Rules of Prey

luck.”
    “Christ knows it’s our turn for some,” Daniel said.
     
    Jennifer had already talked to Carla about an interview, and when Lucas called to agree, she told him that Carla was ready. They would shoot it at three o’clock and run an early, tight version at six o’clock. A longer version would be promoed for the ten-o’clock news, which the station had decided to expand to accommodate the interview.
    Wear a suit, she said, and a blue shirt.
    Shave again.
    The interview lasted an hour, Lucas cool and distracted, Carla warm and insistent. With a proper cut, it would look good. Jennifer watched the interviewer talking with them, and halfway through, realized that Lucas and Carla were sleeping together. Or had slept together.
    When the interview was over, she left with Lucas, trailing behind the cameraman and sound technician, who were carrying gear down to the van. Alone in the elevator she said, “I thought you might have been sleeping with McGowan. I see I was wrong. It was Carla Ruiz.”
    “Ah, man, Jennifer, I can’t deal with this today,” Lucas said, staring at the elevator floor.
    “I don’t mind so much,” she said sadly. “I knew it was going to happen. I was hoping it wouldn’t be this soon.”
    “I think it’s done with,” Lucas said dispiritedly.
    “Just slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am?”
    Lucas shook his head. “She gave me a little talk a few days ago. She likes me okay, but she’s ready to cut me off when I conflict with her work.”
    “Oh, my, that hasn’t happened before, has it?” Jenniferasked. Her tone was light, even sarcastic, but a tear rolled down her cheek. Lucas reached out and thumbed it away. “Don’t do that, for Christ’s sake.”
    “Why not? You can’t tolerate real emotion?”
    He looked at the floor between his feet, then cocked his head at her. “Sometimes people don’t know each other as well as they think they do. You’re giving me shit and I’m supposed to take it like a man, right? You know what I feel like? I feel like going home and sticking my forty-five in my mouth and blowing my brains out. I’ve been beat up by a madman. I might recover. I might not. But I’ll never forget it. Not in this life.”
    The elevator door opened and he walked away and never looked back.
     
    Elle watched him across the expansive game board. The bookie and attorney had gone together, the two students followed a few minutes later. The grocer was still staring at the map, figuring.
    Meade was no dummy. After a day’s fighting, in which the South controlled most of the heights south of Gettysburg, he cautiously withdrew to the south, toward Washington. There were prepared positions waiting. Now the ball was in Lee’s court. Lee—Elle, with advice from Lucas, as Longstreet—could continue his invasion of the North. That looked increasingly untenable. Or he could go after Meade’s army to the south. That army would have to be destroyed in any case. But if Lee went after Meade, it would mean the kind of Napoleonic attack that failed at the real Gettysburg. Once he got down to close-quarters fighting around Washington, with the mountains to his west and a flooding Potomac to his south, it would be kill or be killed. Lucas’ game could end the Civil War two years early . . .
    “You can’t keep thinking about it,” Elle said.
    “What?” Lucas had been balancing on the back two legs of his chair, staring at the ceiling.
    “You can’t keep brooding about the tragedy out at the reporter’s house. It’s pointless. And you almost had him. Youdrew him in. If you’d stop feeling sorry for yourself, you’d come up with something new.”
    Lucas dropped the chair to the floor and stood up.
    “My problem is, I can’t think of anything. My head is frozen. I think he’s gone.”
    “No. Something is going to happen,” Elle said. “You know how there’s a rhythm to these games? When we all know something is about to happen, even when it doesn’t have to? I feel the same kind of rhythm here. The rhythm says this whole thing is about to resolve itself.”
    “The problem is, how?” the grocer interjected.
    “That is the problem,” Lucas said, snapping a finger at the grocer. “Exactly. Suppose the guy resolves it by leaving? He could start all over somewhere else, and we wouldn’t even know it. And we’ve really got nothing to go on. Not a real clue in the bunch. If he wants to leave, he can walk.”
    “He won’t,” Elle said positively. “This