The Shadow hunter

7,1965.

The cams seemed to be getting slippery. No, it was her fingers that were slick with perspiration. She wiped her shaking hands on her blouse and spun the disks. 1007, 1065,0765, and reversals of all these sequences.

Nothing happened.

The gas odor was worse than before. Her stomach coiled. Nausea threatened.

All right/ Plan C. Kicking off her shoe, she tried to slip her foot. through the chain. No use. The circle of steel links dug like small teeth into the skin above her heel, gripping fiercely. Either the chain was too tight, or her darned foot was too big.

Something like panic welled up inside her. She pushed it down. Mustn't freak out. Freaking out was not a survival tactic.

Time for Plan D. So what was it? Well, she could pound the floor, scream for help. Trouble was, she didn't think she could get enough air into her lungs to force out a decent scream, and if she banged on the floor, the downstairs neighbors would either ignore the noise or call the cops. And the cops would take hours to respond to a low-priority call in this district, if they responded at all.

She didn't have hours. The gas was thick. Before long, it would reach the critical mass necessary to set off an explosion and a flash fire.

The temperature in a flash fire could hit 1300 degrees. That was hot enough to fry her up pretty good.

"Damn it, Abby." She blinked sweat out of her eyes.

"You're supposed to be smart, right? And highly trained, with all these advanced skills…"

Skills. She did have skills. Among them was the skill of picking locks.

She had no tools, but maybe she didn't need any.

She pulled the shackle taut, then fingered the cams.

The second one had tightened; it turned with difficulty.

That was the one to work on first. Carefully she dialed the cam through its ten-digit range. On 6 it loosened.

The second number in the combination was 6.

Her heart fluttered. Her vision was blurring in and out. Her general condition was not good, and the prognosis was poor. On the menu tonight, rotisserie Abby, served charred.

Quit it. She needed to concentrate. Easier said than done. Her head was squeezed in a vise of pain, and the bedroom had begun to imitate a carousel, and there was the stench of week-old diapers in her nose and mouth.

Maintaining pressure on the shackle, she tested the other three cams.

Now the first one resisted turning.

She worked it slowly, trying not to think about the gas and the pilot light and what 1300 degrees would feel like. Hotter than Phoenix in July, if such a thing was possible.

The cam loosened when it was set to 8. That was the first number in the combination. Six was the second.

Eight. Six. Put it together, Abby. Eight. Six.

Channel Eight. The news at six… and ten.

The last two digits were 1 and 0. 8610 was the combination.

Had to be. She set the cams in that sequence, and the padlock released.

She was free.

Now get the window open. Hurry.

Prone on her stomach, she crawled across the floor.

Her breathing was awful to hear. Her chest heaved, and she couldn't get oxygen into her lungs, and her head was sizzling, and there was pain like a crushing pressure at the back of her eyes. Sometimes, she thought, I really hate my job.

She came up against the bedroom wall. The window was just above her.

Close, but she couldn't reach it, couldn't raise herself off the floor.

Too weak. Come on, she chided silently, you can do a pull-up, can't you?

With one arm extended, she got hold of the windowsill and, using it as leverage, lifted herself to her knees.

The window was locked. Hickle, the bastard, had actually taken the time to secure the latch. She fumbled at it, but her fingers, glazed with sweat, couldn't find a grip. This whole situation was starting to get on her nerves in a big way. Nothing was easy. And time was running out.

Finally she got the latch open. Okay, lift the window.

She put both hands on the sash bar and strained.

Nothing happened. She had no strength. She battered the glass with her fists. Her blows fell like sighs. A kitten could have done more damage.

Again she tried to raise the window. Still no luck.

Weakness overtook her, and she lowered her head, coughing. God, she was tired. She wanted to sleep… Plenty of time for rest later.

Eternal rest, if it worked out that way. At the moment she was still alive. She would not waste whatever time she had left. The explosion could come at any moment. She had to dilute the fumes with clean air, or she was dead. Open the damn window. Do it now.

She put everything she had into a final effort, pushing upward with her last strength, and the window cracked open a few inches.

Success.

She rested her head on the sill and tried to draw a breath, but her throat had closed. There was air coming in, pure air, and she couldn't breathe it. What the hell was wrong with her lungs?

But it was simple, really. Her vision was graying out, and her ears hummed, and she was going to lose consciousness.

She had driven herself to the point of collapse, and although she had forced the window ajar, it was not enough to save her.

"Nice try, girlfriend," Abby murmured, "but no lollipop."

The floor rushed up, and she fell away into the dark.

"… vehicle is a VW Rabbit wanted for felony evading, license plate…"

Wyatt heard the call on his radio as he cruised back to Hollywood Station after supervising a crime scene on Highland-drugstore hold-up, nobody injured.

The suspect had taken a hundred bucks out of the cash register and three packages of Trojans. Apparently he had a big night planned.

It was nothing major, and Wyatt had passed the time pondering what to do about Abby. He had decided on a confrontation tomorrow. Call her, arrange a lunch meeting, then demand to know what she'd gotten involved in. And once she told him? He didn't know. His planning hadn't made it that far.

At 11:40 he had been relieved of responsibility for the crime scene by the arrival of a bored detective, accompanied by an equally bored forensic photographer.

Now he was driving down Melrose, listening to the dispatcher report a CHP stop gone awry on the Santa Monica Freeway, miles away, twenty minutes ago. He wondered why the BOL was going out over a Hollywood Division frequency. As he turned onto Wilcox, he got his answer.

"… registered to a Hollywood resident…"

That explained it. There was a fair chance the suspect would be stupid enough to return home. Patrol units in Hollywood were advised to watch for a VW Rabbit with the reported plate number, and to keep an eye on the suspect's residence.

"… address, 1554 Gainford…"

Wyatt stiffened. The Gainford Arms.

"… name, Hickle, Raymond, that's Henry Ida Charles…"

It was Hickle who had been speeding on the freeway, Hickle who had fled a traffic stop. Wyatt had no idea what this might mean, except that Hickle was out of control and dangerous and crazed.

"Abby," he breathed, a cold feeling in his gut.

The time was 11:48 when Hickle abandoned his car in a small beach parking lot off Pacific Coast Highway.

He'd made it. He was in Malibu, on Kris's territory.

The police had not intercepted him.

The access path to the public beach was never closed. He lugged his duffel down the dirt path, then headed into the woods that bordered Malibu Reserve, his flashlight probing the foliage.

Midnight was close, the time frame tight, but he no longer feared failure. He was destined to succeed. He could feel it. Kris had messed with him, and she would pay, as Abby had paid.

Thinking of Abby made him wonder if she was dead yet. Fifty minutes had passed since he'd released the gas. By now she must have been asphyxiated or blown to bits.

Now it was Kris's turn to die.

Not far from the Reserve's perimeter fence, he located the mouth of the drainage pipe. The pipe was two feet in diameter, jutting out of a mound of earth under a eucalyptus tree. There was a small brackish pond nearby, and evidently the pipe had been laid down as a flood control device, its purpose to channel overflow from the pond away from the path and into the ravine that ran through the fenced compound.

On hands and knees Hickle bellied inside, dragging the duffel after him.

The bag got stuck in the opening, and briefly he was afraid it wouldn't fit-he'd never brought weapons on his previous outings, only the Polaroid camera-but when he turned the bag sideways it slipped through.

He crawled over leaves, twigs, candy wrappers, and other detritus washed in by storms. Beetles skittered out of his path. Some backtracked and flitted over him, tickling like light fingers.

He didn't mind. He had come this way before, and there were always bugs.

He'd never made the passage at night, though. His flashlight traced pale loops and whorls on the pipe's soiled interior. Past the light there was only darkness, not the reassuring glow of sunshine that had drawn him forward on past occasions. He guessed he had come halfway, which meant he was under the fence.

Inside the Reserve.

Kris had surrounded herself with a fence and a gatehouse, a bodyguard at the wheel of her car and other bodyguards stationed in her guest cottage, yet all these precautions had proven useless against him. He was unstoppable. He was a force of nature, a man of destiny.

He crawled faster.

Wyatt parked by a fire hydrant outside the Gainford Arms and mounted the front steps two at a time. The lobby door was locked, and he didn't have a master key. He buzzed Abby's apartment, got no answer.

He went around to the rear door, locked also. He scanned the parking lot and saw her white Dodge Colt in its assigned space.

She was home. She wasn't answering the buzzer.

And Hickle, the man she'd been spying on, was running from the police.

With his side-handle baton he smashed the glass panel adjacent to the rear door, then reached in and released the latch. Inside, he stabbed the elevator call button, but when the elevator didn't instantly arrive he gave up on it and ran up the stairs. At the fourth floor he exited, slowing to a walk. There was a remote chance Hickle had already come back and was waiting to ambush the first cop who arrived. Might have been a good idea to check the parking lot for Hickle's Volkswagen or call for backup. A little late for either plan now.

He drew his service pistol, approaching Hickle's apartment. He tested the door. Locked. He heard no movement inside. Even so, he ducked low, dropping below the peephole, as he passed by.

Abby's apartment was next. Number 418. He rapped his fist on the door, then frowned. He smelled something.

"Oh, shit," he whispered.

He tried the knob. It turned freely. He stepped into a den of fumes, moving fast, unafraid of an ambush now. Hickle wasn't here, wasn't coming back. He'd made Abby's apartment into a giant bomb and fled before it could explode.

The stench was overpowering. The gas must be nearly at critical mass.

Any spark could set off a detonation.

Wyatt advanced into the room, grateful that the lights had been left on; he wouldn't dare flip a light switch now.

He saw the dislodged oven immediately, the ruptured inflow line spewing gas. He cranked the shutoff valve, sealing the pipe, then got the living room window open. Leaning on the sill, he took a deep breath of fresh air to dispel any dizziness. He was shaking. It seemed okay to shake. He was standing inside an apartment that had been converted into a large-scale explosive device. It could still go off at any moment.

In the bedroom he found Abby. She lay unmoving in a twisted pose before the window, which was unlatched and a few inches ajar.

Hickle hadn't left it open, that was for sure. Abby must have raised it. The effort had exhausted her, but by bringing in a small quantity of clean air and diluting the lethal concentration of vapors, it had also saved her life.

If she was still alive. Wyatt didn't check until he had raised the window fully. Then he knelt, feeling her carotid artery. His fingertips detected the flutter of a pulse.

He hauled Abby through the window onto the fire escape and set her down.

She was barely breathing. He tilted her head back to open her airway, pinched her nostrils, sealed her mouth with his and blew air into her lungs. He did it a second time, then paused, studying her chest, waiting for an exhalation. None came.

He repeated the procedure, expelling air down her throat, forcing her chest to rise. Still she wasn't breathing.

He did it again. He would not give up. He would not let her die.

Hickle struggled out of the drainage pipe, toting the duffel bag, and scrambled through a shallow ravine, emerging near Gateway Road. Gateway was two lanes of pitted macadam lined with eucalyptus trees, the only way for vehicular traffic to get in or out of Malibu Reserve. The guardhouse with its lowered gate lay at the end of the road, the coast highway beyond.

He needed to cross Gateway, a risky endeavor if the guard happened to be looking in this direction. He took a breath and scurried across, the heavy bag slapping his hip with every step. At the far side of the road, he disappeared into the woods, sure he had not been seen.

Fast through the trees, heading toward the smell of the sea. He could hear the crash of breakers. Malibu had been named for that sound; the Chumash Indians had dubbed it the place where the waves are loud. But tonight there would be something louder than the surf. There would be gunshots. And screams.

Hickle reached Malibu Reserve Drive, which intersected with Gateway and ran parallel to the beach.

The Barwoods' house lay on the far side of the street, one of a row of beachfront homes built close together, most fronted by guest cottages and elaborate entry ways He hunkered down behind a tuft of weeds and studied the house. The lights in the guest cottage glowed, and there was restless movement in the windows. As he watched, a man in a dark blazer and turtleneck stepped out of the cottage, looking around. A moment later the man went back inside, but he kept the door open.

This was bad. The two security agents stationed in the house seemed to have been put on alert. Was it possible TPS had already been notified of the explosion in Hollywood? He doubted that the news would travel that fast. More likely, Abby's earlier reports had triggered a higher state of readiness.

His idea had been to cross the road and hide in the bushes alongside the Barwoods' driveway, then fire at the Town Car when it pulled up.

Now he wasn't sure the plan would work. He might be spotted as he approached the house or when he took cover close to the cottage.

He checked his watch. Midnight. Kris could arrive at any time. If he was going to rethink the ambush, he had better do it fast.

The TPS man slipped out of the doorway again, casting another wary glance up and down the road.

That decided things. There was no chance of success if he stuck to his original plan. He had to improvise.

Hickle slipped through the woods, moving parallel to Malibu Reserve Drive, until he reached the intersection with Gateway. After entering the compound, Kris's Town Car would proceed down Gateway, then turn left on Malibu Reserve Drive, heading for the beach house. It was a sharp turn, forcing the driver to cut his speed. When the car slowed and the driver was turning the wheel, Hickle would strike.

He squatted in the tall grass. To his right he saw the dim glow of the guardhouse four hundred yards away. The guard would come running when the shots were fired, as would the two security agents in the cottage, but nobody would reach the scene in time to save Kris.

Hickle set down the duffel bag and took out the shotgun, dumping extra shells into the pockets of his windbreaker. He wondered how long he would have to wait, how long Kris had left to live. He did not hate her now. He was past hate. He merely wanted to set things right, out of a sense of justice.

At the far end of Gateway-headlights. A car pulled up to the gate. He couldn't tell if it was a Lincoln.

Hickle crouched low, the shotgun gripped in his cold, steady hands.

There was air in her lungs, and she was breathing.

The smell of rotten eggs was leaving her nostrils. She felt a flicker of returning strength in her arms and legs.

These were the first reports that reached her as Abby swam upward out of bright light and found herself on the fire escape with Vie Wyatt bending over her.

"You'll be all right, Abby," he said.

"You'll be fine."

She had no idea how he had come here. He might have been a dream. But the cold iron grillwork beneath her was real enough, and so was the pulsing pain in her head.

Later she would find out how he'd rescued her.

Right now there was something else she needed to deal with. Something urgent, if only she could remember what it was.

An image flashed in her mind: Devin Corbal motionless on the floor of the nightclub. Was it Corbal who was in danger? No, it was too late to save him.

She saw the lake of blood spreading under his body.

He was dead, and it was her fault, no matter what anyone said. She had to make up for it somehow. Couldn't lose another one. Couldn't lose Kris… Kris.

And Hickle. Ambush in Malibu. Tonight.

With a jolt of panic she tried to sit up.

"Rest, Abby," Wyatt said.

Couldn't rest. Had to tell him. She tried to force out speech but produced only a dry cough that racked her abdomen with spasms.

"Abby, lie still, okay? You had a close call."

She wouldn't listen. She gulped air and found a way to make words.

"Phone," she gasped.

"Get me a phone…"

The car was a Lincoln. Hickle could see it clearly as the gate lifted and the guard waved the driver through.

Kris's car: He was sure of it.

The Lincoln rolled forward, moving slowly, headlights fanning across the cracked macadam. Hickle sank lower on his haunches, tensing for the moment when he would leap upright and open fire.

