Shadow Prey

the card to be signed?”
    “Yeah. ‘Love, Lucas.’ ”
    “That’s nice.” The woman picked up the phone, rapped in four numbers and said, “This is Helen. You got a Rothenburg? Don’t know the spelling. Yeah . . . Four-oh-eight? Thanks.”
    “We’ll send it right up,” the woman said as she gave Shadow Love his change.
    Room 408. “Thanks,” he said.
    He left the shop and went outside. It was late afternoon, getting cooler. He looked both ways, then walked away from the car toward Loring Park and took a long turn around the pond, thinking. The woman was good with a gun. He couldn’t fuck up. If he waited awhile, then went straight in to the elevators, as though he belonged there, he might get up. Then again, maybe not—but if they stopped him, they wouldn’t do more than throw him out. He dug in a pocket, took out a Slim Jim sausage and chewed on it.
    If he got up, what then? If he knocked on her door and she opened it, bang. But what if the chain was on? He had no faith in the idea of shooting through the door. The pistol was a .380, good enough for close work, but it wouldn’t punch through a steel fire-liner. Not for sure. She’d recognize him. And she was a killer. If he missed, she’d be all over him. It’d be hell just getting out of the hotel . . . .
    Have to think.
    He was still working it out when he got back to the car. A Federal Express truck stopped across the street and thedriver hopped out. Shadow Love, his mind far away, automatically tracked him as he went into the lobby of an office building and began emptying the local package box. A moment later, when the driver came out with his load of packages, Shadow Love skipped out of the car and walked into the lobby.
    The Federal Express box had an open rack of packaging envelopes and address slips, with ballpoint pens on chains.
    Lily Rothenburg, Police Officer, he wrote. Room 408  . . .
    He still didn’t know how he’d get in her door. Sometimes you had to pray for luck. When he got back on the sidewalk, it was dark . . . .
     
    The rose was totally unexpected: the last thing she would have expected, but it thrilled her. David sent flowers; Davenport did not. That he should . . .
    Lily put it in a water glass and set it on top of the television set, looked at it, adjusted it and sat down with Anderson’s computer printouts. In two minutes, she knew she couldn’t read.
    Davenport, God damn it. What’s this rose shit? She took a turn around the room, caught her image in a mirror. That’s the silliest smile I’ve seen on you since you were a teenager.
    She couldn’t work. She glanced at a copy of People, put it aside and walked around the room again, stopping to sniff at the rose.
    She was in a feeling mood, she decided. A hot bath  . . .
     
    Shadow Love went straight through the lobby with the Federal Express package in his hand, slightly in front of his body, so the bellhops could see the colors. He stopped at the elevators, poked 4 and resolutely did not look at the desk and the bellhops. The elevator chimed, the doors opened . . . he was in, and alone.
    He gripped the knife, feeling its holy weight, then touched his belly, feeling the gun there. But the knife was the thing.
    The doors opened on the fourth floor and he stepped out, still holding the package in front of him. Room 408. Heturned right and heard a vacuum cleaner behind him. He stopped. Luck.
    He turned back, went around the corner and found a maid with a vacuum cleaner. There was nobody else in the hallway.
    “Got a package,” he grunted. “Where’s four-oh-eight?”
    “Down there,” the maid said, flipping a thumb down the hall behind her. She was a short woman, slender, early twenties; already worn out.
    “Okay,” Shadow said. He slipped a hand under his jacket, looked around once to make sure they were alone, pulled the gun and pointed it at the woman’s head.
    “Oh, no . . .” she said, backing away, her hands out toward him.
    “Down to the room. And get your keys out . . . .” The woman continued backing away, Shadow matching her pace for pace, the muzzle of the gun never leaving her face. “The keys,” he said.
    She groped in her apron pocket and produced a ring with a dozen keys.
    “Open four-oh-eight . . . but let me knock first.” He thrust the package at her, his voice rising, an edge of madness to it. “If she answers, tell her you’ve got a package. Let her see it. If you try to warn her, if you do