The Shadow hunter

KPTI.

The office tower was hemmed in by cyclone fencing, but the side gate had been forced open, allowing access to the grounds. Abby led Travis directly to it, explaining that she'd already reconnoitered the area and found the way in.

Travis silently admired her diligence. Except for her one blunder in the Corbal case, she really was quite good at what she did. It would be almost a shame to lose her.

But even one blunder was more than he would permit.

The lobby of the office building was two stories high, enclosed by wide windows, one of which had been smashed. Travis stepped through, kicking away wedges of glass that clung to the frame. Abby followed.

The glow of streetlights penetrated only a few feet into the building.

The rest of the lobby was dark.

"Bring a flash?" Abby whispered.

"No." He should have thought of it, but he'd had other things on his mind.

"I've got one."

She rummaged in her purse and removed the mini flash Its beam swept the room, highlighting a quarry tile floor, curved metal-lath walls partially finished in plaster, and a high coffered ceiling.

Dropcloths, ladders, and worktables on sawhorses were distributed throughout the cavernous space.

"No Hickle," Travis said.

Abby shrugged.

"If he were down here, we would have been dead the minute we stepped inside."

The beam found a doorless opening in an alcove, with a steel staircase visible inside. She led Travis to the stairwell and played the beam up the shaft, illuminating the concrete walls and steel landings.

"Empty," she said, "at least as far as I can see."

"Then up we go."

"Just a minute." She shifted the flashlight to her left hand and reached for her purse.

"I'm starting to feel a little naked without my thirty-eight."

He couldn't allow her to get the gun in her hand. He had to make his move now.

"Don't do that, Abby," he whispered.

His tone stopped her for a moment, which was all the time he needed to pluck the Colt from his waistband and press it into her rib cage.

Abby's gaze ticked down, registering the gun in her side, then rose to his face.

Travis studied her expression. He expected to see shock, fear, anger.

He was looking forward to it.

But she disappointed him. What he saw was only a look of sad reproach.

"So it really was you," Abby said quietly.

"I'm sorry, Paul. I was hoping I was wrong."

Abby watched Travis's eyes narrow as his mouth formed a bloodless line.

"You knew?" he whispered, his voice returning in soft echoes from the corners of the stairwell.

"I suspected," she said calmly.

"I wasn't sure. I guess I didn't want to believe it."

The muzzle of the gun was a hard circle of pressure against her ribs.

She felt the pistol trembling slightly, perhaps with her own breath or with Travis's pulse.

She waited for whatever he would do next.

"Hold your hands up," he said finally. She obeyed, her movements deliberately slow, like the subtle progressions of a tai chi exercise.

"Now give me the flashlight/ She let him take it with his left hand. He took a half step back, the gun shifting to the spot between her shoulder blades.

"All right," Travis said, "let's go."

"Where?"

"Up."

"Is there some advantage to killing me on a higher floor?"

"As a matter of fact, there is. Now get going."

Abby climbed the stairs, guided by the flashlight and the gun in her back.

"I'm betting that gun isn't silenced," she said.

"True."

"When it goes off, the report will echo through the building. Hickle will hear it. He'll panic and flee, maybe take a different stairwell."

"And I may not be able to intercept him. Very good.

You get an A plus."

"I'm not your student anymore, Paul."

They reached the third-floor landing and continued higher. Abby noticed that the fire doors on the landings had not yet been installed.

Dark halls lay beyond the doorways. They looked like the narrow passageways of a pharaoh's tomb, the kind of place where ghosts walked.

But there were no ghosts here. Not yet.

"It's Howard Barwood's gun," she said quietly, "isn't it? You stole it from his bungalow this morning, after you left the hospital."

"That's right."

"Was that before or after you planted the cell phone in the beach house?"

"Oh, I took care of that chore several weeks ago, during one of my visits to Kris to update her on the case. The phone, of course, is registered in the name of Western Regional Resources, though poor Howard never knew anything about it."

"If you planted the phone back then, how did you use it to call Hickle on Thursday night?"

"I didn't. I used a different phone, which I'd programmed with the identical code. It's not hard to do.

Some people make a nice living by stealing cellphone codes."

"What happened to this other phone?"

"It's at the bottom of the canyon behind my house. I threw it off the deck earlier this evening. I had no further use for it."

"Just as you have no further use for me… or Hickle."

"You catch on so fast. It's what I've always loved about you."

They had passed the fourth-story landing.

"I guess pretty soon you'll have everything you want," Abby said.

"I'll be dead. Hickle will be dead.

Howard will be in jail or running for his life. And if your luck really holds, you may get to marry Kris."

Travis was behind her, and she couldn't see his face, but from his tone of voice she knew he had registered another small shock.

"You even figured out that part of it?"

"It didn't take any major intuitive leaps. Kris told me you've made yourself available. She's under the impression you haven't been seeing anybody. I didn't disillusion her, by the way."

"That's good of you, Abby. I appreciate your discretion."

On the fifth-floor landing now. Halfway to Hickle's firing site.

"I'm sure you do," she said quietly.

"It would ruin that part of your plan if Kris found out she's not your one and only. She wouldn't be so receptive to your proposal of marriage. Not that marriage is an essential ingredient in the scheme.

More like icing on the cake, correct?"

"Correct."

"You wouldn't mind having her money, her lifestyle, her connections, and with Howard out of the picture, you'd have a pretty good shot at all that. But the main thing has always been rescuing the reputation of TPS. And with the Barwood case, you saw a way to do it. When did you first get the idea? When you did the background check on Howard?"

"That's right. From what I learned, I could see it was obvious that he was fooling around and preparing for a divorce. That's when it occurred to me that if Hickle was believed to have an accomplice, Howard would be the logical suspect."

"You made your move on Kris…"

"Just to lay the groundwork for future possibilities.

The icing on the cake, as you called it." They were above the sixth-floor landing.

"Then I started contacting Hickle via e-mail, feeding him information, prepping him for the attack."

"Did you know about the incident with Jill Dahlbeck?"

"No. If I had, I might have hesitated to use Hickle. I knew he was potentially dangerous, but I didn't realize he was that unstable, that impulsive. I wouldn't have wanted him splashing acid on Kris."

