Mortal Prey

workshop. She went past the garage, vaulted a chain-link fence—moving fast now, slipping the silenced Beretta from under her shirt—to the open side door of the workshop. As she came up to the door she happened to glance upward, and saw a motion detector tucked in the corner, and she stopped, peeked around the door frame. Johnson was looking right at her, a silent-alarm strobe light bouncing off his protective glasses, and he was moving to his right, quickly. She stepped through the door, following the muzzle of her pistol. He froze when he saw her, his hands empty. She glanced toward the wall that he’d been moving to: A shotgun leaned against a cabinet.
    What had Jaime told her, at the ranch, about the need for handguns? “The rifle will be leaning against a tree, and that’s when they will come.”
     
    SHE SMILED, THINKING about it, and Johnson flinched. He took a step back and tried a placating smile. “Hello, Clara, I…”
    No point in conversation. Rinker shot him in the nose, and he went down, twisting away, his face striking the edge of the saw table. He landed faceup in a pile of shavings. She looked at him for a moment, on the floor, judged him dead, but shot him again, carefully, between the eyes. The planer was so loud that she heard no hint of the shot, or of the gun’s cycling action.
    He was dead for sure now. The planer was still screaming, the plank beginning to buck. Rinker couldn’t see a switch, so she pulled the plug, and the machine wound down like a depowered airplane engine.
    She couldn’t leave Johnson on the floor, or even in the workshop, she decided. The yard was fenced, but it wasn’t the best neighborhood, and if somebody broke in, he might be found.
    She looked around for a moment, then grabbed him by the collar and dragged him to a lowboy he’d used for hauling lumber. She pushed a stack of planks onto the floor—thought better of it, in case somebody looked in, and took a minute to stack them neatly near the wall—then loaded his body onto the lowboy and covered it with four transparent bags full of wood shavings and sawdust.
    She pushed the whole load out the door, up the concrete walk to the back of the garage, then into the garage, past an E-Class Mercedes-Benz, and through a breezeway to the house. She couldn’t actually get the lowboy into the house, because of a step. She left the body and the cart in the breezeway and let the muzzle of the Beretta lead her through the house. She was, she found, the only living thing in it.
    The house was neatly kept, but had no more personality than a motel room—a few woodworking magazines, some reference works, a television set with an incongruous Nintendo console sitting on the floor next to it.
    She checked it all out, then hauled Johnson’s body into the house and rolled it down the basement stairs. She first thought to leave it there, at the foot of the stairs, but then noticed a chest-style freezer against the wall, and opened it. It was half-full of Healthy Choice microwave dinners, and bags of frozen peas and corn.
    She took a bunch of the dinners and some of the corn, then managed to tug and pull the body around until she could boost it into the freezer. Johnson landed facedown, and she had to twist his legs to get him to fit inside. She slammed the lid.
    With a few paper towels to wipe up the odd blood smear, she thought, everything would be as nice and tidy as Honus Johnson used to be.
    And she had a new phone, a new house, and a new car.
    Not bad for twenty minutes’ work.
    Though, she admitted to herself, moving the body had given her the willies. As did Johnson’s bed. She was beat from the day, needed some sleep, but couldn’t sleep with the smell of him, and his body still cooling in the freezer. She found clean sheets in a linen closet, sheets that smelled only of detergent, and crashed on the couch.
    Long day coming…

18
    THEY WOUND UP SITTING IN ONE OF THE FBI rental trucks, a six-seater Suburban, eating Snickers and Milky Ways, drinking Cokes and waiting for anything on the perimeter, any sign that Rinker was coming in. They got nothing except distended bladders, and strange looks in a Shell station when they repeatedly tramped through to the rest rooms. Andreno gave up at nine o’clock and took off. At ten-thirty, Mallard was willing to admit that Rinker had flown.
    “We go back to the four main guys,” Mallard said, in frustration. “Ross must be a target—she worked for him for too long. He