Side windows first. Kris rode in the backseat. Kill her with multiple shots to the head and upper body.

No need to aim, just point and shoot. He knew what shot shells could do to a human being at close range.

Each disintegrating shell was like a miniature shrapnel bomb, flinging a cloud of lethal debris. Kris would be ripped apart. She would have no time to react, no chance to duck or hide, and even if she tried, there was no place for her to take cover in the Town Car's rear compartment.

She was sealed in a box, and killing her would be, quite literally, like shooting fish in a barrel.

"You should've answered my letters, Kris," Hickle whispered.

As soon as the Town Car stopped at the Reserve's gate, Travis shifted into hyper vigilance He was seated beside Kris in the backseat. Inside his jacket, strapped to his left shoulder, he carried his 9mm Walther.

He unbuttoned the jacket and let his right hand rest on the lapel, ready to draw the gun if necessary.

When the gate rose, Kris seemed to relax a little. No doubt she felt safer inside the compound. She didn't know about the photos in Hickle's apartment, the ones that showed her running on the beach. She didn't know there was no safety here. Quite the opposite.

This was the time and place of maximum jeopardy. If Hickle planned to strike, this was where he would do it.

The Lincoln advanced along Gateway Road, Steve Drury driving at a cautious pace. In the rearview mirror his eyes were visible, ticking back and forth.

Halfway down Gateway now. The intersection with Malibu Reserve Drive was two hundred yards ahead.

"Almost home," Kris breathed.

He glanced at her, silhouetted in profile against the foliage on the left side of the road. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that her face had the perfect bone structure. Probably she worried about getting old, losing her looks, but what she didn't understand was that a beauty like hers was not a matter of smooth skin and ripe complexion, but of the underlying architecture of her strong frontal bone and well-defined zygomatic arches. She would be beautiful when she was eighty, if she lived that long.

One hundred fifty yards to the intersection. Still no trouble. Kris sighed, relaxing a little more-the amateur's mistake. Proximity to home only increased the danger. Hickle would wait until the car had slowed to a crawl, as it would when it turned into the driveway.

Drury had not relaxed, Travis noted. Good man, well trained. He wore a Kevlar vest under his jacket;

Travis had brought it for him. He had brought no vest for himself.

He'd been afraid Kris would see it and panic. Sometimes it was necessary to take certain personal risks to maintain the client's confidence. Anyway, Travis was fatalistic about such things. He always estimated the risks of any undertaking before proceeding with it. Once committed, he put all danger out of his mind. All danger to himself, at least. The threat to Kris was a different story. Nothing could be allowed to happen to her.

One hundred yards to Malibu Reserve Drive. The interior of the car was quiet except for the thrum of tires, the muffled vibration of the engine, and Kris's breathing, slow and steady.

Then a new sound, startling-a loud, insistent chirp.

His cell phone. Who would be calling him at midnight?

He whipped out the phone and held it to his ear, his gaze fixed on the dark roadside.

"Travis," he barked.

"Sir, it's Hastings." One of the TPS computer jocks tracking down Trendline Investments and its possible connection to Western Regional Resources.

"You told us to call if we found anything definitive."

"Did you?"

"Yes, sir. I'd say we did."

"Give it to me fast," Travis ordered, still watching the darkness.

"I don't have much time."

Abby had propped herself to a sitting position on the fire escape when Wyatt returned, climbing through the bedroom window with her purse in his hand.

She took the cell phone from her purse and powered it on. In the glow of the liquid crystal display she found the menu button and navigated to the first number stored in memory, the number of Travis's mobile phone.

She speed-dialed it.

Wyatt crouched beside her, saying nothing. She knew he had many questions to ask, and she loved him just a little for not asking them yet.

Busy signal.

She hissed a curse and terminated the call, then redialed.

Still busy, damn it.

"What's the matter?" Wyatt whispered.

"Can't get through." She forced the words past gritted teeth.

"You can dial the operator, have the phone company break in on the call."

"It'll take too long." She called again. Busy "Come on, Paul, clear the line."

"I'll cut to the chase." Hastings's voice crackled in Travis's ear.

"We started with Trendline Investments.

Trendline, as a corporate entity, sits on the board of directors of something called Pro Future Opportunities, also incorporated in the Netherlands Antilles. There are three other companies on Pro Future board-all dummy corporations, as far as we can tell. One of them is named Grayfoxx Financial. You following this?"

Travis nodded, his gaze never leaving the blur of shadows at the edge of the road.

"Go on."

"Here's the link. Grayfoxx is the largest shareholder of Western Regional Resources." "Bang," Travis said softly.

"You got it. Essentially, Grayfoxx owns Western Regional, and Grayfoxx and Trendline jointly own Pro Future Our guess is that Mr. Barwood-"

"Owns all of them," Travis finished.

"Right. He set it all up as shells within shells, very complicated, hard to trace. But we nailed him." There was pride in Hastings's voice. Travis supposed he was entitled to it.

"Good work. Now get some rest." Travis ended the call.

Twenty yards to the intersection. The Town Car slowed in preparation for a sharp left turn.

"What was that about?" Kris asked.

Travis couldn't tell her now. Later was the right time. Later, when she was safe.

"Some other case," he said.

"Don't worry about it."

She frowned at him, her reporter's instincts evidently disputing his answer, but before she could ask anything further, the phone chirped again. Was it Hastings, calling with additional details? For a moment Travis considered shutting off the phone to silence it.

Ten yards.

Oh, hell. He took the call.

"Travis," he snapped.

"This had better be-" He didn't finish. On the other end of the line was a hoarse, desperate, anguished voice, Abby's voice, and. she was screaming.

"Code Red, Paul, you hear me, Hickle is Code Red!"

The Town Car was turning onto Malibu Reserve Drive when its brakes squealed, and suddenly the car was reversing fast, and Hickle knew they were on to him.

He sprang out of the foliage, the twelve-gauge in both hands. From this angle he didn't have a clear shot at the side windows so he opened fire on the windshield, hoping to take out the driver. The glass starred but didn't shatter. Behind the web of fractures he saw the driver spinning the wheel as he backed onto Gateway.

Once lined up, the Lincoln could reverse straight to the gate, where the guard must already be dialing 911.

Hickle fired two more shots at the windshield, emptying the Marlin, but although the glass buckled, it still did not give way. The shots distracted the driver long enough for the car to skid partially off the road at a crazy angle. For a moment the Lincoln was stuck, its right rear tire mired in dirt.

Hickle ditched his duffel bag and charged the car, reloading on the run.

He saw movement in the backseat, two figures. One of them was Kris.

The driver shifted out of reverse and plowed forward, but by the time he was back on the road, Hickle had run alongside. He fired three shells at the car's side panel, hoping to blow it apart. No good. The car absorbed the shots with only superficial damage.

Armor plating. Bulletproof glass. Jackbnimble had never mentioned anything about that. Either he hadn't known, or this was some kind of setup. Hickle had no time to puzzle it out. The Lincoln was executing a clumsy K-turn as the driver tried to orient the car toward the exit.

Hickle fired one shot at the front tire, puncturing it, but it didn't go flat. Even the tires were bullet-resistant.

He dug in the pocket of his windbreaker and reloaded.

As the Lincoln completed its turn, he leaped onto the hood, face to face with the driver. Over the ringing in his ears he heard a male voice from the backseat shout, "Get down!"

Hickle pumped the Marlin and fired a shot into the windshield at point-blank range. Charred shell wadding blew back in his face. He shut his eyes against the debris. When he opened them, he saw a hole in the windshield, exposing the Lincoln's interior.

He swung the shotgun into the hole and fired twice, not aiming, hoping for a lucky hit or a ricochet.

The Lincoln slammed on its brakes. He thought he must have hit the driver until, with a scream of tires, the Town Car snapped into reverse.

Inertia rolled him off the hood. He flopped onto the pavement, and the Lincoln stopped. One headlight was dark. The other pinned him in its glare.

He knew what was about to happen even before the car shot forward, trying to run him down.

Reflexes saved him. He plunged off the road, taking refuge in the trees. Behind him, the pursuing car slammed to a halt at the edge of the woods. Hickle threw himself prone on the ground, below the cone of glare from the one intact headlight. By a miracle the shotgun was still in his hand, and now he had a clear view of the Lincoln's underbelly.

He fired a single shot, targeting the chassis.

Sparks and broken metal showered the earth, and he knew that one part of the vehicle was not armored.

The Town Car retreated onto the road, but Hickle was already scrambling after it, cramming more shells into the gun. He fired four times, aiming low. The Lincoln veered away, skidding on something wet and shiny, which was gasoline. He had ruptured the fuel tank.

"Fuck you," Hickle gasped, "I got you now!"

He reloaded, tramping through pools of gasoline, and fired again and again, pursuing the wounded car as it reversed down Gateway. The sedan wobbled on damaged tires and bent wheels. It accelerated, still backing up, and for a moment he thought it would get away.

Then the gas caught fire.

Abruptly the entire front section of the Lincoln was burning-tires, chassis, gas-soaked chrome. The Town Car careened to a stop, and Hickle plucked the last shells from his pocket and loaded them as he loped toward his quarry with death in mind.

Inside the Lincoln there had been chaos and terror from the moment Travis heard Abby's warning and shouted at Drury to back up. Kris had looked at him with an unvoiced question as the first shots crackled out of the darkness. Shotgun fire.

The TPS staff car was shielded by panels of aramid fibrous armor, lighter than steel and nearly as impenetrable, lining the doors, roof, quarter areas, and pillar posts. All the glass in the vehicle had been replaced by bullet-resistant sheets of multilayered transparent composite, a lamination of glass and polycarbonate.

The tires were fitted with antiballistic run flat inserts that allowed them to hold their shape even when ruptured.

The level of protection these features offered was moderately high, but there were points of weakness.

The ballistic glass could stop handgun rounds and other small arms fire, but repeated blasts from a heavy-gauge shotgun might penetrate.

The armor plating provided perimeter and roof protection, but the floor and the underside of the chassis were unshielded, vulnerable to attack from below. A fully armored vehicle offered greater protection but, because of the increased weight, less maneuverability. Tradeoffs had been made.

Travis wondered if those tradeoffs had been advisable as the first two shot shells chipped and splintered the Lincoln's windshield.

After that, there was no time to wonder about anything.

The range of his thinking narrowed to the immediate concern of keeping Kris alive. He told her to get down, but the words didn't register with her. There was stark panic on her face, every muscle drawn taut.

When the Town Car blundered partly off the road and was briefly stuck in the dirt, Travis actually felt the shiver of pure fear that rocked her in her seat. Then they were back on the road but no longer positioned to go either forward or back, and Drury had to spend a few desperate seconds hauling the car around in a ragged turn. That was when Hickle opened fire on the side of the car, trying to punch through the doors.

Kris screamed. Travis saw the door panel cave inward a few inches under the impact of the multiple hits. But the armor held, and the Lincoln straightened out. As Drury accelerated, Hickle threw himself onto the hood.

Travis saw the shotgun kiss the weakened glass, and he knew the next blast would open up the car to a direct assault. He seized Kris and shoved her to the floor as two explosions from the shotgun echoed inside the car.

Exactly what happened next Travis didn't know.

Bending to cover Kris with his body, he was aware only of a succession of stops and starts, the car braking, then reversing, then flying forward and braking again, and then another shot, this one striking low, and more low hits as the Lincoln backed off and screamed in reverse toward the guardhouse four hundred yards away.

The low hits scared Travis most of all. He was thinking of the unshielded underside of the car. He was thinking of the fuel tank.

He held Kris tight and heard her whispering the same words over and over in a hushed, urgent monotone:

"God help us… God help us… God help us…"

Then there was fire.

Travis heard the whoosh of igniting gasoline even before the sudden orange glare lit up the front windows.

By luck or skill Hickle had punctured the gas tank, and sparks from successive shots had set the gas ablaze.

The Lincoln would be enveloped in fire within seconds.

The car might not blow up-gasoline was less combustible than Hollywood movies liked to pretend-but it would certainly burn to cinders, as would its occupants.

He pulled Kris upright and yelled at Drury to evacuate the vehicle.

The car stopped at a crazy angle halfway down Gateway Road, and Drury got out, or at least Travis thought he did. He couldn't be sure, not when his full attention was focused on prying open the rear door and dragging Kris out of the car and away from the spreading flames.

He pulled her into the bushes at the roadside, then drew his Walther and turned in a crouch, scanning the dark for Hickle, who had to be out there somewhere, because if anything was clear and obvious in the midst of this insanity, it was that Hickle would not give up until Kris was dead.

The car was a flaming pile. It threw off a moist heat that slapped Hickle in the face as he sprinted closer, the shotgun gripped with both hands. He became aware that he was favoring his left leg. Must have turned his ankle when he rolled off the hood onto the pavement. It didn't matter. He was still mobile, and the car had been abandoned.

Kris was outside, unprotected.

Only one shot was needed to finish things.

Kris had been riding in the back of the Lincoln. The rear passenger door hung ajar. Hickle ran toward that side of the road and saw her on the roadside, a huddle of fear and shock. With her, a man Hickle didn't recognize.

Not her husband. A man with a gun.

Hickle saw the gun come up fast and flung himself to the ground, taking cover behind the wreckage of the Lincoln, then sensed movement nearby and turned in time to see the driver taking aim with a pistol from behind the open front door. Hickle fired the shotgun, and the man went down. Hit? Hard to tell. Hickle darted around the door, preparing to fire again, but it wasn't necessary. The driver was alive but out of commission, writhing on the pavement, his pistol dropped and forgotten.

Hickle ignored him. He had no interest in delivering a coup de grace.

The man meant nothing to him. It was Kris he wanted.

He scrambled to the rear of the Lincoln, staying low.

The air was brutally hot. Alongside the rear bumper he peered out and saw Kris and her defender retreating farther into the foliage. He jerked the Marlin's trigger twice, blowing sprays of shot at them, and saw them go down, but he didn't think they'd been hit. They had dived for cover.

Muzzle flashes from the foliage. Kris's bodyguard was shooting back.

Hickle snapped off another shot, then retreated to the front of the Lincoln, moving fast.

He had a plan now. They thought he was positioned at the rear of the car. They wouldn't expect him to charge from the front.

He sprang out from behind the car and instantly collided with something-somebody-who fell in a heap at his feet.

Kris.

She had panicked and run. Run right into him.

She looked up and saw him, and the look on her face was the most priceless gift he had ever received. It was a look of stark fear, of total resignation and final submission.

It told him that he had won and she had lost, that he was the master and she the victim.

All of this lasted less than a second, no longer than it took for him to swing the shotgun toward her, the muzzle stamping its cold kiss on her brow. He pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

The gun was empty.

He registered this fact, and then a pistol's report rang out from the roadside, the bullet slicing past him, inches away.

The man with the handgun. Coming.

Hickle turned and fled.

He had no choice. There were no more shells in his pockets.

Another crack of pistol fire behind him. He reached the far side of the road and dived into the woods, stumbling over something that got caught up in his feet. His duffel bag.

There might be more shells in the bag, but he had no time to dig for them. There was the rifle, fully loaded, but he couldn't pull it out and take aim, not with an armed man pursuing him.