"Or shooting her in the head, for that matter. You couldn't afford to let him succeed."

"Of course not. I wanted Hickle to make his attempt-and fail. Kris had to survive unharmed, or the whole plan would be ruined. Despite everything, her safety really was my highest priority. That's why I switched to the armored staff car and rode shotgun-to be sure Kris was fully protected."

"Then in the aftermath, TPS gets a media makeover.

Now you and your staff are the heroes of the hour, a fact that Channel Eight will exploit to the max on their top-rated newscast-thus canceling out the Devin Corbal story, reviving your prospects, and making you the golden boy all over again."

"Something like that. But we needed a scapegoat. If Hickle had been captured alive, he would have revealed the existence of an informant with inside information.

Even if he had been killed in the attack, the police might have found evidence of the e-mail account I'd set up for him, and they would have known he was working with somebody. I couldn't afford any suspicion falling on TPS itself, and certainly not on me personally."

"So Howard was framed as the accomplice."

"Why not? He was the perfect candidate-cheating on Kris, out every night with no good alibi, hiding her assets, preparing for a divorce.

When they catch him, he'll never be able to talk his way out of it.

Especially when the police find Howard's own gun in Raymond Hickle's cold, dead hand."

"And a bullet from that gun-in me."

"Exactly. And one of your bullets in poor Raymond.

Bang bang. You went after Hickle on your own. He shot you, and you shot him. Two corpses. End of story."

They'd reached the seventh floor. Each flight consisted of eighteen stairs; she'd counted. Fifty-four stairs to go.

"Not quite the end," she said.

"You haven't explained why you brought me into the case."

"Can't you guess? There were two reasons. The first was of a practical nature. I had to do something to set Hickle off. I'd tried goading him, pushing his buttons, but he kept hesitating. I needed a way to make him crazy-even more crazy than usual. I knew he was paranoid. If he found out the new woman in his life was a spy…"

"He'd snap."

"So I sent you in… and set you up."

"Nice. But you said there were two reasons. Mind if I take a stab at the second one?"

"Be my guest."

"Devin Corbal."

"Bingo."

"You told me a hundred times that it wasn't my fault."

"I lied. That night four months ago, you fucked up.

You fucked up, Abby."

She heard the surge of raw hostility in his voice, and for a moment she was reminded of Hickle inveighing against the people he hated, the people with "the look." They were not so different, Paul Travis and Raymond Hickle. Both knew all about hatred and little else.

"You had a job to do," Travis was saying, "and you failed. In one moment of carelessness you jeopardized everything I've worked for, brought me to the edge of bankruptcy. I started in a Newark housing project, and I made it this far-and you nearly took it all away. And you expected me to forgive you! To say it's okay, don't worry your pretty head about it? You're supposed to know all about people, Abby.

Didn't you know me?"

"Not as well as I'd thought," she said quietly.

"There's no forgiveness in matters of this kind," Travis breathed.

"That's one lesson I learned on the street a long time ago. Nobody fucks with me. Nobody takes what I have. And if they hick up, they pay. They pay."

Eighth floor. Abby's shoulders were getting sore from the strain of holding her arms above her head.

Well, it wouldn't be a problem much longer. Two flights of stairs-thirty-six steps-and it was the end of the line.

"Is that why you went after me in the hot tub?" Abby asked.

Travis made a small affirmative sound.

"I hadn't planned it. It just happened. I was watching Hickle's building to see if you'd established residency yet. I saw you enter the spa area. And-well, it just looked so damn easy. I would push you down, and in a minute you'd be dead."

"You weren't worried about the consequences?"

"What consequences? Most likely it would have been ruled an accidental drowning. If it wasn't, I could pin the blame on Howard. He was out nearly every night. He would have no alibi except the word of his mistress, hardly a credible source."

"But I wouldn't be around to push Hickle over the edge."

"There were other ways to motivate him. But I wasn't thinking of that.

I was thinking-"

"You weren't thinking, Paul. Not at all. You were caught up in rage, a child throwing a tantrum."

"I almost got you," he muttered sullenly.

"If you hadn't grabbed that damn beer bottle…" He sighed.

"I couldn't afford to let you cut me. I couldn't afford to leave any blood at the scene. But it doesn't matter. I've got you anyway. I've got you." They reached the ninth-floor landing, and suddenly the gun pressed harder into her back.

"Okay, this is your last stop."

"You've lost count. We want the tenth floor."

"My math is fine. You'll die right here. I'm close enough to Hickle now. And I'd rather have the police find you one story below-like he got the drop on you while you were coming up. Now turn around slowly."

Abby obeyed, wishing they'd climbed one story higher. She'd wanted a little more time.

"I'm impressed, Paul," she said softly.

"I didn't think you'd have the nerve to face me."

The flashlight illuminated his features from below, casting the hollows of his eyes into harsh relief. He was smiling.

"On the contrary, I've been looking forward to it. So do you want it in the head or in the heart? Considering our relationship, I think the heart would be more appropriate."

"You're not going to shoot me," Abby said softly.

"No? What's stopping me? Sentiment? Affection? I don't traffic in those weaknesses. If you didn't know that by now, you'll have to learn it the hard way." He studied her, a connoisseur admiring a prized acquisition, then lowered the gun to target her left breast.

"In the heart, then."

He squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

No shot, no recoil, not even the click of a misfire.

"Sorry, Paul. That gun isn't any good." In one smooth motion Abby lowered her hands, plucked the Smith from her purse, and aimed it at his face.

"This one, on the' other hand, works just fine."

Hickle crouched by the window, his muscles stiff with tension, his gaze still fixed on Abby's balcony.

She wasn't there, and he was beginning to think she would never be there. Maybe she was spending the night someplace eke. Or maybe he'd misunderstood Travis, maybe he'd been watching the wrong window all along, in which case he had failed again… "No way," he whispered angrily.

His voice came back at him from the far corners in a ripple of echo, and then behind that echo he became aware of other sounds.

Voices.

Faint but unmistakable, drifting through the vacant corridors to reach him where he crouched.

He was not alone.

Travis pulled the trigger again and again, willing the gun to fire.

Abby watched him, a sad smile on her lips.

