John Sandford - Mortal Prey

But he did not.

After ten minutes, he headed back, paused by the metal building, looking over the spot he thought might have given her the shooting stance. She would have been able to rest her hand against the building, and across the parking lot, now a sea of flashing lights, they would have been perfectly illuminated and silhouetted against the hotel…

"Goddamnit," he said aloud.

Thiswas the reason for sending Bennett to watch Dallaglio. Rinker had found out where the out-of-town agents were staying, probably by calling around to the main hotels and asking for them by name.

Once she had the hotel, she'd scouted it, picked a place to shoot from. But she couldn't wait out there all day with a gun, hoping somebody would come along. By sending Bennett out to Dallaglio's, she'd known that all the big shots would be pulled out of the hotel, and once they found out that it was a false alarm, they'd all be coming back, late at night. She'd be in the dark, and they'd be walking in the bright lights of the parking lot…

As he thought that, he was swept by a sudden, physical chill. He hadn't even considered the possibility anybody might have been hit. He'd just run. He turned back down toward the hotel. A cop tried to wave him off, but he shouted, "FBI," and was pointed into the back lot. He got out and started around the hotel, and saw a man running toward him, a big man, flapping his arms like a goose trying to take off, and not getting there.

"She…," Mallard croaked. "She…"

"Whoa, whoa," Lucas said, and suddenly he was frightened himself. "Whoa, Louis, what happened?"

"She… she shot Malone. Malone was shot."

"Ah, Jesus, how bad? How bad?" Lucas looked past him, but there was nobody on the ground, nothing. She must be on the way to the hospital.

He started past Mallard, but Mallard hooked his arm and closed his eyes and said, "She's dead."

Malone had been hit between the shoulder blades, Mallard said. The ambulance had been there in three or four minutes, but she was gone by then. She'd never opened her eyes after she'd gone down, had never made a sound. They put her in the ambulance and rushed her to a critical care unit, but Mallard had been a Marine lieutenant in the last days of Vietnam and had seen people shot, had picked up people hit in the back, and knew she was gone.

"But you're not right a hundred percent of the time. Let's get over there," Lucas said harshly. He was running a little out of control, he knew, but that had happened before, and he recognized it. "Let's get a car."

His reaction pumped a gram of hope back into Mallard, and Mallard was suddenly waving his arms at the red-haired agent, and in less than a minute, they were out of the parking lot heading west. Mallard was hoping again, but shaking his head. "I don't think, I don't think," he said over and over again. "I don't think…"

Lucas let him ramble: Mallard was in shock.

Rinker would call him again, Lucas thought. He had to talk to somebody about that-maybe Sally Epaulets. Rinker wouldn't be calling to crow about the shooting, but she'd call to talk: to make the point that this was tit-for-tat, Malone for Gene Rinker. Lucas couldn't imagine that she'd let her guard down, but he couldn't take the chance. As Mallard continued to press against the dashboard, leaning toward the hospital, Lucas took out his phone and called Sally.

She answered, and asked, "Is it true? It can't be true."

"She was shot. She's bad, and Louis thinks she's dead. We'll be at the hospital in a minute."

"Oh, my God. Her parents…"

"Listen. Sally. Listen. Are you listening?"

She was crying, Lucas realized, and he really didn't have time for that. "Stop that shit," he snapped. "Stop crying. Shut the fuck up."

That shocked her out of it, and she said, "What?"

"Rinker's gonna call me. You've got to be ready to track her. You've got to coordinate with St. Louis and everybody else. Everybody's got to be ready to roll, as soon as you have a location. Do you understand? You're monitoring me, just like we did before."

"But what about Louis…?"

Lucas glanced at Mallard, then said, "Louis is out of it for now. So you're carrying it, okay? Get this set up. She's gonna call tonight. And I gotta stay off this phone."

They were at the hospital two minutes later, Mallard hopping out of the truck while it was still rolling into a parking space. There were two agents already there, outside the emergency room doors, but he bulled on past them through the doors and inside. Lucas followed, but stopped and looked at the agents.

"She's…"

"Gone," said one of the agents. "She was gone when she got here. They put her on a respirator, but there's nothing to work with, they say."

"Ah, Jesus."

"There's one of the paramedics."

A paramedic had come out of the building, a black man with a shaved head. He wore a small gold earring and had a cigarette dangling from his lip. Lucas walked over and said, "I'm… with the FBI guys. I understand you brought Malone in?"

"Yeah. There was nothing we could do. We couldn't help her."

"Where was she hit?"

"In the spine, right between the shoulder blades. The doc could maybe tell you better. I'm not a doctor."

"Tell me what you think," Lucas said.

The paramedic took a long drag on the cigarette, blew smoke, then said, "It looked to me like a small-caliber bullet, a. 22 probably. Very small entry wound, almost like the end of a pencil. We turned her over to see if she was pumping blood out of her chest, but there were hardly any exit wounds, a couple of little cuts, like. Like shrapnel, or something. I think the bullet clipped through her spine and just exploded, like one of those… you know, those guys who shoot prairie dogs."

"A varmint bullet."

"Yeah. Varmint bullet. Like it hit her and exploded everything, just pulped her heart and lungs."

They stood silently for a minute or so, and then the guy said, "I'm sorry."

Lucas rubbed his nose. "Goddamnit."

"She a nice lady?"

"Ohhh… yeah, in a lot of ways," Lucas said, not ready for that kind of question. The paramedic looked at him oddly, and Lucas realized that he had been asking a pro-forma question and had expected a pro-forma answer. Lucas nodded his head and said, "Yeah, she was, really. A nice lady."

Lucas went inside and found Mallard slumped in a chair, while an uncertain doctor stood a couple of feet away, looking down at him, then at Lucas. "Are you a friend?"

"Yeah."

"We might want to keep this gentleman around for a little while-he's got a shock problem."

"All right. I'll have somebody sit with him."

Lucas sat down and looked at Mallard, who had suddenly shriveled. He wasn't saying anything, wasn't looking at anything except the tiled floor. Lucas patted him on the shoulder and said, "Just sit for a while."

Mallard nodded dumbly, and Lucas got up, found the red-haired agent, and told him to stick with Mallard.

The red-haired guy nodded and said, "I jerked the AIC out of bed. He's on his way to the scene, so that's covered."

"All right. I'm going back to the hotel."

"Wait for the call?"

"If it comes."

The agent shook his head. "Gotta get the bitch now. Before it was a sport. Now it's a war."

Lucas took a step toward the emergency room door, then turned back. "When you take Mallard out of here, use some other door. She set up this last shooting-it just occurred to me that she could be setting up outside here." He nodded toward the doors. "She knows we'll all be here."

The agent looked at the doors and then said, "I'll get some guys to make a quiet sweep."

"Do it."

Lucas went back to the hotel to wait; took off his shirt, got into some jeans, tried not to think about Malone. Couldn't help thinking about her: wanted to get her back, but couldn't. Finally used the hotel phone to call Weather, and told her.