The victim had been with him in the back seat of that Maxima. So had Max. She’d seen it in detail, lived it exactly as that woman had lived it. Everything else about the vision seemed to have gone hazy, but not this, not him. She felt him between her legs, inside her, tasted him on her tongue.
The bus sped up in a cloud of exhaust. For a moment she lost sight of the man, and when the haze dissipated, he’d turned his head away from the dead woman’s car.
“Follow him.” Cameron urged.
Almost at the same moment she said, “You knew he was going to be here, didn’t you? That’s why we had to come.”
“I told you I didn’t know what we’d find. I just knew we had to come.”
She didn’t know whether to believe him. Sometimes...sometimes she thought he kept things from her, that he knew more and remembered more than he admitted. No time to analyze that now, though.
Since they’d been at the far end of the lot, the shuttle was on its return to the terminal. She got snagged at the entrance with one car in front of her while the bus skated through its own gate. A tow truck entered a side entrance and turned south toward the dead woman’s car. Max’s head felt like a ping-pong ball as she flashed glances between the truck and her quarry. The bus hit the road. She inched forward, rolled down her window, held out her under-eight-minute ticket, and the attendant waved her on. Three cars were now between her and the bus on the frontage road as they headed toward the freeway.
“Why is it getting on the freeway? I’ll lose it.” She shot through the tail end of the yellow light, the chase giving her an adrenaline rush.
There were now five cars between her and the minibus.
“Hot damn.” It was the only vehicle to exit onto the airport flyover. She caught up with the bus before a rush of commuters merged in from the southbound access. The Departures route was heavily packed, and the shuttle stopped at every airline while she sat in the wake of its fumes and the racket of honking horns and traffic whistles.
“Will you recognize him?”
“I’ll know him.” She hadn’t seen the man well at all, and the back of his head had disappeared from the window as if he’d gone forward to gather a bag or wait near the door. It didn’t matter. In the dream, she’d memorized every line on his face.
She knew the moment had arrived before the bus even came to a complete stop and opened its doors. She gave the steering wheel a hard yank to the right and squeezed into a spot between a minivan and a shiny Lexus.
The shuttle’s doors opened with a vacuum-packed whoosh, disgorging its occupants onto the sidewalk teaming with travelers. Max jerked her car door open and jumped out. Hot air blew up from the second roadway beneath them.
Max saw him only five feet away as he used the rear exit. The noises, the scents, the flashing lights faded into the background. He was mid-thirties, a tall man, a good head above her five-feet-six. His sandy hair sported a short, neat cut; his dark, mirrored glasses were an early sixties style. A fine shadow covered his jaw, indicating he hadn’t shaved that day. His face was long and lean, and from the side, a slight bump marred his nose as if it had been broken. He’d dressed in worn jeans and chambray work shirt. Scuffed, tan work boots covered his feet. A small workout bag dangled negligently in one hand, and a newspaper was tucked beneath his arm. In the next moment, he pulled out the paper, gave it one last cursory glance, then threw it in a trash bin.
He turned, looked at her, a break in his long-legged stride the only indication that he might actually have noticed her from behind those mirrored lenses.
Her heart tripped over itself, then pounded. Her sunglasses slid down her nose. Her fingers trembled with the need to touch him, an alien need not her own. Where the hell did it come from?
A fresh wave of passengers carried him into the terminal.
“Don’t lose him,” Cameron pressed.
Max started to run.
A shrill whistle blew close to her head, punctuated by a sharp, “Hey lady, you can’t leave your car unattended.” A beefy hand on her arm jolted her to a stop.
The traffic cop had insinuated himself between Max and the terminal door. “You aren’t leaving your car unattended, lady, and no excuses. I’ve heard ’em all, so don’t even bother.” His white shirt was too bright for the early hour, his belly too large to push past, and her checkbook too lean for a ticket.
Behind him, the automatic doors slid shut, the interior of the building obscured by the dark glazing.
Her quarry was gone.
The only thing the man left behind was his folded newspaper.
She tried to smile simperingly at the guard. “Can I get my paper? I dropped it over there.”
She didn’t wait for the cop’s agreement, simply dashed the three steps to the trash and grabbed the newspaper off the top.
“You’re out of breath,” Cameron whispered in her ear.
She got back in the car. “I was running for the paper.”
“You’re breathless for the paperboy who left it behind.”
“I wanted to see what he’d been reading.”
"But you lost him, Max."
"I know that." She resisted the urge to smack her hand on the steering wheel.
"He went out there specifically to look at her car."