Michael Prescott: Stealing Faces

Immediately she spotted him. He was not lying in wait for her. He was moving quickly, at a brisk walk, perhaps working off the effects of the two drinks. She followed, taking care not to make a sound.

Foliage hemmed in the trail on both sides. Moonlight glistened on cactus needles, pale as ice. A saguaro, its thick arms outspread against the sky, loomed like a monument in the night.

Cray increased his pace, almost jogging.

She hurried to catch up, but she couldn’t run without being overheard.

The trail curved. Cray shrank and vanished, lost to sight behind stands of prickly-pear cactus and palo verde trees.

She risked a short sprint, hoping to close part of the distance between them, and then she rounded the curve and stopped.

Dead end.

The trail finished here.

And she was alone.

But she couldn’t be. Cray had to be somewhere nearby.

Unless he’d left the trail and continued through the brush, and why would he do that?

He must be hiding.

This was an ambush. Had to be. He’d led her to this desolate spot, and he meant to strike.

Her gun came up, gripped in both hands, and she spun in a full circle, then back again, daring the darkness to attack her.

There was only silence and the strange, pensive stillness of the desert in moonlight.

If Cray was here, watching her, he had not chosen to show himself. Maybe the gun had scared him. Or did he have a gun of his own, a silenced pistol, and even now was he drawing a bead on her, ready to take her down with one shot…?

She had to get away, get away now.

The gun was shaking in her hands. He must be laughing at her. Enjoying her stupid panic even as he lined her up in his sights.

She took a backward step, then turned to confront him if he was behind her, but he wasn’t, and she ran three yards down the trail and turned again, certain she had heard him or heard something, but there was no noise, no movement, and finally she couldn’t take it any longer and she broke into a reckless run, gasping as she retraced her route along the trail in a blur of moonlight.

Once or maybe twice she blundered off the path, and sharp teeth bit her, teeth that were cactus spines or the pointed tips of agave leaves. Pain surprised her but did not slow her down.

She was out of breath and shaking all over when she reached the staircase and climbed back to the path.

Amid the lights of buildings and pathways she remembered the gun in her hand. Clumsily she stuffed it in her purse, leaving the clasp unfastened so she could grab the.22 instantly if she needed it.

Voices floated to her — a family walking back to their room. The same family she’d seen earlier, the kids in the swimming pool and the parents drinking at a poolside table.

As they passed her, the father looked at her strangely, and the younger child, giggling, was shushed by his mom. Elizabeth didn’t understand until she stopped at a fountain and caught her reflection in the water.

She was a mess. She’d lost her straw hat somewhere on the trail, and her hair was windblown and tangled and studded with broken bits of leaves, and her face was inflamed with a wild-eyed, panicky stare that almost scared her.

She looked like a street person or a drug addict — or perhaps just a girl who’d had a good roll in the hay.

The thought coaxed a smile from her. She relaxed a little, then stiffened again, superstitiously afraid that by lowering her guard she had invited an attack.

But there was nothing.

“Stop it,” she whispered to herself. “You’re driving yourself crazy.”

These were not the right words to use. She regretted them as soon as they were spoken. They touched a part of her that was still tender, still too easily liable to be hurt.

She sat on the rim of the fountain and combed out her hair, allowing herself to be soothed by the simple, repetitive chore.

Then she set off once more, searching the hotel grounds.

Cray was here. Somewhere.

She would find him.

But she didn’t.

She wandered up and down the network of paths for more than two hours, the purse clutched tight, the little Colt within instant reach. She found the tennis courts, lit up but deserted. She climbed the stairs to an observation deck and found it empty as well.

Cray was not loitering near any of the three swimming pools, he was not in the restaurant or in the bar, and the gift shop and the wellness center were closed.

She even dared to try the fitness trail again, venturing along its entire length. Cray was not there either.

At the trail’s dead end, where she had panicked before, she forced herself to probe the brush. With a pocket flashlight she swept a cone of amber light over cholla cactus and wild purple sage. She found no shoe prints, no sign of human passage.

It was as if Cray had vanished into air. As if he had never existed at all.

She didn’t like that thought.

Briskly she doubled back along the trail. She wasn’t sure quite where she was headed until she found herself approaching the lobby.

Then she knew that she meant to check out the parking lot.

She wanted to see Cray’s SUV, the fancy Lexus he drove, because the vehicle was something real and tangible, and it would prove that Cray was real also.

The Lexus was black, of course, like Cray’s ensemble. Somehow he kept it spotless even in the desert, where dust and rainstorms competed to dull any automobile’s finish. From the first time she’d seen it, she had thought the vehicle suited him. It suggested both civilized refinement and a dangerous addiction to thrills, and it seemed at home in the night.

And now it was gone.

A red Fiat was parked in the space the Lexus had formerly occupied.

Elizabeth looked at the Fiat, turned away, then looked again. A shiver ran through her, and for a dizzy moment she was sure she was losing her mind.

Cray wasn’t here.

He’d never been here.

She had been pursuing a phantom all night long. A delusion, something conjured by her brain, not part of external reality at all, and suddenly she felt it again — the disorienting awareness of a gap between her mind and her environment, between consciousness and reality, and as she stood unmoving, the gap widened and became a chasm, and into it she was falling, falling….

Head lowered, eyes squeezed shut, she forgot everything except the need for calm.

Time was suspended. She was not herself. She was only a stretch of blankness with no body, no mind.

Then finally the panic was gone, and she was all right, not crazy, and the world had not strayed from its orbit.

There was still no Lexus, only the red Fiat, but that was fine. Because, of course, there was an explanation. A very sensible explanation.

Cray had left.

That was all. So simple.

He had been here, she really had seen him and followed him, and he really had disappeared somehow in the dark, but there was nothing supernatural about it, nothing to upset the balance of her mind.

He had simply returned to the parking lot and driven away. He could be anywhere now. She would not find him again tonight.

And although she knew she ought to be sorry she had lost him, she was too tired to feel any regret. She wanted only to go back to her sordid little motel room and lie on the sagging bed and stare at the busted TV until sleep came.

Tomorrow night she would follow Cray again, from his home. Tomorrow, when she had the strength.

Nodding in assent to this plan, Elizabeth crossed the parking lot to the far corner, where she had left her car, a 1981 Chevrolet Chevette with 92,000 miles on an odometer that doubtless had passed the 100,000 mark at least twice. The four-cylinder engine was held together with spit and paper clips. Every part of the car rattled. The seat belts were broken and the ventilation ducts were clogged.