Naked Prey

next instant that it had to be Letty, because Martha was definitely dead.
    He spotted the door with light leaking beneath it, stepped over to it, and said, “Letty?” and tried the knob. Locked. He kicked it once and it bent, without breaking. He kicked it a second time, a cop-kick, and it flew open. Letty was gone. Window broken, with movement—the jacket going out. He stepped on a notebook and almost fell, got right, hurried to the window and saw a dark figure on the ground, hobbling down the side of the house. He fired once, missed, and, blinded by his own muzzle flash, let go another shot, and then he couldn’t see her anymore.
    Think.
    She was out there alone, maybe hurt. There was nobody else out there—the countryside was empty, he could shoot a machine-gun at her and nobody would hear. He ran down the stairs, realized his arm was burning. He looked at it,quickly, as he hurried through the living room and out on the porch: blood. Then he was around the house, and he got out the flash and got under the window and flicked the penlight on, and started tracking her. At the back of the house, he found blood, so he’d hit her, maybe, unless she’d cut herself going out of the house . . .
    He tracked her for a minute, then called out, “Letty. You might as well stop, I can see you.”
    She called, “Who are you?” and he stopped, trying to focus on the direction. It was dark as a coal sack.
    Then a star burst in front of him, a muzzle flash, and he felt a sharp slap on his chest and he involuntarily sat down. He could hear her running again but he paid no attention: he thought, I’m shot. I’m shot. He couldn’t believe it—he was shot. Shit at and missed, shot at and hit. He almost giggled. Had to do something about this.
    He crawled back toward the house, then got on his feet, staggering, got inside, and looked at his chest. Nothing: but it hurt bad. After a second, he spotted a tiny dimple in the parka fabric. A hole, he thought, wonderingly. He unzipped the parka, found a small circle of blood on his uniform shirt. Pulled his shirt open, found a bigger circle on his undershirt. Pulled that up, and found a hole in his chest, just right of his left nipple. The skin was already beginning to bruise, and when he touched it, pain rippled across his chest.
    Shit. He was shot.
    Didn’t hurt as bad as his arm, though. He took a few experimental breaths. He was breathing okay. And he thought, She yelled, “Who are you?”
    Did she really not know? When would she have seen his face?
    He began to see some possibilities—maybe he could pull this off yet. And then he thought, DNA. Goddamn DNA. Martha West had cut him up, they might find his blood anywhere . . .
    L ETTY FIRED THE shot, then stumbled away from her muzzle flash, aware that it would have given her away. The man was crunching through the snow again, and she found another shell with her good hand —what was wrong with her left? It just didn’t work— and tried to get it in the gun. She fumbled it, found another, got this one in, stopped to listen.
    Nothing. Where was he? She began to get the creepy feeling that he was right next to her, breathing quietly, and she slowly dropped to her knees, huddling into the dried Russian thistles along the West Ditch. Waited. Where was he . . .
    Two minutes passed, though it took an eternity. Another minute? Where was he? What happened to Mom? She almost gagged, because she thought she knew what happened to Mom. Though Mom had fought the guy long enough for her to go out the window . . .
    More light. What was that? More light, lots more light . . .
    The house was burning. She was drawn to it—was there something she could do, or was the gunman simply pulling her in? Frightened, she shrank farther back into the dark, and farther back, as the flames grew.
    When the first of the volunteer trucks arrived, twenty minutes later, the fire was five stories high and climbing into the night like a volcano.

15
    L UCAS HAD STOLEN an old copy of Fortune magazine from the motel lobby and lay in bed, reading an article about how he could still retire rich, when the phone rang. Del?
    He picked it up and got the comm center clerk from the Law Enforcement Center. “Mr. Davenport? This is Susan Conrad down at the sheriff’s office. We’ve just dispatched our fire department to the West house. The call coming in said the whole house was burning like crazy. Thought you might want to know.”
    “Jesus.