Michael Prescott - Stealing Faces

The clerk nodded. “As a matter of fact, we do. I may have a brochure here someplace.”

He shuffled through some documents, and she leaned close, averting her face from the door to the bar.

When she heard a rustle of displaced air, she knew the door had opened.

Cray was in the lobby with her. She forced herself not to look up, not to betray the slightest concern.

“Sorry,” the clerk said. “I seem to have mislaid it. But you can get the information at the tennis center. They’re open until nine.”

“I’ll do that.”

At the edge of her vision, the door to the rear terrace opened, and a figure in black passed through.

He’d gone outside.

Once he left the immediate area, he could go anywhere on the resort’s spacious grounds, and she might never track him down.

She stepped away from the desk, saying a quick thank-you.

“Do you need directions?” the clerk asked.

“I think I know where to find it.” Hurrying for the terrace.

“That’s the wrong way, ma’am.”

“I can find it.” Move, move.

“But that’s the wrong—”

She pushed open the door and emerged onto the terrace, and at the desk, the clerk shook his head slowly.

He was not actually a clerk. His proper title was night manager. He saw all sorts of people come and go. Sometimes he thought of writing a book about it. He had a degree in English literature from the University of Arizona, for all the good it had done him.

Most of the people who stopped at the desk could be sized up easily enough, but the woman in the straw hat intrigued him, and not just because she was pretty and her voice was the type he liked — hushed and shy and faintly smoky, a bedroom voice.

She had been lying, of course. She had no interest in the tennis club. He doubted she could afford it. She was wearing a yellow blouse and a white skirt, a summer outfit not quite appropriate for late September, even in the desert heat. The blouse was faded, and the skirt had begun to fray at the hem.

He was a writer, or at least he liked to think so, and he had been told that writers noticed such things.

But none of that was the reason she intrigued him.

It was some quality in her eyes, her face, something that lay behind her quick smile and bright demeanor. Something like… desperation.

And as he recalled from one of his many English classes, the root word of desperation was despair.

Elizabeth emerged from the lobby into the balmy night, sure that Cray would be moving fast, nearly out of sight.

But he surprised her. He stood at the railing, absorbed in the view of the city.

She stopped outside the door, once again at a loss for anything inconspicuous to do.

Damn. She just wasn’t very good at this.

Sneaking around, hiding from sight, spying on a man like Cray — there were people who could do such things, but Elizabeth Palmer was not one of them.

At any moment Cray might turn, and then he would see her. He couldn’t do anything to her, not in a public place, but once he knew she was after him, she would not be safe again, ever.

All right. Think.

There were two routes he could take when he was done admiring the view. He could return to the lobby or descend to the swimming pool.

Gambling on the second outcome, Elizabeth walked quickly to the steps and headed down, never looking back.

Two children splashed in the shallow end of the pool. A thirtyish couple, no doubt the kids’ parents, shared drinks at a poolside table, laughing softly at some intimate joke. An older man lounged in a foaming spa nearby, a white cap tilted on his head. The moon was out, white and full, and woven around it was a vast wreath of stars.

Briefly Elizabeth wished she could just stop here, recline on a lounge chair and forget everything she knew and everything she suspected.

Let Cray go. Let the world fix its own problems; God knew, she had enough problems of her own. It would be so good to rest, and she’d had so little rest in the last twelve years.

She did, in fact, sit on a lounge chair, but only to rummage through her purse in an elaborate pretense of looking for some lost item.

The ruse was getting old, and she was beginning to worry that she had miscalculated about where Cray was likely to go, when she heard footsteps on the stairs.

His footsteps. She knew it, even without looking. Footsteps that were quick and light, preternaturally nimble.

A flicker of black, and he passed the spot where she was seated, heading down a pathway.

She got up and followed.

Part of her knew it was reckless to press her luck any further. In the crowded street fair the risk had been acceptable. Here at the resort there was too much open space. She was liable to be seen at any time.

But she had to do it. This was her responsibility, and hers alone. The whole city was afraid of the man who’d murdered Sharon Andrews, but only Elizabeth might know his name.

The path was lit by small lanterns at ground level, glowing like the luminaria set out at Christmas in many local neighborhoods. The ambient light blended with the pale radiance of the moon. She could see Cray easily, fifty feet ahead.

He passed between two buildings. Someone sat on a second-floor balcony smoking a cigarette. Through a ground-floor window a TV was visible, casting a blue flicker on a large bed with an ornate headboard.

Elizabeth thought of the motel where she was staying. The bed sagged, the TV didn’t work, the toilet had a funny smell. In the afternoons she heard noises of frantic passion through the walls; the adjacent rooms seemed to be booked by the hour. For this opulence she was paying nineteen dollars a night.

She wondered what it cost to stay at this resort for just one day. As much as she could earn in a week, probably — if she had a job. Which, at the moment, she did not.

Cray seemed to know where he was going. Elizabeth kept her distance as he crossed from one path to another, skirting a second swimming pool, smaller and less busy than the first.

On the prowl. He hadn’t found what he wanted in downtown Tucson’s crowded streets, so he was looking here. Hunting prey.

She couldn’t imagine how he meant to handle the abduction, but he would find a way. He had experience in such things.

Or perhaps he was just a lonely man taking a nighttime stroll on the landscaped grounds of a resort. Perhaps he had no sinister purpose.

She wanted to believe this. She wanted to leave Tucson and resume the life she’d led, and to feel no pang of conscience on sleepless nights.

Ahead, Cray went down a short flight of steps and disappeared amid the mesquite trees and weedy underbrush. A sign read FITNESS TRAIL.

Elizabeth hesitated at the top of the staircase. The trail seemed empty and dark. A good place for an ambush. Suppose he had seen her in the bar, after all. Suppose he was deliberately leading her here, to the edge of the resort, away from more public places.

Well, she was ready for that.

She opened her purse and reached inside for the Colt.22 she’d bought at a pawnshop after arriving in Tucson. It was a small gun, lightweight but fully loaded, and she knew how to use it.

She had used a gun once before.

The thought made her tremble, and for a moment she worried that she couldn’t go forward, that the old memories might swamp and capsize her, as they sometimes did.

Not tonight. Tonight she had to be strong.

There might be a life at stake, the life of some woman who was a guest at this hotel, a woman who would be kidnapped and killed and buried in the wilderness, like Sharon Andrews.

She slung the purse over her shoulder to free her hands. Holding the Colt down at her side, out of sight, she descended the staircase and advanced along the trail.