Night Prey

closet at the other end of the hall.
    When Koop arrived at Jensen’s, they’d wait until he’d made a move at the door—tried to unlock it, tried to break it. Lucas would give the word, and Sloan would take him from one end of the hall, Del from the other. Lucas and Connell would come out of the apartment. Four-on-one.
    Connell had her pistol out, checking it. She’d fed it with safety slugs. They’d rip massive holes in a slab of meat, but would pretty much fall apart when they hit a wall. She held the gun with the barrel up, her finger alongside the trigger guard, her cheek against the cylinder.
    “On the roof. He’s on the roof,” Del called from Jensen’s roof. He was breathing hard: he’d beaten Koop up to the top by thirty seconds. A moment later: “He’s on the air-conditioner.”
     
     
     
    KOOP PULLED HIMSELF up, crawled to his protective vent, looked across the street. Sara was there, on the bed, reading. He’d seen her doing this twenty times, prowling through her papers. He put the Kowa scope on her and saw that she was looking through long lists of tables. Her concentration was intense. She turned a page.
    She was wearing a white terry-cloth robe, the first time he’d seen it. He approved. It set off her dark, dramatic looks like nothing else would. If her hair had only been wet, she’d have looked like a movie star, on stage. . . .
     
     
     
    “HE’S ON THE air-conditioner,” Lucas said quietly to Jensen. She showed no sign that she’d heard, although she had.
    “He’s got a scope, and he’s watching her,” Del said. “Christ, he must feel like he’s inside the room with her.”
    “I’m sure he does,” Connell murmured into her headset. Lucas looked across at her: the gun was still against her cheek.
    Jensen put down her newspaper and rolled off the bed, wandered toward the bathroom. This was not part of the script. “What?” Lucas asked.
    She didn’t answer, just ran water in the bathroom for a moment, then walked back out. The bathrobe had fallen open. Lucas was looking at her back, but he had a feeling . . .
    Jensen came out of the bathroom. The bathrobe had fallen open, and she was wearing only underpants beneath it. Her breasts looked wonderful against the terry cloth, alternately exposed and hidden. She was apparently upset by something. She spent a few minutes pacing, back and forth across the gap in the curtains, sometimes exposed, sometimes not. All told, it was the best strip show Koop had ever seen. His heart caught in his throat each time she passed the window.
    Then she dropped on the bed again, on one elbow, facing him, one breast showing, and began going through the papers. Then she rolled onto her back, bare legs folded, feet flat on the bed, knees up, head up on a pillow, the robe open again, breasts flattening of their own weight. . . .
    Koop groaned with the heat of it. He nearly couldn’t bear to watch it. Absolutely couldn’t bear to take his eyes away.

    LUCAS SWALLOWED, GLANCED back at Connell. She wasn’t getting any of this. She simply sat, staring sightlessly at a cupboard. He looked back at Jensen, on the bed. Jensen’s eyes had flicked toward him once, and he thought he saw the thinnest crease of a smile. Jesus. He began to feel what Koop did, the physical pull of the woman. She gave off some kind of weird Italianate hormone-cooking vibrations. Where’d she get the name Jensen? Had to be a married name; whatever was bubbling out of the woman on the bed, it wasn’t Scandinavian.
    Lucas swallowed again.
    If there was such a thing as a politically correct cop manual, this would be specifically outlawed. But Lucas had no objection: if this didn’t do it to Koop, nothing would. Sara got out of bed again, robe open, went into the bathroom, closed the door. When she did this, she usually stayed awhile.
    Koop dropped back behind the ventilator duct, tried to light a cigarette. Found that the cigarette was damp, realized that he was soaked with sweat.
    He couldn’t do this. He had the hard-on of a lifetime. He found his knife, pushed the button. The blade sprang out like a serpent’s tongue.
    Time to go.
     
     
     
    “H E ’ S DOWN,” DEL said. “Holy shit, he’s down. He’s walking across the roof, he’s through the door. . . .”
    “Greave, you hear that? It’s on you, man,” Lucas said.
    “We got it,” Greave said.
    Lucas stepped into the bedroom. “Sara. Time to go.”
    Jensen came out of the bathroom, the robe tied tight.