Anyway, he had lost his chance. Even if he could kill Kris's protector, the other TPS agents must already be rushing to the scene, and so was the guard, and the police too-everybody.

It was finished.

Hickle slung the duffel over his shoulder and charged through the trees, head down, panting hard.

He tried not to think about what had happened, how close he had come, how badly he had failed. He knew that if he thought about it, he would simply stop running and fall on his face and cry like a child, because the world had cheated him and life was so terribly unfair.

Travis pursued Hickle a few yards into the woods and saw him disappear among the eucalyptus trees and the deep drifts of weeds. Briefly he considered following, but looking after Kris was his highest priority.

He doubled back and found her kneeling, dazed, on the pavement, her face streaked with tears, eyes wide and unblinking.

"God damn it," he snapped, anger overcoming compassion, "why the hell did you leave cover? What made you do that?"

She didn't answer, and of course she didn't have to.

He knew what had made her scramble away from him when the bullets started flying. She had lost her nerve.

She had heeded the blind impulse to put distance between herself and gunfire. In consequence she had blundered into Hickle and had nearly gotten killed.

Travis steadied himself. Gently he clasped her shoulder.

"You okay, Kris?" he asked in a softer voice.

She looked at him.

"I thought I was strong," she whispered.

He understood. She was a veteran of the news business.

She had covered earthquakes, gang wars, sadistic slayings. She had believed she could handle anything.

But tonight when the gunshots were aimed at her, when she was at the center of the story, she had cut and run like a panicky child. She wasn't as tough as she'd imagined. It was a painful lesson, but she would survive, and to Travis her survival was all that mattered.

Not far away he heard sirens. The local residents and the guard at the gatehouse must have called 911 when the shooting started. Malibu contracted its law enforcement services to the LA County Sheriff's Department.

The nearest sheriff's station was miles away in Agoura, but evidently a couple of squad cars had been in the area.

He looked up and down the road. The two TPS staff officers stationed at the guest cottage, Pfeiffer and Mahoney, were approaching fast.

Every light was burning in the homes that lined both intersecting streets. Nothing like a little midnight gun battle to wake up the neighborhood.

Circling the car, Travis found Drury sprawled on the macadam, his knees twisting slowly, blood soaking through the left sleeve of his jacket.

Hickle had unloaded the shotgun at the driver, but most of the spray had gone wide. A few steel pellets had caught Drury in the arm and shoulder. There was blood loss but no arterial spurting. The angle of the arm inside the jacket suggested broken bones, possibly a shattered elbow.

"It's okay, Steve," Travis said, knowing the man couldn't hear.

"You'll be fine."

The sirens grew louder, then whirred to a stop.

Travis saw the gate rising to admit a pair of sheriff's cruisers.

"Status?" That was Pfeiffer, arriving with his Beretta unholstered, his eyes glassy with an infantryman's thousand-yard stare. Mahoney came right behind.

"Hickle ambushed us and fled," Travis said crisply.

"I don't think he'll be back. He scored a lucky hit, incinerated the car. Nailed Drury in the shoulder. Mrs.

Barwood is okay, just shaken up. Where's the husband?"

"We told him to stay put," Mahoney answered. He lowered his voice to add, "He didn't need much persuading."

Travis nodded, unsurprised that Howard Barwood was reluctant to throw himself in the line of fire.

A few yards from the smoking wreckage the squad cars rolled to a stop.

Two deputies, each riding solo, got out with guns drawn and eyes wary.

Travis met the men and summarized the situation.

"RA coming?" he asked. Rescue ambulance.

"En route," a lanky red-haired deputy answered.

His nameplate read Carruthers. He couldn't have been older than twenty-five. His gaze kept darting to the shrubbery at the roadside.

Travis knew he was worried that Hickle would return for a second try, but there was little chance of that.

Hickle had taken his best shot and failed. Now he was heading for some dark corner where he could console himself and lick his wounds. But he hadn't had time to go far.

"Either of you men care to join me in pursuit of an armed suspect?"

Travis asked.

"I think we can pick up his trail."

Carruthers wanted in on the action. The other deputy, less enthusiastic, elected to remain at the scene and wait for the paramedics.

Travis drafted Pfeiffer to complete the posse.

"Mahoney, you stand post over Drury and Mrs. Barwood.

See if you can find some blankets for them. Drury looks like he's shivering."

"Nice kid, Drury," Pfeiffer said.

"He'll be all right. Let's move."

The three of them set off together, Travis in the lead, Pfeiffer and Carruthers close behind.

"What kind of firepower this son of a bitch packing?" Carruthers asked.

"He used a shotgun in the assault. My information is that he also owns a rifle with a telescopic sight and laser sighting system. You wearing a vest. Deputy?"

Carruthers snorted.

"I wish. Thing is, this duty's usually pretty quiet, and that vest gets hot."

"Pfeiffer?"

"Yeah, I got on my Kevlar. How about you. Boss?"

"Left mine at home." Travis snapped a new magazine into his Walther.

"Let's hope Raymond doesn't put up a fight."

Hickle ran blindly, lugging the duffel like a heavy load of guilt.

Behind him there were sirens. He never looked back. He was afraid he would see a whole squadron of cops rushing after him.

This was bad. This was a complete mess. In his imagination he had always carried out the attack perfectly.

Yes, he had been arrested afterward, but only once Kris was dead and his immortality was assured.

It was Jackbnimble's fault. In all his e-mail messages Jack had said not one word about armored plating on Kris's car or bulletproof glass.

"Not one goddamned word," he gasped, furiously indignant, and then he blundered into a steel fence topped with razor wire.

It was part of the fence that encircled the Reserve.

He had reached the perimeter of the compound.

Panic screamed in him. He was trapped.

He could turn around, try hiding in the woods, but they would find him before long. There had to be another way. Think.

The fence ran down to the water's edge but no farther.

He could slip around it onto the adjacent public beach, then use the access path to get back to his parked car.

Limping on his bad ankle, he ran along the fence toward the sea. The last house on Malibu Reserve Drive loomed on his right. The space between the home's side wall and the fence was narrow, but he crab walked through, pulling the duffel after him. The shotgun, he noticed, was in the duffel now. Sometime during his run he must have stuffed it inside the bag to free his right hand. He couldn't remember doing this.

He was operating on instinct like any hunted animal.

On the verge of the beach Hickle paused, afraid of the open space where he would be exposed and unprotected.

If the police had anticipated his escape route, somebody might be watching the beach even now. But he saw only white sand, the fringe of the surf, and above the water a few scattered rocks glistening with kelp. He risked going forward, kicking up sand as he ran. Where the fence ended, he sloshed into the tide and staggered ashore on the public beach.

As he climbed a hill of damp sand above the low tide mark, it occurred to him that he was leaving tracks.

He looked back. A line of shoe prints receded into the water. There must be a similar line on the other side of the fence and in the loose dirt of the woods. His enemies could follow him easily.

As if on cue, a glow of flashlights appeared in the shadows between the last home and the fence. They were coming. At least two of them, maybe more.

He ran for the path that led to the parking lot, but at the end of the path, beyond the trees and the dark roof of a ramada, danced a flickering glow of red and blue-the dome light of a police car.

Cops had pulled into the parking lot already. They'd found his car.

Hickle reversed course, retreating up the path toward the beach again.

The flashlight beams were nearer. The pursuers who'd followed him from the Reserve were closing in, following his shoe prints in the sand.

His every escape route was cut off-except one.

The lagoon.

It lay on his left, a dark spread of mud flats and low shrubs bordering two shallow ponds fed by Malibu Creek. Forty acres of wetland, Malibu Lagoon State Park. A nature preserve, a nesting spot for migrant birds and for him, a place to hide.

Hickle left the path and started running again. He wondered if he would ever be able to stop.

"He went into the lagoon." Pfeiffer stood where the beach met the dirt path, staring down at a confusion of tracks.

"He ran for the parking lot, must've been spooked by the cop car, came back, and took cover in there."

His flashlight beam picked out a zigzag line of shoe prints that vanished among the tall cattails and pickle weed their roots sunk in the muddy soil.

Travis and Carruthers stood beside him, guns and flashlights drawn.

"Might be hunkered down," Carruthers said nervously, "drawing a bead on us right now."

"This guy is too rattled to draw a bead on anyone," Travis answered.

"He's a scared rat on the run." He looked at Pfeiffer, who had a good eye for a trail.

"Can we track him?"

"Don't think so. Boss. He must've trampled the foliage, but it looks to me like it's already springing back. And what with storm surges and careless hikers, there's enough damage to cover whatever tracks might be left."

Travis surveyed the ranks of cattails, then pointed at the bridge over Malibu Creek.

"He's heading that way.

He'll go in the water, cross under the bridge, and get out on the opposite side."

Carruthers frowned.

"How can you be sure?"

"I know how these guys think. I was right about the car, wasn't I?"

Travis had suggested the possibility that Hickle left his car in the beach parking lot. Carruthers had passed on the alert over his radio, and a CHP unit in the vicinity had taken the call. The highway cops had found Hickle's Volkswagen Rabbit a couple of minutes ago.

"You were right," the deputy conceded.

"Well, if the bridge is where our boy is going, we better stop him."

He undipped the radio from his belt and, via the dispatcher, relayed a message to the CHP officers in the parking lot, reporting that the armed suspect had entered Malibu Lagoon and might attempt to make egress under the Cross Creek bridge. He really did use the words make egress.

"If those guys are done securing his vehicle," he told the dispatcher,

"we could use'em on the bridge to keep an eye out."

"Good idea," Travis said when the transmission was over.

"Yeah, if you're right about where he's headed. If you're wrong, then we're watching the bridge while he circles back to the beach and hightails it out of here in any of three directions."

"So how do we proceed?" Travis asked. He had to defer to Carruthers because the kid was the only law enforcement officer on the scene.

"We split up, cover the whole lagoon. If he's hiding in there, we flush him out."

Travis nodded.

"It's a plan."

"Who checks out the creek under the bridge?" Pfeiffer asked.

"I do." Travis shrugged.

"My theory, so I get to prove it."

"Watch your back," Carruthers said.

Travis sketched him a wave and headed into the lagoon, holding his flashlight down at his side to conceal its beam.

Hickle crawled through the ranks of high, waving cattails, dragging the duffel. His elbows and knees were slimed with mud. Gnats buzzed at his ears.

Twice he had blundered close to nesting waterfowl, which had flapped their wings at him, squawking angrily.

He didn't know if his pursuers could pinpoint his position from the noise.

The ground turned softer. He smelled brackish water. One of the ponds was just ahead. He scrambled forward, sloshing up thick clumps of ooze, and finally burst out of the cattail forest into the open space at the edge of the estuary.

The pond joined the mouth of Malibu Creek, which flowed under the bridge that was part of the coast highway.

Bridge traffic flashed past with a rattle and hum.

On the far side of the highway no one would be looking for him.

This thought impelled him off the muddy bank into the pond. He stayed low, bending almost double as he slogged through the shallow water, kicking up swirls of silt. Mud sucked at his waterlogged shoes, sending jolts of pain through his bad ankle. He kept going, his attention fixed on the bridge and the safety beyond it.

The duffel bag was an increasingly difficult burden, but he would not relinquish it. He might need the guns. As the water deepened, he hoisted the bag higher to keep it dry. He couldn't afford wet ammunition.

The bridge was close. When a faint current moved against him, he knew he had left the pond and entered Malibu Creek. The creek wound inland through forest and scrub. He could follow it as long as he liked, exit whenever he felt sure he'd shaken off his pursuit. Then he would need a car. He would steal one. He knew how to hot-wire an ignition. He had seen it done on television a thousand times. One of Kris's newscasts had detailed the procedure in a report on auto theft.

He hated to think of Kris. It stirred up too much anger and pain. He consoled himself with the thought that at least Abby was dead.

Under the bridge now. Traffic thrumming overhead.

No moonlight or starlight reached into the concrete grotto. Dark water sloshed fitfully against the pylons, its wet slaps repeated in a train of soft echoes. He could hear his own breathing, amplified by the peculiar acoustics of the place.

He was rearing the far side of the bridge when he heard a car stop directly above him. Instinct froze him in place. A moment later a spotlight snapped on, sweeping the water straight ahead.

The car was a patrol unit, maybe the same one from the parking lot, and it was angling its spotlight down into the creek. He couldn't go forward. If he left the cover of the bridge he would be seen instantly.

Had to retreat, conceal himself in the lagoon until the way was clear.

He headed in that direction, then stopped as a flashlight beam shone down from the bridge on that side, panning the water.

There must be two cops. Highway patrol officers, probably; they rode in pairs after dark. Between them, they had both sides of the bridge covered. He was safe only as long as he stayed hidden underneath.

Trapped.

He backed up against one of the rusty pylons and huddled there, a scared animal. Minutes earlier he had been the predator lying in ambush. Now he was the prey, hiding from those who hunted him.

With trembling hands he removed the shotgun from the duffel, then felt inside the bag until he found a box of ammo. He fed four Federal Super Magnum shells into the gun. If the cops figured out where he was, he would open fire. The twelve-gauge was a better weapon than the rifle at close range. He might kill one of them, at least, before the sound of gunfire led his other pursuers to the bridge.

He hoped it wouldn't come to that. If Kris had died, his own fate would no longer matter. But as long as she lived, there was still a purpose to his life.

Travis saw him there, under the bridge.

The poor son of a bitch was pinned between one highway cop's downcast flashlight beam and the spotlight from the CHP car itself. He couldn't leave without being seen. All he could do was brace himself against a pylon and sit tight.

Crouching on the mud flat his flashlight off, Travis considered his next move. Carruthers and Pfeiffer were too far away to see him. The highway patrol cops were within hailing distance, but he would be invisible to them as long as he stayed in the high bulrushes and sedges along the bank.

Carefully he pocketed his flashlight, then made his way through the foliage, keeping his head down and relying on the tall plants for cover.

He advanced step by step, waiting for a gust of wind to shake the sedges and mask the disturbance his passage caused. As he drew close to the bridge, he timed his moves to coincide with each new rush of traffic, letting the roar of a Harley's unruffled motor or the rattle of a camper drown out the noise of his progress.

It had been a long time since he had been involved in the pursuit of an armed assailant. He found himself enjoying it. He almost wished he were an employee of Travis Protective Services, assigned to field duty, rather than the founder and proprietor, condemned to spend most of his time behind a desk.

He proceeded to within five feet of the bridge, and still the cop with the flashlight hadn't spotted him. Travis could see the patrolman leaning over the side, casting the beam into the waist-deep water, then exploring other parts of the creek and pond. Behind him the CHP car's light bar threw blue and red pulses over the scene.

Travis was wondering how he would get past the drifting glow of the flashlight when his problem was solved for him. The patrolman abruptly lifted the flashlight and turned away, his attention drawn by the rising whine of two ambulance sirens.

The fire station was practically next door to Malibu Reserve, and the paramedics must have arrived almost immediately. The nearest hospitals were in Santa Monica and West LA. To get there, the ambulances had to cross the bridge, heading south on PCH. The patrol cops had paused in their surveillance to slow oncoming traffic and wave the emergency vehicles through.