"Are you done, Paul?" she asked finally.

Slowly he lowered the pistol. He blinked, and for a moment he found it difficult to form words.

"How'd you do it?" he whispered.

"How'd you-what did you-" He couldn't complete the thought.

"Its simple, really." The.38 in her hand never wavered. It was targeted at his chest.

"I knew if you'd framed Howard, you'd want to use his gun tonight-a gun traceable to him. I gambled that it was the one you'd bring."

The one he would bring. The one… But he'd brought two guns. There was the Beretta in his shoulder holster-Even as he thought of it, Abby shook her head in a warning.

"Don't try, Paul. I know you're carrying a backup, but you can't draw fast enough. You've seen me at the firing range. I'm quick when I have to be.

And I will shoot you."

He studied the hard set of her mouth, the coldness in her eyes. She wasn't lying.

"Anyway," she went on as if there had been no digression, "when I found that gun in the nightstand, I had a bad feeling about it. Thanks to you, I had Howard Barwood pegged as Hickle's accomplice. It didn't seem like a good idea to leave him with a fully functioning deadly weapon, so before I left, I took the gun apart. The Colt 1911, you know, is one of the few models that can be detail-stripped without the use of tools.

When I put it back together, I left out the firing' pin."

Travis heard everything she said but couldn't quite make sense of it.

"You didn't disable Hickle's guns," he whispered.

"No, because the next time he used them for target practice, he would have discovered the tampering. But Howard's gun wasn't being used at all. He hadn't even lubricated it." Abby smiled.

"At the hospital, I intended to let you know what I'd done, but that nurse interrupted us. Lucky for me, huh?"

"Lucky," Travis echoed.

"I've always been a fortunate gal. Now, shall we go downstairs?"

Travis was suddenly too exhausted to move.

"What for? What's down there?"

"Nothing yet, but after I call a friend of mine at the LAPD, we'll have some company. Go on, Paul."

"Why don't you just shoot me right here?"

"It's a temptation. But I think I'd rather turn you over to our system of justice, risky as that can be in LA.

I actually look forward to visiting you in prison. But don't get your hopes up. They won't be conjugal visits."

A surge of helpless anger shook Travis like a fever chill.

"You bitch. Fucking bitch."

Abby frowned.

"That's not very nice. I may have to edit that part out."

"Edit…?"

"I've been running the recorder in my purse ever since we entered the building. Switched it on when I was rummaging for my flashlight. I've got your whole confession on tape."

On tape. She'd thought of everything.

"Get moving," Abby ordered, but Travis still did not obey. The full reality of what she'd done, how she'd handled every detail, was finally real to him.

"You set me up." He said it slowly, almost in righteous indignation.

"You played me. Asking for my help, telling me how we couldn't call the police, getting me to talk. You put on an act and sold it to me, sold it all the way."

Abby shrugged.

"That's my job, Paul. Its what you trained me for-or did you forget about that?"

"No." Travis's anger was spent.

"No, I didn't forget."

Then his gaze drifted upward, and in a softer voice he added, "But maybe there's something you forgot."

On the upper landing, amid the shadows, the long barrel of Hickle's rifle was slipping through the bars of the banister to draw a bead on Abby's back.

Abby saw Travis's gaze tick upward and the almost imperceptible change in his expression. He said something, but she didn't register the words, because she was too busy processing what her eyes had shown her and seeing all the implications as clearly as if she could see the red stamp of Hickle's laser on her back.

The rifle cracked a split second later, but she was no longer in the bullet's path.

Diving for the floor, she hit the concrete hard as the shot flew over her head and clanged on the steel handrail of the banister. A second shot was coming, but before Hickle could adjust his aim she snap-rolled through the landing's open doorway into a dark ninth- floor hallway.

The rifle barked again. Abby scrambled half upright and flung herself into the deeper darkness of the hall until she was out of Hickle's line of sight.

Not Travis's, though. The hall was illuminated suddenly with a fan of light from the flashlight in his hand. Three shots crackled behind her.

Small arms fire.

Travis had unholstered his Beretta. She spun and snapped off two rounds, then ducked into the nearest doorway.

She found herself in a dark, windowless inner office.

From what she'd seen in the sweep of the flashlight, she believed that the office was situated at the intersection of two halls, the short hallway from the stairwell and another, wider corridor running perpendicular to it. Somewhere along the far wall there might be a second doorway, which would open onto that other corridor. She groped her way toward it, her hands sliding blindly over sheets of gypsum wallboard.

She had messed up. She should have made Travis head downstairs sooner, should have anticipated that Hickle might leave his firing site and approach the stairwell. If she died tonight, the fault would be hers.

Okay, blame assigned, responsibility accepted. Now shut up about it and stay alive.

She advanced in darkness, feeling her way toward an exit that might not even exist, and then outside the office there was movement. Two sets of footfalls pounding hard. The beam of a flashlight flickered through the doorway she had used. Travis and Hickle were coming after her, hunting her together.

Huddled against the wall, she lifted her.38. If they were reckless enough to burst into the room, she would open fire.

They didn't enter. She saw the flashlight's glow slide past the doorway, and a new brightness dawned a few feet from where she crouched.

There was indeed a second exit, and she'd been close to finding it, but Travis, aided by the flash, had found it first.

She pressed her ear to the wall. It was cheap plywood screwed into wooden studs, and it conveyed sound fairly well. She heard faint whispers, the words unintelligible. The two men evidently had stationed themselves at the outside corner of the office, where they could cover both halls and both doorways. If she tried to leave via either exit, they would gun her down.

It was two against one. They had her trapped. Now they were discussing strategy.

Abby liked to think of herself as an optimist, but right now she had to admit that things did not look good.

"Where the hell is she? Where did she go?"

"Calm down."

"God damn it, where is she?"

"She ducked into that office. We've got her boxed in.

Just breathe easy, Raymond. Breathe easy."

Hickle's ears were still ringing from the flurry of gunshots, his own and Travis's. Every report had been amplified in the echo chamber of the stairwell, the sounds reverberating off the steel staircase and the concrete walls. Even now, in the aftermath, he could hardly hear Travis's low voice over the din in his ears.

