Mortal Prey

much, but had to admit that he knew how to run the truck.
    Mallard was on the radio the full time. He’d been on it when he ran out of the hotel a minute after Lucas and Malone, stopped using it just long enough to explain that he’d been getting ready to take a shower when the call came from the field, and then got back on it, with brief breaks to pass along what he was hearing.
    “I’ve told them to move on her whether or not we’re there. As soon as they’re ready, they go.”
    “They gonna rush her?”
    “They’re gonna block her, front and back, with trucks. We’ve got people moving up through a yard that she’s parked near, but there’s a dog, and they’re talking to the owner about getting the dog out of there quietly before they go through. When she’s blocked, there’ll be a guy pointing a shotgun through her window before she has time to move. They think they can close up to fifteen feet.”
    They kept getting closer, and nothing had happened. The dog was hanging them up, and then Mallard reported that the dog was now locked in the basement of the nearest house, and that the tac squad was moving in, cutting through the dark yards. The red-haired agent took them off the freeway and down a couple of major streets, the tires screeching on the warm asphalt, all of them leaning into the turn, and then suddenly, on a narrow street, surrounded by woods, he slowed, and reached out and killed the flasher.
    “Six blocks,” he said. Twenty seconds later: “Four blocks.”
    Then up in front of them, a block away, they saw another suburban pull away from the curb, go down another block, and turn a corner. “That’s our guys,” said the redhead.
    “Going down,” Mallard said. He couldn’t keep the stress out of his voice. “I’m about to wet my pants.”
    “This is a rental,” the redhead said. “Try not to.”
    They idled along for a block, paused before the corner, drifting toward the curb. Then Mallard said, “They’re doing it, they’re doing it, let’s GO.”
    The red-haired man mashed on the accelerator and the Suburban grunted away from the curb and turned the corner, and, two blocks away, they could see a car in a brilliant slash of light and trucks all around it, and men with long guns and helmets….
    “Got her,” Mallard shouted. “We got her.”
     
    AND A HALF hour later, he said, harshly, angrily, to Lucas, “What the fuck is this about, Lucas? What the fuck is this about?”
    They had Nina Bennett pressed against a six-year-old Volvo station wagon, frightened, crying, hands cuffed behind her back. And obviously not Clara Rinker.
    After some preliminary shouting, the next thought was that Rinker was using Bennett as a diversion to approach Dallaglio’s house, and there was a rush to get a larger squad around the house. But Dallaglio was okay, and there was no sign of Rinker, or of fleeing cars, or anything else.
    Which brought up Mallard’s question, “What the fuck is this about, Lucas?”
    “I don’t know.” He looked around. “Maybe she’s watching from somewhere, to see what would happen.”
    “She had to know that Dallaglio was protected. What would she gain?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “We don’t even know it was Rinker,” Malone said. “The woman who hired her—if this even happened—didn’t sound like Rinker.”
    “Didn’t sound like Mrs. Dallaglio, either,” Lucas said dryly.
    “Maybe she’s just pulling our chain,” said the red-haired agent.
    That seemed unlikely, Lucas thought, but he couldn’t think of anything better.
    An hour later, after taking the cuffed Nina Bennett to the Dallaglios’ house to confront Jesse Dallaglio—both women agreed that they’d never met—they sent Bennett downtown for a formal statement, and pulled everybody else back into position.
    “She doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Mallard said, meaning Bennett. “We’re gonna get her statement and cut her loose.”
    “Got a story to tell, anyway. Private eye—you don’t see many of them anymore. Not like that,” Lucas said.
    “She even had a bottle of booze in her car, and a little on her breath,” Malone said. “And she must’ve smoked like a chimley. The whole car reeked.”
    “You said chimley,” Lucas observed.
    “Did not. I said chimney. ”
    “Chimley,” Mallard said, absently. Then: “But you know what’s really strange when you think about it? She smokes, like a chimley, and she drives a Volvo station wagon. I didn’t think