Certain Prey

into the hall, they closed the door behind themselves; they took three steps and suddenly a shaft of light fell across their faces. They both looked right, standing in the hall, and then down. A small girl stood there, looking up at them. Their faces were illuminated by the light from the interior. Then, behind the girl, a crabby mommy called, “Heather! Shut that door!”
    Carmel was fumbling at the pistol in her pocket, but then another door opened above them, and a male voice said a few unintelligible words; they both looked up, and the little girl closed the door.
    “Gotta go,” Rinker said urgently.
    “She saw us,” Carmel said.
    But there were footsteps on the landing above, and Rinker thrust Carmel toward the door. She went, hurrying, Rinker a step behind, out the door, down the sidewalk, the apartment door closing behind them.
    “She was just a kid,” Rinker said. “She won’t remember. They might not find the bodies for a week.”
    “Why can’t this be easy?” Carmel asked. They hurried down the dark sidewalk toward the lights of Dinkytown, and she added, “This is just like a dream I had when I was a teenager. A school dream, where I couldn’t find my locker and the bell was about to ring, and every time I was about to find it, something else happened to keep me away from it . . .”
    “Everybody has that dream,” Rinker said. “We’re in the clear.”
    “Maybe,” Carmel said. She turned to look back; the dark figure of a man was climbing on a bike, and then headed away from them, out on the street. “But I am on the inside; if anything comes out of that kid, we’re gonna have to go back and clean up.”
    “Let’s get that drink,” Rinker said. T HEY HAD SEVERAL DRINKS, and two midnight steaks, at Carmel’s apartment. Carmel had a rarely used grill on her balcony, and Rinker did the honors, moving the meat and sauce like a professional. “I once worked in a bar where we had an outdoor grill. Place was full of cowboys, wanted their steaks burned, ” she told Carmel.
    “Make mine not-quite-rare,” Carmel said. “No blood.” Carmel was in the media room, looking at the tape: the whole episode with Rolo was on the tape, while the other tapes had only the final sequence. “So this is the original,” she told Rinker with satisfaction. “Even if there’s a copy someplace, they could get me into court, but I’d prove it was a copy and could have been altered and I’d be gone.”
    “Still be best if there weren’t any copies,” Rinker said.
    “You about done out there?”
    “All done. Dinner is served.”
    “Good. One more thing before we eat.” Carmel stripped the tape out of the cassette by hand, tossed the cassette pack into a wastebasket, squeezed the jumbled tangle of tape into a wad the size of a softball and dropped it onto the hot charcoal in the grill.
    “That won’t be coming back,” she said as she watched it burn.
    “Three people dead because of that tape,” Rinker said, shaking her head.
    “Ah, they were nothing, a bunch of druggies,” Carmel said. “Nobody’ll miss them.”
    “Even druggies have families, sometimes,” Rinker said. “I hated my step-dad and my older brother, I don’t like my mom anymore, but I’ve got a little brother, he’s out in L.A. and he does drugs, sometimes he lives on the beach . . . I’d do anything I could for him. I do everything I can for him.”
    “Really,” Carmel said, impressed. They’d moved the steaks onto a seldom-used dining table. “I’ve never been like that with anybody. I mean, I give to charity and all, but I have to. I’ve never really been where . . . I do anything for somebody.”
    “Not even for Hale?”
    Carmel shook her head: “Not even for Hale.”
    “You killed for him,” Rinker said.
    “No, I didn’t,” Carmel said. “I killed for me—for something I want. Which is Hale. If he’d had his choice, who knows? He might’ve decided to stay with Barbara.”
    “Mmm,” Rinker said, chewing. She swallowed, watched for a moment as Carmel worked her way into the steak and then asked, “Would you have killed the little girl?”
    Carmel said, “You make me sound like a monster.” “No, no. I’m just interested,” Rinker said. “I’d do it, if it was absolutely necessary. But I’d hate doing it.”
    “Why?”
    “Because she’s a kid.”
    “So what? None of this means anything, this”—Carmel looked around—“this life. We’re just a bunch of meat. When we think