But he knew the man was right. Keep calm-yes, that was the right thing to do. Keep calm and kill Abby.

They stood together at the intersection of two hallways, where Travis had led him on the run. Instinctively Hickle had yielded to Travis's expertise in this situation, but he couldn't resist pointing out that Travis had not always been in command.

"She had you, man," Hickle whispered.

"I saved your ass back there."

"Yeah, you saved me." Travis's face, lit harshly by the flashlight, was all hollows and crevices and bright, staring eyes.

"I owe you for it. Maybe later I can buy you a beer. At the moment we have more immediate issues to deal with. Abby's trapped but not defenseless.

She carries a thirty-eight Smith, five shots, and a five-shot speed loader in her purse."

"How do you know what she's got in her purse?"

"Because I know her. It's what she always carries.

She's wasted two rounds already, so she's got eight left. How's your ammo holding up?"

"Eight rounds to go."

"No spares?"

"Not with me. I left my duffel upstairs."

"Eight shots is plenty. Just conserve ammo. My Beretta was fully loaded-sixteen rounds in the clip, plus one in the chamber. I fired three times, so I've got fourteen shots left. Between us we have twenty-two shots, and she has eight. If we play this smart, we can get her to use up her remaining ammunition. Then she's helpless, and we move in and put her down."

Hickle licked his lips.

"Okay, how do we do it?"

"Cover the first doorway. I'll cover the second. We take turns firing one shot apiece into the office. If we're lucky we might nail her.

There can't be much cover in there; from what I can tell, it's an empty room. Even if we don't hit her, she'll have to fire back. We count her shots. When she's used all eight, she's history."

"Why not go in after she's fired three shots? She'll be reloading."

"Probably she's already replaced the rounds she wasted. Play it safe.

Don't take any chances. Not with her." Travis switched off the flashlight, darkening the hall. His voice reached Hickle like the whisper of a ghost.

"Remember, one shot at a time. Save your ammo. The whole point is to outlast her."

"I got it, I got it," Hickle breathed, teeth gritted. He was impatient to get started. Here and now he hated Abby more than he hated Kris. It would be so damn good to make her dead.

Working by feel, Abby had found the speed loader in her purse and fumbled two rounds out of it, dumping the two expended shells in the Smith's cylinder and tamping in the replacements. She had five shots again, but five shots didn't amount to much against two armed men.

Her purse also contained a cell phone, but calling for help was not an option. If her pursuers heard her voice, they could pinpoint her position in the office and fire through the wall. Anyway, the police would never get here in time to save her. She was on her own.

Ordinarily she valued her independence, but not tonight.

In the hall the flashlight winked off. She heard movement outside. It sounded as if her two adversaries were splitting up. She listened, bent almost double to make a smaller target, her heart beating in her ears.

She wished she had light. The wish was irrational, since she couldn't use any light without exposing herself to enemy fire. She wished for it anyway.

She didn't want to die in the dark.

Through the first doorway, a purple muzzle flash and a cough of rifle fire. Hickle, coming in. She fired twice at the doorway and scrambled across the floor to a new hiding place as Travis's handgun spit out a single shot from the second doorway. She whirled on him and fired once more, then bolted to another corner and waited, the gun shaking in her hands.

They hadn't entered. She had been sure they were mounting an attack.

Now she saw it differently.

They'd fired in order to panic her into using ammunition.

It had worked. It would continue to work. She had to return fire, keep them out of the doorways, or they could shoot at will until a lucky hit took her out.

She removed the three cartridge cases from her Smith and replaced them with unexpended rounds from the speed loader Five shots, all she had left.

From the first doorway the rifle cracked again. This shot landed close.

She heard it puncture the drywall a yard from where she knelt.

She scurried to her left and fired once, not at Hickle but at the second doorway.

There was a chance that Travis had stepped into the doorway to take his follow-up shot. She might get lucky.

She didn't. The Beretta fired at her, Travis targeting her muzzle flash, but she was already rolling into another corner of the office, and the shot missed.

She had four rounds now. The odds were stacked high against her. She needed to even things out. There might be a way.

"Raymond!" she yelled.

"He'll kill you next!" Even as she said it, she was on the move again, knowing that her voice would draw their fire.

Hickle was about to squeeze off another round when he heard Abby's shout. From the connecting hall Travis called, "Don't listen to her."

There was a shot. Travis had fired. Hickle had missed his turn. Still he hesitated, thinking about those words: He'll kill you next.

Travis seemed to guess what he was thinking.

"She's playing with your head," he said in a loud, calm voice.

"She's a shrink, you know."

"A shrink?"

"She's been studying you up close like a lab specimen.

She thinks she knows what makes you tick."

That sounded right. Sounded just like Abby.

"Fuck her," Hickle said, and he leaned through the doorway and fired once.

There was silence for a moment. He allowed himself to think he'd hit her, or maybe Travis had. Then Abby shouted again.

"He never wanted Kris to die. He's framed Howard Barwood-"

"Don't pay any attention to her bullshit," Travis snapped.

"-and he's setting you up as the other fall guy. Raymond, he's not your friend, he's using you!"

Two more shots from the Beretta. Hickle knew Travis was rattled.

Travis had insisted on not wasting ammo, taking only one shot at a time.

Now he was violating his own rule.

"What's going on, Travis?" Hickle yelled.

"Don't let her get to you. You can't trust her. God damn it. You know that."

Hickle did know it. But maybe he couldn't trust Travis either.

"You never told me why you did all this," he called out.

"Why you jeopardized your own client, your business associate. You never said what it was all about."

"Take your shot, asshole. We've got her right where we want her-"

"What's in it for you, Travis? Tell me!"

Travis hesitated long enough for Hickle to know he was improvising some lie.

He had no time to use it. Abby answered first.

"He has to keep Kris alive in order to save TPS. And he wants her husband out of the way so he can marry her, Raymond! So he can marry Kris!"

And with a crash of terrible insight Hickle knew it was true., Travis had never wanted Kris dead. He had wanted the attack to fail. That was why he had requisitioned the armored sedan, why he had ridden with her.

