Hard as Nails

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

The man with the terribly burned face was staring across the dark parking lot at her.

Arlene didn't know how he could see her without binoculars—and she could see through her own binoculars that he had none—but she was sure that he saw her. She leaned her head back against the Buick's headrest, deeper into the shadows, making sure that there was no glint of the sodium-vapor lamps reflecting off her binocular lenses.

The burned man kept staring at her from the pest control truck. His rapt but blind attention reminded Arlene of something but she couldn't think of what for a moment. When she did remember, it wasn't reassuring.

Like an animal—a predator—that can't see its prey but smells it.

She thumbed her cell phone on and held that thumb over the fifth pre-set fast-dial button. Earlier in the evening she'd looked up the number for the Niagara Falls precinct house closest to the Rainbow Centre Mall… sometimes direct dial brought help faster than 911.

The burned man stared her way for another minute but then pulled his scarred face back into the shadows of the van. Arlene couldn't see even a silhouette.

Is he back in the van? Did he get out the other side? The overhead cab light hadn't gone on in his vehicle, but Arlene was sure that this man had long since broken or removed that bulb. Whatever else he was, he was a stalker. He loved the night.

Arlene licked her lips and considered her options. She assumed that the burned man was also waiting for Aysha, although there was no evidence for that yet. But like her boss, Arlene DeMarco very rarely believed in coincidence.

If the man started across the parking lot on foot toward her—and she was still about eighty yards away from his truck and parked in the shadows here by the Dumpsters—she'd simply start the Buick and drive like hell.

If he pulls a weapon?

She'd get her head down, steer by instinct, and try to run over him.

If he starts that obscene pest control van and drives it my way?

Outrun him. Alan had always kept their Buicks well maintained and Arlene had continued the practice after her husband's death.

But what if he just sits there and waits until Aysha's dropped off?

This was the contingency she didn't have an answer for. The burned man was much closer to the mall doors than Arlene was. The Yemeni girl, Aysha, had been told she'd be picked up by her fiancé—the man Joe had killed—or by someone who'd take her to her fiancé. She'd get in the first vehicle that drove up.

What then?

Let her go. Let them both go. That was the obvious answer. Could this be so important, Arlene thought, that she should risk her life to pick up this strange girl?

Joe asked me to. We don't know how important it might be.

The burned man was still invisible in the darkness of the van's shadowed interior. Arlene had the image of the man pulling a rifle from the back of the van—of him sitting in the darker shadows of the passenger seat, invisible to her binoculars, and sighting through a scope at her this very second.

Stop it. Arlene resisted the urge to sink down out of sight or to start the Buick and drive off at high speed. He's probably here to pick up his girlfriend who works on the janitorial crew

"Uh huh," Arlene whispered aloud. "And if you believe that, dearie, I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might want to buy."

She desperately wanted a cigarette, but there was no way that she could light one without showing the burned man that someone was in the dark, silent car out here in the shadows by the Dumpsters.

It might be worth it. Light the Marlboro. Enjoy it. Make him tip his hand.

But Arlene didn't think she wanted to tip the burned man's hand. Not right now. Not yet. Arlene looked at her watch—almost 11:20.

She was peering through the binoculars again, trying to decide if that darkness within the darkness there might be the shapeless silhouette of the man behind the wheel of the van, when her phone rang.