David Morrell - The Protector

"Unless he buys books off the Internet."

"There's nothing like a real bookstore, though."

"In that case, he might decide to make the short drive north to Monterey," Jamie said.

Cavanaugh gave her a look.

"Just trying to investigate alternatives," she said.

"Which brings us back to sitting here on the beach and watching for him."

"Fine with me. I'll get a beach chair and a book. I can use the rest," Jamie said.

"After dark, we'll stake out the best restaurants and see if he shows up."

"I was sort of hoping we could eat in those restaurants, not watch them."

"Given how little he's probably eating these days, he'll want the small portions he allows himself to be exquisite. Only the top two or three restaurants in town will be acceptable to him."

"Unless he eats at home."

Cavanaugh gave her another look.

A jogger sprinted to their end of the beach, turned, and ran back in the opposite direction.

"Weight loss," Jamie said.

"You thought of something?"

"I'm going to hate myself for being honest. It'll take more than dieting for Prescott to lose weight fast. He'll need exercise. Hours and hours of it."

Cavanaugh waited in an art gallery while Jamie found a break in traffic and crossed to the opposite side, where a walkway led to what their map indicated was a warren of shops in the center of a block. They'd learned that one of the exercise clubs they wanted to check was on the second floor of a building over there, affiliated with a nearby hotel. The time was now 4:30. Although there wasn't any guarantee that Prescott would use an exercise club, let alone that particular club at that particular moment, Cavanaugh couldn't risk entering, just in case Prescott might, in fact, be present. Because Prescott didn't know Jamie existed, the safer course was for her to go in alone and look around. If no one aroused her suspicion, she was to tell an instructor that she was writing a health-magazine article about overweight people who'd lost a remarkable amount of weight in a short time thanks to their determination. Then she'd ask if any of the club's members fit that description.

Pretending to appreciate the gallery's paintings, Cavanaugh often glanced through the front window toward the other side of the street. The late-afternoon sun put some of the doorways in shadow. As tourists went in and out of the mews over there, he checked his watch, then feigned interest in more of the paintings.

Thirty minutes later, he was still pretending to be interested in the paintings.

He stepped outside and crossed the street. Pots of brightly colored flowers flanked the mews's entrance. Beyond them, shifting among tourists, he passed a walkway on his right. According to what he and Jamie had learned, the exercise club would be along the next walkway on the right. He turned a corner, passed more flowers, and came to steps that led up to the second floor. A sign read the fitness clinic.

Upstairs, he scanned the lobby and the long, bright exercise room beyond it. Jamie was nowhere in view. Staying to the side of the lobby, he carefully assessed the people working the various machines. None of them reminded him of Prescott. Amid the hum of treadmills and the clank of weights, he approached a muscular man in tight shorts and a T-shirt who stood behind a counter.

"I'm supposed to meet my wife here, but I'm late," Cavanaugh said. "Do you know if she's still around? Tall, thin, auburn hair. Good-looking."

The instructor frowned. "Is your name Cavanaugh?"

"Why? Is something wrong?"

"Man, I'm real sorry about what happened."

"Sorry?"

"After your wife fainted, her two friends told me she's got some kind of low blood pressure problem."

Cavanaugh's hands and feet felt numb.

"I wanted to call an ambulance," the instructor said, "but they said she'd had fainting spells a couple of times before. Nothing life-threatening. Something about her electrolytes being low."

Cavanaugh's stomach turned to ice.

"So I got them a bottle of Gatorade from the machine over there," the instructor said. "They gave her a couple of sips and helped her stand. She was woozy, but she could walk, sort of, if somebody put an arm around her."

"Friends?" Cavanaugh could barely speak.

"Two women who came in behind her. A good thing there were two of them. The one with the crutches couldn't have handled your wife all by herself."

"Crutches?" The lobby seemed to waver.

"Because of a cast on one leg. She said she knew you'd be worried, so she left a message for you." The instructor reached under the counter and set down an envelope.

Cavanaugh's fingers didn't want to work as he fumbled to open it. The neatly hand-printed note inside made him want to scream.

Tor House. Eight tomorrow morning.

Grace, Cavanaugh thought. He struggled to keep control. Despite the weakness in his legs and arms, he drove at random through the area, going around blocks, making U-turns and heading back in the direction from which he'd just come. He timed traffic lights so he got through them just before they turned red, using every technique he could think of to make sure he wasn't followed. Cursing, he realized that Grace had made the connection between A Summer Place and Carmel. With no other direction in which to go, she was searching the area as he and Jamie had been doing. Sometime during the day, their paths had crossed. Perhaps at Tor House. Grace didn't know about Prescott's fascination with Robinson Jeffers, but that didn't matter. Tor House was one of the local attractions and had to be investigated. Perhaps Grace had been approaching it when she'd seen Cavanaugh and Jamie get in their car and drive away. That would explain Grace's choice for a meeting place tomorrow. Or had it been on 17-Mile Drive or at Pebble Beach's lodge, or had Grace seen Cavanaugh through binoculars while she scanned Carmel's beach?

This much was certain: Grace had followed him, had taken her chance to grab Jamie, and was probably following Cavanaugh now. Inhaling sharply, he realized that while he'd been away from the Taurus, Grace might have planted a location transmitter in the car, making it easy for her to follow at a distance. Cavanaugh immediately stopped at a gas station and checked the obvious hiding places in and under the car. He used a pay phone to call information and get the numbers for Radio Shack stores in the area. One-to the north, in Monterey-was open until nine o'clock, he discovered. After asking directions about how to get there, he drove the seven miles along Highway 1 as fast as he could without breaking the speed limit. Using an FM receiver that he purchased at the store, he walked around the Taurus several times, slowly changing stations, waiting to hear the beep… beep… beep of the location transmitter. It would be set to one of the unused FM bands in the area. On Grace's end, the loudness or softness of the signal would tell her if Cavanaugh was near or far. But if Grace had managed to get something more sophisticated, something that used ultrasonic transmissions, Cavanaugh couldn't hope to find a comparably sophisticated device at Radio Shack to detect it.

After an hour in which he failed to discover a transmitter, he got back in the Taurus and resumed his evasive driving, frequently checking his rearview mirror to see if any headlights took the same direction he did. At last, fatigue and frustration wore him down. He returned to the motel room that he and Jamie had rented. Grace might use chemicals to make Jamie tell her the name of the place, but as much as Cavanaugh was tempted to spend the night somewhere else, he couldn't let himself. If Jamie escaped, she would phone the room or return to it, looking for him. He kept the lights out, wedged the bureau against the door, and sat on the floor in the corner next to the front window, his knees drawn to his chest, his pistol in his hand, not daring to sleep, ready to shoot if anybody crashed through.