The whole thing had been a setup, and what he wanted… what he really wanted… Kris as his wife. Mrs. Paul Travis. He would get her money, and more than money-her lifestyle, her circle of glamorous friends, her world. He would have everything Hickle had dreamed of and fought for, everything that should have been his, as Kris should have been his, because she had always been his destiny.

"Mother fucker," Hickle breathed.

With a roar of rage he charged for the connecting hall, pivoting around the corner, firing twice with the rifle, both shots aimed at the doorway, and then the flashlight snapped on, unexpectedly close, its glare catching him in the eyes, dazzling him for a crucial split second, and erupting through the glare a shapeless burst of violet like an afterimage of the sun, and another and another and noise everywhere.

Hickle's knees buckled. He staggered backward into the first hallway and slumped against a wall, the rifle leaving his hands as he clutched at the smooth unpainted wallboard. Slowly he slid down, leaving a track of blood, and sat in a spreading red puddle, trembling all over.

Travis crouched by him, the flashlight sweeping the damage done to Hickle's body by the volley of shots.

"You're a born loser, Raymond." He did not say it unkindly.

He was even smiling.

"You can't do anything right. You couldn't kill Abby. Strike one. You couldn't kill Kris. Strike two."

Hickle wanted to say something, utter some protest or excuse, but he had no more excuses, and anyway, there was a lot of blood in his mouth.

"And you couldn't kill me." Travis bent closer, and his gun felt sleek and smooth as it slid gently under Hickle's chin.

"Strike three. You're out."

Blammo, Hickle thought numbly.

The last thing he ever saw was Travis's cold smile.

Abby heard the coup de grace delivered outside the office wall.

Her plan had worked. It was no longer two against one. She had gotten Hickle killed. She ought to have felt good about that, but all she felt was nausea, cold and burning at the same time.

Think about it later. There was still Travis to deal with. If she wanted to survive, she had to take him out too.

"Nice job, Abby," Travis said, his voice clear and close through the wall.

"I'll bet Raymond was thinking of you when-he died."

She didn't answer. Talking would only betray her position, and she knew she couldn't manipulate Travis the way she had played with Hickle.

Travis was too smart and knew her too well.

"You've helped me out, actually. I was wondering how I'd explain one of my nine-millimeter rounds in your body. The police would ask questions about that. Now it won't be an issue. You want to know why?"

She wouldn't be goaded into giving a reply. She waited.

"Cat got your tongue? I'll tell you anyway. See, when the police find you, the Beretta will be in your hand. My prints won't be on it. It's not my personal weapon; that gun was confiscated by the sheriff's department for ballistics tests after the little dust-up in Malibu.

This Beretta is one I got from the TPS supply room. Only, when the police look at the sign-out sheet, they're going to see your signature.

I can forge it."

She was sure he could. He had many talents, some of which she'd never guessed until today.

"They'll think you weren't satisfied with your five shot Smith, so you stopped by TPS and checked out a backup that packs more firepower. Then you went on a vendetta against Hickle. Tracked him down, and there was a running gun battle, slugs deposited everywhere-rounds from his rifle and your Smith and your new Beretta. There'll be no way for the evidence techs to ever piece it together and no reason for them to try very hard, since the bottom line will be obvious. Double homicide.

I'll be inconsolable when I hear the news."

None of that mattered, except for one thing. He had told her he would be using the rifle now. It was the only way he could kill her and pin the blame on Hickle.

The rifle had to be nearly empty. She had lost count of the rifle shots, but there must have been at least six or seven by now, and Hickle's Model 770 had a ten-round magazine. Hickle might have carried spare mags in his pocket, but it was equally possible he kept the ammo in his duffel, and she doubted he had lugged the duffel with him on the run. There was a fair chance Travis was down to only three shots. He couldn't blast wildly. He would have to get close. If she ran, he would pursue until he had a clear shot.

"Abby," Travis called, "did I ever tell you how much I love you?" He was laughing.

She ignored his words. They meant nothing. But from the direction of his voice, she knew he was closer to the second doorway than the first.

It was all she needed to know.

Travis held the rifle in both hands, ready to fire. The flashlight was lashed to the long barrel with a strip of his shirtsleeve; its glow moved wherever the muzzle pointed. The Beretta was holstered again, to be wiped clean and left with Abby once she was dead.

He was ready. He would enter the office, and then it was a simple matter of kill or be killed. Either Abby would get him, or he would get her. He couldn't hope to flush her out of hiding, and he could no longer force her to waste her ammo. Even if he had been willing to use the Beretta, he could not fire through one doorway while covering the other exit. That was a job for two men, and he was alone.

Still, he had the advantage. Abby's survival instinct was strong, but her conscience was stronger, and it was her conscience that would make her hesitate for an instant before shooting him. He, on the other hand, would not hesitate at all.

He drew a few quick, shallow breaths, over breathing like a diver preparing to submerge, then readied himself to go in.

In the adjoining hall-running footsteps.

She'd fled, using the first doorway.

He sprinted around the corner, the glow of his flashlight swinging down the hall and spotlighting a blurred, disappearing figure. He almost fired but didn't trust his aim, and then she spun and shot at him once, driving him back behind the wall. When he looked out again, she was gone.

There was only one exit she could have taken. The door to the stairwell. She was trying to get out.

She'd made a mistake. He knew it. He charged down the hall, the flashlight bobbing with the rifle in his arms.

Heading downstairs, she would be an easy target.

He would have the high ground. He could fire on her from the landing and finish her before she could take cover.

He reached the stairwell. Professional caution made him hesitate on the threshold of the landing. He swept the rifle downward, and the flashlight's beam picked out a small, familiar shape on the stairs descending to the lower level.

Abby's purse. She'd dropped it as she ran.

No, wait. Too obvious.

She hadn't dropped the purse. She'd thrown it there to mislead him into thinking she'd gone down, when actually-' She'd gone up.

Ambush.

Hugging the doorway, he aimed the rifle straight overhead and fired twice, gambling that she was in the doorway directly above him, leaning out to take her shot.

A cry, a clatter of metal on metal-Abby's.38, clanging on the steel staircase. He'd nailed her.

He burst onto the landing and took the steps two at a time to the tenth floor, expecting to see Abby's fallen body, but she wasn't there.

