MIchael Prescott - The Shadow hunter

His every escape route was cut off-except one.

The lagoon.

It lay on his left, a dark spread of mud flats and low shrubs bordering two shallow ponds fed by Malibu Creek. Forty acres of wetland, Malibu Lagoon State Park. A nature preserve, a nesting spot for migrant birds and for him, a place to hide.

Hickle left the path and started running again. He wondered if he would ever be able to stop.

"He went into the lagoon." Pfeiffer stood where the beach met the dirt path, staring down at a confusion of tracks.

"He ran for the parking lot, must've been spooked by the cop car, came back, and took cover in there."

His flashlight beam picked out a zigzag line of shoe prints that vanished among the tall cattails and pickle weed their roots sunk in the muddy soil.

Travis and Carruthers stood beside him, guns and flashlights drawn.

"Might be hunkered down," Carruthers said nervously, "drawing a bead on us right now."

"This guy is too rattled to draw a bead on anyone," Travis answered.

"He's a scared rat on the run." He looked at Pfeiffer, who had a good eye for a trail.

"Can we track him?"

"Don't think so. Boss. He must've trampled the foliage, but it looks to me like it's already springing back. And what with storm surges and careless hikers, there's enough damage to cover whatever tracks might be left."

Travis surveyed the ranks of cattails, then pointed at the bridge over Malibu Creek.

"He's heading that way.

He'll go in the water, cross under the bridge, and get out on the opposite side."

Carruthers frowned.

"How can you be sure?"

"I know how these guys think. I was right about the car, wasn't I?"

Travis had suggested the possibility that Hickle left his car in the beach parking lot. Carruthers had passed on the alert over his radio, and a CHP unit in the vicinity had taken the call. The highway cops had found Hickle's Volkswagen Rabbit a couple of minutes ago.

"You were right," the deputy conceded.

"Well, if the bridge is where our boy is going, we better stop him."

He undipped the radio from his belt and, via the dispatcher, relayed a message to the CHP officers in the parking lot, reporting that the armed suspect had entered Malibu Lagoon and might attempt to make egress under the Cross Creek bridge. He really did use the words make egress.

"If those guys are done securing his vehicle," he told the dispatcher,

"we could use'em on the bridge to keep an eye out."

"Good idea," Travis said when the transmission was over.

"Yeah, if you're right about where he's headed. If you're wrong, then we're watching the bridge while he circles back to the beach and hightails it out of here in any of three directions."

"So how do we proceed?" Travis asked. He had to defer to Carruthers because the kid was the only law enforcement officer on the scene.

"We split up, cover the whole lagoon. If he's hiding in there, we flush him out."

Travis nodded.

"It's a plan."

"Who checks out the creek under the bridge?" Pfeiffer asked.

"I do." Travis shrugged.

"My theory, so I get to prove it."

"Watch your back," Carruthers said.

Travis sketched him a wave and headed into the lagoon, holding his flashlight down at his side to conceal its beam.

Hickle crawled through the ranks of high, waving cattails, dragging the duffel. His elbows and knees were slimed with mud. Gnats buzzed at his ears.

Twice he had blundered close to nesting waterfowl, which had flapped their wings at him, squawking angrily.

He didn't know if his pursuers could pinpoint his position from the noise.

The ground turned softer. He smelled brackish water. One of the ponds was just ahead. He scrambled forward, sloshing up thick clumps of ooze, and finally burst out of the cattail forest into the open space at the edge of the estuary.

The pond joined the mouth of Malibu Creek, which flowed under the bridge that was part of the coast highway.

Bridge traffic flashed past with a rattle and hum.

On the far side of the highway no one would be looking for him.

This thought impelled him off the muddy bank into the pond. He stayed low, bending almost double as he slogged through the shallow water, kicking up swirls of silt. Mud sucked at his waterlogged shoes, sending jolts of pain through his bad ankle. He kept going, his attention fixed on the bridge and the safety beyond it.

The duffel bag was an increasingly difficult burden, but he would not relinquish it. He might need the guns. As the water deepened, he hoisted the bag higher to keep it dry. He couldn't afford wet ammunition.

The bridge was close. When a faint current moved against him, he knew he had left the pond and entered Malibu Creek. The creek wound inland through forest and scrub. He could follow it as long as he liked, exit whenever he felt sure he'd shaken off his pursuit. Then he would need a car. He would steal one. He knew how to hot-wire an ignition. He had seen it done on television a thousand times. One of Kris's newscasts had detailed the procedure in a report on auto theft.

He hated to think of Kris. It stirred up too much anger and pain. He consoled himself with the thought that at least Abby was dead.

Under the bridge now. Traffic thrumming overhead.

No moonlight or starlight reached into the concrete grotto. Dark water sloshed fitfully against the pylons, its wet slaps repeated in a train of soft echoes. He could hear his own breathing, amplified by the peculiar acoustics of the place.

He was rearing the far side of the bridge when he heard a car stop directly above him. Instinct froze him in place. A moment later a spotlight snapped on, sweeping the water straight ahead.

The car was a patrol unit, maybe the same one from the parking lot, and it was angling its spotlight down into the creek. He couldn't go forward. If he left the cover of the bridge he would be seen instantly.

Had to retreat, conceal himself in the lagoon until the way was clear.

He headed in that direction, then stopped as a flashlight beam shone down from the bridge on that side, panning the water.

There must be two cops. Highway patrol officers, probably; they rode in pairs after dark. Between them, they had both sides of the bridge covered. He was safe only as long as he stayed hidden underneath.

Trapped.

He backed up against one of the rusty pylons and huddled there, a scared animal. Minutes earlier he had been the predator lying in ambush. Now he was the prey, hiding from those who hunted him.

With trembling hands he removed the shotgun from the duffel, then felt inside the bag until he found a box of ammo. He fed four Federal Super Magnum shells into the gun. If the cops figured out where he was, he would open fire. The twelve-gauge was a better weapon than the rifle at close range. He might kill one of them, at least, before the sound of gunfire led his other pursuers to the bridge.

He hoped it wouldn't come to that. If Kris had died, his own fate would no longer matter. But as long as she lived, there was still a purpose to his life.

Travis saw him there, under the bridge.

The poor son of a bitch was pinned between one highway cop's downcast flashlight beam and the spotlight from the CHP car itself. He couldn't leave without being seen. All he could do was brace himself against a pylon and sit tight.

Crouching on the mud flat his flashlight off, Travis considered his next move. Carruthers and Pfeiffer were too far away to see him. The highway patrol cops were within hailing distance, but he would be invisible to them as long as he stayed in the high bulrushes and sedges along the bank.

Carefully he pocketed his flashlight, then made his way through the foliage, keeping his head down and relying on the tall plants for cover.