AN HOUR LATER Kathryn Dance was doing some stalking herself.
She’d returned to the Mountain View, where she’d called her mother—the kids had gone to bed. Dance had dialed the number with some uneasiness, afraid she’d learn something more about Jon Boling’s impending departure. But Edie Dance said nothing further on the subject, explaining that the children were doing well and Stuart, Dance’s father, had her house ready for the guests and the party planned for this weekend.
After disconnecting, she debated calling Boling. Then decided not to.
Partly because she was a coward, she chided herself. But she also had work to do.
Stalking …
She turned on the TV, a commercial network with a lot of commercials, so the many random flickers from the screen on the window shade would suggest someone was inside. She pulled on the only night-op camouflage she had: a navy sport coat, black jeans and a burgundy T-shirt. The outfit would have to do. For shoes, Aldo pumps; she had no tactical boots.
Finally ready, Dance slipped outside and stepped into the parking lot.
Her mission was to find out who might be the person with the bad habits of nicotine and, possibly, espionage. She’d just seen the glow of the cigarette again, in nearly the same place that she’d seen it earlier, in the park across the road. The smoker was still there.
She glanced out from behind a Caravan filled with dog show paraphernalia and a bumper sticker bragging that the driver was the proud owner of a German shepherd smarter than your honor student.
Dance focused again on the tiny orange glow in a recess between two thick stands of pine.
Was the cigarette just a coincidence? Dance might have thought so except for the fact that Sheri Towne’s attacker had possibly been smoking. And that Edwin might still have the habit.
In any event, she wanted to get a glimpse of the person. If it was a teenage boy sharing a cigarette—or a joint—with his buddies, that would be that. If it was Edwin Sharp—or someone else she might have come in contact with recently—that would be a different matter.
Dance waited until a car entered the lot and drove past her, parking at the entrance. Then she stepped out of the shadows and made her way to the four-lane road and hurried across.
Very aware of the lightness on her hip where her pistol normally was, she circled wide and entered the park through one of the half dozen gaps in a rusty chain link fence.
She stayed close to the trees—the path through the playground would have offered a good view of her approach in the cool moonlight. She waved away lethargic but persistent late summer insects, and bats dipped close, dining on them. Keeping her eyes down to spot noisy vegetation and food wrappers, she moved forward steadily but slowed as she approached the cul-de-sac where the spy, or an innocent citizen, was ruining his health.
Twenty feet farther on she smelled cigarette smoke.
And she slowed even more, crouching.
She couldn’t see him yet but noted that the place where he was sitting seemed to be a picnic area; there were several tables nearby, all of them chained to thick concrete posts in the ground. Was table theft from public facilities a big problem in Fresno?
She moved closer yet, one careful step at a time.
The orange glow was evident but thick pine boughs completely obscured her view of the smoker, about twenty feet away.
She reached out and gripped the bough, moving it aside.
Squinting …
Oh, no! Dance gasped.
The lit cigarette was stuck into a fork of a sapling near a picnic table.
That meant only one thing: Edwin or whoever it might be had seen her leave the motel and drawn her into a trap.
She spun around but saw no attacker. She dropped to her knees fast, remembering that his weapon of choice was a pistol, probably Gabe Fuentes’s stolen Glock. She wasn’t much of a target in the moonlight but you can spray ten or twelve rounds very quickly with a weapon like that and all you needed to do was point in the general direction of your victim.
Still no sign of him.
Where could he be?
Or had he lured her here to get into her room, steal her computer and notes?
No. He’d be coming after her.
She couldn’t wait any longer. She rose and turned, feeling a painful tickle of panic on her back, as if he were actually rubbing the muzzle of the gun along her spine.
But instead of returning in the same direction she’d come, she decided to head directly for the motel. This route was closer, though it required her to vault the six-foot fence. Still, she felt she had no choice, and she headed that way now, turning away from the lone cigarette and moving as fast as she could, keeping low, toward the road.
Thinking about getting across those four lanes, which would expose her to—
It was then that he sprang the trap.
Or rather she sprang it herself, tripping over the fishing line—or maybe guitar string—he’d strung across the route he’d anticipated she would take back. She fell hard, slamming into the packed dirt; there were none of the many pine needle beds here, which would have broken her fall. She lay gasping, breath knocked from her lungs.
Damn, oh, goddamn. That hurts! Can’t breathe….
She heard footsteps, not far away, moving in.
Closer, closer.
She desperately tried to scramble toward the road, where at least a car might be driving past, discouraging him from shooting.
But the asphalt was at least forty or fifty feet away, through the woods.
She tried to rise but couldn’t; there was no air in her chest.
Then through the still, humid night she heard behind her, the double snap of an automatic pistol’s slide, back and forward, chambering a round.
Chapter 45
KATHRYN DANCE TRIED once more to get to cover.
But there was no cover, nothing here but skinny pine trees and anemic brush.
Then a firm voice, a man’s from not far away, called in a sharp whisper, “Kathryn!”
She glanced about but could see no one.