MIchael Prescott: The Shadow hunter

Sheila wasn't there. The stool she had been using was unoccupied.

This was bad.

Abby stood at the bar and signaled to the bartender.

He bared his teeth in a predatory smile when he saw her.

"Hey, sweet thing."

She ignored this.

"Where's the woman I was sitting with?"

"Sheila?" His smile became a smirk.

"I think she went to visit a friend."

Abby's heart sped up.

"What friend?"

He leaned close.

"Listen, forget about her. She's a loser anyway. You don't need to hang with her. I just wanted to get rid of her, so maybe you and me could get to know each other."

"So you told her Devin Corbal is here?"

"How'd you know-"

"Never mind. Where's the V.I.P Room?"

"Sorry, you can't go in there. Celebs only. You know, I get off in a couple hours-" Abby reached out and grabbed his right wrist, applying painful pressure to the scaphoid bone below the ball of his thumb.

"Where is it?" she hissed.

The bartender paled.

"Around back," he said through gritted teeth.

"That way." He jerked his head to the left.

She released his wrist. He rubbed it, gasping.

"Jesus, lady, what the fuck's up with you?"

Abby barely heard him. She was already pushing through the crowded dance floor, praying she was not too late.

Sheila's pulse was roaring in her ears, and her eyes didn't seem to want to blink anymore, and there was a hot, crawling queasiness in her gut.

She knew what she had to do. She had rehearsed it, fantasized it, but in her fantasies she had never been shaking with fear, and her stomach hadn't bubbled like this, and the music hadn't been so loud, the dancing crowd so close and hot.

She had the gun. She was ready. She had to be ready.

He would be in the V.I.P Room. It was where he always went when he was here. He had taken her to that room one night. She remembered it well-a small ‹oom in the rear of the Liz, curtained off. A room without windows. A room that would offer no place for him to run or hide.

As she left the dance floor, she reached into her purse and withdrew a Llama.45, fully loaded, the safety off.

The V.I.P Room was just ahead, unmarked, screened off by a curtained doorway.

She would enter that room and shoot Devin Corbal right in his lying heart. Teach him a lesson for treating her like some whore. Show him she hadn't been kidding around when she warned him he'd be sorry.

Briefly she wished she had time for a hit of coke. She carried an insulin needle in her purse and a small bag of the white powder. She could duck into the rest room, mix the coke with water, draw it into the syringe, and then inject herself in the crook of her arm… But she knew that if she took the time to do that, she would lose her nerve.

She had to kill Devin now, before she thought about it too much. It was now or never.

"Now or never," she muttered to herself, boosting her courage.

Go for it.

Sheila took a breath, then pushed through the curtains into the V.I.P Room, the gun leading her.

The room was empty.

Unfinished drinks were scattered around the tables.

Snack foods, still warm, lay on platters. Two chairs had been kicked back from the tables at awkward angles, as if whoever had been in here had departed in haste.

"They cleared him out," Sheila whispered, piecing it together.

"He was in here and… they cleared him out."

But he hadn't gone out via the dance floor to the front entrance. She would have seen him.

The back way, then.

She left the V.I.P Room and looked down the hall. At its far end was a dim, flickering exit sign.

Of course.

She ran down the hall, the din of dance music diminishing behind her, and pushed open a metal door.

She found herself at the top of a short flight of wooden steps descending into an alley. Her gaze took in the high brick walls, the sloping shoulders of the Hollywood Hills rising to the north, the haze of neon glare and smog that hid the stars, and, ten yards away, moving fast-Devin Corbal.

In the light from a billboard overhead she saw Devin clearly. He was tall and lean, dressed in an open collared shirt and faded jeans, and he was being hustled out of the alley by two grim-faced men in dark suits who must be his bodyguards.

They hadn't looked back. Hadn't noticed her on the stairs.

From this vantage point she could see Devin's broad back, a perfect target.

Her gun came up. Finger on the trigger.

One of the bodyguards saw her, too late.

Sheila fired once-twice-and then something hit her hard from behind, driving her forward, down the stairs in a tangle of flailing limbs.

She had an impression of dark hair and furious hazel eyes, and then there was an elbow coming up fast to slam the base of her jaw, and she went limp and felt nothing at all.

Abby clawed Sheila's gun out of her slack fingers and batted it away, then pinned her to the pavement at the bottom of the stairs. She held her down until she was certain that Sheila had blacked out from the blow to her jaw.

Then she looked at Devin Corbal. He lay motionless on the ground. One of his bodyguards performed frantic CPR while the other yelled into a cell phone; "Get the car back here now, right now'."

"We need an RATHE first bodyguard shouted. Rescue ambulance.

"It'll take too long, we can drive him to the ER ourselves."

Into the phone again: "Where the hell is the car?"

But the car wouldn't help. An ambulance wouldn't help, nor would an emergency room. Nothing would help. Abby knew that.

She saw the lake of maroon blood that seeped from between Devin's shoulder blades. She saw his eyes, open, staring.

Sheila had fired twice. One shot had gone wild, but the other, by skill or luck, had hit Devin Corbal squarely in the back and killed him instantly.

The bodyguard performing CPR finally reached the same conclusion. He stood slowly, shaking his head.

"We lost him," the man said.

"God damn it, we lost him."

No, Abby thought. You didn't lose him.

I did..

Hickle watched her as she ran.

Her hair fascinated him. It was long and golden, blown in wild trammels by the sea breeze. It trailed behind her, a comet's tail, a wake of blond fire.

She was crossing directly in front of him now. Instinctively he withdrew a few inches deeper into the overhanging foliage that screened him from view.

She pounded past, plumes of sand bursting under her bare feet. Her long legs pumped, and her slim belly swelled with intakes of air. Even from a distance of twenty yards he could see the glaze of perspiration on her suntanned skin. She glowed.

Months earlier, when he had first seen her, he had wondered if her radiance was a trick of the camera lens. Now that he had observed her in person many times, he knew it was real. She actually did glow, as angels did. She was an ethereal being, tethered lightly to this world.

Soon he would cut the tether, and then she would not be part of the world at all.

He could have done it now, today, if he'd brought the shotgun with him.

But there was no hurry. He could kill her at any time.

Besides, he enjoyed watching her.

She continued down the beach, followed by her bodyguard. The bodyguard always accompanied her when she went jogging, and never once had he even glanced into the narrow gap between two beachfront houses, where a trellis of bougainvillea cast a shadow dark enough to conceal a crouching man.

"You shouldn't trust your life to him, Kris," Hickle whispered.

"You're not nearly as safe as you think."

There was sun and sea spray and blue sky. There was the momentum of her body, the rhythm of her feet on the sand. There was her breathing, her heart rate.

This was all. Nothing more. Only the moment. One moment detached from the rest of her life, one moment when she did not have to think about threats and security measures, the bodyguard jogging a few paces behind her, the command post in the guest cottage at her house… Damn.