Sudden prey

TWENTY-TWO

LUCAS SAT AWAKE, TRYING TO MAKE SENSE OF IT. IF LaChaise and Martin were on a suicide run-and it had appeared that way from the beginning-what had changed their minds? They couldn't believe that escape was as simple as running to

Mexico. The Mexicans would ship them back to the States as quickly as they were found; or kill them.

Maybe it was simpler than he was making it: maybe their nerve failed.

He got up, hands in his pockets, and stared out the window across his snow-covered lawn. In the distance, on the other side of the Mississippi, he could see Christmas lights red, green and white along somebody's roofline. A silent night.

And he was restless. He hadn't wanted Weather to come back to the house-one more night in the hotel, he'd said, just until we find their trail again-but she'd insisted. She wanted to sleep in her own bed. She was in it now, and sleeping soundly.

Lucas was sitting up with a pistol and a twelve-gauge Wingmaster pump. He looked at a clock: four in the morning.

He picked up a TV remote, pointed at a small TV in the corner of the room, and called up the aviation weather service. All day, the weather forecasters had been talking about a huge low-pressure system that was pinwheeling up from the southern Rockies. Snow had overrun all of the southwestern and south-central parts of the state, and now the weather radar showed it edging into the metro area.

If they were coming back, he thought-if this thing was no more than a shuck-and if they'd fallen behind the snow line, they might be stalled for a day. If they'd stayed ahead of it, they'd be coming into town about now.

Nobody thought they'd be coming back. The network TV people were getting out of town as fast as they could pack up and find space on an outgoing plane. Nobody wanted to be stuck out in flyover country the week before Christmas, not with a big storm coming.

The cops were the same way: going home, filing for overtime. Lucas called Kansas

City cops, and the Missouri and Kansas highway patrols every hour, looking for even the faintest sniff of LaChaise. Nobody had gotten one: they'd vanished.

Just as if they'd taken country roads east and north, instead of west and south, where the search was focused, Lucas thought. He looked out the window again, then selfconsciously went and closed the wooden blinds.

After killing the TV, he wandered through the dark house, moving by touch, listening, trailing the shotgun. He checked the security system, got a drink of water and went back to the living room where he dropped on a couch. In a few minutes, he eased into a fitful sleep, the. 45 in a belly holster, the shotgun on the coffee table.