate opened without incident. She steered the Dodge inside, heading down the ramp to the condominium building’s underground garage.

The garage was the next possible location for an ambush.

Hickle might have concealed himself behind one of the reinforced-concrete pylons or in somebody’s vehicle.

He might be waiting for her to emerge into the glow of the overhead fluorescent lights.

She parked in her reserved space, then slung her purse over her shoulder; holding the Smith down at her side, and got out of the car quickly. She let a moment pass after she shut the car door, listening to its echoing thud. Slowly she came out into the open, her eyes big, her gaze ticking from shadow to shadow.

No shadows moved. No gunshots sounded.

She remained alert as she crossed yards of concrete to the elevator and pressed the call button. The elevator carried her to the tenth floor.

She put the gun in her purse but kept her finger on the trigger.

The elevator doors hissed open. She scanned the hallway before proceeding to her apartment. The likeliest place for Hickle to hide was her own living room.

She kept her head low, away from the peephole, and cautiously tested her doorknob. Still locked—a fact that proved nothing, but if the door had been unlocked, it would have proven a great deal. She looked closely at the knob and detected no sign of tampering.

In her search of Hickle’s apartment she’d found no locksmith tools or books on picking locks. She had no reason to assign him any expertise in that area.

Nonetheless, she tensed herself for violence as she found her key and unlocked her door. She removed the Smith from her purse and held it in front of her. If one of her neighbors stepped into the hall in the next few seconds, she would have some explaining to do.

The most dangerous part was what came next.

Going in, she would be most vulnerable. She had no idea what sort of greeting she might expect inside.

Hickle aligned the rifle’s muzzle with the hole in the glass, keeping the barrel inside to muffle the shot.

Carefully he sighted the balcony, the glass door, the curtains.

He would wait for her to open those curtains. It shouldn’t take long.

When she stood in plain view, large in the scope, he would depress the trigger—gently, gently—and one-twentieth of a second later, there would be no more Abby in the world.

Abby went in fast, throwing open the door and pivoting inside, then ducking into a crouch so any shots aimed at her head would go high.

No shots. She closed the door but didn’t touch the wall switch near the frame. Her living room was in darkness; trusting the Royal’s security, she never bothered with putting her lights on timers. She was glad it was dark. If Hickle was hiding and she was exposed, light was her enemy.

In her purse she carried a mini-flashlight with a surprisingly bright beam. She found it by feel and held it in her left hand, well away from her body, before turning it on. If the light drew fire, she wanted the shots aimed away from her vital organs.

She swept the light over the living room, picking out the familiar shapes of her sofa and armchair, her stuffed animals, her stereo equipment and TV. Nothing had been moved or damaged, as far as she could tell.

Into the kitchen, then down the short hall to the bedroom.

She shone the flashlight into closets and behind doors, into the shower stall in the bathroom, and under the bed. She returned to the living room and checked behind the couch and the chair.

Hickle was not here. He had never been here.

She ought to be glad about that. Not having a psychopath in one’s home was ordinarily cause for celebration.

But she knew something was wrong. She stood in the dark, her flashlight angled low, the gun still drawn and ready, and pondered the situation.

Hickle hadn’t staked out the garage entryway or the garage itself, and he hadn’t gained access to her condo and waited for her return.

So where was he?

She tried to put herself into his mind. He was angry and desperate. He had the shotgun and was itching to use it. His fantasy of squeezing the trigger and blasting Kris into hell had been unfulfilled. He wanted a second chance.

But the shotgun had not been his first choice of weapon, had it? He’d bought the rifle first. Fitted it with a scope and a laser targeting system. Last night when she’d entered his apartment to debug the place, she hadn’t seen the rifle in his closet. He must have taken it with the shotgun. He must still have it.

The shotgun was good only at close range, but the rifle was made for longer distances. For marksmanship.

With the scope and the laser, it was a sniper’s gun-Sniper… Her gaze moved to the curtains over the balcony door.

Hickle was losing his patience. If it had been Abby’s car he’d seen, she should have arrived in her apartment by now. But no lights had come on inside, and the curtains had not opened.

“Come on, you bitch,” he muttered, blinking away a bead of sweat that trickled into his left eye.

“Show yourself. I only need one shot, Abby. One shot.”

Abby considered the curtains. If she had not suspected that Hickle was in the neighborhood, what would she have done upon entering her condo?

When she and Hickle shared Chinese food the other night, what was the first action she had taken?

She had opened the windows to let in some air.

