Jeffery Deaver - XO

Finally ready, Dance slipped outside and stepped into the parking lot.

Her mission was to find out who might be the person with the bad habits of nicotine and, possibly, espionage. She’d just seen the glow of the cigarette again, in nearly the same place that she’d seen it earlier, in the park across the road. The smoker was still there.

She glanced out from behind a Caravan filled with dog show paraphernalia and a bumper sticker bragging that the driver was the proud owner of a German shepherd smarter than your honor student.

Dance focused again on the tiny orange glow in a recess between two thick stands of pine.

Was the cigarette just a coincidence? Dance might have thought so except for the fact that Sheri Towne’s attacker had possibly been smoking. And that Edwin might still have the habit.

In any event, she wanted to get a glimpse of the person. If it was a teenage boy sharing a cigarette-or a joint-with his buddies, that would be that. If it was Edwin Sharp-or someone else she might have come in contact with recently-that would be a different matter.

Dance waited until a car entered the lot and drove past her, parking at the entrance. Then she stepped out of the shadows and made her way to the four-lane road and hurried across.

Very aware of the lightness on her hip where her pistol normally was, she circled wide and entered the park through one of the half dozen gaps in a rusty chain link fence.

She stayed close to the trees-the path through the playground would have offered a good view of her approach in the cool moonlight. She waved away lethargic but persistent late summer insects, and bats dipped close, dining on them. Keeping her eyes down to spot noisy vegetation and food wrappers, she moved forward steadily but slowed as she approached the cul-de-sac where the spy, or an innocent citizen, was ruining his health.

Twenty feet farther on she smelled cigarette smoke.

And she slowed even more, crouching.

She couldn’t see him yet but noted that the place where he was sitting seemed to be a picnic area; there were several tables nearby, all of them chained to thick concrete posts in the ground. Was table theft from public facilities a big problem in Fresno?

She moved closer yet, one careful step at a time.

The orange glow was evident but thick pine boughs completely obscured her view of the smoker, about twenty feet away.

She reached out and gripped the bough, moving it aside.

Squinting…

Oh, no! Dance gasped.

The lit cigarette was stuck into a fork of a sapling near a picnic table.

That meant only one thing: Edwin or whoever it might be had seen her leave the motel and drawn her into a trap.

She spun around but saw no attacker. She dropped to her knees fast, remembering that his weapon of choice was a pistol, probably Gabe Fuentes’s stolen Glock. She wasn’t much of a target in the moonlight but you can spray ten or twelve rounds very quickly with a weapon like that and all you needed to do was point in the general direction of your victim.

Still no sign of him.

Where could he be?

Or had he lured her here to get into her room, steal her computer and notes?

No. He’d be coming after her.

She couldn’t wait any longer. She rose and turned, feeling a painful tickle of panic on her back, as if he were actually rubbing the muzzle of the gun along her spine.

But instead of returning in the same direction she’d come, she decided to head directly for the motel. This route was closer, though it required her to vault the six-foot fence. Still, she felt she had no choice, and she headed that way now, turning away from the lone cigarette and moving as fast as she could, keeping low, toward the road.

Thinking about getting across those four lanes, which would expose her to-

It was then that he sprang the trap.

Or rather she sprang it herself, tripping over the fishing line-or maybe guitar string-he’d strung across the route he’d anticipated she would take back. She fell hard, slamming into the packed dirt; there were none of the many pine needle beds here, which would have broken her fall. She lay gasping, breath knocked from her lungs.

Damn, oh, goddamn. That hurts! Can’t breathe…

She heard footsteps, not far away, moving in.

Closer, closer.

She desperately tried to scramble toward the road, where at least a car might be driving past, discouraging him from shooting.

But the asphalt was at least forty or fifty feet away, through the woods.

She tried to rise but couldn’t; there was no air in her chest.

Then through the still, humid night she heard behind her, the double snap of an automatic pistol’s slide, back and forward, chambering a round.

KATHRYN DANCE TRIED once more to get to cover.

But there was no cover, nothing here but skinny pine trees and anemic brush.

Then a firm voice, a man’s from not far away, called in a sharp whisper, “Kathryn!”

She glanced about but could see no one.

Then the speaker called, “You, by the gym set. I have a weapon. I’m a county deputy. Do not move!”

Dance tried to see who this was. She couldn’t spot her attacker either.

There was an eternal pause and then from behind her she heard fleeing footsteps as the attacker escaped.

Then her rescuer was running too, in pursuit. Dance rose unsteadily, trying-still largely unsuccessfully-to breathe. Who was it? Harutyun?

She expected to hear gunshots but there was none, only the sounds of returning footfalls and a man saying in a whisper, “Kathryn, where are you?” The voice was familiar.

“Here.”

He approached. Finally she sucked in a solid breath and wiped tears of pain from her eyes. She blinked in surprise.

Walking through the woods, holstering his weapon, was Michael O’Neil.

She barked a laugh, which contained part relief, part joy and a dash of hysteria.

THEY SAT IN the bar, drinking Sonoma Cabernets.

Dance asked, “That was your car? That I saw pulling in fifteen minutes ago?”

“Yeah. I saw you crossing the street. You looked… furtive.”

“I was trying. Not furtive enough.”

“So I followed.”

She lowered her head to his broad shoulder. “Oh, Michael, I never thought it’d be a trap.”

“Who was it, Edwin?”

“Probably. Yes, no. We just don’t know. What did you see?”

“Nothing. A shadow.”

She gave a faint laugh at the word, sipped her wine. “That’s the theme of the case: shadows.”

“He’s still using that song you told me about?”

“Right.”

She gave him an update of what had happened so far, including how the information on the website he’d found from the file sharer’s partner in Salinas had let them save the life of Kayleigh’s stepmother.

“So he’s targeting family?” O’Neil, as a Major Crimes detective, had some experience with stalker cases too. “That’s rare.”

“Yes, it is.” She added, “There’s one verse of ‘Your Shadow’ left. But Kayleigh’s written a lot of songs. She’s convinced he’s using fire because of her hit ‘Fire and Flame.’ Who knows what else he could decide to do? Each verse in ‘Shadow’ has a theme but they’re also pretty vague so we can’t figure out just who he’s going to target next.”

“How does the last verse go?”

Dance recited it.

You can’t keep down smiles; happiness floats.

But trouble can find us in the heart of our homes.

Life never seems to go quite right,

You can’t watch your back from morning to night.

“Maybe it’s a love song but it’s plenty creepy to me. And, right, it doesn’t exactly give GPS coordinates about where he’s going to attack.”