His flash swept the area and found no blood spatter.

He hadn't scored a hit after all. But she'd lost her weapon. She was disarmed, defenseless. She was finished.

Travis proceeded down the dark hallway at a run.

The game was nearly over. The tenth floor would be the killing ground.

Abby had liked to believe she was lucky, but that was before Travis saw through her ambush and literally shot the gun out of her hands. She didn't think she'd been hit, but the gun was lost, and now she was out of options and almost out of time.

She ran along a tenth-floor corridor, away from the stairwell into a wider hall that fed into an open floor plan occupying the front half of the building. Bands of plate glass stretched from floor to ceiling along the far wall. Through the windows came the glow of streetlights, starlight, the luminous haze of the city. The light allowed her to orient herself and to dimly see the space around her. When the tower was finished, where she stood would be a large work area partitioned into cubicles. Now it was an open expanse of concrete floor without walls or furnishings.

Nowhere to hide. She ran toward the windows, seeking light. Dying might be a little easier in the light.

In the corridor behind her, there were footsteps, charging hard.

She reached the windows. Past the glass lay Wilshire Boulevard and her condo building. By one of these windows Hickle had waited for the long-distance kill that had never come. Waited with the rifle in his hands, the rifle Travis was carrying now.

Ahead was a worktable, indistinct in the gloom.

Hickle must have dragged it near the window to have a place to sit.

She'd found his firing site.

"Abbyl" Travis, bursting into the room, the flashlight attached to his rifle like a bayonet, the beam stabbing the darkness as he pivoted from side to side.

He hadn't spotted her yet. She ducked low and kept running, thinking she could use the worktable for cover, buy herself a few more seconds.

The beam swept toward her, rippling across the broad sheets of glass.

She dropped to her knees and crawled under the worktable to hide.

The flashlight probing, licking the room's far corners, then drifting back to alight on the table and illuminate her small, huddled shape.

"You're dead, you bitch," Travis breathed, his voice eerie in the dark, and he was coming her way.

She scrambled out from beneath the table and collided with something shapeless and heavy on the floor.

Hickle's duffel bag. Not empty. Something was inside.

He had used the rifle in the stairwell. But the shotgun was his weapon of choice at close range. Why hadn't he used it? Because he'd left it here-left it in the bag.

Her shaking hands unzipped the flap, touched the sleekness of the shotgun's barrel.

Travis sprinting. Light expanding at her back.

She jerked the long gun free of the bag, braced the butt against her chest and spun in a crouch, pumping the action once. Her finger groped for the trigger, and the flashlight found her.

She couldn't see Travis, only the blinding glare. It was easier that way.

She fired at the light.

The recoil upset her precarious balance, blowing her backward onto her tailbone. The room spun in curlicues of yellow glare. She thought she was suffering some extreme onset of vertigo, then realized that what she saw was only the smeared beam of the flashlight as it spun with the rifle across the concrete floor.

The gun and the flashlight attached to it came to rest against a wall, by chance casting the beam at Travis, sprawled limp on the floor.

Abby knew he was dead even without taking a close look. She had fired at him from six feet away. The shotgun shell had cut him almost in half. She couldn't see his features and didn't want to. She imagined that the last look on his face had been one of surprise.

He had never thought he could lose to anyone and certainly not to her.

He was her mentor, after all, and she was only the gifted protegee.

She got to her feet, leaving the shotgun where it had fallen after she fired. She didn't need it any longer.

There were no more bad guys to kill.

Her first step was shaky, and she almost sank to her knees before steadying herself. On her way out of the room she stooped to pry the flashlight free of the rifle.

Its beam guided her to the stairwell. On the stairs below the ninth floor she found her purse with her cell phone inside.

She took out the phone and sat on the steps, taking a moment to compose herself before calling Wyatt at the Hollywood station.

"Hickle's dead," she said when he came on the line.

"And somebody else too. But I'm okay. I just wanted you to know."

"Abby, what the hell are you talking about? Where are you?"

"It doesn't matter where I am. I'll be calling nine-one-one after I'm through talking to you. Everything will be taken care of. But you have to stay out of it, all right? I mean completely out. Don't visit me, don't call me, at least for a while. I don't want your friend Detective Cahill putting things together-and he will, if anybody connects you with me."

"You still haven't told me what happened."

"Do you promise to keep your distance?"

"Yes, damn it, I promise. Now what's going on?"

She let her head fall back against the cold concrete wall.

"It's nothing. Vie, really." She sighed.

"Just another day at the office."

She ended the call before he could ask her anything more. ramedics delivered Abby to UCLA Medical Cener, where she was checked for injuries and released.

There were two detectives waiting for her outside the examination room.

They asked her to accompany them to the West LA station. She was relieved to learn that neither of them was named Cahill.

The first interview was brief. She was too tired to give more than a bare recitation of the facts, carefully edited. But she gave the detectives a present-the tape in her microcassette recorder. It was a fresh tape, which she had loaded immediately before Travis's arrival in Westwood; it contained his confession and nothing else.

The police allowed her to leave by 8 a.m. She had not seen her condo in daylight for a week. She slept until two in the afternoon, then fixed a meal. At three the guards in the lobby said two men from the LAPD were here to see her.

This time she gave the detectives the full story, staying close to the truth but not too close. Fatigue made lying easy; it was as if her body was too worn out to register any of the usual discomfort that a lie detector or a trained observer could catch.

"Travis hired me to move in next door to Hickle. I was there to track his movements, make note of when he came and went. We wanted to get a feel for his daily routine. That was what I was told, anyway. But in fact, I was being set up. Travis told Hickle I was spying on him, and it drove Hickle over the edge. He tried to kill Kris. After he failed, Travis gave him my home address in Westwood. I guess you know what happened after that." They asked what had led her inside the office building.

She said she had begun to suspect Travis. Suspecting an ambush, she'd checked out her neighborhood and found evidence of illegal entry to the office tower.

She'd thought Hickle might be inside.

"That's when you should have called the police," the older of the two detectives said in an almost fatherly tone.

"I wasn't sure Travis was guilty. I wanted proof. I wanted it on tape."