It would take less than a minute for both ambulances to pass, but that was all the time Travis needed.

He entered the creek, holding his gun high, and with one hand he cut the water with a strong stroke, gliding under the bridge.

When the first ambulance screamed overhead, he risked propelling himself forward with a strong kick.

He was sure Hickle couldn't hear the splashing above the din from above.

Behind a pylon Travis paused, only his head and the Walther above water.

Hickle, he saw, had turned toward the far side of the bridge.

He was watching the spotlight, which had stopped moving. The duffel was strapped to his shoulder, and the shotgun was in his hand.

The second ambulance blew past with a cacophonous wail. Travis used the covering noise to glide forward, eel-like in the slippery water, moving from pylon to pylon until Hickle was within reach.

At the last moment Hickle seemed to sense another presence in the dark, but it was too late. Before he could turn, Travis pressed the Walther's muzzle to the back of Hickle's head.

"Don't move, Raymond."

Hickle stiffened. Travis knew he was thinking of the shotgun, calculating odds and risks.

"I know you want to do something heroic," Travis whispered.

"Something crazy. Don't. Just listen to me.

Will you do that, Raymond? Will you listen to one thing I have to say?"

"So say it," Hickle breathed, tension bunching up the muscles of his shoulders.

"Okay, here it is, Raymond. Here's what I came to tell you."

Travis leaned close, pressing his mouth to Hickle's ear, and smiling in the dark, he recited the words of a nursery rhyme.

"Jack, be nimble… Jack, be quick…"

The gas was off. The furnace's pilot light was out.

The windows in the bedroom and living room were open. Abby had not yet risked turning on an electric fan to expel the gas-any spark might ignite an explosion-but already the air was clearing.

"We've got to get you to a hospital," Wyatt said for the third time.

The rover radio clipped to his uniform belt crackled with unintelligible crosstalk; he ignored it.

"I told you," Abby said, "I'll go when I'm through here."

"Through with what, exactly?"

"Damage control." She tried giving him a sharp look, but the effort of focusing her gaze spun ripples of vertigo through her skull.

She knew he was right about the hospital. It wasn't the inhalation of gas that worried her as much as the head trauma she'd suffered when Hickle knocked her out. She still had a raging headache centered behind her eyes, pain that she could no longer attribute entirely to the gas.

She was less steady on her feet than she ought to be, and the nausea in her belly had not completely vanished even after she'd started breathing fresh air.

So, yes, she would go to a hospital, but not until she had tied up a few loose ends. The police-by which she meant officers of the law other than Vie Wyatt-would arrive before long to check out Hickle's apartment and look in on his immediate neighbors. This was standard investigative procedure, and it would be triggered by Hickle's attack on Kris Barwood.

Abby knew there had been an attack. On the phone she'd heard Travis yell an order to a driver. Kris's voice had been briefly audible, asking what was wrong.

Then, gunfire. The shotgun, from the sound of it. Several shots, Kris screaming, Travis yelling at her to get down-And silence. The connection had been lost.

Anything could have happened after that. Desperate to know, Abby had redialed Travis's cell phone twice. No answer. She'd considered phoning 911 before remembering that TPS had stationed security agents at the beach house. They must have heard the shots, as had Kris's neighbors.

So the police were definitely involved. Whatever the outcome of the attack, there would be a thorough investigation.

The Hollywood side of the case would focus on Hickle's apartment. Nice men in suits would be banging on every door on the fourth floor very soon. But by then she would be gone.

She made her way somewhat unsteadily into the kitchen and took out a pair of rubber gloves. As she was pulling them on, she heard Wyatt's low-top boots on the linoleum floor.

"I'm not sure I want to know what those are for," he said wryly.

She saw a frown of disapproval pinching his mouth.

"Then you'd better not follow me when I go into Hickle's apartment."

"His apartment?" The frown deepened, and he folded his arms across his chest, the blue sleeves of his jacket straining taut.

"Sounds like tampering with a crime scene."

"Going to arrest me. Sergeant?" His silence was an eloquent reply.

"Okay, then."

Taking her cell phone in case Travis called back, she hustled into the bedroom, where she picked up the padlock and chain. Then she climbed onto the fire escape and lifted herself into Hickle's bedroom window.

"You took a blow to the back of the head," Wyatt said from behind her.

His voice surprised her. He had followed her so silently that she hadn't been aware of his presence. She paused, straddling the windowsill.

"Yeah, Hickle clipped me," she admitted, self-consciously fingering the bump he had seen. There was no laceration, no bleeding, only a large, swollen knob, tender to the touch.

Wyatt leaned close and patted-the injury also, drawing a wince from her.

"How?" he asked, worry in his eyes.

"What did he use, his fist or a weapon?"

"I don't, know. I've got a little memory gap. I remember fighting him then coming to."

"You lost consciousness from the blow? Hell, Abby, you've suffered a grade three concussion. We have to get you to an ER. You need a neurologic exam-"

"I need to take care of business. The ER can wait."

She tried to complete her unlawful entry into Hickle's apartment. Wyatt grabbed her hand to stop her.

"You have any idea how serious a major concussion can be?"

She raised her head and met his eyes, experiencing another swoon of vertigo.

"I think I do. Let's see, when my brain sloshed forward, I could have suffered a cont recoup injury-contusion of the frontal and temporal lobes. Or I could have ruptured some blood vessels, in which case I have a nice little subdural hematoma building up pressure in my skull.

Maybe I've formed a blood clot, and if I receive another blow it'll be jarred loose and I'll have a stroke, possibly fatal. So yes. Vie, I have a vague idea of how serious a concussion can be, and the sooner you let me do what I have to do, the sooner I can get medical attention.

Okay?"

She shook free of his grip and finished climbing through the window.

She knew she had been sharp with him. Irritability was one symptom of head trauma.

The air in Hickle's apartment was clean. He hadn't set a similar death trap in his own place.

"Don't touch anything," she instructed Wyatt when he followed her inside.

"You were never here."

She wiped off the padlock and chain, tossing both items on the bedroom floor, and proceeded into the living room. The first thing she saw was that Hickle had pulled down the smoke detector. Scanning the carpet, she discovered the camera's crushed remnants.

She put them in her pocket.

"What was that?" Wyatt asked.

"Surveillance camera. In pieces, but the crime scene guys would still be able to identify it."

"Camera? One of yours?"

"It's just a tool of the trade, no big deal, except it's illegal."

"Yeah, except for that."

Abby retrieved the infinity transmitter from the smashed telephone, then found the bug in the oven's ventilation hood, which Hickle had overlooked. She returned to the bedroom. The place was a mess.

Hickle had torn down most of the photos; they littered the floor like a drift of faces. Abby wondered if Wyatt noticed that the subject of every photograph was Kris Barwood. If so, he didn't mention it.

As she was groping underneath the drawers of Hickle's nightstand to recover the other microphone, she heard Wyatt say, "You think you can disappear, is that it?"

"Possibly. I've done it before."

"You mean when you were Emanuel Earth's housekeeper?"

"How'd you guess?"

"I didn't, until Sam Cahill gave me the details. He's the detective who handled the case and put Earth away the second time."

She looked at him.

"You talked with a detective about me?"

"Your name never came up."

"Even so, you must've raised his suspicions."

"Sam's a friend. He'll be discreet. You can trust him."

"I don't seem to have a choice," she snapped.

"You know, for someone who just cheated death, you're in a pretty foul mood."

Abby found a smile.

"Sorry. I just don't like people knowing my secrets, that's all."

"Even me?"

"Even you. Vie. Even though you saved my life. It may be irrational, but that's the way I am. Anyway, you're right about the Earth case. I was Connie Hammond."

"And you disappeared."

"It was easy enough. Nobody was looking very hard for Connie. This time there are complications.

Hickle knows the truth about me. Someone else may know also. If either of them ends up in custody and wants to talk, I could have some explaining to do." She pocketed the second mike, then picked up her microcassette recorder, which Hickle had left on the bed.

"Sounds like you're in a lot of trouble, Abby."

"No, I was in a lot of trouble. Now I'm fine, thanks to you. And I do mean thanks. I was wrong, you know, the other night."

"Wrong about what?"

"When I said I didn't need any help, that I could handle myself and I didn't need anybody watching my back. I was wrong." It was difficult for her to say this. Self-reliance and self-sufficiency had been the basic credo of her life.

"Yeah, well"-Wyatt shrugged-"we all make mistakes."

The last thing Abby took out of Hickle's apartment was the Maidenform briefs he'd stolen from her laundry.

She noticed Wyatt eyeing the underwear with a puzzled look, but he didn't ask any questions, and she didn't feel like talking about it.

They returned via the fire escape to her apartment.

By now the gas had largely dissipated, and Abby felt ready to risk a spark. She turned on a table fan, blowing the rest of the fumes out the living room window.

In her bedroom, she removed the monitoring gear from the closet and arranged it on the bureau.

"More spy stuff?" Wyatt asked.

"Not anymore. Now it's your garden-variety TV and VCR."

"And an audio deck with long-playing reel-to-reel tapes."

"Quirky, but not particularly suspicious. I doubt anybody will even notice it on a casual walk through.

Can you get me a trash bag from the kitchen?"

While Wyatt fetched it, Abby went into the bathroom and poured a long drink of water. God, her throat was so sore. She was tempted to take aspirin, but she knew it would thin her blood and exacerbate any internal bleeding. At least her head no longer was beating like a bongo drum. Now it was more like a snare drum. That had to constitute an improvement.

She checked her eyes in the mirror. The pupils looked evenly dilated, a good sign. Maybe her injury wasn't as bad as she'd feared. Had she dodged the blow at the last instant, receiving only a glancing impact rather than a direct hit? Had her reflexes saved her from a skull fracture and brain injury? It was possible.

She didn't remember how she had reacted or even what Hickle had hit her with. She didn't remember the moment of impact at all.

"You're'hurting," Wyatt said when she emerged from the bathroom. He had been watching her.

"It's nothing a little fresh air and exercise won't cure." She'took the trash bag from him and stuffed it with the wrecked video cassette and audio reels, as well as the Maidenform briefs, which she sure as hell wasn't going to wear again.

Wyatt grunted.

"Maybe. But you're still going to the ER, if I have to drag you there by your hair."

"How Neanderthal of you. But entirely unnecessary."

She added the camera, microphones, and transmitters to the bag, along with the rubber gloves.

"I'm going of my own volition. See?" She held up the trash bag.

"All packed."

In the living room she picked up her purse and checked to confirm that her gun was still there. She put her micro recorder and cell phone inside, pausing as she wondered if she should try Travis's number again.

Wyatt saw her hesitate.

"He still hasn't called back-whoever you reported to."

"Maybe he can't. Maybe the alert came too late.

Maybe"-she hated to say it-"maybe he's dead, and the client too."

"Kris Barwood," Wyatt said. So he had noticed the photos.

Abby nodded. This time her head did not reel from the effort, and she took some comfort from that.

They left the apartment together and rode the elevator to ground level.

Wyatt said he would drive her in his squad car, and she said, "Yes, of course." In her present state she was unfit to sit behind the wheel of an automobile. If she had suffered any serious cranio- cerebral trauma, she could black out at any time.

"But," she added, "we have to move my Dodge out of the parking lot so your pals in blue don't find it."

"Why?"

"So if I'm interviewed, I can say I drove myself to the hospital." As he walked her to the Dodge, she explained more fully. Talking was good.

It kept her alert.

"See, I'm trying to keep all my options open until I know how things work out. I'd prefer to have Abby Gallagher disappear forever, like Connie Hammond.

But if Hickle or someone else identifies me to the police, I'll have to come clean. At least, reasonably clean."

"How clean exactly?"

"I won't admit to any illegalities. No electronic surveillance, no breaking and entering. I was hired to move in next door to Hickle and keep an eye on him, that's all. He found me out and attacked me. When I came to, I was confused and disoriented. I drove myself to the hospital in a daze and didn't remember my obligation to talk to the cops until my memories came back at a convenient time."

"Weak."

"But un disprovable

"That's not a word."

"It is now."

"Hickle will tell them about the bugs in his apartment.

How are you going to explain that?"

"Explain what? The paranoid ravings of a homicidal stalker?"

"And if Hickle is never caught and your cover isn't blown?"

"Then farewell, Abby Gallagher, wherever you are."

He looked at her with admiration.

"You've got it all worked out, haven't you?"

"This is nothing. You should see me in action when my brain hasn't been batted around like a beach ball."

Wyatt moved the Dodge to a side street, then escorted her to-his cruiser. He asked which hospital she wanted. She ran through the options in her mind and decided that on a Friday night any emergency room in this part of town would be a war zone.

"I don't suppose you could chauffeur me all the way to Cedars Sinai she said. It was in West Hollywood, a better neighborhood.

"No problem."

"It might be a problem for you if the watch commander starts to wonder where you've been for so long."

"I'll tell him I stopped at a donut shop. That's always plausible for a cop, right?"

Abby smiled.

"No comment."

Three blocks from the Gainford Arms, Wyatt detoured into an alley and discarded the trash bag in a Dumpster. As he pulled onto Santa Monica Boulevard, heading west, Abby fished her cell phone out of her purse and speed-dialed Travis's number. Still no answer.

"It'll be all right," Wyatt said quietly.

"Sure. I know. The good guys always win, don't they?" She sank back wearily in the passenger seat and shut her eyes, repeating the words as a mantra.

"The good guys always win."

Are you really him?" Hickle breathed.

"Are you Jackbnimble?"

"I'm him. You still thinking about using that twelve gauge The tension eased out of Hickle in a shaky expulsion of breath.

"Guess not."

"Glad to hear it." Travis stepped back, lowering the Walther.

"You can turn around. No reason we can't talk face to face. We're partners, after all."

Hickle turned, the water rippling around him. Overhead a burst of crosstalk sounded from the squad car's radio, the volume high. The flashlight winked on again, and, the spotlight resumed probing the creek waters. The two cops had returned to their task.

"We're both trapped in here now," Hickle whispered.

"No, I'll get us out. You'll go inland while I distract the two Smokies on the bridge."

"Distract them how?"

"Don't worry about that. We have a lot to discuss and not much time.

Do you know who I am?"

Hickle studied him in the gloom. Travis took the opportunity to assess Hickle's face. He had never seen the man in person. He had small, suspicious eyes, a rodent's eyes. His skin was pasty, his hair greasy and wild. He belonged here under the bridge in the fetid water, amid the flotsam of fast-food containers and cigarette packs.

"No," Hickle said finally.

"Should I?"

"I think so, if you've watched the news." Travis allowed himself a brief smile.

"And I know you never miss the news."

The small eyes narrowed. The bloodless line of Hickle's mouth pinched in a frown.

"Hey," he whispered, "you run the security firm. You're Paul Travis.

You're famous in this town."

Hickle seemed almost honored to be meeting a celebrity, even if the encounter had to take place in a dark creek during a police pursuit.

And why not?

Fame was his obsession.

"You're the one who's famous now," Travis said.

"In a few hours your name will be all over the newspapers and the TV, radio-everywhere."

Hickle nearly brightened, then twisted his mouth in a pout.

"As a failure."

"For the moment." Travis sighed.

"You know, you really should've killed her when you had the chance."

