Mortal Prey

rifle. Good.
    Andreno came over with a plastic plate full of finger food. “Better get over to the table. The best stuff goes fast. The pâté is recommended, with them little round yellow crackers.”
    “Give me one of yours,” Lucas said. He tried a little yellow cracker and the pâté, which was recommended. But he didn’t have much of an appetite. The night seemed to be getting warmer rather than cooler, and a large number of good-looking middle-aged women were showing ingenious displays of skin. Lucas and Andreno began to move with them, clockwise, around the rose garden, like migrating geese. The Rosses were on the far side of the clock, and they kept it that way, although Ross caught Lucas’s eye once and shook his head, a shallow, dour smile locked on his face.
    The clockwork continued, around and around the rose garden, as slow as a minute hand, people clumping and talking, but always seeming, after a few minutes, to move. More people showed up, and as the crowd got denser, there was more of the high-pitched feminine laughter that seemed to accompany a crowd of tuxedos and party dresses, rich people and wanna-bes preening themselves—Lucas checking the women, anybody close to the height and build of Rinker. There were several of them, but none was her.
    At eight-thirty, the party was near its peak, the promenade continuing. At the heart of the clock face, Lucas realized after a while, were the principals of the orchestra: the conductor, the president, a couple of violinists, all with shaggy longish hair and cultivated manners, a kind of gardened drollness that led to heavy lids and rolled eyes.
    Then Andreno said, “I think I’m in love.”
    Lucas looked and said, “Jesus Christ, she’s fourteen.”
    “But she thinks like forty. You want some purple fish eggs?”
    “This party is too good for you.”
    “That’s possible. Did I ever tell you about the time the Prince of England came here, and I was supposed to be security, and I was wearing this tux, but my Jockey shorts kept riding up in my ass crack and were strangling my balls….”
    Lucas listened with mild amusement, and then realized…
    “Where’s Ross?”
    Andreno stopped in midsentence, looked around, and said, “Three minutes ago, he was under that crab-apple tree.” They both looked toward the top of the garden, the end away from the brick building. There were two men standing under the tree, talking, but neither was Ross. Treena Ross was also gone. “Maybe in the can.”
    “Not unless they’re peeing in the bushes,” Lucas said. They were both moving, passed Sally and Mallard. As they went by, Lucas said, “Ross is gone. You see him?”
    They both looked and fell in with Lucas and Andreno, and Sally said, “Shit. He was right there.” The four of them continued to the top of the garden, to the two men under the crab apple. Lucas asked, “Have either of you seen John Ross and his wife? It’s pretty urgent.”
    One of them said, “Yes, I think they went to look at the orchids in the Climatron. Treena had a flier of some kind, a special orchid display.”
    They all looked that way, and saw Treena Ross stepping through the door into the Climatron, with John Ross a step behind. Lucas shouted at them, “ROSS: WAIT.”
    But Ross was gone, the door was closing, and Lucas started running, as hard as he could, down the sidewalk, running hard, Andreno falling behind, Sally a couple of steps behind Andreno, handicapped by heels, Mallard behind that, Sally shouting into a radio, something unintelligible, and then as Lucas came up to the door, he saw three flashes, muzzle flashes, and heard faint screaming and he shouted, “She got him, she’s inside, spread out, block the place…” And he was through the door.
    The Climatron was literally a jungle, bamboo and palms and ficuses and probably a fuckin’ cockatoo, he thought. Once inside, Treena Ross’s screams were shrill and close by, but he couldn’t see her. He was on a pebbled sidewalk, and he drew his .45 and ran down the sidewalk, following a curve around to the right and then back toward the center. As he came around the curve, he saw Treena Ross backed against a low wall of bamboo, a body at her feet, her cream dress blotched with blood.
    She saw Lucas coming and screamed, “She went that way, she went that way, she’s in the trees. She’s in the trees, she shot John, call an ambulance.”
    Andreno was right behind him and had a telephone out and was calling an