John Sandford - Rules of Prey

"Jennifer Carey came over last night," she said as she sat down. She unbuttoned her coat but left it on.

"Oh." Lucas sat down across the table.

"We had a talk."

Lucas looked away from her into the front room. "And did you decide my future? Between the two of you?"

Carla smiled a very small smile. "Yeah," she said. She took a sip of coffee.

"Good of you to let me know," Lucas said sourly.

"We thought it was the polite thing to do," Carla said, and Lucas had to laugh in spite of himself.

"What did you decide?"

"She gets custody," Carla said.

"You don't mind?"

"I mind, kind of. It makes me angry that you were sleeping with us alternately, one down here, one up in the North Woods. But I figured our relationship wasn't long for the world. We live in different places. I weave, you shoot people. And it seemed like she had a better prior claim, with the baby and all."

"What about what I want?"

"We decided that didn't matter too much. Jennifer said you'd wiggle and squirm, but eventually you'd come around."

"Now, that pisses me off," Lucas said, no longer smiling.

"Tough," Carla said.

They stared at each other across the table. Lucas flinched first. "I may tell Jennifer to take a hike," he said.

"Not with her being pregnant," Carla said, shaking her head. "No chance. That's Jennifer's judgment, and I agree. I asked her what she'd do if you went with somebody else. She said she'd go over and have another talk with the somebody else."

"Jesus," Lucas said. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back and massaged the back of his neck. "What'd I do to deserve this?"

"Slept with one too many women," Carla said. "It's actually pretty flattering, when you think about it. She's good-looking and smart. And in her own screwed-up way, she's in love with you. In my own screwed-up way, I'm not-though I'd still like to use the cabin a couple of times a year. Until I can afford my own."

"Anytime," Lucas said wistfully. He wanted to say more, but couldn't think of anything.

Carla took a last sip of coffee, pushed the cup, still half-full, into the middle of the table, and stood up.

"I better get going," she said. "The cab should be back."

Lucas sat where he was. "Well, it was real."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she asked as she retrieved her purse.

"That's what you say when you can't think of anything to say."

"Okay." She buttoned her coat. "See you."

"How come Jennifer didn't deliver the message?"

"We talked about that and decided I should do it. That'd make a clean break between us. Besides, she said you'd spend about a half-hour on some kind of Catholic guilt trip, then you'd go into a rage and kick stuff, then you'd try to call her on the telephone so you could yell at her. Then in about two hours you'd start laughing about it. She said she'd rather skip the preliminaries." Carla glanced at her watch. "She'll be over in two hours."

"Motherfucker," Lucas said in disbelief.

"You got that right," Carla said as she went out the door. A yellow cab was waiting. She stopped with the screen door still open. "Call you next spring. About the cabin."

It was more like three hours. When Jennifer arrived, she wasn't embarrassed in the slightest.

"Hi," she said when he opened the door. She walked past him, took off her coat, and tossed it on the couch. "Carla called, said the talk went okay."

"I'm pretty unhappy-" Lucas started, but she waved him off.

"Spare me. McGowan's going to network, by the way. It's all over town."

"Fuck McGowan."

"Better hurry," Jennifer said. "She'll be gone in a month. But I still think what you did was awful. McGowan's just too dumb to recognize it."

"Goddammit, Jennifer…"

"If you're going to yell, we could have this talk some other time."

"I'm not going to yell," he said grimly. He thought he might strangle.

"Okay. So I thought I might give you my position. That is, if you'd like to hear it."

"Sure. I mean, why not? You're running the rest of my life."

"My position is, I'm pregnant and the daddy shouldn't screw anybody else until the baby is born, and maybe"-she paused, as though considering the fairness of her proposition-"maybe a year old. Maybe two years old. That way, I can kind of pretend like I'm married and talk to you about the baby and what we did during the day and his first words and how he's walking and I won't have to worry about you fooling around. And then, when you can't stand it and start fooling around again, I can just pretend like I'm divorced."

She smiled brightly. Lucas was appalled.

"That's the coldest goddamn thing I ever heard," he said.

"It's not exactly an extemporaneous speech," she said. "I rewrote it about twelve times, I thought it was rather cogently expressed, but with enough emotion to make it convincing."

Lucas laughed, then stopped laughing and sat down. He looked haggard, she thought. Or harried. "All right. I give up," he said.

"All right to all of it?"

"Yeah. All of it."

"Scout's honor?"

"Sure." He held up the three fingers. "Scout's honor."

Late in the evening, Lucas lay on the surveillance team's mattress and thought about it. He could live with it, he thought. For two years? Maybe.

"That's weird. You see that?" said the first surveillance cop.

"I didn't see anything," said his partner.

"What?" asked Lucas.

"I don't know. It's like there's some movement over there. Just a little bit, at the edge of the window."

Lucas crawled over and looked out. The maddog's apartment was dark except for the faint glow from the night-light.

"I don't see anything," he said. "You think he's doing something?"

"I don't know. Probably nothing. It's just every once in a while… it's like he's watching us. "

It was the winning stroke. If he had the nerve, he could pull it off. He imagined Davenport 's face. Davenport would know, but he wouldn't know how, and there wouldn't be a damn thing he could do about it.

In some ways, of course, it would be his most intellectual mission. He didn't need this particular woman, but he would take her anyway. To the police-not Davenport, but the others-there would be a logic to it. A logic they could understand.

In the meantime, the other pressure had begun to build. There was a woman who lived in the town of Richfield, a schoolteacher with almond eyes and rich sable hair, wide teeth like a Russian girl's. He had seen her with a troop of her children in the basement level of the Government Center, installing an elementary-school art show…

No. He put her out of his mind. The need would grow, but he could control it. It was a matter of will. And his mind had to be clear to deal with the stroke.

He first had to break free, if only for two hours. He didn't see them, but they were there, he was sure, a web of watchers escorting him through the city's streets and skyways. His night watches and his explorations in the attic had been fruitful. He knew, he thought, where two of their surveillance posts were. The lighting patterns were wrong for families or individuals, and he saw car lights coming and going at odd hours of the night, always from the same two houses. One of the houses, he was sure, had been empty until recently.

They were waiting for him to move. Before he could, he had to break free. Just for two hours. He thought he had a way.

The law firm of Woodley, Gage amp; Whole occupied three floors of an office building two blocks from his own. He had twice encountered one of their attorneys in real-estate closings, a man named Kenneth Hart. After each of the closings, they'd had lunch. If someone had ever asked the maddog who his friends were, he would have mentioned Hart. Now he hoped that Hart remembered him.