"Don't you go blaming me for that. It was the car, the Lincoln. It was bulletproof-"

"That's not what I meant. I'm talking about Abby."

"Abby?" A beat of silence as Hickle took this in.

"She's-she's still alive?"

"Unfortunately, yes. But she doesn't have to be."

Travis's words returned in a wave of echoes.

"What do you mean?" Hickle's voice, very soft, produced no echo at all.

"I know a way for you to get Abby, really get her this time, no mistakes. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"

The glimmer in Hickle's eyes was pure malice.

"I'd like Kris more."

"She'll come later. Abby first. It only makes sense.

Security around Kris will be tight for a few days. Not just TPS security-police protection too. But Abby won't have any protection at all."

Hickle processed this, then nodded.

"How do I do it?"

"I can tell you where she lives. Her permanent address, not the apartment she rented next door to you.

With that rifle of yours, you can nail her easily. I've got it all worked out."

"Yeah, sure, you've got it all worked out." Hickle took a step toward Travis in the deep water, launching concentric circles of ripples that sloshed against the pylons.

"So why the hell didn't you ever mention the armored car and the bulletproof glass? Why-"

"Keep your voice down." Travis glanced upward at the underbelly of the bridge.

"They may hear." "Don't tell me what to do," Hickle said, but he did lower his voice.

"You're the one who messed up everything.

Or maybe it was all a setup. Is that it? You were in the car with her.

You're the one who protected her from me. You never wanted me to kill her. This is all some kind of game-"

"No game, Raymond."

"So explain it." Hickle was close now. Travis could see the wildness in his eyes. To control him, Travis would have to handle this next answer just right. He wished he were more skilled at reading people.

That was Abby's special talent. Absurdly he regretted that she wasn't here to help.

"Raymond," he said quietly, "I had no choice about what happened tonight. Kris insisted on using a TPS staff car, one of our armored vehicles. And she insisted that I ride shotgun. I couldn't refuse either request without raising her suspicions. It all happened fast, I had no chance to e-mail you an update."

The story sounded plausible, Travis thought. He waited while Hickle's eyes ticked back and forth, his brain probing the story for weaknesses.

"Why would Kris want special protection tonight of all nights?" he asked finally.

Travis was ready for that one. He fixed Hickle with a reproving stare.

"Because you varied your routine.

You didn't call her today."

A beat of silence, broken only by the sizzle of radio crosstalk overhead.

"You're saying," Hickle breathed, "it's my fault?"

This was precisely what Travis was saying, but he chose to be magnanimous.

"What's done is done. It's nobody's fault. Just one of those things."

"But you protected her. You helped her find cover after I blew up the car."

"I wasn't protecting her. I was defending myself.

You would have killed us both. A shotgun isn't a discriminating weapon."

"You fired at me even after she broke away from you. You popped off two shots right at me."

"And missed both times. I'm a skilled marksman, Raymond. I didn't have to miss." He paused to let that statement register.

"For that matter, I don't have to be telling you any of this right now.

I could have alerted the cops on the bridge-or shot you in the back of the head when I swam up. Instead I've taken you into my confidence.

I've revealed my identity. Don't I deserve a little trust in return?"

Nicely done. Travis was pleased with himself. Even Abby couldn't have manipulated the man any more expertly.

"Well," Hickle muttered, "maybe. But I can't figure your angle. Kris is your client. Abby's your employee or business associate or something. Why would you want either of them dead? Why would you be helping me when it's your job to stop me?"

"Good questions. I wish I had time for an in-depth discussion. But you see, there are other men combing the lagoon. One of them will see us soon. We need to wrap this up."

His point was punctuated by a sudden clatter of wings in the lagoon-a bird startled into flight. Either Carruthers or Pfeiffer must have blundered into a nest not far away.

"Hear that?" Travis said.

"They're closing in. Now, do you want my help or not?"

Hickle hesitated only a moment, then nodded.

"I want it."

"Okay, first things first. How were you planning to get out of Malibu?"

"Head upstream to where there are houses and ranches, then steal a car out of somebody's driveway.

Or if I can't find a car, I'll hide in the woods till the heat dies down."

"No good. Either way it'll take too long, and time is not on your side.

You're underestimating the gravity of this situation. You're big news, Raymond. Let me tell you what's going to happen within the next fifteen minutes. First the choppers will arrive. Sheriff's department aerial units. TV and radio helicopters too.

One of them will spot you in the creek or the woods. If they don't find you, the dogs will. K-nine units. You've seen them on the news, right?

Those dogs will be sniffing for a scent on both sides of the highway.

The creek won't cover your scent, either. That's a myth.

Smells carry just fine over water."

Clearly Hickle hadn't thought about dogs, choppers.

He licked his lips.

"So," Travis continued relentlessly, "you're screwed any way you look at it. Stay in the creek or hide in the woods, and the dogs will track you down unless a chopper spots you first. Take cover in a house, and the police will figure out where you are once they start conducting house-to-house searches. You'll be surrounded by a SWAT team, and your only choice will be whether you kill yourself or let them do it for you."

"All right, all right." Hickle was even paler than before.

"I won't hide out. I'll steal a car, like I said."

"That's right, you will, but you have to do it fast.

There'll be roadblocks set up before long. Highway patrol units and sheriff's cruisers, checking every car that goes through. The one thing that's working in your favor is that Malibu is relatively isolated. It takes time to deliver manpower and other resources out here.

That's why there are only three patrol units on the scene so far. You have to make your move before it gets any more crowded. That means you don't have time to go far inland. You grab the first car you see. This creek runs past a parking lot behind the little shopping center across the street. Even at this hour, there's a good chance you'll find some sort of vehicle in that lot. If there's anything you can drive, take it. And go north."

"Not south? There's more traffic that way. I might blend in better."

"South is too obvious. There may already be a roadblock south of here.

Your odds are better if you cut through Topanga Canyon to the Ventura Freeway.

They won't block off the freeway, so once you're on it you'll be reasonably safe. Connect with the northbound 405.

You know where San Fernando Road meets the Golden State Freeway?"

"North end of the Valley" Travis nodded.

"High-crime district, lots of auto theft. That's where you'll ditch your vehicle. Leave it unlocked, motor running. With any luck someone else will take it for a joyride, and by the time the police find it, they won't know where you abandoned it."

"Then what do I use for transportation?"

"Steal another car. Cars get stolen in that part of town every night.

The crime probably won't be linked to you at first, which means it won't be a high priority.

Drive south into LA but avoid Hollywood. They'll be expecting you to return there. Where you want to go is Westwood."

"Because that's where Abby is," Hickle breathed.

"Or where she will be, eventually. She lives in a condo tower called the Wilshire Royal." Travis gave the cross street and the address.

"Her unit is ten-fifteen. It's at the front of the building, fourth window from the right, facing Wilshire."

"How do I get inside?"

"You don't."

Travis explained in detail. Hickle listened, nodding now and then to signal either agreement or understanding.

"Got it?" Travis asked when he was through.

"I got it. Now how about Kris?"

"I told you, she'll come later."

"When?"

"I'll be in touch. Once you've nailed Abby, hole up somewhere safe.

Get access to your e-mail account at a library or someplace and log on once a day. I'll contact you as soon as I can. Trust me."

"I'm still not sure I should."

"But you have to. Right now, Raymond, I'm the only friend you've got."

Hickle gave him a cool, perceptive stare.

"I bet Kris and Abby think you're their friend too. Don't they?"

Travis didn't answer.

The Emergency Department at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center had been recently renovated and expanded, and to Abby it felt more like a hotel than a hospital. Then again, at a hotel she would not have been sitting on a wheeled mechanical bed that doubled as an examination table, reading a poster about flu season while holding an ice pack to her head.

Wyatt had dropped her off at the entrance. She'd declined his offer to accompany her inside, knowing that it was besst for both of them if they weren't seen together.

The nurse at the semicircular admitting desk had listened- to Abby's story of a blow to the head delivered by, a racquetball partner's errant swing. If the nurse wondered why anybody would be playing racquetball at midnight, or where the partner had gone, or why Abby wasn't wearing workout clothes, she didn't ask. Obviously she assumed the story was a lie, and that Abby's boyfriend or husband had struck her.

The ER was not excessively crowded even on a Friday night. It didn't take long for a physician to perform an initial baseline evaluation, which included an eye exam and tests of her reflexes, as well as gentle probing of the goose egg on her head.

"Any vomiting?" he asked.

"Amnesia? Drowsiness? Headache?"

She answered no, yes, no, yes but it was getting better.

He gave her a non aspiring painkiller and an ice pack.

His diagnosis was an uncomplicated concussion, full recovery anticipated. He wanted her held overnight for observation. She could sleep, but a nurse would wake her periodically to monitor her alertness.

She would be moved out of the ER shortly.

"Meanwhile, relax," he said, adding that someone else would drop by to check on her before she was moved upstairs. A domestic violence counselor, Abby figured.

Now she waited restlessly, shifting on the bed and swinging her legs.

Really, she wasn't sleepy at all.

There was too much adrenaline roaring through her system after her near-death experience. And there was fear. Travis still hadn't called.

Gazing around the room, she saw what resembled a TV hovering at the end of a mechanical arm alongside the bed. Closer inspection established that it really was a TV-a color TV, in fact. She wondered if it got cable.

"Next vacation," she decided, "I'm booking a room here."

She was debating whether or not to turn on the TV and search for a news update when her purse began to chirp. It took her a moment to understand that a call was coming in on her cell phone. Fumbling one-handed with the purse, she got out the phone and answered the call on the fifth ring.

"Yes?" she gasped, praying to hear Travis's voice.

"Abby-it's me;" A knot of tension unraveled in her gut, and she let herself breathe deeply for the first time in more than an hour.

"Paul. Are you okay?"

"Just fine. You?"

"Never better," she lied.

"What happened in Malibu? How's Kris?"

"Not a scratch on her. We had a close call, though."

"On the phone I heard gunshots."

"Yes, our friend mounted an assault with his shotgun.

Fortunately we were riding in a shielded car from the TPS fleet. Even so, he found a weak spot in the armor. The driver suffered superficial wounds, but he'll be all right"

"And you?" She knew she had asked him already, but she needed to hear his answer again.

Travis chuckled.

"The only damage was to my pride. I got wet. Soaked through."

"Wet?" She didn't understand.

"I pursued Hickle into the lagoon next to the beach.

Thought I saw him under the bridge. Tried to sneak closer and ended up falling into the damn creek. There were two highway cops on the bridge who got a good laugh out of it."

"And Hickle? Was he under the bridge?"

"Nobody was there. What I saw was a trick of the light. I humiliated myself for nothing."

"So he got away?"

"Evidently. The police are combing the area, and they've put up roadblocks on PCH, but I think it's a case of locking the barn door after the horse is gone.

There's a report of a car stolen from a shopping center across the highway from the lagoon. It's a safe guess Hickle took it. Even so, with all the media attention, he won't get far."

Abby wasn't so sure, but she didn't pursue the issue.

"I tried calling you again and again-"

"Lost my phone in the attack.

It probably melted when the car caught fire."

She hitched in a breath.

"Caught fire?"

"It's a long story"

"Were you burned?"

"Not at all. Stop asking for health updates. I'm fine."

"Where are you now?"

"The Barwoods' guest house. Some of the TPS staffers keep spare clothes there, and Mahoney's just my size. My suit was soaked through; I had to change before I caught pneumonia. Next on the agenda is a visit to the sheriff's station in Agoura. I have to give a heads-up to the captain who runs the show."

"About Howard?"

"Right. I'll keep you out of it for as long as I can.

You're not still in Hollywood, are you?"

"No, of course not. I had to make myself scarce."

"That's what I figured. Back in Westwood, then? My advice is to stay put in your condo for at least-"

"I'm not in my condo."

"You're not?" There was an odd note of disappointment in his voice.

"Actually, I'm staying overnight at Cedars. Got a minor bump on the noggin."

"Oh. I see. Hell, I thought you said you were unhurt."

He sounded more angry than concerned.

Abby shrugged.

"It's nothing. I'm here as a precaution, that's all. My brain's my livelihood; I don't like to take chances with it."

"Well, it sounds like you need your rest. I'd better let you go, but I'll visit you first thing in the morning. You check in as Abby Sinclair?"

"That's right. I'm back to my old self."

"Take care, Abby."

"Paul?"

"Yes?"

"It's good to hear your voice."

"Yours too, Abby. Always."

She ended the call and sat very still, the ice pack in one hand, the phone in the other. She sensed a peculiar tautness in the muscles of her face. At first she didn't understand it. Then she realized she was smiling.

Until now she hadn't permitted herself to know how scared she had been.

There was nothing to fear any longer. Paul had survived.

And Kris.

The good guys really had won after all.

Abby did her best to sleep once she was moved to a room on the third floor, but relaxation would not come. When she closed her eyes, her mind was crowded instantly with a confused rush of images-Hickle with the shotgun, Wyatt kneeling beside her on the fire escape, photos of Kris torn and scattered on Hickle's bedroom floor. At times Travis entered her thoughts, and she imagined him flailing in the creek while the cops on the bridge kidded him and laughed… but it wasn't funny, because dimly in the distance a slouching, raggedy figure that must be Hickle was slipping away unseen.

This made no sense. She was overtired, her brain making irrational connections. She wished she could quiet her thinking. At home she would have brewed some valerian tea, but she was sure the hospital stocked only conventional medicines. Anyway, the nurses wouldn't give her any tranquilizers; they needed to monitor her mental clarity at two-hour intervals.

Past 6 a.m." as dawn was brightening her window, she found a way to sleep. She expected bad dreams, but there were none. Her mind had shut down at last, and she drifted weightless in the humming dark.

And woke to see Travis gazing down at her.

"Sorry," he whispered.

"Did I wake you?"

She sat up quickly, noting in a detached way that she experienced no vertigo after the change of position, and that her headache was entirely gone.

"No," she said.

"I mean, yes, I guess you did, but it's all right. What time is it?"

"Eight-thirty."

"In the morning?" she asked stupidly.

Travis smiled.

"Saturday morning, March twenty-six. How are you feeling?"

"Not so bad, just drowsy. Didn't get much sleep last night. How about you?"

"No sleep. Spent all night at the sheriff's station. The captain in charge of the Malibu-Lost Hills station was extremely interested in what I had to say, as were two of his detectives."

"You sure it's not too soon to make an accusation?

We don't have any hard evidence-"

"We do now. Our computer techs found a link between Western Regional Resources and the company that owns the bungalow in Culver City.

However, I didn't approach the subject that way with the captain.

I left the bungalow out of it for now. Didn't want to raise any questions about unauthorized activities."

"You mean, like the fact that I illegally entered the place and searched it?"

"Exactly. All I said was that we'd learned Howard Barwood has at least one dummy corporation. Western Regional Resources, and we have reason to believe he may own a cell phone registered to that company. I suggested that if in fact Howard is Hickle's informant, then Howard might have used that phone to talk with him or arrange a rendezvous. I suggested they check the cellular carrier's records."

"Did they?"

"Yes. They found the Thursday night call made to Hickle's apartment.

That was when they started taking a serious interest in Mr. Barwood, though he doesn't know it yet."

