MIchael Prescott - The Shadow hunter

She tossed her purse into her Dodge and pulled onto Gainford. The street was dark in both directions. She went north to Santa Monica.

There was no stoplight at the intersection; a left turn into the constant stream of traffic was impossible. If Hickle had come this way, he had headed east.

She shot into a gap in the traffic and accelerated, shifting from lane to lane as she scanned the boulevard for a white VW Rabbit. She didn't see one anywhere.

"Where are you, Raymond?" she whispered.

"Where are you going in such a rush? And what do you want the gun for?"

She had no idea what was happening, but her intuition, which seldom failed, insisted that it was big and somehow dangerous. Dangerous to Kris? she wondered.

Or to me?

She didn't know.

Two blocks from Gainford, Hickle veered off Santa Monica, cutting south on Wilcox, then negotiated a maze of side streets and arterial boulevards until he reached Western, where he turned north. He checked his rearview mirror repeatedly.

There was a chance that Jack was following him, that the phone call had been a ruse to lure him out of his apartment after dark. It seemed unlikely, but Hickle had no way to fathom Jack's motives or the extent of his knowledge. To Hickle he was only a name on an e-mail account, untraceable, mysterious.

He remembered the letter that had arrived a month ago, bearing a downtown LA postmark and no return address. The letter had consisted of three lines of computer printout, unsigned. It had said that a Zoom Mail account had been opened for Hickle under the name Jackbquick, with the Volkswagen's license plate number as the password.

The note had advised him to check his mail regularly. It had concluded simply. Destroy this letter.

Hickle had obeyed the instructions, first burning letter and envelope, then visiting the library and using a public terminal to find Zoom Mail home page, where he logged on as Jackbquick. There had been two messages in his Inbox. One was a note from Zoom Mail congratulating him on selecting their free service. The other, according to the return address, had been sent by a Zoom Mail client who called himself Jackbnimble.

It was right out of the nursery rhyme:

Jack, be nimble Jack, be quick Jack, jump over the candlestick Whoever had made contact with him was someone who enjoyed playing games.

The e-mail message, though brief, had been dense with detailed information on the security measures that protected Kris. Hickle had read it slowly, pausing often to draw a breath. He'd learned that Kris employed a security firm called Travis Protective Services, that a bodyguard accompanied her at all times, that the bodyguard carried a 9mm-Beretta and served as her chauffeur, that additional agents were posted in the guest cottage on the property. There had been more, a wealth of facts.

If they were facts. They might have been lies designed to ensnare him in some subtle way. He couldn't be sure. He could trust no one, not even his anonymous benefactor.

But if the message was what it appeared to be, then Jack was someone with inside knowledge of the TPS operation. A TPS employee, perhaps, or a member of the Barwood household. This person knew a great deal about Hickle-his address, his Volkswagen's plate number-and wanted Hickle to know a great deal about Kris.

The last lines of the message had been the most intriguing:

The Malibu Reserve compound is securely gated and fenced, but a drainage pipe affords access to the property on the northwest side, sixty feet from Pacific Coast Highway.

Access to the property. Jackbnimble@zoommail.com had wanted him to know this.

Hickle had replied to the message, typing one word:

Why?

He'd reread Jack's note until it was committed to memory, then deleted it from his mailbox as the sender had instructed.

Hickle hadn't slept well that night. For the next few days he'd checked his e-mail account every afternoon.

A week had passed before he received the next message.

More security details, capped by a provocative closing observation:

Kris is most vulnerable when she returns from work in her Lincoln Town Car shortly after midnight. An assailant could lie in wait in the darkness and not be seen.

Think about it.

There had been no answer to Hickle's question.

Jack's motive, it appeared, was not for him to know.

Hickle had spent his next Sunday afternoon in the brush near the Malibu Reserve, tracking down the drainage pipe. It was narrow, but he could wriggle through. Once inside, he was within sight of the Barwoods' house. Several times he had returned, snapping Polaroids of Kris as she jogged on the beach in the company of her bodyguard. He had watched the guest cottage long enough to see men enter and leave.

Agents were indeed stationed there. Everything Jack had told him had checked out.

There had been two more recent messages, different from the earlier ones. Jack was growing impatient. He goaded Hickle. The last message had been a childish taunt:

Kris laughs about you. She thinks you're a joke. She's told the TPS agents that you're no threat because you don't have the guts to take action.

Crude manipulation. Hickle hadn't fallen for it. He had come to distrust Jack. Something was going on here, something complicated and mysterious. Maybe TPS was sending the messages to grod him into committing some foolhardy arrest able offense. After the last e-mail from Jack, he had sent a one-sentence reply:

You can't make me your bitch.

He had not checked his Internet mailbox this week.

He had expected never to hear from Jack again. Instead, for the first time Jack had made contact by telephone.

The call worried him, because he didn't know what had prompted it or what it might mean.

At this hour the library would be closed. To check his e-mail, he would have to use an all-night copy store on Western Avenue. The store was a block ahead.

Could Jack have anticipated that he would go to this store? Might he be waiting there, ready to spring some deadly trap?

"Seems doubtful," Hickle murmured, but as he eased into the right lane, he reached across to the duffel bag on the passenger seat and unzipped it, affording instant access to the shotgun.

If anybody opened fire, he would be ready. He would not go down without a fight.

Nobody shot at him. He guided the Volkswagen into a shadowy corner of the parking lot, where he could observe the store without being seen from inside.

A neon sign blazed above a glass storefront framing rows of self-service photocopy machines and computers. A few people were running off copies or tapping at keyboards. The clerk behind the-counter looked pale and drawn under the fluorescent glow.

Nothing out of the ordinary. Hickle stuffed the duffel bag on the floor of the passenger side, out of sight, then headed into the store to see what Jackbnimble had to say.

Abby had lost him. After driving for twenty minutes on Santa Monica and adjacent streets she had caught no glimpse of Hickle's car. She pulled into a gas station and parked near the air hose to collect her thoughts.

The phone call was the key. She had to know its point of origin. There was a way. Pacific Bell offered call return service. Entering a three-button code on the phone's keypad provided the customer with the number of the most recent caller. A charge of seventy-five cents for the service would appear on Hickle's next phone bill, possibly tipping him off, but she couldn't worry about that now.

To use his phone she had to get inside his apartment.

Picking the lock on his door was no good; the electric pick gun was too noisy to use in the evening when other tenants were around, and doing the job by hand would take too long. The only other means of entry was his bedroom window. She had seen him open both windows. He hadn't closed them when he left. He'd been in a hurry.