The younger detective, less sympathetic, pointed out that her words on tape and the condition of Howard Barwood's gun, recovered from Travis's body, served as evidence that she had broken into Barwood's Culver City bungalow and tampered with his property.

Abby admitted to this.

"If Mr. Barwood wants to press charges against me, he's entitled." She allowed herself a sweet smile, aimed mainly at the older cop.

"Think he will?"

"Considering that you've cleared him on multiple felony counts, ma'am, I think he'll give you the damn gun if you ask for it, and the bungalow too."

The younger detective wouldn't give up.

"On the tape Travis seems to hold you responsible for the death of Devin Corbal. What have you got to say about that?"

"Travis hired me to follow Sheila Rogers, Corbal's stalker, and report her movements. That particular, night, I lost her. I didn't know where she had gone, and so I wasn't able to give Travis's men a heads-up when she entered Lizard Maiden, the club where Corbal was hanging out. Travis never forgave me for it."

"But you weren't actually present at the scene of Corbal's death?" the younger detective asked.

"No."

"Suppose we were to round up some of the people who were in the club that night and show them your photo. What do you think they'd say?"

"Probably that the club was crowded and dark, and it's been four months since the incident, and under the circumstances their memories aren't likely to be reliable.

That's what a defense attorney would say, don't you think?"

The younger detective had no answer to that. He and his partner left shortly afterward. Before they left, Abby made them promise that her name would be kept out of the media.

They returned twice in the next two days, asking her to fill in details.

At first Abby thought they were leading her on, pretending to believe her version of events while preparing charges against her, either in the Travis shooting or in the Corbal affair. Eventually she realized that the truth was somewhat different. They didn't entirely believe her, but they had no clear idea of how badly she had misled them, and they didn't particularly care.

On Wednesday morning, they paid their last visit and informed her that they were closing the case. Her identity had not been made public.

"There was a close call," the younger cop said. By now he was friendlier.

He had grown to like her, at least a little.

"Channel Eight got hold of your name through a departmental leak. They were set to run with it, but the story got killed. I think we can guess who did you that favor."

"Probably not Amanda Gilbert."

"Amanda Gilbert is no longer with the station. But Kris Barwood's still there."

All of the following day, Abby lazed around, listening to soft music and fixing simple meals. She did a little redecorating. After some deliberation she took down her print of The Peaceable Kingdom and put it in her closet. It no longer amused her to see the lion snuggle up to the lamb.

On Friday morning she drove to Travis's house.

She parked her Miata a block away and walked to the house, lugging a light backpack. Outside the house she waited a few minutes until a Lincoln Town Car arrived, Kris at the wheel. She was driving again-no need for a bodyguard now.

"Abby," Kris said when she got out of the sedan, "I just want to say-I mean, I know everything you did for me-well, maybe not everything, but enough…"

"It's okay, Kris."

"Thank you. That's what I'm trying to say. Thank you so much."

Abby smiled.

"You may not quite understand this, but all the things I did-I didn't do them for you. I did them for me. No gratitude is required."

"You have it anyway. So why did you call me out here?"

"There's something in Paul's house you need to see.

And something I need to see, also."

Kris looked at the yellow police ribbon strung across the driveway.

"It's illegal to violate a crime scene, you know."

"So we're Thelma and Louise, breaking all the rules.

Come on."

Nobody saw them when they ducked under the ribbon and headed to the front door. Abby had brought her locksmith tools in the backpack. It was easy enough to get inside and equally easy to disable Travis's alarm system; she had watched him punch in the code on numerous occasions. She didn't bother wearing gloves; the police had already been here.

"How are things in your life?" she asked Kris as they headed down the hall to the rear of the house.

"Improving. I've filed for divorce."

"I assumed you would."

"Howard may not have tried to kill me, but he did plan to steal me blind, and he's hopelessly unfaithful.

I can do better."

"No argument here." She led Kris-into the master bedroom. The bureau drawers had been opened and emptied, the walk-in closet cleaner out, but as Abby had expected, the Scientific Investigation Division technicians had overlooked the TV set. On casual inspection it would never have been identified as a safe.

She tapped the combination into the remote control. The front of the TV swung ajar, revealing the array of compact disks. The first one that interested her was the Barwood disk. She handed it to Kris.

"Your life story is on there," she said, "and Howard's too. The assets he tried to hide from you-you'll find some leads in tracking them down.

Get a good accountant on the case."

Kris handled the disk in its plastic sleeve.

"Travis had been investigating our background?"

"Not just yours. Everybody's. Including mine."

Abby found the disk with her name on it.

"This is what I wanted to see."

The other item in her backpack was a portable computer.

She switched it on and loaded the disk labeled "SINCLAIR, ABIGAIL." "Maybe I shouldn't look at this," Kris said as Abby began navigating through the data.

"Don't be shy. We have no secrets from each other.

Travis tried to use us both. It's only fair that we see what he was up to."

The disk contained dozens of scanned articles on the Corbal case.

Travis had obsessively collected them. He seemed to feed his frustrations on every insult and innuendo directed at TPS.

The articles held little interest for Abby. She was looking for photos.

She found them in a folder marked "JPEG," a standard photo-compression format. When she opened the folder, dozens of thumbnail images appeared in a checkerboard pattern.

Images of her.

There she was, leaving the lobby of the Wilshire Royal to go for a walk.

There she was, dining at a coffee shop in Westwood Village.

There, visiting a park in Beverly Hills. There, playing tennis on a Sunday afternoon.

And more: washing her car, shopping at a mall, strolling on Santa Monica Pier, hiking in Will Rogers Park. Standing on the balcony of her condo-a shot taken from the office tower across the street, the same vantage point Hickle had chosen.

No wonder Travis had been able to guide Hickle to the tower. He had been there himself. Watching her.

Photographing her, just as Hickle had snapped Polaroids of Kris jogging on the beach.

"He was stalking you," Kris whispered.

"Like Hickle stalked me."

Abby nodded. She was not surprised. Travis had said he'd been watching her on the night when he tried to drown her in the Jacuzzi.

She'd had the feeling it wasn't the first time his obsessive hatred had drawn him close.

He had taken photos with a long lens, probably using a digital camera, then had simply stored the images on the CD. His private collection.

