“Sure you did. He was there when I came in.”
“But I didn’t make him. It was his idea. He offered. He didn’t want to take advantage of me. He was… a gentleman.”
“Was he? Maybe. Or maybe he was just trying to con you. Gain your trust. Men do that, you know. They pretend to be your friend, when all they really want is… is…” He looked away, and Wendy realized with a stab of astonishment that he was embarrassed. “Well,” he said vaguely, “you know.”
“Yes. I know.” Out of the corner of her eye she watched his face in profile against the blur of the roadside. “But you’re different. Aren’t you?”
“I am.”
“So”-she spoke slowly, forcing out the words like paste through a tube-“what is it you want?”
He swiveled in his seat and looked right at her. “You, Wendy. I want you. But not in the way other men do. Lesser men. Men who could never appreciate you, could never hope to equal your strength of spirit. What you and I will have-oh, it will be something wonderful. A merging of minds, a commingling of souls. Nothing cheap or casual or meaningless. A partnership that will lift us both to new heights, heights neither one of us could have reached alone. That’s what I want, Wendy. I won’t take anything less. I want you. I want you. I want you.”
Anger and terror and revulsion boiled inside her, reached a flashpoint and merged in a white heat of fury that made her reckless.
“But I don’t want you!” she screamed, then stiffened, catching her breath, afraid of what she’d said and of what he would do.
But he merely smiled.
“You will,” he said with finality. “Tonight.”
She licked her lips. Her heart thumped in her ears. Sweat trickled down the insides of her arms, pasting the blouse to her skin. She hated to ask the next question, for fear of what the answer surely would be; but she had to ask it, because she had to know, just had to.
“What… what’s going to happen tonight?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he snapped his fingers with a sudden thought.
“Oh, gosh. I knew there was something I forgot to do. We’re running low on gas, aren’t we?”
Her gaze flicked to the fuel gauge, where the arrow was brushing the red zone.
“Almost empty,” she reported.
“Darn. We’ll have to fill up, then.”
Fill up. At a gas station. With people around. Lots of people. He wouldn’t shoot her there. Not in front of everybody. Would he? Maybe he would. But if she took him by surprise… if he didn’t react quite fast enough…
All she had to do was throw open the car door and run, get inside the office or the service bay, and then-
“I know what you’re thinking, Wendy.”
A wave of light-headedness passed over her. She felt as if his fingers had been prying inside her brain. “I’m not thinking anything.”
“Oh, yes, you are.” He sounded amused. “It’s written all over your face. Little Red Riding Hood thinks she’s found the golden opportunity to get away from the Big Bad Wolf.” The gun pressed deeper into her side. “But you’re wrong, Wendy. Very wrong. Fatally wrong. I warned you about what would happen if you tried anything. I made myself explicitly clear. Didn’t I? Didn’t I? ”
“Don’t kill me,” she breathed, the words coming out so spontaneously she was astonished to hear them.
“Don’t make me,” he answered coolly. “Lock your door.”
She depressed the lock.
“Good. Now if you have any thoughts of making a break for it when we stop for gas, consider this. You’re wearing a safety belt. Your door is locked. It’ll take time to unbuckle that belt and unlock that door. A full second, at least. How long do you think it will take me to put a bullet in you?”
She didn’t answer.
“How long?”
“Okay,” she whispered. “I understand.”
“You yell for help, you honk the horn, you do anything out of the ordinary-and you’re dead.”
“I understand,” she said again, more sharply.
The Ford coasted down the mountain into Studio City. A few blocks ahead, the bright orange ball of a Union 76 sign hung against the sky like a setting sun.
“Pull in there,” he ordered.
She guided the Ford onto the asphalt and pulled up alongside a full-service island, then shut off the motor, silencing Rosanne Cash, who was singing about a runaway train. Wendy knew about trains like that. She was on one right now.
“What now?” she breathed.
“When the attendant asks, you say you want a full tank.” He was buttoning up his brown coat to conceal the policeman’s uniform underneath. “And remember what I told you.” The gun snaked behind her, the metal cylinder of the five-inch barrel hard against her lower back.
She cranked down the window, waited for an attendant to arrive, and asked him to fill the tank.
“Check the oil?” he asked briskly. “Tire pressure?”
A painfully false smile distorted her face. “No, thanks.”
The attendant hooked up the gas-pump nozzle, then squeegeed the windshield with broad vigorous strokes. As he was scraping off the soapy water, Wendy turned toward the passenger seat.
“I don’t have any money with me, you know,” she whispered.
“That’s all right.”
“What are we going to do? Drive away without paying?”
“Wendy.” He looked genuinely distressed. “That would be immoral. Of course we won’t do anything like that.” With one hand he fumbled in his coat pocket and gave her a well-worn wallet. “There ought to be enough in there to cover it.”
The attendant rang up the total. Wendy handed him a couple of bills through the open window.
“Thanks,” he said as he dug in his pocket for change. “Nice set of wheels.”
He was looking right at her. She looked back. Their eyes met. In that instant she considered trying to signal him somehow, with a facial expression or a whispered word or… or something.
Courage failed her. She could imagine the shuddering blast of the gunshot as it tore through her spine.
“We like it,” she said with another faltering smile.
“Yeah, they really built ’em back then. What is it, a sixty-two?”
“Sixty-three,” the Gryphon said helpfully from the passenger seat.
The attendant nodded. “Nice condition.”
“Well,” the Gryphon said politely, “I’ve always believed that if you take care of your car, it’ll take care of you.”
“Hey, you know it.” The attendant handed Wendy her change. “Have a nice one.”
Wendy started the engine and steered the car out of the service station, rolling up the window. The deadly pressure on her back eased.
“Congratulations,” the killer told her. “You’re a very smart girl.”
She took a breath. “You never answered my question,” she said softly. “What’s going to happen tonight?”
“Oh, nothing so awful.” He was smiling again. “We’re going to get to know each other a little better, that’s all. We’ve been enemies, and now we’re going to be friends. And something more than friends.”
Her voice was a whisper. “Something more?”
“Lovers, Wendy,” he breathed. “That’s what we’ll be. And I promise you, once you’ve known my passion and my power, then you will love me too.”
25
Delgado was still at Cedars-Sinai when the Dodge Aries was found in the alley.
He’d arrived at the hospital at nine-fifteen, twenty minutes after Wendy’s abduction, having left most of the task-force detectives at the scene of the wreckage with instructions to comb the area for clues. The chance of finding anything significant on the fire-ravaged mountainside was remote, but no possibility could be overlooked.
Plainclothes and patrol officers were crowding the lobby and parking garage of the medical center’s North Tower when Delgado entered, accompanied by Tom Gardner and Rob Tallyman. Delgado hunted down the detectives in charge. They were Frank Nason and Chet Gray, who had taken him on a tour of Elizabeth Osborn’s house two weeks ago.
“Fill us in on what happened,” Delgado said brusquely.