Hidden Prey

her laptop into the phone jack and then came back downstairs and asked, “I’m sorry; have I been neglecting you?”
    “You guys . . .” But he was mildly amused. They went around and checked doors and turned off the lights, made sure Sam was okay, both kissed him and headed down the hall to their bedroom; and then Nadya called, across the house, “Lucas, are you there?”
    “Yeah . . .”
    He walked back toward the guest room, Weather a step behind. Nadya came around a corner, still dressed. She held a finger up, and said, “I must tell you, I have not been completely truthful.”
    “What?” Lucas looked at Weather, who shook her head.
    “Truthful. I have not been completely.”
    “What, uh . . .” Weather stepped up to Lucas and put her hand on his biceps.
    “I have a shadow; this I knew.”
    Lucas shrugged: “So did everybody else.”
    “This shadow, I do not know him. He was assigned by the embassy, and he was investigating beside us. This morning, I told you, a man telephoned the embassy and asked to speak to a man in intelligence. I didn’t tell you that he mentioned some . . . items . . . that told us he was genuine. He spoke in Russian. He arranged to meet the shadow this evening at the Greyhouse Bus Museum in the town of Hibbing. You know this museum?”
    “Never heard of it, but it’s probably the Grey hound Bus Museum. So what happened?”
    “The shadow is missing. His cell phone rings, he doesn’t answer. He always answers. There is a strict rule that he call back every half hourwith information about destination and names and he had one of these, eh, photographic telephones, but his telephone now rings without answer and he took no photographs . . .”
    “When was the last time they heard from him?” Weather asked. “The last moment?”
    “Tonight, as he arrived at the bus museum. Since then, nothing.”
    “Let me make a call,” Lucas said.
    She was anxious, twisting her hands. “Could you hurry? People are very worried. This shadow has a daughter, but his wife died three years ago, and everybody is worried for this man and especially the daughter.”

     13 
    J AN W ALTHER HAD honey-colored hair with a few streaks of gray, a round, pink-cheeked face, and worried green eyes. She worried about everybody and everything. She worried that her son, Carl, might be gay, or into drugs. She worried that her mother would have to go to a nursing home, and about where the money would come from. And she worried most of all that she wouldn’t make the weekly nut at Mesaba Frame and Artist’s Supply, her store in downtown Hibbing.
    The one thing she hadn’t worried about much was her sex life, for, though the men came around at regular intervals—some nice, respectable guys, too—she’d firmly pushed them away and focused on the business. If a thousand dollars didn’t come through the door each week, she’d be out of it.
    Now the whole sex thing was coming up again. A guy who owned a steel-fabricating business, a three-year widower with a couple of kids, had come in to get a watercolor framed—a whitetail deer standing in aforest glade, its front feet in a leaf-dappled pool. He’d chatted awhile when he came back to pick it up, and then he’d stopped a couple of times, passing by, he said, just to see how things were.
    She’d known him most of her life—he was three grades ahead of her in school—so they were comfortable. He hadn’t asked her out yet, but he was edging up to it, and she liked him. She even liked his kids, and she wouldn’t mind, after this long hiatus, getting laid again.
    Which brought her back to worrying about Carl. Bill, she thought, wouldn’t be too happy about a gay stepchild, if that was the situation. On the other hand, she had no reason to think Carl was gay. Maybe he was just a little slow with girls. From what she read in the papers and saw on TV, half the girls Carl’s age were already sexually active, and Carl had never been on a date. He was certainly good-looking enough to attract girls, but he had that tall, willowy, clear-complected look that she’d associated with homosexuality—TV homosexuality, anyway. And something sexual was going on with him; she’d been bleaching the semen stains out of his shorts since he was twelve.
     
    S HE WAS IN that questioning mood when she saw the cut on his arm. She’d come home late—she kept the place open late two nights a week, trying to make that thousand-dollar nut—and