She remembered the dozens of photos of Kris that Hickle had cut out of magazines and newspapers and tacked to his bedroom walls. Travis had been doing much the same thing, driven by the same compulsion.

"He could have taken a shot at you whenever he liked," Kris said.

"When you were on the balcony… or walking in the park…"

"I'm sure he was tempted more than once. But he was cautious by nature.

He was waiting for his best opportunity. He was biding his time."

"Like Hickle," Kris breathed.

"They were more alike than different, it appears."

"But why? Why did he hate you so much?"

"Because I failed him. He had trained me, mentored me, and then I made one mistake and nearly cost him everything he had. This house with the canyon view, his office suite in Century City, his glamorous friends, the A-list parties-he saw it all slipping away, and he blamed me."

Kris shook her head slowly.

"We both know how to pick'em, don't we?"

"Maybe next time our luck will be better." Abby smiled.

"It can't get much worse."

Before leaving, Abby gathered up the remaining CDS, dumping them into a plastic garbage bag. She took them with her when she said good-bye to Kris outside the house.

"Thanks for keeping my name out of the news," Abby said.

"It's the least I can do. And I mean that literally.

Thanks, Abby. And… take care, will you?"

"I always do. It's how I've stayed alive this long."

On her way home Abby stopped in an alley in West Hollywood and buried the bag at the bottom of a trash bin. There were secrets on those disks no one had any right to see.

That evening she took a walk in Westwood Village, window-shopping aimlessly. When she saw the bar that served good pifia coladas, she went inside. The pina co lada remained her one weakness. At least she liked to think it was her only one.

She sat at the bar, the glass raised to her lips, thinking of Travis and his secrets.

"Buy you a drink?"

She looked up. It was Wyatt, off duty, in street clothes. He slid onto the stool next to hers and ordered a beer.

"This is the second time you've encountered me here," Abby said with a slow smile.

"You're not stalking me, are you?"

"If I were, I'd expect you to know it. You're the expert."

"I used to think so," Abby said, remembering the photos on the disk.

Wyatt's beer arrived. They passed a few minutes sipping their drinks, not speaking.

"Truth is," Wyatt said eventually, "I've been hanging out here a little more than usual. Hoping I might run into you."

"It worked-just as long as you weren't followed."

"I wasn't." He swiveled on his stool to face her.

"So how are you doing, Abby?"

"Never better."

"Not sure I believe that."

"Well, I'm alive and fully functional. How are things with you?"

"No complaints."

"And no heat from your friend Cahill or anyone else?"

"Zero heat. There's no reason for anybody to link the Hickle case to Emanuel Barth. And no reason anybody would link me to you."

"Unless somebody at Hollywood Station remembers that I paid you a visit a few hours before the excitement started."

"Nobody'remembers. Hollywood's a busy place.

People come and go. So we're okay, Abby. The case is closed. It's over."

"Its over Abby echoed. The words felt good to say.

Wyatt looked away.

"I understand how you wanted to keep things out of official channels, but I wish you'd confided in me. When you came to see me at the station, you already suspected Travis, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"You should have said something."

"I wanted to handle things myself."

"Yeah."

"Typical of me. Right?" "You said it. I didn't." He tipped the beer mug from side to side, sloshing the foam in the glass.

"You know, I'd like to keep seeing you."

"Absolutely. You're my main resource in Hollywood.

I depend on you."

"What I mean is-not on business."

"Oh." Abby was quiet for a moment, staring into the mirror behind the bar, where her face gazed back at her, calm and contemplative.

"I don't know. Vie."

He studied her, his expression showing more bewilderment than hurt.

"We get along pretty well, and you wouldn't have to keep any secrets from me, so… why not?"

"Maybe because of what you just said-I can't keep secrets from you.

See, I don't like to be with people who know me too well. I like staying hidden. I like having my space. It's been like that for me since I was a kid. I keep my distance, always."

"That's no way to live, Abby."

"But it's a way to survive."

He let his hand rest gently on hers.

"I won't pressure you. If you change your mind, call me. Think it over, okay?"

"I will. I promise."

They parted a short time later. Abby was first to leave the bar. When she looked back from the doorway, she saw Wyatt sitting alone at the bar.

The sun was setting when she returned to her condo. On her balcony she watched the red glaze of the sky. She remembered sitting with her father before another sunset, years ago, and asking if her aloneness, her need for solitude, was a good thing. He'd said it would be, if she could make it work in her favor. His words were like a riddle she had never solved.

Call me, Wyatt had said. She wondered if she would.

In the living room, her phone rang. She left the balcony to answer it.

For some reason she expected to hear Wyatt's voice, but it was Gil Harris on the line-the New Jersey security consultant who'd brought her in on the Frank Harrington case.

"Abby, how you doing?"

"Fine, Gil. I'm great." She carried the cordless phone back onto the balcony.

"} take it you've recovered from your latest run-in with a crazy man,"

Gil was saying.

She wondered how he could know about Hickle, then realized he was referring to Harrington.

"Sure," she said easily.

"It's amazing what ten days of rest and relaxation will do for you."

"Well, I hope you've had enough vacation time, because I've got something that's definitely up your alley. Interested?"

She hesitated only a moment.

"When do you need me?"

"Soon as possible."

"I'll catch a flight first thing tomorrow, be at your office by late afternoon. Deal?"

"Works for me. Oh, and I should warn you-this one could be kind of tricky."

"They're all tricky, Gil." She leaned back against the railing and smiled.

"Although I have to admit, some are a little trickier than others."

After the call she lingered on the balcony, watching the last of the sunset. She felt her old friend, adrenaline, pumping through her body, and she knew it was what she needed. Wyatt could wait. Her personal life, whatever there was of it, could wait. In the end it was the job that kept her alive and sane. The job was what she lived for. The job was who she was.

People were always reaching for what they didn't have-fame or wealth, youth or love, some final victory or vengeance. They chased after the prizes that would sum up their lives, seeking to complete themselves.

It was so easy to get caught up in the chase.

Easy but unnecessary, at least for her, at least right now.

If you can make it work in your favor, her father had said.

When the sun was gone and there was only darkness, Abby went inside to pack.