Michael Prescott - Stealing Faces

Still organizing her thoughts, she stepped out of the alcove, just in time to see a dark sedan pull into the parking lot.

And she knew.

Cop car.

There was no doubt. She knew it with her nerve endings and reflexes, before her mind even had time to process the reasons. Cops always drove either a Ford Crown Victoria or a Chevy Caprice, and the sedan was a Ford straight out of the police motor pool, complete with a stubby, telltale antenna jutting out of its rear.

Instantly she ducked back inside the alcove, her heart booming, the can shaking in her hand.

Had they seen her? She wasn’t sure.

She had emerged from the alcove only momentarily, and the overhang above the doorway had kept her in shadow.

They might not have noticed her. She prayed they hadn’t.

If they had, she was finished. There was nowhere to run. The alcove had no exit except the one that led to the parking lot.

She hugged the wall and listened.

The sedan rumbled to a stop not far away. The motor died. She heard a car door open and shut.

One door.

One cop, then. Alone.

Had to be a detective. It was the detectives who drove the unmarked cars.

He was here, looking for her. He must be.

She had been stupid, so stupid, to check into this motel. She should have known that the cops at the coffee shop would remember her. Should have left this neighborhood, gone outside city limits entirely. But she’d been exhausted, distracted by the news on the radio, not thinking clearly — not thinking at all.

Twelve years of caution, and now it all might have ended for her because of one mistake, one moment’s inexcusable carelessness.

Footsteps on asphalt. The man… approaching.

He was coming for the alcove, straight for the alcove, and coming fast.

God, this was it.

Arrest.

The word she hated most in the world.

Would they put her in another mental institution, or would it be jail this time? She might almost prefer jail. Either way, she would be trapped, caged, and they would never let her go.

He was close now. A few yards away.

Wildly she thought of making a break for it, sprinting across the parking lot, perhaps losing him in a back alley.

Ridiculous. She could never outrun him.

He stepped onto the walkway outside the alcove.

Then a door opened — the door to the motel office — and she heard a male voice say, “Excuse me. I’m Detective Shepherd, Tucson PD.”

The door swung shut.

He was in the office. He’d had no interest in the alcove. He hadn’t seen her, after all.

Relief weakened her. She dropped the soda can, and its contents painted an ink-stain splash on the cement floor.

Moving fast, she left the alcove and doubled around to the rear of the motel, praying she had time to salvage her belongings and flee.

*

The manager was in her office, smoking a cigarette and arguing with somebody on the phone. She hung up quickly when Shepherd entered. He’d heard enough of the conversation through the door to know she’d been in a dispute with her bookie, but he didn’t give a damn about that.

He introduced himself, showed his badge. She was no more interested in it than the receptionist at Hawk Ridge had been.

“How can I help you?” she asked indifferently. She had narrow, suspicious eyes and three chins.

“I’m looking for a woman, a fugitive, and it’s possible she’s staying here.”

“What woman?”

“She’s blonde, looks to be between twenty-five and thirty, and if she checked in, it probably would have been this morning, before ten.”

“We don’t get many check-ins at that hour….”

“It could have been later. She was wearing—”

“Whoa. Hold on. What I was gonna say is, we don’t get many check-ins at that hour, which is why I remember the lady in question.”

She was here.

Elizabeth came around the back of the motel at a run and nearly collided with a maid’s cart outside room 29.

“ Senora,” the maid called from just inside the doorway.

A note of urgency in her voice made Elizabeth stop. “Yes?”

The maid came forward, struggling to find words in English. Elizabeth remembered her from this morning, when she changed the room after the early check-in.

“There is a man who looks for you,” the maid said finally. “A tall man.”

A man? Detective Shepherd? Had he been here earlier, snooping around? Or was it some other cop?

Elizabeth didn’t know, had no time to think about it.

“It’s okay, thanks,” she said meaninglessly, and again she was running for her room.

She reached it and found her key and flung open the door. Crossing the threshold, she realized distantly that the shredded newspaper was still in her hand. She dropped it on the floor and found this morning’s outfit scattered on two armchairs and a table — skirt, blouse, jacket.

Quickly she scooped up all three items and ran to the big suitcase on the folding stand. She thrust the clothes inside.

Maybe it was stupid to take the time to salvage her things. Maybe she would be better off just running now, leaving everything behind.

But she had almost no money left. How could she replace her wardrobe? She didn’t have much as it was. She had to save what she could. She—

A presence.

Behind her.

She sensed it, felt it.

Detective Shepherd — he was here, he was in the room with her, and she’d lost her last chance, she was finished, she could never get away.

Slowly Elizabeth turned, dread numbing her, and she saw the man in the doorway, limned in the afternoon glare.

Not a detective.

Detectives wore suits and were neatly groomed and said things like Don’t move, you’re under arrest.

This man was clad in khaki trousers and a lime-green shirt, and there were deep sweat stains under his armpits, and he wasn’t saying anything at all.

A tall man, as the maid had said. A man who, like Shepherd, had come looking for her.

Elizabeth stood frozen, staring at him, uncertain what to think or what to do.

“Kaylie,” the man whispered.

The bottom dropped out of her stomach, and she knew him suddenly. She remembered.

He was one of Cray’s patients — yes — the one who was a permanent fixture at the hospital. He’d entered her room — her cell — several times to change the bedding, while she huddled in a corner, watching, hoping he wouldn’t notice the marks of tampering on the grille of the air duct.

Walter. That was his name. She used it now, in the feeble hope of establishing a connection with him.

“Walter,” she said. “Hello.”

He took a step forward.

Somewhere an impatient voice was screaming at her that she had no time for this, because the policeman would be coming, might be on his way already.

She ignored it.

The policeman was not her biggest problem at the moment.

Walter was.

Walter, who held her pinned in his unblinking stare. Walter, who was so tall, so powerfully built, whose large hands hung at his sides, the fingers slowly curling and uncurling.

“Kill her,” Walter said, his tone quite normal, the words stated casually and calmly. “Break her neck.”

Then with astonishing speed he closed the gap between them, his big hands rising, and she ducked and pivoted away from him, grasping the first object within reach, the large suitcase, and swung it at him, the lid still open, clothes and toiletries spilling everywhere as the heavy canvas case struck him solidly in the gut.

He grunted, grasped the suitcase in both hands, yanked it away, tossed it on the bed.

“Kill her,” he said again. “Break her neck.”

He lunged. She stumbled backward. The bathroom door was behind her, and she pushed it open and darted inside, then shut the door and fumbled for the lock, but there was no lock, damn it, the door didn’t have a lock and now Walter was pressing hard against the other side, his weight and his strength overpowering her, forcing her back, the door easing open and nowhere to run, the room so small and no window and no exit.