Shadow Woman

23

She heard him before he put the key in the lock. She let him sneak in without acknowledging his presence, or the bright sunlight that shone in the door when he opened it. She had gone out twice during the night to walk the perimeter of the hotel grounds, studying the cars in the parking lot and the windows of rooms that were on the court, but had seen nothing that worried her, and then she had slept.

She waited until ten to get out of bed. While she was in the shower he got up too, and she found him packing his suitcase. “Good morning,” she said, carefully modulating her voice to sound as cheerful and unconcerned as she could.

“Good morning,” he answered. He stepped past her into the bathroom without meeting her eyes, and then she heard the shower for a long time.

She finished packing, latched her suitcase, and spent a few minutes selecting identities for the day. Today they would be Tony and Marie Spellagio, who had not yet made an appearance in Montana. She laid their credit cards and driver’s licenses on the bed in a row, so that Pete could examine hers too.

Then she made her preliminary inspection of the grounds through the windows. It was another perfect late-summer day in the Rockies, with the sun glaring from what seemed to be just over their heads, and no sign that anyone was near enough to be watching.

Pete came out fully dressed and with hair wet from the shower, picked up his cards and both suitcases, and followed the usual routines. He set the suitcases down beside the car, dropped something so he could look beneath it, peered under the hood, and then loaded the trunk while Jane checked out. She came back and said, “You want to eat breakfast before we move on?”

“No,” he said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get down the road a bit before we stop.”

Jane nodded and got into the passenger seat. She was not sure whether he was feeling queasy from the syrupy drinks or wanted to be gone before his little playmates woke up. As he drove off the lot onto the highway, he answered her question. “I don’t want to run into Pam and Carol.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Because they want to travel with us for a few days. It came up last night. I can’t think of a good way to refuse without hurting their feelings. Everything I tried last night had an answer. This way I’m a jerk, and that will burn off the attraction. Because I left them both, neither one will take it personally. In a day or two they won’t mention me, even to each other.”

Jane did not speak, because he was probably right. His famous understanding of women seemed to have come back to him. It shouldn’t have been a surprise: he had given himself a giant dose of femininity in the past twelve hours. She studied her road map.

They stopped outside a big restaurant in Swan Lake. There was no evidence on the signs on nearby businesses that the name referred to anything but a lake that had once had swans in it. They walked inside and the head waitress noticed them. “Would you like to sit inside, or outside on the terrace?”

Pete glanced at Jane, who said, “Inside” and moved into the interior of the restaurant. “Is that booth over there taken?”

“No,” said the waitress, “but I could seat you by the window if you like.”

“No, thanks,” said Jane.

When the woman had left the menus and returned to her post by the door, Pete said, “What’s wrong? Are you hungover?”

Jane leaned forward, her forearms on the table, so she could talk quietly. “It’s a beautiful spot, so most people want to sit where they can see it. This time you don’t want what everybody else wants.”

“I don’t?”

“Sitting here is a precaution that costs you nothing, loses you nothing. It makes you invisible to anybody but the people to the side of this booth.”

His eyes moved to the side. “There aren’t any people to the side of this booth.”

She smiled. “That’s why I picked this one instead of another. Almost all precautions are simple and effortless. After a time you’ll take them without thinking each one through. The important thing is that you look at each situation and modify it to make yourself comfortable. If there’s a choice between a tiny bit of vulnerability and none at all, you pick none.”

“I thought the best place to hide was in a crowd.”

“It can be. If a crowd is immobile and on display, then it can’t hide you. If what you want it for is to hold off shooters by surrounding yourself with witnesses, then twenty is better than a thousand, because they can’t shoot even twenty, and all of them will see. So you don’t stand in long lines to go to movies or plays or games. You do your waiting at home. When the movie has been out a month, you can walk right in.”

“What if it’s a game? You can’t wait a month for that.”

“Watch it on television. If it’s so important to you that you still want to go, then it’s important enough to pay for the safest seats in the stadium.”

