Michael Prescott - Stealing Faces

Then she was at her car, thrusting the key at the keyhole of the door on the driver’s side, and Walter was loping toward her in a coltish, loose-limbed gait, covering ground with deceptive speed.

The key turned, the door unlocked, and she was behind the wheel, trying to find the ignition slot, missing it, missing again.

Her hand was shaking wildly, and strands of hair had fallen in hectic disarray across her face.

Finally she got the damn key in the slot, and she cranked the ignition and heard the motor rev and fail.

It wouldn’t start, the damn car wouldn’t start.

This had happened before. The Chevette was old. It had been used hard for many years. Sometimes she had to nurse the engine to get it to turn over.

Walter was ten feet away.

“Come on, Kaylie,” she whispered, “do this right.”

Distantly she realized that she had just called herself by her true name for the first time in a dozen years.

She took a long, slow breath and forced herself to turn the key slowly while gently, gently depressing the gas pedal.

A feeble growl, the motor coming alive, then a cough and a rattle and silence.

Slap of a hand on the windshield, Walter’s left hand, leaking blood from the cuts on his arm, leaving long pink smears on the glass.

Elizabeth pumped the accelerator slowly, slowly.

The door shook. Walter had grabbed the handle, but miraculously she had locked it after entering, though she had no recollection of doing so.

She pumped again, in a careful rhythm, the way she had taught herself. No panic. Panic would kill her.

Walter snarled.

His face had been empty of expression before, but there was rage stamped on it now, a crazed fury born of years of frustration, of being unable to follow directions or answer simple questions or understand what other people were talking about, and now even in the simple task he had set for himself— kill her, break her neck —he had failed, he had once again been humbled by the world, and he hated her for it.

Elizabeth keyed the ignition. The motor struggled. Wavered.

Walter smacked the driver’s-side window with his fist, and a loose mosaic of hairline cracks shivered through the safety glass.

Another blow would open the window, and his hands would plunge inside and tear her apart.

The motor caught.

She slammed the gear selector into reverse, and the Chevette squealed backward, her foot flooring the gas.

*

Through a fog of tears Walter watched the red car drive away.

He tasted defeat, a familiar flavor. He had been defeated at nearly everything, and now this too. But this time the sting of defeat was worse. On past occasions when he had disappointed himself, he had known only shame. This time there was fear also.

He had ventured well beyond the narrow boundaries Dr. Cray had circumscribed. He had taken a risk and had lost.

Dr. Cray would be angry.

The thought started Walter running in a clumsy, loose-limbed trot. He had no particular destination in mind. He merely had need of speed and exertion, so he ran across the parking lot, finally reaching the curb, where he found himself at the side street where he had parked.

His car, the car Dr. Cray in his kindness had purchased for him, waited a few yards away.

Walter hoped Dr. Cray would not take back the car. He hoped Dr. Cray would not be too terribly upset.

Most of all, he hoped Dr. Cray would not take matters into his own hands, would not attempt to track down the dangerous Kaylie McMillan all by himself.

“She’s vicious,” Walter said, finding the exotic word somewhere in the lower reaches of his memory. “She’s a vicious, vicious person. She could hurt Dr. Cray.”

Maybe she was on her way to Dr. Cray’s office right this very moment. Maybe she meant to kill him.

With that thought, all concern for himself vanished from Walter’s mind, and he hurried to his car, eager to return to Hawk Ridge and protect Dr. Cray, protect him from Kaylie McMillan, protect him at any cost.

“We’re on our way,” Alvarez said. “ETA in fifteen.”

Shepherd ended the call and pocketed the phone. The manager handed him a passkey.

“Like I said, room thirty-seven.”

“Left side of the building?”

“Yeah. You’re not going in alone, are you?”

“I’m not that much of a hero. Think I’ll just walk past her room, see if I hear any activity inside.”

“She’s been quiet all day. You plan on telling me what she’s wanted for?”

Shepherd remembered the phone conversation he’d interrupted. “Illegal gambling,” he said, keeping the smile off his face. “Placing bets with a bookie. We’re really cracking down on that.”

The manager frowned, unsure whether to believe him. Shepherd left her to think about it.

Outside, he took a moment to readjust to the glare and open space. Then casually he started walking toward room 37, where a woman who’d been a fugitive for twelve years was about to end her run.

Room numbers glided past on his left. 42… 41…

He turned a corner.

Her room was three doors down.

39.

He could see her door now.

38.

Her open door.

“Shit,” Shepherd breathed, and he knew right then that he’d lost her.

He turned, his gaze sweeping the parking lot for any sign of a blonde woman. There was no one.

Slowly he approached the open door. His gun was in his hand, its weight reassuring. He had slipped it free of his armpit holster without conscious intention.

At the door he called loudly, “Police.”

No answer.

She could be inside, could be hiding, could even be lying in ambush. The prudent thing was to wait for Alvarez and the two street cops.

Hell. He knew she was gone. Call it intuition.

He entered the room, the pistol high and leading him, and saw an overturned table, a smashed television set, a suitcase flung open on the bed, clothes and sundries strewn over the floor.

Distantly he recalled the manager telling him not to bust up the place. He hadn’t planned to, but Kaylie seemed to have had other ideas.

Shepherd searched the room with swift efficiency and determined that Kaylie was not hiding anywhere. He noted the broken mirror in the bathroom, the rust-colored dabs of blood on the carpet.

“She had a party, all right,” he murmured grimly. He thought of the Lexus vandalized in Cray’s garage. The pattern here was similar.

Touching nothing, he cast his gaze over the scattered items on the floor, focusing on two objects of interest: a spiral-bound book that looked like a photo album, and a manila envelope stuffed with paper.

In his pocket he carried a pair of latex gloves. He put them on, then flipped through the photo album. Snapshots of parties and picnics riffled past. Most of the faces were different, but in nearly every photo there was a woman — sometimes blonde, sometimes dark-haired — but always the same.

Hello, Kaylie, he thought with a tight, fierce smile.

He could see why the waitress at the coffee shop had described her customer as looking young. Kaylie had a slightly round, almost childlike face that had not aged much in the past twelve years.

An innocent face. Pretty, in fact.

Shepherd thought of her voice on tape, the hushed urgency, the shyness. He had liked her voice. He had wanted to believe her.

Studying the photos, he wished… he almost wished that he…

The thought felt dangerous. He blinked it away.

To feel anything for this woman was just stupid. Worse than stupid — disloyal. A betrayal of his wife, or of her memory. Kaylie McMillan was just another Timothy Fries, a psychopath, violent and unstable and obsessive, and sympathy for her was an affront to Ginnie.