Thomas Perry - Shadow Woman

She was right beside him now. He could smell the scent of her hair. Things must be going much better than he had imagined. She was much closer to him than was normal. They were almost touching. She leaned over the engine and pointed to a box bolted to the firewall that had colored wires plugged into it. “When I opened it, I could smell something burning over here.”

He leaned in too, trying to see if the insulation on one of the wires was melted. He felt a light touch on the small of his back, and the hard, heavy weight of his pistol was gone.

Almost instantly, his head was pushed to the side. The pain was horrible, and it was coming from a heavy metal object pressed to his temple. He could feel the red cotton towel covering it, but he had no time to think.

She was speaking low, almost in a whisper. “Police officer. Come around to the back of the car.” He hesitated, but she tugged his coat hard, and he tried to straighten so fast that he banged his head on the hood. When he reached the back he noticed that the light in the trunk had gone out.

“Get in,” she ordered.

“Look,” he said. “I can explain the gun. I was just trying to help you.”

“You have the right to remain silent.” She lifted the rag off her hand and he could see the gun now. It was big and square and ugly, with a muzzle that looked cavernous. “Get in the trunk, please. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”

Keller was dazed. His mouth was dry and he couldn’t swallow. He was getting arrested by a Denver cop, a woman decoy. On an illegal weapons charge. They would find out who he was. There had to be a way out of this.

“You have a right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, the court will appoint one for you. Have you heard and understood these rights?” Her thumb with the beautifully polished, tapered nail came up and cocked the hammer.

David Keller climbed into the trunk. Why did she have to put him in the trunk? Didn’t they have a second car with regular cops who hauled you away when they caught you? Of course. She wasn’t a decoy at all. She was off duty. She had just seen the gun at his back, plucked it away, and stuck hers in his face. The trunk slammed down on him and the world went black.

Linda stood behind the trunk of the car, squeezed her eyes closed, and smiled, smelling the thin, delicious night air. She had found the mark, taken his gun away from him, and locked him up, all by herself.

Part of the pleasure of it was that she was not alone. She had done it from start to finish with Earl watching her. He had seen her pretending to burn herself and sucking her fingers and crying just a little bit, just enough to seem soft and feminine and vulnerable. And he had seen her stand on her tiptoes to bend over the engine in these tight jeans, just arching her back a tiny bit, enough to make the mark ashamed of himself for thinking that way, and enough to give Earl something to think about too. For Earl, part of the experience was that it made him want to hurt the guy, to break bones and teeth for Linda.

Linda didn’t really think much about the mark once she had him. He was necessary, but he wasn’t really a player in the event. She was just using him to act out for Earl’s eyes how desirable she was. The mark was a mirror for both of them. He let Linda see how beautiful she was through his eyes, because she never could quite look at herself the way men did, and so watching them look was the only way. And Earl could look at the way she affected this mark, and it made Earl feel more that way about her—as though he were seeing her for the first time too, and because he was feeling desire, he knew exactly what the other man was feeling, and that made him wild. The night was filled with invisible sparks of energy shooting back and forth around her. It was magic.

This was the part of their lives that she craved. She loved it when they were out in the night hunting together, thinking hard together about the mark and his habits and what he would do, and deciding what they would do to bag him like this. And now the hunt was right at its climax, with Earl out there in the dark concentrating all of his attention on her. In a minute he would emerge from the shadows to obliterate the mark and reclaim her. They would drive him up into the mountains and bury the body before dawn. She felt as though somebody had taken one of those electric-shock machines they had in hospitals and pressed the paddles to her chest to jump-start her heart.

She saw Earl appear from the alley behind the little market, walking along briskly. He was primed. She stepped to the front of the car and slammed the hood. That let her see the police car.

Then it was pulling up beside the Lexus. The cop was young, and she could see his lips were straight across his face with no smile, but she knew it was waiting to come, because the eyebrows had that wanting-to-be-concerned look that cops sometimes got. He stopped the car, got out, and left the door open so he could hear his radio. He didn’t do the things they did when they were suspicious—put their nightsticks in their belts, say something into the radio. She could hear the nasal voice of a female dispatcher squawking out meaningless words and numbers, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he stepped closer to Linda and said, “Having car trouble?”

“No,” said Linda. When she smiled she could feel that she had actually induced a blush. Her cheeks were hot. “I thought I heard something in the engine, but it was just my imagination. Everything is fine.”

He glanced at the car, then back at Linda. “Why don’t you start it up, and I’ll listen?”

Linda sensed that it was a devious way of being sure the car wasn’t stolen without coming out and asking for her license and registration. She was glad he was so young and handsome, because the sight of him right after Hatcher would be sending hot flashes of jealousy up Earl’s spine mixed with the alarm and the wonder at how desirable the bait really was. She smiled as prettily as she could for both of them and said, “Well, if you wouldn’t mind …,” then obediently opened the driver’s door and sat behind the wheel.

The shot was so loud that her legs kicked out and pushed her back against the seat. Blood and brain from the cop had spattered the windshield. She scrambled out of the car as though it were on fire.

Earl’s strong hand clamped her arm. She danced at the end of his arm, tugging to get moving, but he tightened his grip. “He’s still alive, right?”

At first she thought he meant the cop. “How could—” she began, then remembered. Hatcher was still in the trunk. She held her panic in check as she hurried to the trunk, unlocked it, and lifted the lid three inches. She stuck her big Colt into the dark space, then pulled the trigger four times before Earl grabbed her and slammed the trunk.

In the sudden silence she could hear the sirens too. More police were coming. Earl dragged her toward the alley, his grip so tight that she could feel the blood beginning to collect below it, so her fingers throbbed. His voice was a raspy whisper. “Don’t ever fire blind into the trunk of a car when your ass is that close to it again, you dumb bitch. The gas tank is right under it.”

She had forgotten about the gas tank. Imagining the bright orange explosion she had flirted with gave her a giddy feeling of luck, but even better, she detected that the strain in Earl’s voice was genuine concern. He had just dusted a cop to reclaim her, and he really didn’t want to lose her. She let him pull her along the alley, then lead her up the dark space beside the market and over to the next street. In another minute and a half they were on the pedestrian mall along Sixteenth Street, far from the sirens and far from the cops cruising around looking for a getaway car.