“Which are those?”

“Down near the field. The only ones who can see your face in a stadium are the ones below you. A hunter scanning for you would look up toward the seats in the back—not only because the back seats feel like a hiding place to an amateur, but because they’re all the hunter can see. So you pick the front seats. Everything is a choice.” She smiled. “You’re getting a feel for this. All you have to do is keep trying it out in different situations until they’re all automatic.”

Another waitress arrived and took their orders, then bustled off to the kitchen window to clip it to a stainless-steel wheel for the cooks to read.

Pete stared at the table. “ ‘Different situations.’ You’re trying to be tactful about the mistakes I made last night, aren’t you?”

Jane looked away for a moment, then back to him. “What was wrong last night? You tell me.”

“We met two strangers. I let them get too close before I was sure they were okay.”

“Go on.”

“I went to their room. Somebody could have been waiting.”

She waited, but that was all he was willing to say. “Or been called in by one of them while the other one … kept you busy. Prostitutes have been robbing clients for thousands of years, so the routines are pretty slick by now. You couldn’t know all of them.”

“For starters, they weren’t prostitutes.”

“I’m teaching you how to live by your wits, not by luck. Neither of us knew anything about them when they showed up. What about my mistakes?”

“Yours?”

“Sure. You can learn from those too.”

He seemed shocked. After a moment, he said, “I guess you let them get too close.”

“Good. I never saw them coming until they were by the corner of the building. I should have kept scanning the entrances to the courtyard while I was swimming.”

“Like those Secret Service guys,” he said sadly. “What a way to live.”

“It would have been easier than that. All I had to do was keep my mind on the possibility, and looking would have been unavoidable. As it happened, it didn’t matter. As soon as I saw them, I was certain they weren’t dangerous.”

“How?”

“They showed up in the skimpiest suits imaginable.” She saw Pete wince, but she went on. “In certain situations that would be ominous. Maybe they had been sent to distract you, keep you from looking in another direction. But it also let us see that they couldn’t be armed. And their presence wouldn’t make it any easier for someone else to kill you: they might get hit in the dark, and they could hardly expect me to be stupefied by the sight of a girl in a bikini.”

“Stupefied?”

“I’m sorry,” said Jane. “Distracted.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry. Once again.”

Jane’s eyes flicked to his face and then around the dining room. He was miserable, and she wasn’t being fair. “I guess we have to clear the air some more, don’t we?”

Pete shrugged. His face was apologetic and appealing, like a little boy who wanted to be forgiven.

Jane took a deep breath and saw the waitress striding toward them on rubber soles, carrying a tray. Jane waited until the waitress had served them, said, “Enjoy your meal,” and hurried away.

“Back to that air,” she said. “I’m a guide. I lead people who are about to be killed to places where nobody wants to kill them. I give them pieces of paper that say they’re somebody else. To the extent that I can, I train them to be the new person—how to look, act, think. If they’re being actively hunted, I give them a few tricks that can fool hunters.”

“And?”

“And then I turn them loose and go home.” Jane stared into his eyes and watched him to see if he understood everything she was saying. There was light behind his eyes, but it seemed only to be the life force, the glow of the eyes of a big, healthy animal.

“What is he like?”

Jane stiffened. “That wasn’t … I wasn’t talking about him.”

“No,” he said. “You know everything about other people, but they’re not supposed to know anything about you.”

It wasn’t a statement Jane could ignore. “It’s true, and it’s not an accident. It protects him, and it protects me, and it protects you. When I take on a person like you, we both have to be aware that some day I might very well be caught. Years from now I might be asked where you are and what name I gave you. There are things that could be done to make me want very much to tell. My promise to you is simply that I won’t tell. If there’s no other way, I’ll commit suicide to avoid it.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She let the knowledge settle on him for a moment. He seemed unable to take the next step. “If I tell you about my family and friends, are you willing to do the same before you’ll tell anyone?”

