Certain Prey

I mean, that’d settle things.”
    “All right. I’ve got to run to Wichita. I’ll see you tomorrow night, probably.”
    She made two calls to the airport, then called a cab. She left her car and luggage at the Holiday Inn, but took her guns. The cab dropped her at Shack Direct Air, where a laconic pilot who looked far too young to be allowed in airplanes was waiting in the pilot’s lounge, reading the Wall Street Journal. “You Miss Maxwell?”
    “Yes.”
    “I was supposed to get some money.”
    She took two thousand dollars out of her purse and handed it to him. “We’re outa here,” he said. S HE ARRIVED in Wichita a few minutes before midnight, took a cab straight to the bar, said, “Hey, Johnny,” to the bartender, who said, “You’re back?” and she said, “Yeah, but I’m running. See you tomorrow.”
    “Heavy date?”
    “Something like that. I’m taking the van, so don’t worry about it.”
    “Okay.”
    From the back room she got a dozen liquor boxes and the keys for the bar’s van, a big practical Dodge. On the way back to her apartment, she stopped at a convenience store, bought a package of plastic garbage bags, and hauled them with the liquor boxes back to her apartment. She lived on the second floor, and she carried the boxes up in three trips, four at a time, and tossed them into the kitchen. After the third trip, she shut the door behind her and started packing.
    Tried not to think about it: just packed. She packed a sock bunny that her mother had made her, when her mother was still functioning as a human being, before her step-dad had beaten the liveliness out of her. She’d gotten the bunny for Christmas when she was six; it was the single oldest thing she possessed. She packed the photographs taken with other dancers at two or three bars around St. Louis, with people at the booze warehouse, where she’d worked after the dancing ended. She packed the first two-dollar bill that the bar had taken in—they’d saved the first two-dollar bill because they’d forgotten to save the first dollar.
    She packed: she’d lived in the place for six years, and it had been as much a home to her as anything she’d ever had, and it took a while. She hummed while she packed. Hummed like an angry bumblebee. “That fuckin’
    Davenport,” she said. “That fuckin’ Davenport.”
    When she’d packed everything important to her, including her schoolbooks and papers, she realized that she couldn’t pack everything that was important to her. She couldn’t pack the place. She sat on the bed and smoothed the sheet, and went once more through the chest of drawers, where even the tired cotton underwear suddenly seemed important . . .
    “That fuckin’ Davenport . . .” And this time, she cried. Let it go, couldn’t stop it.
    Ten minutes later, eyes red, she was wiping the place with Lysol. B Y THREE-THIRTY in the morning, she was finished. If the cops really took the place apart, they might find a print or two, but it’d take weeks. She took the last of the boxes down to the van, moved the van down the street, then went back to the apartment. Her apartment was at the end of a hall, and when she’d first moved in, she’d made a small change: she’d placed a wireless movement alarm, which she bought at Ward’s, just above the window at the end of the hall. The alarm, when tripped, set off a buzzer or a strobe on a small console next to her bed. She chose strobe, put the console next to her face, placed her guns on the floor next to her bed, and let herself slip into a fitful sleep.
    She hadn’t thought that the man in St. Louis would ever harm her; she had almost that much faith in him. But not quite that much. She’d told him she hoped to be in Wichita by the time the banks opened. If he was going to make a move against her, probably using one or the other muscleheads that always seemed to be around, the guy most likely would be waiting at her apartment, waiting for her to open the bank and then come back.
    Coming from St. Louis, even by air, would put him in Wichita at least a few hours later than her. He’d have to be found, and an airplane would have to be rounded up, or he’d have to get in his car and drive . . . If he was coming, she really wouldn’t expect him before six o’clock or so.
    He was better than that. He arrived at five. She thought she actually woke a minute before the alarm went. Whatever, she sat up with the strobe flashing in her face. She hit the off button