The Shadow Hunter

by Michael Prescott

  Abby shrugged. “That’s my job, Paul. It’s 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.

  54

  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.”

  “Goddamn 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 speedloader 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.

  55

  Working by feel, Abby had found the speedloader 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 spat 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 l
ucky hit took her out.

  She removed the three cartridge cases from her Smith and replaced them with unexpended rounds from the speedloader. 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.

  56

  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, goddamn 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.

  “Motherfucker,” 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.

  57

  Abby heard the coup de grâce 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 dustup 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.

  58

  Travis held the rifle in both hands, ready to fire. The flashlight was lashed to the long ba
rrel 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, overbreathing 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.