"Where's Howard now?"

"Scheduled for a talk with those two detectives I mentioned. They'll be handling him with kid gloves, giving him the OJ treatment. He's well-connected, and they don't want to do anything rash until they know what's going on."

"Just be sure they keep an eye on him. If they give him too long a leash, he may flee. Then you'll have to tell them about the bungalow."

"Why? You think he'd go there?"

"It's possible. He keeps a gun in his nightstand. He might want to pick it up, especially if he has any plans to rendezvous with Hickle."

"A gun? You never mentioned that."

"It didn't seem too important at the time. A little Colt forty-five, like the malt liquor."

One of the nurses appeared in the doorway, telling Travis he'd been allowed only five minutes with the patient, and his time was up.

"I was just leaving," Travis said with a smile.

The nurse was not charmed.

"See that you do. Miss. Sinclair suffered a nasty concussion in a racquetball game." She squinted at Travis suspiciously.

"You wouldn't happen to be the one she was playing with?"

"Abby and I never play games," Travis said.

"At least not with each other."

The nurse frowned, aware that some sort of veiled joke had been told but unable to see the punch line.

"Well, say your good-byes, and let the patient sleep."

When the nurse was gone, Abby smiled at Travis.

"See how well protected I am?"

"I should hire her for TPS. She'd make a good bodyguard.

As for Howard, you don't have to worry about him. Men of his social standing seldom run. They stick around and hire smart lawyers. They always think they can beat the system. Half the time they're right."

"I guess so."

"But I'll keep the bungalow in mind. If he flees, I'll tell the police." He touched her hand lightly, then pulled away.

"Better get going before Nurse Patched returns. Besides, there's another stop I have to make on this floor. Kris is here."

"Kris? Right down the hall?"

He nodded.

"She showed symptoms of neurogenic shock. The paramedics brought her in."

"Saint John's would have been closer, or UCLA Medical."

"Her regular physician is on call at Cedars, so this is where she wanted to come. And you don't say no to Kris Barwood, especially now.

If you thought she was big before, you should see the coverage of this case."

She understood what he was thinking.

"Then maybe TPS will make a comeback?"

"Here's hoping."

"And maybe… maybe I can let it go." She said the words softly, half to herself.

"Corbal?" Travis asked.

She nodded.

"I know I told you I wasn't trying to prove anything or redeem myself.

I lied. It's all I've thought about for the past four months. The way I screwed up… and what I could do to try to make it right."

"You did everything you could," Travis said gently, "and then some.

Now get some sleep. You've earned a good long rest."

"I will. Thanks, Paul."

She let her head fall back on the pillow, drowsiness washing over her.

She was closing her eyes when Travis leaned down and kissed her forehead, a tender act, unusual for him.

"A good long rest," he repeated softly.

She was asleep before he left the room.

Their names were Giacomo and Heller, and they greeted Howard Barwood at the sheriff's station with smiles and handshakes, saying how much they appreciated his taking the time to clear up a few minor details about the case. He scarcely listened. He'd slept little, having spent most of the night at Cedars-Sinai with Kris. He was tired and hungry;

Courtney had fixed him breakfast, but he'd had little appetite. Above all, he was burdened with guilt.

He regretted his every hour with Amanda. He regretted every thought of leaving Kris. He regretted being a bad husband. What made it worse was that he knew this was only a mood that would pass, and before long he would be sneaking out for more liaisons with Amanda or some new young thing. His good intentions never lasted.

Preoccupied with these thoughts, he let Giacomo and Heller usher him into a small office, where they offered him a seat at a battered wooden table. They sat opposite him. Heller took out a notepad and a pen.

Giacomo placed a cassette recorder on the table and said something about a need to record the interview to ensure an accurate transcript.

"Fine," Howard said indifferently.

Giacomo did most of the talking. He began by speaking into the recorder, giving the location, date, and time of the interview. Howard noticed he used military time-oh-nine-hundred thirty-five hours.

"We're here with Mr. Howard Barwood," Giacomo said, asking for Howard's birth date. Howard rattled it off without thinking, his voice alien to him, coming from far away.

"Now, Mr. Barwood, I'm going to give you your constitutional rights.

It would be good if you would listen carefully-" For the first time Howard roused himself.

"My rights?"

Giacomo said yes, and Heller nodded, both men smiling in a way that seemed too friendly.

Howard blinked.

"Am I a suspect or something?"

The idea seemed bizarre, incomprehensible.

"Actually, Mr. Barwood, we're mainly interested in eliminating you as a suspect."

"But… a suspect in what? Hickle attacked Kris.

People saw him. I was in the house-"

"Of course you were. There are witnesses who support everything you just said. And nobody doubts that Raymond Hickle ambushed that car."

"Then what…?" He couldn't finish the question.

Nothing was making sense.

"There are always a lot of angles in a case like this," Giacomo said.

"We need to tie up some loose ends, that's all."

Angles, loose ends… Howard was baffled.

"You never said anything about viewing me as a suspect."

Heller spoke.

"We don't view you that way. Truth is, we hate to even waste your time with this. What we'd like is to get it over with so we can all go home."

"It's been a long night for everybody," Giacomo said.

"I'm beat," Heller added.

Vaguely Howard understood that something was taking place that was not necessarily to his benefit. But the two detectives were right about one thing. It had indeed been a long night. He was reluctant to walk out of the interview now, only to return later and go through all this rigmarole again. And if he did walk out, he'd have to contact Martin Greenfeld, his attorney.

Martin would never let him talk to any detectives or waive any rights.

Martin believed in handling every situation as if it were an adversarial contest played for the highest stakes.

Howard imagined the consequences of refusing to talk. The story would leak to the media. People would suspect him of complicity in the attempted murder of his wife. And if his relationship with Amanda came out… On the other hand, if he simply kept Martin and all other lawyers out of it and did as the detectives asked, he could be done with this interview in thirty minutes.

No suspicions, no rumors, no damaging publicity, no journalists digging up dirt.

"Fine," he said evenly.

"Let's proceed." Giacomo recited Howard's rights. Howard said he understood them. Yes, he wished to give up his right to remain silent.

Yes, he gave up his right to have an attorney present. Yes, yes, yes.

Then there were questions about his activities last night. He told his story about taking the Lexus for a long drive up the coast. The detectives didn't interrupt or challenge him. He began to think this really was a routine interview. By the time he narrated the climax of the story-the moment when, standing on his beachfront deck, he'd heard gunshots-he was relaxed and confident. He didn't need Martin to hold his hand.

He could take care of himself.

"So that's the way it happened," he finished.

"Great, Mr. Barwood." Giacomo spoke in the tone of a man adjourning a meeting.

"I guess you drove that Lexus of yours here today, didn't you?"

"I drive it everywhere. I love that car."

"Maybe when we're done here, Kevin and I could take a look at the odometer."

This froze Howard.

"The odometer?"

"Just to note the number for our records. If you've been driving up to Santa Barbara on a regular basis, you must have logged some serious miles."

"Well… I may have exaggerated the number of trips I took. And it's a new car, quite new. There aren't a lot of miles on it yet." He was starting to babble. He shut up.

Heller wrote something in his pad.

"Okay, well, we'll talk about that later," Giacomo said blandly.

"Now I wonder if you could tell us anything about this company of yours.

Western Regional Resources."

Western Regional. How the hell could they know about that? How was it possible? Why would it even come up?

"I don't think my business holdings are relevant," he said stiffly, playing for time.

"Oh, you're probably right, Mr. Barwood." Giacomo would not stop smiling.

"It's another of those loose ends we told you about. You do own a company called Western Regional Resources, don't you? Or are we wrong about that?"

By all logic Howard knew he should stop the interview and get Martin Greenfeld on the phone, but stubbornly he still believed he could talk his way out. He was a good talker. He had developed parcel after parcel of prime Westside real estate on the strength of his facility with words, his charm, his self-possession. He called on those faculties to rescue him now.

"I own it," he said slowly, punctuating the admission with an insouciant shrug.

"Western Regional Resources is a corporation I established in the Netherlands Antilles. All perfectly legal. There are sound reasons-tax-liability reasons-for setting up such an entity. As I say, it's all within the bounds of the law."

Giacomo said he was sure it was.

"And in the course of setting up this offshore, uh, entity, you presumably set up a few other things? Like a bank account?"

"Yes."

"And you arranged for someone to oversee the account and handle any legal issues for the company, right?"

"A bank officer in the Antilles does that for me, yes."

"And I suppose you might have acquired, say, a residence in the Antilles for business purposes."

"No residence. I used a hotel the one time I went there."

"How about other acquisitions? A car, a phone, a club membership?"

"Nothing like that. Western Regional Resources is-well, it's a legitimate corporation-I mean, it's legal in every way, but-but it has no tangible assets, it's not a going concern, it's-"

"A dummy corporation?" Giacomo asked.

Heller was writing in his pad again.

"It could be described that way," Howard said.

"A tax haven?"

"It's all legal," he repeated for what felt like the fiftieth time.

The hell of it was, the goddamned arrangement really was legal. But he wouldn't expect these two ruffians to understand that. They could hardly relate to his problems, his priorities. If he claimed he was hiding money from the IRS, they wouldn't sympathize.

And if he admitted the truth-that he was executing an end run around California's community property laws to smooth his way through an upcoming divorce-well, they would think he had a motive for getting rid of Kris… And in fact, he did have such a motive, didn't he?

Didn't he?

"Do you have any other business entities offshore, Mr. Barwood?"

Giacomo asked. He put a slight, disdainful emphasis on the word entities.

"} don't think I'm under any obligation to discuss the details of my financial situation with you," Howard said.

Heller's pen scratched again.

"Okay, that's fine." Giacomo was still smiling. He must smile in his sleep.

"We're trying to tidy things up here, that's all. I guess you were over at KPTI the other night."

The change of subject startled Howard, but he was happy to drop the issue of his business dealings.

"That's right."

"What night was that? Tuesday, wasn't it? March twenty-second?"

"Yes. How'd you know?"

"Some people who work there mentioned that you were around. It's nice to share an evening with your wife at her place of work, isn't it?"

"Yes," Howard said warily.

"Though I understand you weren't with her the whole time. You spent a good part of the night with the producer. Miss. Gilbert-isn't that her name?"

Howard focused all his willpower on the task of holding his face expressionless.

"Amanda Gilbert," he said.

"Amanda, yeah. She a friend of yours?"

"Why would you say that? She works there, that's all. She works there-"

"Hey, hey." Giacomo held up both hands.

"Take it easy. It's just that some folks at the TV station seemed to think you and Amanda were pretty friendly with each other. Maybe a little less friendly when your wife was around."

"What are you implying?" Howard breathed, as if the question needed to be asked.

"Not implying anything, Mr. Barwood. How does Amanda feel about those offshore accounts? She like the idea?"

"I never told-" He caught himself.

"She doesn't know anything about my private affairs." Damn, affairs-the wrong word to use.

"She's Kris's business associate, that's all. We have no personal relationship-"

"Funny." That was Heller, finding his voice for the first time in a long while.

"She told us something different when we talked to her a couple of hours ago."

There was silence. The detectives stared at him.

Howard stared back, his gaze ticking from one interrogator to the other.

He had no way of knowing if they had actually talked to Amanda or were merely hoping to elicit some incriminating response. But if they hadn't interviewed Amanda yet, they soon would. And she would break. She was weak. Any woman who needed to assert her individuality by having a tattoo stamped onto her butt, for God's sake, was weak by definition.

And what had he ever found alluring about that ridiculous tattoo anyway?

"Mr. Barwood?" Giacomo ventured.

Howard looked at him, then widened his field of view to take in the table, the fluorescent light panel overhead, the bare walls, the short-nap carpet, the metal wastebasket in the corner. It was real to him finally-where he was, whom he was facing, what was happening here.

This was a sheriff's station, and these men were cops, and they thought he was mixed up in the attack on Kris. They thought he had a motive.

They thought they had the goods on him.

"Mr. Barwood," Giacomo said again, not making an inquiry.

"I have nothing more to say," Howard whispered.

"I want to consult with my attorney."

Heller closed his notepad.

"Okay." Giacomo shrugged.

"That's your right, as we informed you." He placed a hand on the tape recorder.

"We're terminating this at ten-hundred forty six He shut off the recorder. He and Heller stood up.

Howard noticed they weren't smiling anymore.

"You're in trouble, Howard," Giacomo said, not bothering to call him Mr.

Barwood any longer.

"You conspired with that psycho Hickle to ice your wife.

You know it. We know it. And we're going to prove it."

They left him alone in the room to think about that.

Although Travis hadn't had any sleep in more than twenty-four hours, he was curiously alert. An uninterrupted adrenaline rush from midnight onward had supercharged his nervous system, replenishing his energy whenever his strength began to flag. He had not felt this good in years.

Part of it was the excitement of the final round. His strategy, conceived months ago, had reached its climax.

In a day or two, everything would be settled. The game would be over.

And he could sense that it would end in his favor. Despite unanticipated setbacks, despite twists of fate that had required creative improvisation on his part" he had persevered and won.

At 11 a.m. he parked in front of the bungalow in Culver City and got out of his car. The street was deserted.

No doubt most of the residents were at work or engaged in their daily chores. Even if someone was watching from a window, he wasn't overly concerned.

It was unlikely that any of the neighbors had ever seen Howard Barwood up close, and from a distance one well-dressed, middle-aged white male looked basically like another. He could pass for the owner of the house.

And he had a key. Months earlier, when he had done his research on Howard and learned of the bungalow's existence, he had anticipated the possibility that he might require access to the house. He had thought of planting the cell phone here-the phone he'd purchased himself and registered in the name of Western Regional Resources-although as things had turned out, he had been able to place the evidence in an even more incriminating location.

In any event, wanting to be prepared, he had come here late one night when the house was empty. Working in the glow of a pencil flashlight, he had used an impressioning file and a key blank to produce a new key for the front door.

That key was in his hand now. He used it to enter the bungalow.

The house was still, the air heavy. He moved quickly down the hall to the master bedroom. Abby had told him that Howard kept a gun in his nightstand.

And yes, there it was in the sock drawer, a neat little Colt.45.

Travis picked it up with his bare hand. He had no worries about fingerprints. The gun would be thoroughly wiped before he left it for the police to find.

He was pleased to see that the serial number had not been filed off.

The gun was traceable. There was every reason to believe that Howard Barwood had bought it legally and that it could be easily linked to him.

Presumably Howard had purchased the.45 for the same reason he had installed bars on the bungalow's windows.

In a high-crime neighborhood he had wanted to feel safe.

Travis pocketed the gun after confirming it was loaded. Soon enough he would have a use for it. He would send Hickle an e-mail arranging a rendezvous in a secluded spot-perhaps one of the trails in Topanga State Park. At dawn, say, when no one was around. When Hickle arrived, Travis would sidle up next to him conspiratorially, and then-bang-one bullet to the head. He would wipe the gun and leave it in Hickle's dead hand. Easy.

But first Hickle had to take care of Abby. Well, she ought to be going home later today. She would face a one-man welcoming committee.

