Mortal Prey

that was allowed.”
    “I said chimney, ” Malone said.
    After a minute of silence, the red-haired agent said, “Did not. Said chimley. ”
     
    THEY’D STOPPED TEASING her about when they got back to the hotel, still frustrated from the false alarm. They parked, got out, and started walking for the main entrance, under the orange sodium-vapor lights, when somebody shot at them.
    BANG!
    They were spread out, walking away from the Suburban, walking in a line side-by-side, like a publicity shot for the Magnificent Seven, when the BANG! echoed off the building front and they all knew what it was and the agents went down and Lucas pivoted and realized in one half-second that the shooter had to be at the far end of the huge empty parking lot, a hundred and fifty yards north, or possibly on the roof of one of the old buildings down to the right, but there was no place else, really, and he ran toward his car, thinking Go-go-go and flashing on the difficulty of hitting a running deer at a hundred and fifty yards, hoping, hoping, looking north as he ran, looking for another muzzle flash, and then he was at his car and inside and fired it up and pulled out of the parking lot, catching from the corner of his eyes the confused, scrambling huddle of agents in the driveway and then he was on the street and accelerating…
    He never saw her, he thought later.
    He thought he found the place from where she’d fired the shot, a spot beside a big metal-sided building that would allow her to park right there, that would allow her to fire, and then to run back and climb inside her car in a matter of two or three seconds. She was probably moving before Lucas had reached his car, he thought.
    He did the neighborhood anyway, gunning up and down the side streets. There was an entrance to a whole nest of interstates right there, and he was sure that was where she’d gone, and if she had, she’d be truly gone. He’d never know what car she was in if he went that way, so he stayed on the down streets, hoping against hope that she’d gotten cute, that she’d tried to drive away slowly, that he might see something.
    But he did not.
     
    AFTER TEN MINUTES , he headed back, paused by the metal building, looking over the spot he thought might have given her the shooting stance. She would have been able to rest her hand against the building, and across the parking lot, now a sea of flashing lights, they would have been perfectly illuminated and silhouetted against the hotel….
    “Goddamnit,” he said aloud.
    This was the reason for sending Bennett to watch Dallaglio. Rinker had found out where the out-of-town agents were staying, probably by calling around to the main hotels and asking for them by name.
    Once she had the hotel, she’d scouted it, picked a place to shoot from. But she couldn’t wait out there all day with a gun, hoping somebody would come along. By sending Bennett out to Dallaglio’s, she’d known that all the big shots would be pulled out of the hotel, and once they found out that it was a false alarm, they’d all be coming back, late at night. She’d be in the dark, and they’d be walking in the bright lights of the parking lot….
    As he thought that, he was swept by a sudden, physical chill. He hadn’t even considered the possibility anybody might have been hit. He’d just run. He turned back down toward the hotel. A cop tried to wave him off, but he shouted, “FBI,” and was pointed into the back lot. He got out and started around the hotel, and saw a man running toward him, a big man, flapping his arms like a goose trying to take off, and not getting there.
    “She…,” Mallard croaked. “She…”
    “Whoa, whoa,” Lucas said, and suddenly he was frightened himself. “Whoa, Louis, what happened?”
    “She…she shot Malone. Malone was shot.”
    “Ah, Jesus, how bad? How bad?” Lucas looked past him, but there was nobody on the ground, nothing. She must be on the way to the hospital.
    He started past Mallard, but Mallard hooked his arm and closed his eyes and said, “She’s dead.”

20
    MALONE HAD BEEN HIT BETWEEN THE shoulder blades, Mallard said. The ambulance had been there in three or four minutes, but she was gone by then. She’d never opened her eyes after she’d gone down, had never made a sound. They put her in the ambulance and rushed her to a critical care unit, but Mallard had been a Marine lieutenant in the last days of Vietnam and had seen people shot, had picked up people hit in