John Lutz - Night kills

"Let's hope they're mutually exclusive," he said.

"Let's hope. Hope is a good thing."

And she did hope.

Jill and Tony talked for more than two hours except for a few minutes when Tony left the table to talk on his cell phone.

Jill decided that their coffee bar date had gone marvelously. He'd been about to kiss her on the forehead when they'd parted outside of Has Beans, but then he'd changed his mind, despite her unspoken wishes. Obviously, he didn't want to push too soon and too hard.

Maybe later.

Still high on caffeine or Tony Lake, Jill now began to walk.

It was interesting how her nervousness had left her only moments after sitting down with Tony. And their conversation had flowed so smoothly. Most of it, she realized, had been about her. She told herself not to be so selfish next time they met. But he had a way of making her feel important and the natural subject of the conversation. He wanted to know all about her. He was genuinely interested in her. More than interested-fascinated.

Yes, fascinated was the word.

She smiled at her happiness that lay right there in front of her like a gold coin waiting to be picked up.

Face it, doomster, the meeting was a roaring success.

Now and then in this crappy, difficult world, something went wonderfully right.

As she strolled away from Has Beans toward her subway stop, Jill actually found herself whistling.

The traffic light at the intersection was a DON'T WALK, so Jill stopped and stood with a few other people waiting for it to change. Since she had on her sweats and Nikes, she began idly jogging in place on the sidewalk, her body revolving in a slow circle. She could feel a slight bouncing of her breasts, but she didn't mind. Let people look. Let them guess how happy she was. Someone passing in a car honked the horn and shouted something.

At me?

For me?

Almost certainly.

As she turned to face back the way she'd come, her mood suddenly changed for the worse. She saw a woman, a street person in filthy clothes and with unkempt dirty blond hair, standing about fifty feet away and openly staring at her.

What bothered Jill was that the woman seemed oddly familiar.

Then she realized why. Jill was sure she'd seen her across the street from Has Beans when she and Tony had emerged from the coffee bar. Jill remembered the pang of pity she'd felt for the woman, who'd been standing alone and motionless as if lost, clutching a wrinkled brown paper sack beneath her right arm.

The woman was staring at her now in a way that evoked more fear than pity. As if there was some kind of connection between them.

Jill didn't want a connection. With a little bad luck, she could be this woman. Maybe only her dwindling checking account was the difference between them now. Homelessness happened. This city was cruel and could crush.

The woman took a faltering step toward her.

Jill looked away, continuing to jog in place, turning her back to her.

The woman had to be close now. Getting closer.

Jill continued facing away from the sad specter of a horrifying future and stared hard at the traffic signal across the intersection.

Change, damn you. Change!

The light did change.

Jill lengthened out her foot motion and jogged across the intersection. After veering around an old woman pushing a shopping cart full of groceries, she accelerated into a brisk run. Her rhythmic arm motion and the strain on her thighs felt great, liberating.

The homeless woman didn't figure to be a runner. Jill didn't have to glance back to know she was leaving the ragged figure behind. Her bleak alternative future receding into her past.

Running faster made Jill somehow breathe easier.

On the way home from work the next evening, Jill saw the woman again. It was when Jill stopped to look at a shoe sale display in a small shop. There, superimposed in the show window over the red high-heeled pumps she was considering, was the woman's reflection. She had to be close, not more than ten feet behind Jill.

There was something about the woman's reflected image that horrified Jill to the point that Jill was faintly nauseated.

To be in this woman's thoughts, her intentions…

It wasn't simply that Jill knew for sure now that the woman had truly been following her, had for some reason fixated on her. It was more a creepy certainty that she'd seen the woman before, other than just that evening outside Has Beans.

How long has she been following me? Watching me?

Had they met? Did they somehow know each other?

Had she simply pegged Jill as a soft touch, wanted a handout and was too shy to ask? It was a possible explanation. Maybe the poor thing was driven more by hunger than malice.

Either way, Jill had to find out.

Better to face your fears.

Jill decided to turn around and simply ask the woman, get to the bottom of this nonsense. She'd look the woman in the eye. Force a smile. Force a question.

Do we know each other?

She knew from experience that when you confronted your terror, it could quickly dissipate.

And this woman, determined, homeless, terrified her.

This will all end in a moment.

She tensed her muscles and whirled to face what waited behind her.

The woman was gone.

Mexico City, two months earlier

Maria Sanchez lay next to her husband, Jorge, in a circular bed in the honeymoon suite of the plush Hotel Casa Grande on the busy Paseo de la Reforma. They were on the twelfth floor, far above the noise and bustle in the streets below.

The only sound in the room was Jorge's even breathing, but Maria knew he wasn't asleep. He'd seldom slept at all the last few weeks because of the pressure. Political winds had shifted, and Jorge Sanchez, once an almost invincible drug lord and master of cocaine, was now vulnerable. New drug money, in larger amounts, had found its way to Jorge's friends in the government and made him dispensable. Over the past few months, routes into the United States had closed or become too dangerous. Just last week a sleek cruiser running drugs into southern Florida had been intercepted at sea, actually boarded after two of its crew had been gunned down from another, faster boat. After the cargo was transferred, the surviving members of the crew were allowed to live. They, along with the boat, might prove useful to Jorge's successor.

The alarm by the bed began to buzz, and Jorge sat up immediately and turned it off. He was a lean, muscular man, dark and with a black, carefully trimmed beard and mustache. The fierce downward trim of the mustache was overmatched by the liquid softness of his brown eyes.

In the silence after the alarm, he lay back down and drew Maria to him. Both were nude, and sexually satiated after last night, but for a moment Maria thought he might want to make love again.

Unlike her husband, Maria had a light complexion, though her long, straight hair was auburn, like his. Her features were symmetrical and well sculpted, and her body was trim and athletic. Maria was the daughter of staid Midwesterners and had met Jorge three years ago when she was an art student at UCLA and he was studying business. Supposedly. What Jorge was really doing in the United States was establishing a drug distribution network.

With Jorge's help, Maria's basic grasp of Spanish soon improved, and their friendship quickly developed into a love that transcended any cultural differences. In fact, it gained the momentum of a freight train, and there was no leaving the rails without a fatal smashup.

When Maria learned from one of his friends that Jorge was a major drug dealer, she was thrilled rather than repelled. She confided this to him, and their love affair became even more heated. The friend who'd told her about Jorge disappeared. Maria never asked why or where to.