The police could be trusted to put it all together the right way. They would say that Hickle had killed Abby, then had shot himself in the woods. They would say that Howard Barwood, a real estate developer with ready access to property assessment records, had given Abby's home address to Hickle sometime in the previous two or three days, just as he had supplied Hickle with other inside information. They would say that Howard had even gone so far as to arm Hickle with a handgun he himself had purchased.

Howard would deny everything, but no one would believe him. It was all very tidy, no loose ends. The only person who might have been able to see through the charade was Abby. She was intuitive about these things.

She was also a few hours away from being dead.

He only wished he could have contrived a way of killing her personally.

Sadly, the idea wasn't practical.

He must content himself with arranging the hit, pulling the strings as Hickle's puppetmaster. It was not all he wanted, but it was enough.

Abby had to die. She had failed him, after all.

And failure was the only sin he recognized.

Travis left the house, locking the front door. The sun was high and bright, and he blinked at its glare, keeping his head down as he walked to his car.

There had been a time when he loved southern California's sun. Lately he preferred the dark. He wasn't sure why.

In midafternoon Abby woke for good. She knew she had recovered from the concussion. Her headache was gone, and she felt no aftereffects of her head trauma. After lunch she informed the nurse of her diagnosis.

The nurse smiled and suggested that a second opinion might be required.

"Fine," Abby said, but once the nurse had left, she dressed herself in yesterday's outfit, preparing for her departure.

There was a rap of knuckles on the open door. She turned and saw Kris Barwood in the doorway. Abby almost said hello, then hesitated, struck by the wildness in Kris's eyes.

"Kris," she said uncertainly.

"Abby." The word was less a greeting than a dulled acknowledgment.

Abby looked her over. Kris was fully dressed, evidently ready to leave.

In the hallway a TPS officer in a sport jacket and open-collared shirt stood post.

"Going home?" Abby asked.

"In a minute or two. Mind if we talk first?"

"Of course not."

Kris shut the door for privacy, leaving the TPS man outside.

"I guess you've heard," she said.

"Heard?"

"It's been all over the radio and TV-with my loyal friends at KPTI leading the charge."

"I've been asleep," Abby said gently.

"Why don't you sit down?"

Kris looked at the visitor's chair in the room and took a moment to study it, as if trying to decide what it was for. Then she sat. Abby assumed a lotus position on the unmade bed.

"It's Howard," Kris said, her voice hushed.

Abby nodded. From the look on Kris's face she had already guessed that word of Howard Barwood's probable involvement in the crime had been leaked to the media.

"What about him?"

"Well"-Kris lifted both hands, palms up-"he's disappeared."

This took Abby by surprise.

"Disappeared?"

"Yes."

"When?".

"An hour ago. He-he ran away. He ran away." She needed to repeat the words in order to make them real.

"Kris, what happened exactly?"

"What happened…"

"Tell me the who, what, where. The bare essentials.

The time line." Abby hoped an appeal to the woman's journalistic training would prod her to organize her thoughts.

The tactic worked. Kris straightened, her gaze clarifying.

"All right, here it is. Howard was with me for most of the night. This morning he left for an interview at the sheriff's office. It was supposed to be routine. I expected him to return, but he never did.

Finally I reached him at home. He was in a meeting with his lawyer, he said. He promised to call back."

"But he didn't?"

"No. Half an hour ago I called again. This time Martin Greenfeld answered. Howard's attorney. He said-well, it's just incredible what he said."

"Take it easy. Go slow." "He said detectives had arrived with a search warrant for the house.

Our house. They'd searched and found something. They seemed excited about it. Martin saw it in a clear plastic evidence bag. It looked like a phone, he said. A cell phone."

Abby knew it had to be the phone registered to Western Regional Resources, the phone Howard had used to call Hickle's apartment.

"Where did they find it?" she asked.

"Martin wasn't sure. It could have been in a closet downstairs, but why? Howard and I have three cell phones, but we don't keep any of them in a closet."

"And after this," Abby prompted, "Howard disappeared?"

Nod.

"He said he had to use the bathroom. Must have slipped out of house via the rear deck. He went to Tern and Mark's place down the road and asked if he could borrow one of their cars-they've got three.

Claimed he had to visit me here and his Lexus wouldn't start. They gave him the keys. He got out of the Reserve without being spotted.

Now he's gone, just gone.

And it's on the news, every channel. They're saying he's a suspect in the case, and he fled. Martin won't give me any details, and I'm afraid to call anybody in the news business-I can't talk openly with them.

They're my friends, but they won't hesitate to screw me if they can get a jump on the competition. I'm about to go home now, and I still don't know what's going on."

Her last statement was a plea. Abby knew she had to answer it.

"Travis told you I was here?" she asked, stalling a little.

"Yes, he mentioned it."

"But he didn't say anything else, anything about Howard?"

"Not a word."

"Well… he should have." Courage was a quality Abby prided herself on possessing, but she felt it desert her as she met Kris's earnest, beseeching gaze.

She steeled herself for honesty.

"All right, here's what I know. Hickle had an informant who ratted me out.

We don't know exactly who it was, but…"

Kris shook her head in automatic denial.

"No. Oh, no, impossible."

"There's evidence."

"What evidence?" Kris got up, paced the room.

"The phone? Is that it? The cell phone they found?"

"I think so."

"What could a phone possibly mean?"

Abby answered with a question of her own.

"Has Howard ever mentioned a company called Western Regional Resources?"

"No."

"On Thursday night Hickle got a call at his apartment, probably to arrange some kind of rendezvous. I traced the call. It was made from a cell phone registered to Western Regional Resources. Travis found evidence that the company is something Howard set up offshore-without your knowledge, apparently."

"No, it can't be true. Why would he want to help that man? What conceivable motive could he have?"

"Well, this is only speculation…"

"Say it," Kris snapped, losing patience.

"Western Regional Resources isn't the only such corporation Howard established. He owns several. He's been moving his assets-your assets-into secret accounts offshore."

A beat of silence in the room while Kris took in this statement and its implications.

"Hiding our assets," she said finally.

"That's what you mean, isn't it? Hiding them from me?"

"It looks that way."

"So he can leave me and… when we split the estate…"

"Exactly"

"Then it's true." Kris turned away, staring blankly at nothing.

"What's true, Kris?"

"That he's been unfaithful to me. I suspected it. But I couldn't quite believe…" Her voice dropped to a whisper.

"I wonder who she is."

Abby didn't answer. This was one blow she could spare Kris.

"We might be wrong," she said weakly.

"About the transference of assets, the corporations he's set up?"

"Well, no. That part is pretty well nailed down, but it doesn't prove he's Hickle's accomplice. Not absolutely."

"Not absolutely," Kris echoed, then added in the same faraway voice, "I wonder if he thought I was unfaithful too."

"Why would he think that?"

"I've been offered the opportunity. I turned it down.

But Howard might not have known that. He might have thought I went through with it." She looked away.

"It's even possible he wanted us both dead."

Abby couldn't see what Kris was getting at, but she asked no questions.

Sometimes it was better to just let a person talk.

"No." Kris shook her head after a moment's reflection.

"That doesn't make sense. Howard couldn't have anticipated that Paul would be with me in the car last night, could he? It was the first time he'd ever accompanied me home."

Paul.

Abby sat very still, but under her the bed seemed to shift as if in a small earthquake, or perhaps it was her world that had shifted off its foundation.

In the same moment Kris came back to herself, realizing what she had revealed.

"Oh, God, I didn't mean to say all that."

Abby found a smile somewhere inside her and brought it to the surface.

"It's okay, Kris."

"Did you know? Did he tell you about his… his interest in me? I mean, you work so closely together."

Closer than you know, Abby thought-but not quite close enough: "He didn't have to tell me." she answered, he? voice steady, her face an emotionless mask.

"I guessed."

"Oh." Kris was relieved.

"Of course. You're intuitive about people, aren't you?" "Nearly always," Abby said lightly, putting the slightest ironic emphasis on the first word.

"So Travis suggested having an affair?"

"He didn't put it quite that crudely, but, well, he made it clear he was available. He's not seeing anyone now, apparently."

"When did the idea first come up?"

"Oh, I guess around the time when I was threatening to leave TPS. He was very persuasive in getting me to stay. At first I thought the rest of what he said was just part of his sales pitch. Later, when he restated his intentions, I began to realize he was serious."

"You must have seen him fairly often."

"He would drop by the house every week or so. Almost always when Howard was out playing golf. He's quite a golfer, my husband. Paul would update me on the situation. It was mostly business, but then there would be a more personal touch. He knew I was unhappy with Howard. He said we would be good together.

But he was a gentleman about it. No pressure at all."

"Did anything happen?"

"No. I may be the last person in the greater LA area to still honor my marriage vows. I won't say I wasn't tempted. He can be a charming man.

And who knows?

Maybe we would be good together, as he said. But we never did anything.

It was all very civilized."

"Do you think he's still interested?" Abby asked, already knowing the answer.

"I know he is. I think, in some odd way, he's a lonely man. He told me once that the women he's been with have never meant much to him.

They're merely-well, diversions, I guess. Novelties. Like with Howard and his toys."

"Toys," Abby echoed. There was a stillness within her that felt dangerous, like the hush before a storm.

"I doubt the women were to blame for that. Paul's a fascinating man, but he keeps his feelings close to the vest. He doesn't open up, and he's not easy to open up to."

"But you got him to open up."

"Emotionally? Yes. We just connected, I think. Even though we never did more than talk, it seemed to mean a lot to him. To me too. I needed somebody to talk to, somebody who wouldn't treat me like a paranoid fool because I worried about Hickle all the time.

Somebody who would show me some respect.

Howard never respected my feelings at all."

"How do you think Paul felt about your time together?"

Kris smiled.

"He told me it was like coming alive at the age of forty-four. As if he'd been numb for years, withdrawn and tight, until…"

"Until you."

"I know it sounds silly-"

"No, it doesn't. What about Howard?"

"Howard?"

"You seemed to think he suspects you of actually having an affair."

Kris pursed her lips.

"I think I was being hysterical.

The truth is, I doubt Howard has a clue that Paul has ever looked at me as anything other than a client. He's too wrapped up in his toys and cars and… maybe this plot against me."

"If he is Hickle's accomplice…"

"Yes?"

"You'll be free of him."

"I suppose I will."

"And Paul will still be there."

"You're asking if I might hook up with him?"

Abby nodded.

"It seems to be what he wants. And from what I can tell, it's what you want too."

Kris laughed sadly.

"Oh, hell, I don't know what I want. You know, everybody's life is such a mess, isn't it? We're so screwed up, all of us." She fixed her blue gaze on Abby.

"Except maybe you."

"Me?"

"You're one of the few truly self-sufficient people I've run into. I'll bet you wouldn't get your love life tied up in knots like this, would you?"

"Don't be so sure."

Kris lifted an eyebrow.

"So you have your blind spots too?"

"Maybe just one. But it's a big one."

"Well, I'm glad we have something in common."

Abby was silent. She didn't know what to say.

"It's good you told me all this," Kris added.

"I wouldn't have wanted to find out from the police or our lawyer."

She took a step toward the door. Abby stopped her.

"You never answered my question."

"About Paul? A future with him?" Kris canted her head to one side, an unconsciously glamorous pose, her blond hair falling across one shoulder like golden smoke.

"You know, it's funny."

"Is it?" Abby wasn't finding anything funny right now.

"Before last night I would have said no. But now… well, Paul Travis saved me. He pulled me out of that car and dragged me to cover with shotgun shells flying.

He saved my life." She emitted a short laugh like a sob.

"Howard didn't even come out of the house."

Abby nodded slowly. She'd heard everything she needed to hear.

"Thanks, Kris."

"What for?"

"This talk."

Kris shrugged, honestly bewildered.

"I'm the one who should thank you for all you've done. And just now… for listening."

"I'm a good listener." Abby smiled.

"Everybody tells me so." They said good-bye. Abby sat on the bed and listened to Kris and her bodyguard walk away down the hall. Their footsteps faded out, and Abby was all alone.

Still she didn't move. She thought it was possible she would never move again. Maybe she had experienced too many poundings, physical and psychological, over the past twenty hours. She was worn out. She'd thought-she had honestly thought-"I thought he loved me," she whispered, saying the words aloud to hear them in her own voice.

She had always been wary of love and intimacy. She had protected herself from hurt. Yet it seemed all the barriers she had raised had not saved her. Or perhaps it was the barriers that had been the problem. Had she been too vigilant or not vigilant enough? Or was it wrong to blame herself when what mattered was Travis's dishonesty, his betrayal?

Eyes shut, she wondered if she had loved Paul Travis, imagined a life with him. It seemed ridiculous to plan a future with a man who wouldn't even kiss her in public- for fear of exposing their relationship.

Why, then, had she continued to see a man who gave her so little?

Perhaps because he demanded so little in return. It was a relationship that had seemed to suit them both. Some people had marriages of convenience.

Theirs had been a love affair of convenience.

She could see the plain truth now, but never before.

The mind was capable of phenomenal feats of self-deception.

And the heart… the lover's heart… "The heart has its reasons," she murmured. She had read those words someplace-where? Oh, yes. In Kris Barwood's yearbook, in Raymond Hickle's bedroom.

The heart has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of. Hickle's heart, and Kris's, and Howard's, and Travis's-and hers too, she guessed. Hers too.

The doctor took his time coming to see her, but by 5 p.m. he had given Abby a clean bill of health, and at 5:30 she was in the backseat of a cab, riding toward Hollywood. She watched the streets flow past in a grainy smear. The orange sun burned through the taxi's rear window and pressed against the back of her head.

After her talk with Kris, she had turned on the TV to follow the news coverage. Hickle had achieved the status he'd always longed for; he had become, in some sense, a celebrity. His photo, several years out of date and taken apparently from an employee identification badge he'd worn on one of his various jobs, was flashed on the screen whenever any local station interrupted its Saturday afternoon programming for another pointless news update.

Howard Barwood was no less famous. A photo of him at a charity function was broadcast with almost equal regularity. Both men were still missing. The only new development was that a car stolen last night from Malibu had been found, abandoned in the Sylmar district of the San Fernando Valley. Since the car had disappeared around the same time that Hickle made his escape, he was presumed to have taken it. How long the car had been in Sylmar, and where Hickle was now, nobody could say.

The cab dropped Abby near the Gainford Arms. Her Dodge was still parked on the side street where she and Wyatt had left it. She unlocked the door and keyed the ignition.

Home was where she wanted to go, but first she had a stop to make. She drove to Hollywood Station, arriving after 6 P.M. By now Wyatt ought to be on duty.

She hated entering a police station; the fewer cops who saw her face, the better. But she had two questions to ask, which Wyatt might be more inclined to answer if she spoke with him in person.

She left her gun and locksmith tools in the glove compartment so she wouldn't set off the metal detector in the station house. At the entryway she paused to look again at the swollen, westering sun. Having slept for much of the day, she found it odd that the darkness was coming on so soon. She wondered what the night would bring.

In the lobby she asked for Sergeant Wyatt. The desk officer spoke into the phone, then said the sergeant would see her in a minute or two. As it turned out, she waited more than ten minutes. When Wyatt appeared, he led her into an office down the hall. He didn't speak to her until the door was closed.

"Abby, how are you doing?"

