Secret Prey

FOURTEEN

LUCAS LIVED IN A RANCH-STYLEHOUSE IN ST. PAUL, ON a road that ran along the top of a Mississippi River bluff. From his front window he could see the lights of Minneapolis across the river. The neighborhood was quiet, fine for walking, and he and Weather had walked a lot when they were together.

Weather.

Why would somebody hit Weather? The Edina cops had exactly nothing. Zero. Zip. No likely neighborhood kids. One of the Edina guys had checked on Lucaswould he do it, why wouldnt he do it. Hed been told emphatically that Lucas would not, and the cops had gone away.

But Lucas couldnt accept it as a nutcase. Nutcases didnt pick out random houses to bomb; or if they did, the chances of hitting someone with Weathers history were…

Impossible. Not just slim. Impossible.

HE'D ONCE CONVERTED THE MASTER BEDROOM TO use as a den, but after Weather arrived, hed converted it back to a bedroom, and moved his drawing table into one of the smaller bedrooms. He hadnt worked on a commercial game for years now: everything had gone to computers, and while he might still develop ideas and scenarios, hewas rapidly moving away from game development.

Too much money, he thought sometimes. Hed made too much money, almost inadvertently, as sometimes happened in the computer age. Hed drifted from writing tabletop war games to writing game scenarios, which a University of Minnesota computer freak turned into games, to writing simulations of police emergencies to be played out on police computers. And his company had simply grown, first run out of his hip pocket, then with the computer freak, and finally by a professional businessman whod taken the company public.

And now that he really didnt need to write games, didnt need to sit up until three in the morning thinking of new sci-fi beasts to challenge computer geekdom… he didnt. He missed it, but he didnt do it.

NOW HE SAT AT HIS DRAWING TABLE, CLEARED AWAY detritus from earlier skull sessions, pulled out a sheet of heavy paper and started making a chart.

The situation at the bank was too complicated. There were too many suspects, and all of them had motives. He needed to simplify and clarify.

But the firebombing prowled around the edge of his consciousness: thats what he needed to settle. The bank killings were almost technical problems, problems that cops solved. The firebombing was personal. What if it was aimed at him rather than Weather? But why would it be?

What if Weather had a new boyfriend, a freak of some kind? Naw. That wasnt Weather. She had a built-in bullshit detector, and nobody would get past that. Maybe she snubbed somebody…

Goddamnit. Work. The suspects:

Wilson and Audrey McDonald. What appeared to be a possibly explosive relationship; who knew what might be brewing in that little perfecta? And the more he thought of it, the more he thought that Audrey McDonald was the woman whod called himwho was pointing the finger at her own husband.