C.J. was cornered. He could track her down and then do whatever he liked with her and make it last a good long time.
With a smile he removed a flashlight from the glove compartment, then pushed open the car door and limped down the alley, his shoes crunching on dry leaves.
With the flashlight to guide him, finding her shouldn’t be hard. The warehouse was big-sixty thousand square feet, by his estimate-but it would be empty. No hiding places, no crawl space, only an open floor penned in by metal walls under a high metal roof.
As a kid, he used to pick up bugs and put them in a tin can for safekeeping, and that was what C.J. was now-a bug in a tin can.
He reached the window and drew his gun. He would go in cautiously. It was possible she’d be crouching just inside, wielding a makeshift weapon. He would take no chances now, not with the contest nearly won…
Wait.
He smelled something acrid, tangy.
Smoke.
He glanced around the alley, and in the glare of the high beams he saw a dim mist, which was not mist, rising from beneath his car.
The engine was still idling. And the leaves, the dry leaves-the heat of the catalytic converter must have set them smoldering.
No big deal, but he’d better shut off the engine.
He was limping back to the car when a new scent reached him, unfamiliar and vaguely threatening.
For the first time he considered his situation. Narrow alleyway, fence on one side, metal wall on the other, little room to maneuver.
C.J. wasn’t stupid. She wouldn’t allow herself to be trapped so easily.
Unless it was a way of trapping him.
The leaves, smoldering…
That other smell.
Oil.
God damn it. It was oil.
Adam knew what was going to happen, and his body reacted with an instinctive pivot and then a desperate leap toward the window, and behind him A whoosh of combustion. A rush of heat.
“What the fuck is that?”
The shout came from the Sikorsky’s copilot, who’d been watching the FLIR data on the video display screen and had seen the screen nearly white out with a bloom of incandescence.
But it didn’t take an infrared sensor to detect the red splash of light wavering northeast of the chopper, in the desolate hills.
Tanner glanced at Walsh, peering over his shoulder. “It’s gotta be her,” Tanner said.
Walsh turned to the pilot. “Set us down over there!”
Behind them, there was movement-Deputy Pardon, his scout, his two assaulters, his rearguard, and an attached sniper team of shooter and spotter, all checking their utility belts, goggles, and firearms.
They’d sat stiffly patient since boarding the chopper in downtown LA, but now they were coming to life.
Tanner knew the feeling.
Show time.
55
Brightness at his back. White heat in a solid wall.
It singed Adam Nolan’s neck, his ears, and for a split second he thought he was on fire, actually ablaze like a corpse on a funeral pyre, and then the momentum of his leap carried him through the broken window and he landed on a concrete floor, his injured knee crying out.
While the alarm shrieked around him, he rolled over and over, trying frantically to smother any flames on his clothes or his hair, but there were no flames. The heat had reached him, seared him, but that was all.
He remembered C.J.
Up in a crouch, the gun still in his hand. He snapped off two rounds into the dark. The shots echoed above the alarm’s ululant siren.
He hadn’t hit her, but he must have convinced her to keep her distance.
Now just switch on the flashlight, hunt her down…
No flashlight. He had lost it in his dive through the window. The only light in the warehouse was the fireglow from outside, and it did not extend more than a few yards into the interior.
He would have to track her in darkness, with the alarm wailing and his knee pulsing with pain.
God damn, he hated that whore.
In the flickering firelight he saw the can she’d flung inside. The label read, “WOOD STAIN.”
Oil-based. Inflammable.
She must have poured the can’s contents over the leaves, where she had known he would stop. She had counted on him to leave his motor running, counted on the heat of the catalytic converter to ignite the fuel. She’d meant to roast him alive.
“You cunt,” he breathed, then raised his voice to be heard over the alarm. “You fucking cunt, C.J.!”
He glimpsed her white sneakers blurring into the darker recesses of the warehouse, and he fired again. Missed her, damn it, and already the light from the window was dimming as the fire died down. The inflammable liquids had vaporized, and there was nothing left to burn but dry grass and leaves.
At least the BMW’s fuel tank hadn’t ruptured; there had been no explosion. Car must be ruined, though. Undrivable. How the hell was he supposed to get home? And even if he did, how would he explain the missing car, the injuries he’d suffered?
Everything was fucked up. His perfect crime, his cover story-all shot to hell.
He forced himself to calm down. Hard to think with that alarm clanging in his skull. And he was tired, worn out. But he had to keep it together. He almost had her. And once she was dead…
He would steal a car for the drive home. Clean himself up in his shower, and with fresh clothes and a false smile, he wouldn’t look much worse for wear.
As for the BMW-why would the cops even ask to see it if he wasn’t a suspect? He was the grief-stricken ex-husband, remember? He had fooled Detective Walsh before. He could do it again.
Things would still work out. There were complications, sure. Well, when life gives you lemons…
“Make lemonade,” he said with an odd, lopsided grin that felt strange on his face. He thought he might be laughing. It seemed strange to laugh at a time like this. He might be cracking up.
If he was, it was C.J.’s fault. This whole mess, from start to finish, was her doing. She had walked out on him, ended their marriage. She had wormed her way inside his brain until he could think of no other woman. She had fought him and hurt him and cost him time and pain.
She had done her best to fuck him up.
Now it was time to return the favor.
56
C.J. reached the wall at the far end of the warehouse and groped for an exit, any kind of exit, a door or a window or a hole to crawl through. There was nothing, just smooth metal that stretched in all directions like a sheet of solid darkness.
Stop. Think.
There was no exit. The window was the only way in or out. The doors were padlocked from the outside. She had seen the heavy locks and chains.
She was stuck in here, and Adam was with her.
She’d been waiting for a flashlight to come on, but he must not have a flash. He would find her anyway. He had all the time he needed, and she had no place to hide.
The worst thing was that she couldn’t tell if he was right behind her or fifty yards away. The screaming alarm covered any sound of footsteps.
Covered her own footsteps too. She ought to be grateful for that, but she was past being grateful for anything.
Her ambush had failed. She had worked it out so carefully, and in the end all she’d accomplished was to get herself trapped in a steel cage with a madman.
Nice going, Killer. Real slick.
She didn’t think he’d even been hurt. When he’d called out to her, she had heard no weakness in his voice, only rage-and an edge of hysteria.
He was out of control. There was no telling what he would do to her, how bad it might be…
That line of thought would get her nowhere. She needed a strategy.
The window was her only way out. If she could slip past Adam in the dark, then climb through the window unobserved…