He thought about it for a long time. “I would want to. I don’t think I could.”

“And you don’t have to, because you don’t know about them. But I can’t help knowing about you, so I’m stuck. I gave my word.”

Pete nodded thoughtfully. “We’re back to last night, aren’t we?”

“If you want to be,” she said.

“Why you said no.”

She sighed. “Marriages are fragile. When you boil off all the nonsense, what they amount to is a promise.”

She could tell he had no trouble understanding her. If she could break that promise to her own husband, then strangers like Pete Hatcher wouldn’t stand a chance. “Okay. I won’t grill you anymore.”

“Keep asking questions. It’s what we’re doing together,” said Jane. “I want you to learn everything you can. I want you to get as good at this as I am, because in one more day I’m going to take you somewhere, get you settled, and go home. You’re my last trip.”

He stared at her. “In a way, I’m glad,” he said. “I’m a little scared. One more day isn’t much time. But I’m glad for you. This is a crazy way to live.”

“It took me a long time to reach that conclusion. I guess I had to find another way to live before I could admit it. But I’m taken care of. Let’s get rid of what’s still bothering you.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I seem to be having trouble imagining a future. That makes it hard to ask questions about it.”

“I know some of it,” Jane said. “You’ll live in a place that’s pleasant, but maybe has a few security features most people wouldn’t pay extra for. This morning I was thinking that one of those small, gated developments might suit you. The identity I’m going to give you is terrific, so you could survive the checks they do on new residents. The rent-a-cops wouldn’t present much of an obstacle to the people who are after you, but the entry gates make it difficult for them to drive through and browse. They’re pros, so their main concern is getting out afterward.”

“It sounds logical.”

“We’ll find you a job. You were a manager in Las Vegas, so we’ll get you something at about the same level in the new town. It will have to be something where you have less contact with outsiders, so we’ll pick a company that limits it, somehow—maybe one that sells equipment only to doctors, or physicists, or—”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How do I get a job at that level in a business I’ve never been in?”

She smiled. “That’s something I’ll help you with. I’m a representative from an executive head-hunting agency. I’ve got a promising prospect. I sell you to them. I’ve already checked all your references, et cetera, so the company doesn’t have to.”

“You can pull that off?”

“Sure. I do it by not cheating too much. Your résumé won’t list your real college, but it will have equivalent courses from another one. Your references won’t come from Pleasure, Inc., but they’ll come from a company that has a similar corporate structure, and I won’t lie about your place in the hierarchy. And I’ll be very clear about my fee.”

“You actually collect a fee?”

“Of course. It will be the same fee other companies like mine charge. Otherwise your employers would know I’m a fraud.”

“So now I have a condo and a job. Good start.”

“A condo in the center of the development, that can’t be watched from outside the gate. A job you like and are qualified to do, that keeps you busy. All you have to do is keep from making mistakes.”

“Mistakes—you mean the ball games and movies and all that.”

“I said that I train you to be the new person, to the extent that I can. What I can’t do is give you an identity that doesn’t fit.” She paused. “That’s why I’m glad last night happened.”

“You’re working up to writing me off.”

Jane smiled, but her brows knitted. “I thought we were past that game. You pretend to be shocked at your own behavior and deeply humiliated that I know about it. This forces me to choose between two roles—the scandalized schoolmistress who talks to you with pinch-faced distaste, or the conspiratorial madam who tells you it’s cute. Either way, we evade the real issue.”

“What is the real issue? My sex life?”

“Your life, period. Suppose I tell you that having sex with strangers is dangerous. Is that news? Does it change anything?”

He looked down, silent.

“How about that it’s even more dangerous for you, because the people who are chasing you know that you do it?”

He watched her, but still said nothing.

