MIchael Prescott - The Shadow hunter

Feel sorry for him. Feel sorry.

Who was she to say that, to pass judgment on him?

She was the one who ought to be ashamed of who she was and what she did.

She was the one who made up stories about a failed relationship and bumped into him in the laundry room and got him to talk about the TV news. She was the one who burrowed her way into other people's lives and poked around and uncovered secrets. She was a liar and a snitch and a sneak and a conniving little whore, and what she deserved what she deserved… The shotgun.

That was what she deserved, yes, the shotgun, absolutely.

Hickle sat up, ignoring the cassette as it continued to play She was a goddamned bitch. She had deceived him, manipulated him, served as a tool of his enemies, spied on him and reported to Kris. And she had done it so skillfully that if not for his friend Jackbnimble, he might never have known.

His anonymous informer hiding behind a nursery rhyme name was the only person he could trust, the only person who had been honest with him all along.

Every item of information Jack had passed on had proven true. Every word of advice had been sound.

And he had told Hickle what to do, hadn't he? Hadn't he?

First Abby, then Kris.

The two of them-dead.

Now, without further delay.

He got off the bed and unlocked his bedroom closet.

He took out his duffel bag and unzipped it, removing the shotgun. He checked to be sure it was loaded.

Blammo. No more Abby.

Blammo. No more Kris.

Everything would come to its proper end tonight.

He would win, and they would lose.

The tape kept playing, Abby's voice a whisper amid the folds of his bedspread, but he didn't need to hear it anymore.

To isolate the mystery noise, Abby first used the low pass filter on her audio deck to remove all frequencies higher than eight kilohertz. This cut off part of the hiss but not enough. She fiddled with the ten band graphic equalizer, pulling down the sliders on the higher frequencies while boosting the midrange tones.

She tried to minimize the hiss without losing the murmur. It was hard.

The two sounds were at similar frequencies. But as she made fine adjustments, the murmur came through a bit more sharply, and she identified it as a voice.

Was Hickle muttering to himself under his breath?

She didn't think so. Maybe he was listening to the radio, but she didn't recall seeing a radio in his bedroom.

Then she heard new noises. She paused, kneeling on the floor alongside the console, her ear close to the speakers.

Creak of the bed, thump of footsteps. A door opening.

Something being dragged briefly on the floor.

"What are you up to, Raymond?" she breathed.

Footsteps again. She glanced expectantly at the monitor, but he did not enter the living room.

Then a rattle of activity, a thump that was not a footfall… and silence except for the lingering room-tone hiss and, behind it, the murmuring sound that might have been a voice.

The frequency of the human voice falls mainly between 1.5 and 2.5 kilohertz. She boosted this range, rolling off the higher frequencies, and the background hiss dropped away, leaving the mystery sound isolated and distinct.

It was her own voice.

"… all depends on whether or not he has the nerve to follow through on what has been, until now, only a detailed fantasy of violent revenge The thoughts she'd dictated into her micro recorder Hickle must have taken the recorder, stolen it.

He was listening to the tape.

He knew everything.

Abby's gun was in her purse, and her purse was in the living room. She twisted upright, spun away from the closet-Too late.

Framed in her bedroom window was Hickle. On the fire escape, shotgun in his hands.

He swept the barrel toward her. She ducked behind the bed, denying him a clear shot, but she'd bought herself no more than a couple of seconds.

The window was open. He only had to punch through the screen and climb in.

Distantly it occurred to her that the last question on her mental checklist had been answered.

Would fear deter Hickle from taking action?

It would not.

Prone on the floor, she heard the crunch of the wire mesh, the rattle of the screen as it fell out of the frame.

The unidentified noises from his bedroom-she understood them now-rattle of the screen being removed, thump of the screen as it fell.

He had slipped through his window onto the fire escape.

Now he was climbing into her bedroom. She heard the rustle of his clothes.

Had to get past him, reach her revolver in the living room. If she left cover, he would kill her with one shot.

Okay, so crawl under the bed. She might have time to wriggle out the other side before he figured out where she'd gone.

Good plan, except the bed was too low-she couldn't squirm under it.

She was trapped, and he was coming, his footsteps vibrating through the floorboards.

Her only chance was to fight. She had been trained to respond to an attack from a position of disadvantage, and if her current circumstances didn't qualify as a position of disadvantage, nothing would.

As Hickle came around the bed, she sprang to her feet and ducked under the shotgun's barrel, then brought up her right arm with her hand closed to the second finger joint and aimed a straight blow at his larynx.

He dodged, she delivered a glancing strike to the side of his neck, and he stumbled back, raising the gun.

She snapped a kick at his right arm. It caught him near the elbow.

His fingers splayed. The shotgun fell.

Before he could pick it up-finish him.

She let out a yell of rage and drove her open palm at his face, but he darted sideways, the strike missed, and now she was off balance.

He seized her by the hair and flung her onto the bed, then dipped out of sight and came up with the shotgun in his hands.

She tried to scramble clear, but already he was on top of her, the shotgun muzzle in her face.

"They'll hear you," she gasped.

"Fire one shot and everybody in the building will hear."

The words had come out of nowhere, and she didn't think they had reached him.

There would be a flex of his index finger, and her life would be gone.

She braced for it.

He didn't shoot.

The shotgun withdrew a few inches.

She waited.

"That's a good point, Abby," Hickle said so softly that she could barely hear him above her roaring pulse.

"If that's your real name. Is it?"

"Yes."

"Good. That's one thing you didn't lie about."

"We have to talk, Raymond."

"So talk."

She licked her lips. She smelled lubricant on the shotgun's muzzle.

Absurdly it made her want to sneeze.

"Could you put that thing down? I think I'm allergic to it."

He took a step away from the bed, shifting his grip to hold the gun by the barrel, not the stock.

"Okay," she said.

"It looks like you found me out."

"Looks like."

"You're smart, Raymond. I underestimated you."

"Yes."

"Now that I know how smart you are, things will be different. I can be straight with you."

"Go ahead, tell me what's going on."

"I will. I'll tell you everything." She was starting to get matters under control. She'd had a bad moment there, but it had passed, and now she had options, possibilities.

She sat up, choosing her next words with care, and Hickle slammed down the shotgun on the back of her skull. 2B Abby fell off the bed and collapsed on the floor. She shuddered once, then did not move again.

"No more lies, whore," Hickle whispered.

He stood over her, wary of a trick. She could be playing possum, though he doubted it. The shotgun's butt stock had clipped her pretty good.

Even so, he kept a tight grip on the gun as he crouched beside her and peeled back one eyelid. Her eye was rolled up in the socket.