Hidden Prey

dummy. He’ll probably hear about it.”
    “But will he print it?”
    “If he does, it could hurt him with his sources in the department—everybody would be pissed off at him. I don’t think anyone would confirm it, officially, so he’d have to worry about printing rumors . . .”
    Nadya took a napkin out of a napkin holder and folded it, precisely square, then folded it again. “I have to decide whether to tell my superiors what happened. If I do, it would not be good for me. If I don’t, and they find out, it would be worse. But if I don’t, and they don’t find out, and if we get the killer . . .”
    As she was talking, Lucas noticed another woman approaching their table—not a waitress, but a woman in jeans and a nylon windbreaker. She was dark haired and stocky, and she was moving quickly, beelined toward them, and Lucas said, “Uh . . .” but the woman ignored him and said to Nadya, “Are you Nadezhda Kalin?” She pronounced the name with authority and a light went on in Lucas’s brain and he started to get out of the booth just as the waitress appeared with two cups of hot coffee and blocked him, and Nadya looked at the woman and said, “Yes?”
    “I am Jerry Reasons’s wife,” the woman said, and she launched herself into the booth on top of Nadya, her fingernails flashing, and Lucas said, “Oh, shit,” and the waitress with the coffee went down ass-over-coffee-cup and Nadya screamed and slashed back.
    Lucas was out of the booth and grabbed Reasons around the waist and tried to pull her off Nadya, but she was strong, angry, out of control, and when Lucas got her back a foot she turned in his arms and slashed at his face with inch-long, highly polished fingernails, cut him across the nose and he grunted and lost her, and she went back after Nadya.
    Nadya had gotten her feet up into the booth in front of her and kicked Reasons in the chest, and they were both screaming and waiters were running toward them, and Lucas got Reasons around the waist again and tried to pull back while avoiding the fingernails. Both women now had blood on their faces and Lucas, trying not to hurt Reasons, but at the same time hold on to her, lost her again, and she went back into the booth and Nadya picked up the silver-metal napkin holder and smashed Reasons in the forehead.
    Reasons stopped, hung over Nadya for a second, and Lucas wrapped himself around her and pinned her arms, and then Nadya, now screamingly angry herself, smashed her a second time in the forehead, and Reasons went limp.
    Lucas was shouting “Whoa, whoa, whoa” at Nadya, who came out of the booth with the napkin holder, looking for a third shot, and Lucas let go of Reasons with one arm, put his hand in Nadya’s face, and catapulted her back into the booth.
    “Whoa!” he shouted, and the combination of the shout and the impact she took at the back of the booth stopped her. Lucas pivoted away, with Reasons still wrapped up. She was conscious, but loopy, like a fighter who’s been tagged hard, but not quite dropped.
    The restaurant manager was running toward them and Lucas said, “I’m a state cop. Call the police, tell them to get a car up here.”
    Without a word, the woman turned and ran the other way. The waitress was back on her feet, holding her coffee-stained shirt away from herself, saying, “I’m really fucked up. I’m really fucked up.”
    “Are you burned?” Lucas asked.
    “Look at my blouse. This is like three days old,” she said, and Lucas decided that if she was burned, she wasn’t burned badly. Lucas looked back at Nadya, said, “Stay in the booth,” and pushed Reasons further away, put her in another booth, and blocked it with his body.
    “Jesus . . .”
     
    B OTH WOMEN WERE BLEEDING , and Reasons was still dazed, but neither was badly hurt. One of them started crying, and then the other. A waitress said to Lucas, “You’re bleeding like crazy,” and pressed a napkin to his forehead. “She must have got you with her fingernails.”
    A busboy was gawking at Lucas and said, “Boy, I wish I could have seen this,” which made Lucas laugh despite himself.
    Then the cops arrived, a sergeant and a patrolman, and trailingthem, Andreno, with a look of wonderment. Lucas explained what happened to the cops, and the sergeant said, “Ah, shit,” and then, “What do you want to do?”
    “Could you take Mrs. Reasons home? Talk to her?”
    “Well, uh, are we gonna have charges here?”
    “Just a