Michael Prescott - Next Victim

Speeding down Ventura Boulevard, she lowered all the car windows and shut off the air conditioner and the vents. She thought it would be a long time before she used the AC again.

The night air felt good, rushing in on her face, and by the time she headed up Coldwater Canyon Avenue into the Hollywood Hills, she was feeling almost strong again.

That was good. The night had just begun-it was only 9:25-and she would need to be strong for whatever was to come.

Tess parked down the street from Dodge’s house, on a turnout where her car was half hidden by eucalyptus trees. She’d driven the last quarter of a mile with her headlights off, in case anyone was watching from the windows.

The Sig Sauer felt reassuringly solid in her hand as she left the car and prowled past hedges of oleander to the driveway. At the end of the drive was a carport, with Dodge’s car inside.

No other vehicles were in sight. If Mobius had come, he’d either left already or parked elsewhere.

Dodge’s house was old, small, single-story. It stood on a small, untidy lot against a stand of trees. From the front stoop, the lights of the LA basin would be visible. That was the view Dodge had bragged about.

No lights were on. The curtains were shut, and the place looked empty, but it couldn’t be, not if the car was here.

For a moment she wished she hadn’t fried her phone back at the motel. She would have liked to call for backup, especially since the queasiness and blurred vision brought on by the nerve agent hadn’t entirely dissipated. Maybe she should’ve stopped at a pay phone along the way.

Too late now. She was on her own.

Both the front and rear doors were probably locked. Most likely she would have to force a window. But she decided to try the front door first.

Quickly down the slate path, the stones uneven from the seismic shifting of the earth in the decades since the bungalow was built. Up the two front steps to the door, then crouching low, huddling for cover in case she’d been spotted. A wave of dizziness quivered through her, another aftereffect of the gas.

Silently she grasped the doorknob, and it turned Turning freely under her hand…

The door opening…

Briefly she was disoriented in space and time, and she was entering the house she and Paul had shared, hearing the hiss of running water in the kitchen.

She almost called Paul’s name, as if he might be here.

Then reality snapped back, and this was LA, and it was Dodge she was looking for, and Paul was two years dead.

Probably it was a mistake to go in alone. Probably she was walking into an ambush or another gas chamber like room 14.

She entered anyway, moving fast through the doorway, then stepping to one side and hunching down as her vision adjusted to the space around her.

Living room. Very small. Reflective surface of a TV set, and the faint greenish glow of a VCR’s clock underneath. A low shape that was a sofa, and the sharper rectangles of end tables.

The room was empty. She was almost sure of it. If anyone was here-anyone alive-she would find him elsewhere.

She listened to the house. A creak from somewhere in the rear. Wood settling? Scrape of a tree limb against the roof? Or a footstep on a floorboard?

Another creak.

Footsteps. Back of the house.

She crossed the living room, treading silently, and peered through an open doorway into a dining area. Beyond it lay the kitchen and a hallway. The kitchen was barely larger than a closet, and she could see its complete interior from where she stood. No one there. And no water running either Water running in the sink…

Hissing through the pipes…

Pile of dinner dishes…

She fought off the memories and the new attack of vertigo that came with them. Her stomach twisted. A greasy, sick feeling rose in her throat, and she thought she might vomit. With effort she forced down the sickness.

Then she headed into the hallway.

The bedroom would be down there.

Mobius’s execution site.

Halfway down the hall, a bathroom provided the only illumination in this part of the house-the fifteen-watt glow of a nightlight. She detoured into the bathroom, whisked open the shower curtain.

No one was hiding there. But from down the hall came another creak-different in quality from the first two-then a soft click.

She thought of the sound a pistol’s slide might make as it was racked back.

Mobius had never used a gun, but she drew no comfort from that fact.

If he was out there and armed, she would have to face him. To stay in the bathroom was suicide. He could draw a bead on her from the darkness of the hall, and she would have nowhere to hide or run.

Before exiting, she jerked the nightlight out of the wall outlet, darkening the hall. Then she pivoted through the doorway and jumped to the far side of the corridor. She braced herself against the wall and waited.

No shots were fired.

Still, she’d heard someone. She was certain she had.

Slowly she approached what must be the bedroom, the last door in the hall other than the door to the backyard. Mobius could be just inside the doorway, waiting for her to enter.

Her left hand still carried the nightlight. She pitched it into the darkness of the bedroom.

As it dropped with a clatter, she ducked into the room and took cover behind the open door.

Her diversionary tactic hadn’t drawn any fire. Either Mobius was cool under pressure, or he wasn’t here at all.

She sidled along the wall, staying low, and felt a light switch poke her between the shoulder blades. The switch might control an overhead light or a lamp on a bureau or bedside table.

She needed light. Darkness had given her an edge as long as her intrusion had been undetected. Now it worked against her, giving her enemy too many places to hide.

She flicked the switch, then swept the room with her gaze as a lamp on a table came on.

The bed and what was on it registered instantly, but she refused to take it in until she had looked into the closet and behind the bureau.

Then another glance into the hall.

Mobius wasn’t here.

But he had been.

She turned back to the bed where Dodge lay in his cheap suit, fully dressed, wearing even his shoes, his wrists duct-taped to the headboard, mouth sealed against a cry, throat opened in a gout of drying blood.

His eyes stared, empty.

She touched his neck, impelled by her training to check the carotid artery for a pulse, but of course there was no pulse. The blood had stopped flowing. It was already becoming tacky and dark.

But not very tacky. Not yet.

And Dodge’s skin was warm, his eyes moist with their last tears.

He had died only minutes ago.

The noises she’d heard. That third creak, that soft click.

It had been the creak of the back door opening. The click of the latch sliding into place as the door eased shut.

Mobius had escaped out the back while she was searching the bathroom.

He couldn’t have gone far.

She ran out the back door, the gun leading her, and scanned the shadowy trees. A spotlight mounted on the rear wall threw a pale glow over the grass.

Moving through the trees, she found herself at the edge of a steep hillside sloping down into a canyon. She looked down, and there he was, limned in starlight, a tall, masculine figure slip-sliding through the chaparral brush fifty yards away.

She didn’t know if her voice had come back until she heard herself shout, "Stop, FBI!"

Her cry echoed and reechoed across the canyon, scaring a bevy of birds into reckless flight. The man on the hillside didn’t even slow down.

She pointed her gun at him, but he was far away and there was too much darkness and ground cover and her arm was still shaky from the effects of the VX. She knew she would miss, so she conserved ammunition, slipping the gun into the waistband of her slacks as she scrambled down the slope.