“You could improve your chances a lot just by being slightly more selective. Women who go to church social groups are less likely to be decoys than ones who step out of dark doorways after midnight wearing two ounces of nylon. And church groups are notorious for being exactly what you need. Join a group for singles. Every woman there is looking for a man, and they outnumber the men two to one. Someone like you would be very welcome.”

“Are you trying to help me, or get back at me for embarrassing you last night?”

“I’m being realistic. Even if I were trying to embarrass you, who cares? Will anything I think about your personal life matter when you’re on your own? No, and it shouldn’t.”

“So where does that leave us?”

“When I sent you to Denver I hadn’t had time to get to know you. I expected you to live like a monk. Maybe you did too. This time, let’s get it right. Those security-minded condo places are that way because they’re full of young, career-minded women. You’ll find them hanging around the pools and the exercise rooms. Some of the owners’ associations even have parties where the eligible women will push themselves in front of your nose. Take them. Enjoy yourself. But stick to your story. Never reveal anything that doesn’t fit.”

Hatcher looked at her sadly. “I thought you were just being the pinch-faced schoolmarm. It’s way past that, isn’t it? You sound like a scientist talking about rats.”

She reached out and touched his hand, then regretted it and pulled back. “I’m sorry. I’m just being professional. If you’re happy, you’ll be able to stay in one quiet, safe place for a long time. If you’re not, you’ll take risks to get happy. So I need to make you happy for as long as I can.”

“But you don’t feel anything.”

“I don’t feel what you feel. You see any woman on the youngish side with round breasts and the right ratio of hips to waist, and you want her. I can know that, but knowing is all I can do. It’s all any of us can do. And what you did last night wasn’t shocking or particularly newsworthy. It was just something I needed to be reminded of.”

“You’re taking one incident and weaving it into a rope to tie around my neck.”

“No,” she said. “This is hard for me to talk about, so let me get it all out of the way. Last night I watched a young woman strip off a wet bathing suit to put on makeup at two A.M. so she could lure you away from her best friend. Ignoring the power, the need that makes people do that would be stupid. Will you personally take the chance of getting killed for sex? Sure. Scratch the topsoil anywhere on the planet and you’ll find the bones of people who maybe didn’t all know it, but who died over the instinct to mate. It’s not an opinion, it’s a fact. What I think about it, or feel about it, or what the implications are for romantic love or babies or families or anything else is irrelevant. All I can do is get out of the way. In this case it means putting you in the right location, so you’ll survive.”

“Why?”

“Why?” He had surprised her again.

“Yes. You don’t think much of me today. When I ask you why you save people’s lives, you say it’s because you’re a woman who saves people’s lives. I want to know if you care about me. I know I have no right to ask you to care. I just want to know if you do.”

Jane patted his hand and gave him a smile that was achingly false. “Of course I do. You’re the best brother I ever had.”

She turned her attention to the plate of food in front of her. He had been eating while she had been talking, and her scrambled eggs had turned cold and rubbery. She put some into her mouth. She could feel tears beginning to gather behind her eyes. Something was very wrong this morning, and she could not find a way to fix it. Maybe she had placed too much weight on her young, tender marriage. She had somehow gotten the impression that it was going to be a shield that protected her, kept her at a distance from certain kinds of hurt, certain ugly facts of other people’s lives. If nothing else, it should have made her immune to feelings about men like Pete Hatcher.

Jane swallowed her eggs and turned her attention to the people filling up the dining room for lunch. There were the usual number of older people with gray hair, the women in shoes like nurses wore and the men in socks that matched their shirts, and lots of stuff in their pockets. There were two families with children who had sat in cars all morning and now fidgeted and thought of excuses to get up and wander in the dining room. She let herself wonder if some day she and Carey would be like this, threatening their kids in low voices to make them behave, or later, growing old together and wandering around like the couple in the next booth.

Then she saw two people who intrigued her. The woman was tall and thin with long black hair, dark almond eyes, and high cheekbones. Around here the blood was probably Blackfoot or Kootenai or Flathead. The man was big, blond, and broad-shouldered—not muscular, but fit in the way that tennis players were.