She lifted her arms to demonstrate that all her parts still worked.

"Made a full recovery."

"You ought to be home resting."

"I'm on my way home now. Did you just come on duty?"

"Yeah, that's why you had to wait awhile. I conduct a briefing at the start of the watch."

"You mean like on Hill Street Blues7 "Be careful out there'?"

He smiled.

"I just tell'em to watch their ass." The smile faded.

"Maybe I should start telling you the same thing."

"I can take care-" She stopped.

"Of yourself? I know you can, most of the time."

"Okay, last night was an exception. I couldn't have made it without you. And I guess if you want to tell me to watch my ass, I can't argue, since you already saved it for me. That fair enough?"

"Fair enough." Wyatt dropped into a chair.

"So why are you here, Abby? I have a feeling you don't pay a visit to your local police department very often."

"I want to know something."

"Why am I not surprised? Go on, ask."

"Hickle apparently stole a car in Malibu and ditched it in Sylmar. That much is public knowledge. What isn't public is the make, model, and plate number of the car he replaced it with."

"What makes you think we know what car he's driving now?"

"I'm not saying you know anything for certain. But come on. Vie, we're talking Sylmar on Friday night.

Auto thefts aren't exactly uncommon in that district.

My guess is, you've got at least a couple of grand theft autos that' occurred in the appropriate time frame-say, one to three a.m."

"Okay, we do. Three of them, in fact."

"I want info on those vehicles. One of them is probably Hickle's new set of wheels."

Wyatt studied her with narrowed eyes for a long moment.

"You don't plan to go looking for him, I hope."

"No."

"Then why do you need that information?"

"He tried to kill me once. He may try again. If he's looking for me, I'll stand a better chance of spotting him if I know what vehicles to watch out for."

"How could he come after you? He knows only your Hollywood address, and you're not going back there."

Abby shrugged.

"Haven't you been watching the news? Howard Barwood is suspected as Hickle's accomplice.

Don't you think Howard could find my home address if he wanted to? He knows my name.

He used to be in real estate."

Wyatt looked away, his face pained.

"I never thought of that. Which makes me feel pretty goddamned stupid."

"You've probably had a few other things on your mind. So can I have the info?"

"Yeah, hold on, I'll get it."

He left the office and returned with a BOLO sheet.

"Until we can nail down which vehicle he lifted; we're not releasing these details to the media. We don't want some hothead opening fire on a teenager who took one of these cars for a joyride."

"I don't intend to open fire on anybody." Abby copied the details from the Be on Lookout form into her notepad. The stolen vehicles were a '96 Civic, an '87 Mustang, and a '92 Impala.

"I'm sure you don't," Wyatt said, not sounding sure at all.

"But if you see any of these cars, call me. No heroics, please. Not this time."

"I hear you." She flipped her pad shut and handed back the sheet.

"One other thing. Do you know if Culver City PD is watching Howard Barwood's bungalow?"

"They've put an unmarked car across the street. If Barwood shows, they'll grab him. Did you tip them off?" "Travis did. I asked him to, if Howard fled."

"How'd you-" Wyatt dismissed his own question.

"No, don't tell me how you knew about the bungalow.

I don't want to know. So it sounds like you anticipated he'd run."

"It occurred to me. He's weak, I think. Like a kid who's never grown up. A crisis would shake him.

He'd panic. That's my reading of him."

Wyatt nodded.

"It comes back to what we were talking about in that bar the other night-how there aren't too many grownups in LA. Except I don't know too many overgrown kids who try to have their wives knocked off by a stalker."

"People are complicated," Abby said softly, thinking of Travis and his attempted seduction of Kris.

"They can always surprise you. Even the ones you think you know best."

It was fully dark, nearly 7:30 p.m." when Abby reached Westwood. A block from the Wilshire Royal she turned onto a side street and cruised through the hilly residential neighborhood, looking for any of the three stolen cars. Nonresident parking was prohibited on most of the streets, and there weren't many vehicles for her to look at. None matched any entry on the list.

She Wondered if she was being paranoid about this.

Hickle might not know her home address. Even if he did, he might have higher priorities at this moment than revenge. His survival was at stake. He was a hunted animal. By now he could be across the border or holed up in a motel in the desert.

Then she shook her head, recognizing this train of thought for what it was-a dangerous rationalization.

She was tired and wanted to rest. She was trying to convince herself that it was safe to let down her guard, safe to go home and curl up on her sofa and listen to soft music. It was what she badly wanted to do, but what she wanted and what she needed were not necessarily the same thing. Intuition had saved her life on other occasions. She could not afford to ignore it now.

Her intuition insisted that Hickle had not forgotten her. He had learned where she lived. He was close.

The condominium board of the Wilshire Royal had been displeased when plans were announced to raise a sixteen-story office tower directly across the street. The building, the board members correctly prophesied, would be an eyesore. It would block the views from all the units facing Wilshire. It would reduce property values.

Their petitions and protests had been ignored. The building had gone up, a charm less monolith with dull black walls and narrow slits of windows. The Black Tower, people had inevitably called it. Then when the building was nearly completed, the developers had unexpectedly filed for bankruptcy. Work had halted.

And those residents of the Wilshire Royal with northern exposures had been left to stare at a lightless, lifeless hulk.

But tonight the Black Tower was not lifeless. There was body heat inside. There was breathing. There was the slow beat of a patient heart.

Hickle waited, caressing the hammer-forged barrel and walnut stock of his Heckler amp; Koch 770.

He had arrived at the building last night. In the trunk of the stolen Impala, he'd found a tire iron, with which he'd pried open the locked gate at the construction site. He had climbed nine flights of stairs, guided by his flashlight, lugging his duffel with the shotgun and rifle inside. On the tenth floor he had made his way along a dark hallway to the front of the tower, where bands of plate glass windows overlooked the rushing traffic on Wilshire Boulevard. Directly across the street was the Wilshire Royal. Travis had told him that Abby's apartment was number 1015, fourth from the Royal's western end. Hickle had taken up a position opposite her window. Her lights were off, the curtains shut.

But she would be home eventually.

Among the scattered tools left by the workmen were a glass cutter and a straightedge. With them, Hickle had cut a rectangular hole in the plate glass window.

Through it, when the time came, he could fire.

To pass the hours, he had tested the rifle's laser sighting system, throwing a long beam of reddish orange light along the target-acquisition line. Its glowing pinpoint was brilliant in the variable-power scope.

He could direct the beam at any spot on Abby's balcony or on the curtains behind the glass. And where the beam alighted, a bullet would be sure to follow, racing at twenty-two hundred feet per second across a distance of thirty-five yards.

Periodically he had checked the flags in the Royal's forecourt. He didn't think windage would be a serious factor at this distance, but he was prepared to adjust his aim by a few inches if a strong gust kicked up. The flags had been limp throughout the day and evening.

There was no breeze.

Most of his time was spent simply waiting. He never rested, never shut his eyes. Now and then he shifted his position, easing the strain on his muscles. He tried standing and squatting, then sitting on a rough work table he'd dragged close to the window. Reluctant to leave his post even for a minute, he had ignored hunger and thirst and the need to urinate. After a while these bodily urges had faded. Now it was eight o'clock on Saturday night, and he felt nothing. He was numb.

The only thing that still worried him was a flare-up of his nerves. He would have to hold the rifle steady, and he wondered if his body would betray him at the critical moment. He didn't think so. He had failed to kill Abby once. By a miracle he had been offered a second chance.

He did not intend to squander it.

Abby checked the area north of Wilshire. There were more parked cars here. Many, belonging to UCLA students, were older models. Several times she thought she spotted one of the wanted vehicles, but always the license plate proved her wrong.

Passing a house with dark windows and a for sale sign on the lawn, she noticed a car in the carport. The car might be a Chevy Impala; at a distance it was hard to be sure. She parked down the street and returned on foot, carrying her purse with the gun inside. At the foot of the driveway she studied the car. It was parked facing out, which meant the driver had backed into the carport, an awkward procedure. And the front license plate frame was empty. California drivers were issued two plates and usually mounted both.

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 amp; 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?

My bet is, he's been spotted everywhere from Oxnard to La Jolla." She looked at him, her face upturned in a streetlight's glow, her expression hard.

"The only way I could convince them to take me seriously is if I explain my involvement in the case. And that's more than I want them to know."

"They'll know it anyway, once Hickle is in custody and starts to talk."

"But maybe they'll be inclined to go easy on me, overlook some of the various felonies I've committed over the past few days-if I'm the one who brings him in."

A minivan burred past, headlights sweeping the pavement. Neither of them spoke until was it gone.

Then Travis said, "You want to capture him? Personally?"

"I was thinking more along the lines of us. As in you and me together.

We go up into the building, and we find a way to make Hickle come along quietly."

"We're not vigilantes, Abby."

"Speak for yourself. Besides, it's a citizen's arrest, that's all. We get the jump on Hickle, disarm him, and drive him to the West LA police station."

"Unless he gets the jump on us first."

"It's a risk, admittedly." She puffed her cheeks and blew out a jet of breath.

"Everything I've done in the past few days is a risk. So how about it?

You with me?"

Travis made a show of indecision, though of course there was nothing to debate. On the drive over, he'd plotted gambits to get Abby inside the tower, where he could deliver the fatal shot with no risk of being heard by anyone but Hickle. Now she was volunteering to go in, even insisting on it. It was perfect.

"Oh, hell, I'm with you," he said finally.

"Of course I am."

Chris was glad she lived at Malibu Reserve. The J -gated complex had not protected her from Hickle, but tonight it served the almost equally important function of keeping out the crush of reporters stationed beyond the fence.

As a reporter herself, she understood the desperation that drove her colleagues to camp out on the shoulder of Pacific Coast Highway, or dial her home number sixty times an hour until Courtney disconnected the phone, or buzz overhead in helicopters taking footage of her deck, or slip onto the beach and focus long lenses on her windows. She had done such things herself during the earlier stages of her career when she had delivered reports from the field.

She risked opening the vertical blind on her bedroom window far enough to see a slice of the moonlit beach and the pale, restless tide. She supposed she couldn't complain too loudly about her present circumstances.

She was, after all, alive. Her heart still pumped, and her face in the mirror had lost some of its haunted, harried strangeness. She had begun to feel almost like herself again. The strain of waiting for something to happen had finally been relieved. Now there were only the broken pieces of the aftermath that had to be picked up and put together.

She wondered where Howard was.

The police had confirmed what Abby had told her-he'd been hiding their joint assets in overseas accounts.

The accounts had been opened in the Netherlands Antilles. It was possible Howard had made his way to the islands already. Of course he need not go there. He could travel anywhere in the world and still be within reach of his money. Martin Greenfeld, Howard's lawyer, had speculated that he might have headed south to Mexico, but Kris couldn't picture her husband in a Third World country. He was too accustomed to the good life.

She doubted he'd ever planned an escape. He had fled out of sheer panic. He would be caught before long. Her husband had his areas of competence, but running from the law was not likely to be among them.

Luckily for her, in conspiring with a stalker to have her killed, he had proven equally inept.

"To have me killed," she whispered. It still didn't seem real. An extramarital affair she could believe all too easily. But to plot her murder… to rendezvous with a man like Hickle, a lunatic, a fanatic Her husband, the overgrown child with his toy trains and radio-controlled model airplanes, was a killer. Or a would-be killer anyway, foiled only by Travis's foresight.

"Kris?" That was Courtney, calling from downstairs.

Kris left the bedroom and leaned over the railing in the hallway to gaze down at the living room.

"Yes?"

"They just talked to me over the intercom. The guys in the cottage."

Travis's men, still on post until Hickle was caught.

"And?" "They said Mr. Barwood's come back."

These words were so strange that Kris couldn't absorb them.

"Come back?" she echoed.

"He's here with some police. They're letting him in for a minute. I don't know why." The doorbell chimed.

"That's him."

There was silence while Kris tried to sort this out.

"Well, let him in," she said finally.

Slowly she descended the stairs while Courtney opened the door for Howard and four other men. One was Martin Greenfeld, two others were uniformed patrol officers, and the fourth was a man in a business suit who must be a detective.

At the foot of the stairs Kris stopped, staring at her husband from across the room. She saw fear in his face and something more, something that might have been a desperate, faltering effort at courage. He was not handcuffed, she noticed. They had granted him that much dignity.

"Howard," she said.

"Hello, Kris." Even from a distance she saw the heavy swallowing motion of his throat.

"It's not true."

"What isn't?"

"All the crap they're saying on TV. The charges and allegations. I never talked to Hickle. I never gave him any help. I never wanted to see you hurt."

"Then why did you call him on that cell phone?"

"I didn't. It's not even my phone. I never bought it."

"Then how did it get into our downstairs closet?"

"I don't know. It's a frame. It has to be."

Kris had done enough interviews with the guilty to know that nearly all of them said they had been framed.

"Then why did you run?" she asked tonelessly.

"I got scared. I figured these sons of bitches planted the phone to hang me. I figured there was no way to fight them."

The man who must be a detective spoke Howard's name in a low tone of warning. He and the two patrol officers hadn't liked being called sons of bitches.

Howard didn't seem to notice.

"I came back," he said.

"That's what you have to understand."

"You got caught."

"No, I turned myself in. I walked into the West LA station and surrendered. I didn't have to. I was halfway to Arizona when I turned back."

"Arizona? What's there for you?"

"Nothing. That's what I realized. That's why I had to come back. I called Martin"-he glanced at the attorney as if reassuring himself that Greenfeld was still there-"and he worked out a deal. I would turn myself in, and in exchange I'd be brought here."

"Why?" She tried to sound hard, though the effort was exhausting her.

"Did you forget your toothbrush?"

"I wanted to see you… here, in our home. I had to tell you what I just told you-whether you want to hear it or not."

Kris was quiet for a moment.

"That was the deal?

Just to be escorted home?"

"Yes."

"Then what?"

"County jail, until Martin can work things out, however long that takes."

Despite herself Kris almost smiled.

"A night in stir?

I'll bet you'd rather be in Arizona."

"No. Right here is where I have to be. All I want is for you to believe me."

"You did transfer our assets overseas, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"And you've been having an affair?"

"Yes."

"With whom?"

To his credit Howard did not avert his gaze.

"Amanda."

Kris blinked, appalled as much by his bad taste as by anything else.

"Amanda at work? Anorexic Amanda?"

"I'm sorry, Kris."

She thought of Amanda Gilbert's sympathetic cooing when told that Howard might be unfaithful, her promise to sit down for a nice heart-to-heart.

She made a mental note to have the bitch fired.

"You could have done better," she said simply.

"I already did. I was too stupid to know it."

Kris knew he was hoping for some encouragement or forgiveness. She would not give it to him.

"I think you should go," she whispered.

"I didn't do it," Howard said.

Martin advised him not to say anything more.

The two patrolmen were easing him toward the door when he turned back, grief written on his face.

"I never even wanted her. It's just that she was available' and, well, she was-" "Young," Kris said. It sounded like an epitaph.

He left with the others. Before Courtney shut the door, Kris heard the whir of a chopper overhead.

Somebody was getting first-rate footage of Howard Barwood as he was led down the garden path to the police car.

It would lead the late news on some local station. Kris hoped it wasn't