The restaurant now blocked the sniper’s angle, but Evan didn’t want to give him time to reposition. Taking Katrin’s arm, he dashed through the crowd, heading for the wall of shops and the blocked alley. A panicked flush had overtaken her cheeks, a strand of glossy dark hair caught in the corner of her mouth.
“Wait,” Katrin said. “Where are we going? There’s nowhere to—”
Evan hit a remote-controlled key fob in his pocket, and the minivan’s facing door slid open. He shoved Katrin in, diving after her. He’d left the backseats flattened for precisely this contingency. His thumb keyed the autofeature again, and the sliding door rolled shut behind them, absorbing a bullet from the big rifle. The sniper had picked them up. Another round hammered the door, punching a hole the size of a dinner plate over their ducked heads. Inside the box of the minivan, the clang of metal on metal was deafening. The sniper was working the bolt fast, and if they didn’t want to ingest lead or shrapnel, they had to get clear of the van.
Evan yanked at the opposite sliding door and spilled out the far side into the cramped alley, tugging Katrin so she landed on top of him. Behind them the minivan rocked some more, the windows blowing out.
Katrin’s hands hovered by her ears, her eyes brimming.
“Save it for later,” he said.
Their shoulders scraped either side of the narrow alley, leaving flakes of dried paint in their wake. A kitchen’s back window exhaled hot air and the stench of fish. They reached a T at the alley’s end and peeled right. Six paces down, his Chrysler sedan waited, pointed at the main line of Hill Street. They jumped in and he tore out, blending into a current of traffic.
His eyes darted from the road to the rearview to the road. Katrin jerked in one breath after another.
“Who did you tell you were meeting me?” he said.
“No one.”
“Which phone did you call me from?”
Her hand dug in her jeans, came up with a BlackBerry. “This one, but—”
He snatched her phone, flung it out his window, watched in his side mirror as the pieces bounced.
“What are you doing? That’s the only way they could reach me about my dad—”
“We don’t want them to reach you right now.”
“They followed you.”
“No,” he said. “They didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
He screeched into a liquor-store parking lot, eased behind the building. “Out.”
He met her around back and pulled from the trunk a black wand with a circular head. Starting at her face, he waved it over her, scanning her torso, arms, legs, and shoes for electronic devices. The nonlinear junction detector showed nothing. She made no noise, but tears spilled down her cheeks and she was shaking. He spun her, scanned down her back. Clear.
“Get in the car.”
She obeyed.
He veered out from behind the liquor store, shot across the street, and merged onto the 110.
Her hand was at her mouth, muffling the words. “What now?”
For once he did not have a ready answer.
12
A Woman’s Job
“You’re expensive,” Dan Reynolds said, a flirtatious skip in his step keeping him beside the woman leading him down the corridor of the inn.
Candy McClure didn’t break stride. “I’m worth it,” she said.
Assemblyman Reynolds, the vice chair of the Health Committee, had managed to amass a big reelection war chest while remaining dog-to-bone for patient advocacy. This combination made him atypical. His bedroom proclivities were equally atypical.
Which had something to do with the black leather duffel bag swinging from Candy’s shoulder. Her cropped white-blond hair had been sprayed into a call-girl shellac, and her muscular calves flexed beneath navy blue fishnets, but her dress was decidedly upscale, a strapless tweed knee-to-bust number fitted to show off her firm hourglass figure. She’d chosen it for the zipper back, easy to step out of.
Floral-patterned runners padded their footsteps. Candy had of course selected the most private room, the end unit on the outlying wing of the property. The quaint bed-and-breakfast, a few miles from Lake Arrowhead, had low occupancy for December. Fresh snow had been scarce, and the real holiday break was still a few weeks off. Low occupancy was good. They’d be making some noise.
Reynolds sped up, trying to get a glimpse of her elusive face. After checking in, she’d let him in a back entrance as they’d agreed. As a semiprominent politician, he couldn’t be seen. Not here, not with her.
A big brass key swung from her finger. Her nails, cut short and unmanicured, were the only aspect of her image not polished to a high feminine gloss. Her work required ready use of her hands.
Reynolds gestured at the weighty duffel bag. “Give you a hand with that?”
“Do I look like I’m struggling?”
At her tone the excited flush crept further up his neck. “Can’t wait to see what you’ve got in there.”
“You don’t have a choice. But to wait.”
The color spread to his cheeks, and his breathing quickened. She shoved through the door into the room, which had a nausea-inducing Laura Ashley country-chic vibe, all potpourri and frilly pillows and watercolors of geese. A four-poster bed dominated the space. The sliding door to the bathroom had been rolled back to reveal a copper soaking tub.
The copper tub was why she had selected the place.
The duffel clanked on the floorboards when she slid it off her shoulder. She unzipped it and removed a rubber fitted sheet. He tried to peek over her shoulder to see what else was in the bag, but she closed it and slapped him. His fingertips touched the mark on his cheek, and he made a strangled little sound of pleasure.
She clicked the wooden blinds shut, then yanked off the bedding and laid the rubber sheet over the bare mattress. At last she turned to him. “Strip.”
He complied. He had the build of a former athlete, soft around the middle. His pants snagged on his heel, and he almost tripped in his eagerness. “We need to specify a safe word. Mine is ‘artichoke.’”
“Inventive.”
“Abrasion, fire play, and breath control are off-limits. Pretty much anything else is cool with me.”
“I’ll bear that in mind. Sit.”
He lowered himself onto the bed. She secured his wrists and ankles to the four posts.
“I’m usually down with warm-up—”
“That’s nice,” she said, and popped a ball gag into his mouth.
His face seemed to bulge around the red ball, but she noted the gleeful anticipation beneath his straining. She had few skills, but those she did have she’d mastered. One of them was reading men.
Candy had grown up in Charlotte, North Carolina, under a different name, and her childhood had been a parade of useless males, from the proverbial absent father to the usual handsy dads of friends. She’d pretty much raised herself. At sixteen she’d gotten her driver’s license, and a few weeks later, after a strategic tryst with a zit-faced DMV worker, she’d secured a bus license as well. The money was good, but the training sucked. Mr. Richardson with his stale coffee breath and walrus mustache. Any little mistake she made, he’d announce, “You just killed a kid.” The tires touching the dotted yellow line—“Just killed a kid, sugar britches. Steady on the wheel.” Braking too hard—“Killed another kid, sweet sauce. Easy on the pedal.”
Men. The pleasure they took in the commands they gave.
Well, now she gave the commands.
The oak cheval mirror in the corner threw back her image, her goddesslike stance at the foot of the bed. She reached behind her and slid the zipper down from between her shoulder blades to the base of her back. The dress bowed forward, and she let it fall. On the bed Reynolds responded, mind and body. Who could blame him?