The head waitress moved them from an inner table and seated them at a table beside the window. They watched her set their plates in front of them and talked quietly. Jane wished she had not seen them. The woman looked a little like her, and so she had wanted the man to resemble Carey. It was a childish and primitive impulse to make the world bend into congruence with what she wanted, to have the universe send her an omen that everything was all right. She did not want to notice at first, and then she did not want to acknowledge the truth. If the man looked like anybody, it was Pete.

She looked away. But before her head had finished its turn, she sensed that she had seen something strange. Her eyes shot back to the couple, focused on the high hillside through the window beside them. She gazed at it for several seconds, but the sight did not come again. She had imagined a small, bright flash of sun on metal. She stared down at her plate, not aware that her brow was furrowed.

Pete noticed her expression and said, “What’s—” just as Jane had put the pieces together. She stood up quickly and took a step toward the couple, and time ran out.

She saw the windowpane shatter and the man by the window stop, his mouth open to receive the fork with a piece of pancake on it. His head seemed to bob toward Jane, his ear striking his shoulder, then bouncing back a little. Jane saw the splatter of blood, bone, and dark tissue that had to be brain in the air all mixed with glittering, sparkling fragments of glass.

The dark woman’s eyes grew white-wide, her fingers curled like claws, and she shrieked as the rest of the people in the crowded dining room took in a single gasp and let it out in a shuddering moan. People began to scramble. Chairs fell, plates broke.

Jane dashed over the shards of glass, yanked the woman out of her chair, and pushed her into the crowd that was backing toward the doorway just as the second shot shattered another pane of the window. She turned to search for Pete and he bumped into her, then held her to keep her from falling. The details flooded her mind now: there had been no report of the weapon, so it must have a silencer; no crack of a bullet breaking the sound barrier, so the ammunition must be subsonic. It probably didn’t have the velocity to pierce any walls. She said, “Hold on to me,” and set off, with Pete’s hands on her waist.

They threaded their way into the crowd cowering in the restaurant foyer. The cashier was shouting into the telephone and the dark woman was off to the right screaming while two elderly women held her. Jane’s mind raced. If the shooter had finished firing and was already slipping away, then she should get Pete out of here before he discovered his mistake. But what if he wasn’t running away? His rifle scope had enough magnification to let him put a bullet through the wrong man’s temple from the mountainside. If he was using this time to creep down the mountain, then in a few minutes he would be close enough to see faces clearly.

Jane knew she had to do something that was not going to make her proud, and she had to do it now. She began to push toward the door and yelled, “I’m not going to stay here and get killed!”

The people who had been standing paralyzed, waiting for some voice to suggest a remedy for their terror, shifted in a single wave. The double door ahead of them opened, then began to wag back and forth as each person nudged it aside to get out.

Jane tugged Pete out in the middle of the throng. As she had expected, once they were out in the sunlight and fresh air, sanity seemed to descend upon the crowd. They saw how open and unprotected they were in the parking lot, so they began to spin like dancers, looking in every direction to see where the danger was coming from as they retreated toward the overhanging roof and brick wall of the restaurant.

Jane sprinted to the car and crouched until Pete had joined her. As she had expected, her run—a definite, unhesitating move—seemed to some in the crowd to be shrewdly based on information they did not have. They ran to their cars, started them, and wheeled out of the lot to the highway.

“Drive,” said Jane.

Pete ducked into the driver’s seat and they joined the line of cars streaming out onto the road. Pete gripped the steering wheel hard, holding it steady with effort as though its natural inclination were to veer off into the woods. “I saw it,” he said. “I couldn’t think fast enough.”

“Saw what?” said Jane.

“I was thinking they looked a little bit like us. Like you and me.”

“Drive,” said Jane. “Don’t worry about the speed. Out here what they do when they want somebody is put up a roadblock. When they do, we’d better be on the other side of it.”