"Okay." She felt Travis deserved a smile for his kindness, but she couldn't summon one.
"Let me scrub this makeup off. I'll meet you in my office. You know where it is."
"Kris-I'm sorry about this. We could be wrong in our assessment, but we can't take the risk." She said she understood. And she did. The rational part of her understood perfectly well, but there was another part of her, less sober and composed, that wanted to scream that it was unfair and she was tired and why couldn't Hickle leave her alone and harass somebody else?
In the dressing room she bent over the sink, removing her makeup with a towel. When she was done, she studied herself in the mirror. The face she saw was beautiful and haughty and scared. It was not her face.
Her face never showed fear, and this one did.
Hickle had stolen everything from her now. Her peace of mind, her daily routine, her comfort, perhaps her marriage. Even the face in the mirror wasn't her own anymore.
There was nothing left for him to take-except her life.
Howard parked in the garage of the beach house at 11:15, later than he'd expected, because before leaving the bungalow he had decided to smooth things over with Amanda, a process that had taken some time and further disarranged the bed sheets.
But things had worked out all right. He had beaten Kris home by at least a half hour.
He walked around to the guest cottage, where he was met by the two TPS staff officers on duty. Their names were Pfeiffer and Mahoney, though he never could recall which was which. The men seemed unusually alert tonight. Even as they greeted him, they were scanning the darkness on the far side of Malibu Reserve Drive.
"Anything wrong?" Howard asked.
They assured him the situation was normal. He didn't find their protestations entirely convincing. Something was up. His suspicion was confirmed when one of them mentioned that Kris would be arriving in a TPS staff car tonight.
"A staff car? Why?"
"Routine precaution," Pfeiffer or Mahoney said.
"If it's routine, why haven't you done it before now?"
"It's just standard procedure," his partner, who was either Mahoney or Pfeiffer, replied. Both men kept their gazes fixed on the shadowy foliage across the road.
His answer was no answer at all. It was, in fact, just another way of saying the same thing. Howard thought of pointing this out but decided against it.
Kris was Travis's client. The TPS people would tell her whatever she demanded to know. They rarely extended the same courtesy to him.
He said good night to Pfeiffer and Mahoney, then proceeded down the garden path to the house. Courtney opened the door for him as he climbed the steps.
She must have heard the TPS agents buzz him in.
'"Evening, Mr. Barwood."
He acknowledged the housekeeper with a nod, noticing how she backed away when he stepped into the foyer. Courtney had been keeping her distance from him since the day, several months ago, when he'd reached out in the game room to stroke the dark sheet of her hair. It had been an impulse on his part, stupid and thoughtless. She had recoiled and started to cry, and he'd felt bad, but not so bad that he hadn't resorted to threats to ensure that she kept quiet about the incident, particularly where Mrs. Barwood was concerned.
Now he wondered if she had kept quiet after all.
Maybe she had said something to Kris. Maybe that was why Kris now suspected his affair.
Courtney shut the door.
"How was your ride?" she asked.
"Terrific. I went all the way to Santa Barbara. That car hypnotizes me." He said it as jauntily as he could, but she merely murmured,
"Sounds like fun."
She didn't believe him. She knew he hadn't been out cruising the coast road. She could guess what he'd been up to. And so could Kris.
It was obvious now.
Perhaps, to a more perceptive man, it would have been obvious all along.
"I think I'll unwind out on the deck," Howard said.
"It's a beautiful night."
"Sure is." She seemed relieved to be rid of him.
He walked to the rear of the house, thinking he'd been insane to think he could fool either his housekeeper or his wife. Women had a sixth sense about these things. They could tell when a man was fooling around, the way dogs could sense an earthquake before it hit. It was uncanny, the way women's minds worked. They should all be detectives and fortunetellers and shrinks.
Still, Kris hadn't guessed all his secrets, had she?
Hickle had sped from freeway to freeway, taking the 101 to the 110 to the 10, in a desperate rush for the coastline. Now he was traveling through West LA on the Santa Monica Freeway, the gas pedal on the floor, the needle of the Rabbit's speedometer pinned at eighty-five.
Time was his enemy. He had to be in position outside the beach house by 11:50 at the latest.
He checked the dashboard clock. The readout glowed 11:21. He was still four miles from Pacific Coast Highway. It was going to be tight.
He pulled around a slower car, passing illegally in the right-hand lane, not giving a damn, and then in his rearview mirror he saw the blue-red sparkle of a light bar CHP unit. After him.
Disaster.
He could not afford a speeding ticket. Simply being pulled over would take five or ten minutes, costing him any chance of reaching Malibu in time. Worse, the cops might want to know what was inside the duffel bag. Possession of the guns was legal, but he was sure the authorities would find an excuse to hold him for questioning-and while they did, a report would come in about an explosion at his address.
No.
He had failed at everything he'd ever tried. But tonight he would not accept defeat. Tonight nothing would stop him. Tonight, just this once, he would win.
Hickle accelerated, veering from lane to lane, whipping around slower traffic. The CHP car accelerated in pursuit, and an amplified voice came over a loudspeaker, giving orders that he didn't even hear.
"Fuck you," he breathed. He had taken orders all his life. He had submitted meekly to the demands of carwash proprietors and supermarket managers and Mr.
Zachareas of Zack's Donut Shack. He had been quiet and punctual and reliable, and he had never talked back. Well,"he was talking back now, talking back to the whole goddamned world.
The cops were trying to keep up as he skidded from lane to lane, but they had to worry about the safety of other drivers, and he had no worries at all. The dome light shrank in his rearview mirror, and directly ahead he saw an off-ramp.
Swerving into the exit lane, cutting off traffic with a blare of horns, Hickle veered onto the surface streets.
The cops would want to follow, but when he'd last seen them, they'd been in the fast lane, and he doubted they could cut over to the exit in time.
Even if they did, they wouldn't find him. He was too smart to travel in a straight line. He detoured down side streets, swung through residential neighborhoods, drove along alleys, until he was sure the patrol car had been left behind.
Her first awareness was of pain.
Blinking, Abby raised her head, then shut her eyes against new agony.
It throbbed from the back of her skull to the bridge of her nose. It pulsed behind her eyes.
"Man," she muttered, "this is one bad hangover."
The words came out raspy and blurred. Her tongue was an immense cotton wad blocking her throat.
She was sprawled on the floor alongside her bedroom bureau, and there was a bad smell in the air, a smell like two dozen kinds of garbage blended together on a hot day, a smell like a swamp. She'd been knocked out-couldn't remember how. Her last memory was of Hickle.
Looming over her, the shotgun in his hand.
Had he shot her? She didn't think so. She wasn't aware of any holes in her body, but somehow he'd rendered her unconscious and left her here.
And that sour, brackish smell… Gas. The apartment was filling with gas.