Michael Prescott - In Dark Places

She hated to think of Meg in a place like thisor in someplace worse. And there were worse places in this city. There were shadow lands everywhere.

"There's the tattoo parlor." Wolper pointed at the garish sign over the storefront of Wild Ink. "Now where will he be?"

"Just keep cruising."

They crawled in slow traffic down the boulevard, heading west. When they passed Highland, the area perked up a little, becoming more of a tourist center, albeit a dingy one.

"You know," she said, "if we do find him"

"We won't."

"But if we do amp; well, he's armed."

"So am I."

"Even off duty?"

"A cop in this town is never off duty." He opened his jacket briefly to give her a glimpse of a handgun holstered to his belt in the cross-draw position. "Feel better?"

"I do, actually. But I think we've gone too far. Let's go back. We need to travel farther east."

The area got worse in that direction. Robin thought Gray would gravitate toward the seediest stretch of the boulevard.

Wolper turned around, executing an illegal U at an intersection, cutting off a driver who gave him a long blast of horn.

"One advantage of being a cop," Wolper said. "You never worry about traffic tickets."

She didn't answer. She was studying the crowded sidewalks, the shop windows, the side streets.

They passed Wild Ink again and kept going, east of Las Palmas. Robin leaned forward in her seat. "Wait a minute. Here's a possibility."

She was looking at the flashing lights of a video arcade.

"Those places are for kids," Wolper said.

"Gray isn't much more than a kid himself. Arrested emotional and sexual and social development. Fixation on high school girls." The words came by rote. "But that's not the only reason to look inside. He used to hang out in arcades when he was growing up."

"He told you that?"

"When he got away from his folks, he would play pool or Pac-Man. Games." She heard the bitterness in that word. "He's always enjoyed games." She looked again at the arcade. "He could be in there."

"We'll give it a shot." Wolper steered the car into a red zone and put his badge on the dashboard, insurance against a ticket.

They got out. As she stood up, Robin was briefly dizzy with a rush of blood. She caught Wolper watching her as he locked the car.

"Must've been one hell of a shot to the cranium," he said.

"I'll live."

"Probably. But, Doctordon't lie to me again. I don't like it."

He led her inside the arcade before she could answer.

Brand couldn't figure out what the hell they were up to. It hadn't been easy following Wolper and Cameron when they left Parker Center. He'd been parked across the street from the building's underground garage, watching official and unofficial vehicles go in and out, when his beeper chirped with an SOS. Even so, he hadn't expected Cameron to be with Wolper, and he'd nearly missed seeing her in the passenger seat of Wolper's Mercury. He'd had to pull away from the curb to catch up with Wolper in the dense downtown traffic, staying two or three cars behind to avoid detection.

He thought maybe Wolper was taking Cameron to the hospital or to her home. Instead the car wended into Hollywood, cruising the boulevard and doubling back, as if in search of something.

Now the two of them had gone into a video arcade. Didn't make much sense, unless Cameron had decided that Justin Gray might be hanging out there. Gray was the target, after all. Cameron obviously hadn't seen or didn't remember who had knocked her out, so Gray was taking the blame.

It was funny, in a waya serial killer getting pinned for a bum rap. As if the dumb son of a bitch didn't have enough on his resume already. And even if he was taken alive and swore up and down that he hadn't done it, who would believe him?

Cameron had probably gotten it in her head that Gray would visit this arcade. She'd treated the guy and must think she had some kind of insight into his psyche.

Personally, Brand didn't buy the idea that anybody could understand Justin Gray. Some people were just freaks, plain and simple. There was no more point in trying to understand them than there would be in analyzing the motivations of a school of piranha. That was how he looked at it, anyway.

He shook his head, amused at himself as he locked up his Crown Victoria, parked down the street from Wolper's Mercury Sable. Look at him, Alan Brand, philosopher. Like he knew what the fuck he was talking about. And like any of it mattered anyhow.

What mattered was getting Robin Cameron alone.

It would be tricky. The problem was Wolper. He would be right at her side. Most likely the two of them wouldn't split upnot if they thought Gray might be in the vicinity.

Well, maybe he could arrange a diversion, something to draw Wolper away, if only for a few minutes. Or maybe he would just get lucky. Hell, he was due.

Brand approached the arcade, fingering the off-duty gun under his nylon windbreaker. A Beretta 9mm, identical to his duty pistol. He didn't believe in trying to adjust to a different weapon. In an emergency he would depend on instinct and reflex, and he needed a gun that felt like it was part of him, an extension of his own arm.

Probably he wouldn't have to use the gun tonight. There were other ways of handling this situation. Above all, he had to be smart. He knew he wasn't the sharpest tack on the bulletin board. He'd never been a straight-A student, or even straight-B. He'd barely made it through community college, and he knew he wouldn't ever rise higher in the ranks.

But he'd learned a thing or two about self-preservation. Survivalthat was what it was all about. On the streets you learned about survival, or you didn't last long.

During his wait outside Parker Center, he had decided something. Whatever happened, he was going to survive this mess. He would do whatever was necessary. He was not going down.

Meg wished she smoked.

If she did, maybe she'd have a lighter, some way to penetrate the total blackness around her. She should have taken up smoking and stayed away from Gabe. She'd made a poor choice of vices. Of course, she hadn't thought of Gabe as a vice. She'd thought of him as the love of her life, who would never betray her. Now it was as if she'd awakened from a dreama stupid, irrational dream.

When he'd called her an immature kid, he'd been right. Only an immature kid could have made the mistakes she'd made.

People always said you learned from your mistakes. But you couldn't learn much if your mistakes got you killed.

She had to stop thinking that way, stay positive.

Positive. Right. She was handcuffed to a metal railing in a lightless basement, waiting for a man she'd thought she loved to come back and murder her.

Okay, he hadn't specifically said he was going to murder her. But it seemed like a really safe bet.

Though she might not know his real name, she knew him . She knew his face. His amp; body. She knew he had been at the awards dinner for Robin. She knew he was a cop. She knew too much.

Yesterday she'd wondered what it had been like for Justin Gray's victims, waiting in the back of his van, knowing they would die but not knowing when. Well, now she knew.

Uselessly she rattled the handcuffs against the railing. Around her, in the dark, she heard rustling sounds. Small creatures, disturbed by the noise.

"Bunny rabbits," she whispered, forcing a smile.

She guessed there was some kind of justice to the way things had worked out. She'd broken every ethical rule her mom had drummed into her. She'd lied and gone sneaking around and had sex with a guy who was more than twice her age. And she'd thought she was so damn smart, so grown up, and that her mom, for all her brains and education, just didn't get it because she was too old to understand true love.