Night Prey

exit. That’s the closest way out now. I’ll go on through the skyway if he moves that way.”
    “Good. Del?”
    “Just coming up to sportswear. I can’t see him, but I’m right across from Connell. I can see Connell.”
    “You’re real close to him. He’s behind the shirt rack,” Connell chirped.
    “Excuse me, could you tell me where men’s bathrobes are?” Lucas turned around, and looked down at the short elderly lady. She had ear curls like a lamb, and small thick glasses.
    “Down by that post where you see the Exit sign,” Lucas said.
    “Thank you,” she said, and tottered away.
    Lucas angled through Ralph Lauren into Guess. A blond woman in a black dress stepped up to him and said, “Escape?”
    “What?” He stepped toward her, and she stepped back and held up a cylindrical bottle as though she were defending herself.
    “Just a spritz?”
    Men’s perfume. “Oh, no, I’m sorry,” Lucas said, moving on. The woman looked after him.
    Koop was moving, and Connell beeped. “He’s headed toward the north door. Still moving slow.”
    “I’ve got him,” Lucas said.
    Sloan said, “I’m going through the skyway.”
    “I’ll move into Sloan’s spot,” Del said. “Meagan, you’ve been the most exposed, you either oughta go through way ahead or stay back.”
    “It’s too soon to go through ahead of him,” Connell said. “I’ll hang back.”
    “I’ll catch up to you,” Lucas said.
    Lucas moved up to a glass case of Coach briefcases and looked down the store at Koop’s back. Koop had stopped again, no more than thirty feet away, poking a finger through a rack of leather jackets. Lucas stepped back, focused on Koop, when a hand hooked his elbow. A youngish man in a suit was behind him, another to his left. The perfume woman was behind them.
    “May I ask you what you’re doing?” the man in the suit asked. Store security, a tough guy, with capped teeth. Lucas stepped hard behind the counter, out of sight of Koop, the two men lurching along with him. The security man’s grip tightened.
    “I’m a Minneapolis homicide cop on surveillance,” Lucas said, his voice low and mean, like a hatchet. He reached into his pocket, pulled his badge case, flipped it open. “If you give me away, I’ll pull your fucking testicles off and stuff them in your ears.”
    “Jesus.” The security man looked at the bug in Lucas’s ear, then at his face, at what looked like rage. He went pale. “Sorry.”
    “Get the fuck out of this end of the store, all of you,” Lucas said. He pointed the other way. “Go that way. Go separately. Don’t walk in the aisles and don’t look back.”
    “I’m . . .” the man was stuttering. “I’m sorry, I used to be a cop.”
    “Yeah, right.” Lucas turned away and sidled out from behind the case. Koop was gone. “Shit.”
    Connell beeped. “He’s moving.”

    ROUX WAS SCARED to death. Connell’s idea had scared her so badly that she thought about switching back to Gauloises.
    But Jensen had come to see her the day before, wearing a power suit and carrying a power briefcase, and she’d laid it out: a sucker game might be the only way to take him.
    Roux, stuck between a rock and a hard place, had gone for the hard place.
    “Thanks,” Connell had said to Jensen when they were in the hall outside of Roux’s office. “Takes guts.”
    “I want to get him so bad that my teeth hurt,” Jensen had said. “When will he get out?”
    “Tomorrow morning,” Connell had said. Her eyes defocused, as though she were looking into the future.
    “And you,” Jensen said to Lucas. “Did I tell you, you remind me of my older brother?”
    “He must be a good-looking guy,” Lucas said.
    “God, I’m sick, and he’s trying to push me under,” Connell groaned. “The nausea is overwhelming. . . .”
    They’d tracked him from the moment Koop had left the jail. Took him home, put him to bed. Everything was visual: all the tracking devices had temporarily been taken off the truck. If he thought about his arrest, he might wonder how they’d picked him up at a liquor store.
    The next day, he’d left the house a little earlier than usual. He’d gone to his gym, worked out. Then he drove to a park, and ran. That had been a nightmare. They weren’t ready for it, they were all in street shoes. They’d lost him a half-dozen times, but never for more than a minute or two, when he was running hills.
    “This guy,” Lucas said when they watched him run back to the