She understood then, not in words but with a pair of bodily sensations—the prickling of the short hairs at her nape, the sudden tightening of her abdominal muscles.

She pictured herself parting the curtains, sliding open the glass door.

For a few seconds she would be framed in the doorway. Visible from outside. From a vantage point across the street. And across the street was an unfinished, unoccupied commercial building—a perfect hiding place for a man on the run.

Abby switched off the flashlight and approached the glass door.

Kneeling to make a smaller target, drew the curtains an inch apart. She stared past the railing of the balcony at the black, looming mass of the office tower.

She waited, her gaze fixed on the row of windows opposite her own.

Some time passed, maybe a minute, maybe five or ten. She didn’t move, barely breathed.

When a dim red light flickered in one of the windows, she knew what it was. Hickle, restless, testing the laser sighting system.

“You’re so sly,” Abby breathed, “but so am I.”

She saw the beam alight on the balcony railing, then jerk a few inches higher, pressing a faint dot of light against the glass door a yard to her left. The dot crawled toward her. Carefully she closed the curtains and let the red dot slide over the fabric, some of its glow bleeding through to stamp a pale tattoo on her face.

After a moment the light winked out.

Hickle was now sure he had been wrong about the car. It must have belonged to some maid or some teenage kid—anybody but Abby. She had not come home yet.

But she would. Soon.

He simply had to wait. He would not give up. This time he would not fail.

Abby left the condo, locking the door. As she rode the elevator, she took a quick inventory of the contents of her purse. Gun, spare ammo in a speed loader micro recorder mini-flash, cell phone.

On the ground floor she bypassed the lobby and ducked into the small gym, empty on a Saturday night. The gym’s rear door opened on the street behind the Royal, which Hickle couldn’t see from his firing site. She headed down a side street, intending to cross Wilshire a few blocks away and circle around to the tower.

As she walked, she fished the phone out of her purse and, after a moment’s hesitation, speed-dialed the second number in the unit’s memory.

Ringing at the other end. Two rings, three, and the click of a pickup.

“Hello?” Travis said. She had reached him at home.

“Paul, I’ve located Hickle. He’s in Westwood.

He’s—well, he’s stalking me. Nice turn of events, huh?”

“Abby, slow down—”

“No time to slow down. I’ve found him, Paul, I’ve found him… and now I’m going to need your help.”

Travis arrived in Westwood fifteen minutes after Abby’s call and saw her standing, purse in hand, on a back street behind the office tower. The building loomed over her, sixteen floors of unfinished commercial space, untenanted except for one very temporary occupant.

He couldn’t decide whether to be angry or pleased.

True, he had expected Hickle to take care of this job.

Travis’s instructions had been explicit, and even an amateur ought to have been able to fire a laser-sighted rifle accurately at a distance of a hundred feet. Something had gone wrong, though in their brief phone conversation Abby hadn’t revealed any details. Still, she was alive when she ought to be dead, and this fact disturbed him.

On the other hand, things hadn’t worked out so badly, had they? He had been given the opportunity to take care of matters personally. He expected to enjoy it.

Travis parked his Mercedes down the street, then patted himself to be sure neither of the handguns he was carrying had printed against his jacket. In his shoulder holster was a Beretta 9mm, the gun issued to most TPS personnel. If Abby noticed the Beretta, it was no big deal; under the circumstances she would expect him to be armed. The second gun was the one he couldn’t let her see.

Tucked inside his waistband near his spine, hidden by the jacket’s flap, was the Colt .45 from Howard Barwood’s bungalow.

He got out of the car, closing the door quietly, and approached Abby at a brisk walk.

“Where is he?” he asked, keeping his voice soft, as if he had no idea that Hickle was on the tenth floor of the tower, well out of earshot.

Abby glanced at the building.

“Up there.”

“You sure?”

“I saw him sighting me with the laser beam on his rifle. He’s staking out my condo, planning to make like a sniper.”

“How could he—” Travis knew it was a mistake to play dumb.

“Of course. Barwood’s in real estate. And he knows your last name. He passed along your home address.”

“Looks that way.”

“You said you actually saw the laser? Then Hickle must have seen you.”

“No, I kept my place dark and peeked through the curtains. I don’t think he’s fled yet.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“And tell them what? That I think a strange man is aiming a laser beam at me from the building across the street? They’d send out the men in white coats with the butterfly nets.”

“You could’ve told them it’s Raymond Hickle.”

“Sure. How many reports about Hickle do you suppose they’ve received since this story hit the airwaves?