Thomas Perry - Dance for the Dead

She knew that every thought she had, every movement she made that wasn't directed toward Farrell was a waste and a danger, but she couldn't keep Mary in the back of her mind where she should be. Each time she thought she had her mind focused on Farrell, a few seconds would tick away and the mere passing of time would remind her. A lot could happen to a person like Mary in thirty seconds, enough horror to last an eternity.

Each hour passed so slowly that she couldn't remember what she might have been thinking or doing before the last one, and the meeting on the freeway seemed to have happened weeks ago. She had stared at the office doors and windows for twelve hours, and still Farrell had not emerged.

Something must have happened that she had missed. At ten p.m. she began to prepare herself to enter the building. He might have walked out the door while she was in the ladies' room of the diner hours ago and gotten into a car that someone had brought to the curb for him. That could be why none of the cars parked near the building had been gone when she returned to the window. Maybe she had seen him go. He could have changed clothes with one of his trainees - something simple and rudimentary like that - and fooled her. He had spent his life perfecting the skills of searching and following, and there was no reason to imagine he had not seen all the ways of hiding and deceiving.

This was the other thought that she couldn't seem to get out of her mind. The reason Barraclough had Mary was that he had known what she would do and Jane had not. No, it was even worse. Mary had never met Timmy. He couldn't have known that she would walk into a fire for him. What Barraclough had known was how Jane would react. He had known that she would have to choose one of them, and the one she would choose was the one he had no further use for, the one he could kill.

She dumped her unfinished food and wrappers into the trash can by the door, slid her tray onto the stack, and walked across the parking lot toward the dark stretch of the street where she could cross without coming under any lights. She could hear footsteps on the sidewalk behind her as she stepped into the street, but she had to use this chance to see the building from a new angle, so she ignored them for the moment. She looked up at the building as she crossed, and through the window she saw Farrell. He was sitting behind his desk talking on the telephone. She reached the sidewalk on the other side of the street, stopped walking, and felt her calm return for a second before she remembered the footsteps.

Maybe the footsteps had been behind her when she came out of the restaurant and she had been so distracted that she simply had not heard them. She began to walk and listened carefully; there were three sets of shoes. She felt as though she had put her foot on a step and it had fallen through. She had been so busy watching the office that it had not occurred to her mat Farrell might have a few trainees on the streets outside. She walked along more quickly until she could use the darkened window of a store to get a look at their reflection. The three didn't fit the pattern at all. One of them wore a baseball cap backward and all three wore baggy pants and oversized jackets. They looked about seventeen or eighteen years old, and not seasoned or desperate enough for Farrell.

She had told Carey she had been mugged in Los Angeles, and now here she was, being considered and evaluated for a mugging in Los Angeles. It was simply out of the question tonight. It was not going to happen.

She took a moment to collect her thoughts, then suddenly turned on her heel and walked toward the three boys. They slowed down and spread apart on the sidewalk. When she stepped directly up to the one in the center, he stopped, not sure what he was going to do, but certain he didn't want to bump into her. "Hold it, all three of you," she said. "I want to talk to you."

The other two stopped, looking at her warily with half-averted faces. "What?" said the one on her left.

As she looked at the three unpromising young men, the idea came to her fully formed. The only question was whether she could convince them. "Are you doing anything tonight?" she asked.

The one on her right said, "We're not doing anything," with no inflection. He didn't know whether she was accusing or inviting, but either way that was the right answer.

Jane reached into her purse and they all tensed to move, as though they expected her to douse them with tear gas, an event that was probably not out of the question on these streets at night. She ran her fingers along the lining of her purse and found the Katherine Webster identification packet. She flashed the business card at them. "Katherine Webster, Treasury Department," she said.

"We didn't do nothing," said the one in the center.

"I didn't ask," she said. "I want to know if you're interested in working for a few hours."

"Doing what?" He was very suspicious now.

She pointed up at the lighted window of the Enterprise Development office. "There's a man in that office who's a suspect. In a while he's going to get into a car and drive out of town. You follow him, I follow you. If he spots you, turn off and go home. If he doesn't, you follow him to wherever he's going, you call a number, leave the address on the answering machine, and go home."

"Why us?" said the one on the left.

Jane quoted from an imaginary field manual. "If in the judgment of the investigating agent it is useful to deputize or otherwise employ private citizens in order to avoid detection by the surveillant, he or she is authorized to do so." She waited for a moment while they deciphered this, then said, "You don't have to do it. I can pay you per diem and a performance bonus if you work out."

"What does that mean?" asked the one on the right.

"A hundred dollars each to cover your expenses on the drive. That's the per diem. It means 'per day,' and you don't declare it on your tax return." She caught the amused glance from the one in the middle to the one on the left when he heard that. "Another two hundred each if he doesn't see you. You could each make three hundred before the sun comes up."

"What makes it worth that?"

"He's armed, he's dangerous, and he's smart. If he stops, you've got to keep going. Don't get yourself into a spot where his car is stopped and so is yours. He'll probably kill you."

The three looked at each other. There were a few shrugs and head tilts, but no smirks. The part about killing seemed to have raised their level of interest considerably. She had forgotten for a moment about seventeen-year-old boys. There had never been a moment in human history when anybody hadn't been able to recruit enough of them for a war. She reached into her purse again and said, "The per diem is in advance." She started to count the bills in front of them.

The one in the middle said to the one on the right, "You want to use your car or mine?"

"You have two?" asked Jane.

"Yeah," said the one in the middle.

"Use them both and you each get an extra hundred."

Mary was leaning against the tiled wall of the shower stall in the big first-floor bathroom of the farmhouse. They had finally left her alone, her right wrist handcuffed to the shower head so that she could never quite sit down. She tried to stand on her own, but she felt faint and unsteady. This was probably why they had chained her that way. If she fell she would hurt her arm, but she probably couldn't kill herself by hitting her head on the tiles.

When she looked down at her legs she could see the bruises were already a deep purple, and the welts were red and swelling. She had tried to kick out at them, but they had not grabbed her or tried to wrestle with her; they had simply clubbed the leg that came up at them, and when she kicked out again they would hit it again, until finally she couldn't get the leg to kick.