Shadow Prey

third ring, her voice croaking like a rusty gate.
    “You awake?” Lucas asked.
    “What do you want, Davenport?”
    “I thought I’d call and see if you were lying there naked.”
    “Jesus Christ, are you nuts? What time . . . ?”
    “Billy Hood just rolled into his apartment.”
    “What?”
    “I’ll pick you up outside your hotel in ten minutes. Ten to fifteen. Brush your teeth, take a shower, run downstairs . . . .”
    “Ten minutes,” she said.
     
    Lucas showered, brushed, pulled on jeans, a sweatshirt and a cotton jacket, and was outside five minutes after he talked to Lily. Rush hour was beginning: he punched the Porsche down Cretin Avenue, driving mostly on the wrong side of the street, jumping one red light and stretching a couple of greens. He put the car on I-94 and made it to Lily’s hotel twelve minutes after he had hung up the phone. She was walking out of the lobby doors when he pulled in.
    “No question about the ID?” she snapped.
    “No.” He looked at her. “You’re a little pale.”
    “Too early. And I’m a little queasy. I thought about stopping in the coffee shop for a roll, but I thought I better not,” she said. Her voice was all business. She wouldn’t meet his eye.
    “You had a few last night.”
    “A few too many. I appreciate . . . you know.”
    “You were hot,” Lucas said bluntly, but with a smile.
    She blushed, furious. “Christ, Davenport, give me a break?”
    “No.”
    “I shouldn’t be riding with you,” she said, looking out the window.
    “You wanted to roll, last night. You backed out. I can live with it. The big question is . . .”
    “What?”
    “Can you?”
    She looked at him and her voice carried an edge of disdain. “Ah, the Great Lover speaks . . . .”
    “Great Lover, bullshit,” Lucas said. “You were hungry. That didn’t develop since you met me.”
    “I happen to be . . .” she started.
    “ . . . very happily married,” they said in unison.
    “I want you pretty bad,” Lucas said after a moment. “I feel like I’m smothering.”
    “Jesus, I don’t know about this,” she said, looking away.
    Lucas touched her on the forearm. “If you really . . . rule it out completely . . . we probably ought to hang out with different people . . . .”
    She didn’t say she ruled anything out. She did change the subject.
    “So why didn’t they take Hood when he pulled in? Was it like they thought . . .”
     
    A half-dozen detectives and the FBI agent were waiting in the surveillance apartment when Lucas and Lily arrived. Del took them aside. He was wide-awake.
    “Okay. Talked to Daniel, we all agreed. We wait until the baker leaves for his job. He leaves at seven-thirty, twenty minutes of eight, something like that.”
    Lucas glanced at his watch. Six-twenty.
    “The other guy, the lifter, we can’t tell when he leaves,” Del continued. “The super says that some days he’s out of there by nine, other days he sleeps ’til noon. We can’t wait that long. We figure that if Hood comes in at six, he’s probably pretty beat. Maybe driving all night. Anyway, there’s a good chance he’s asleep. So we call it this way: We go in and cut their phone, just in case somebody else in the building is with them. Then we put an entry team in the hall, four guys, and stick a microphone on the door. Listen awhile. See who’s up. Then, when the baker opens the door to come out, we grab him and boom—we’re in.”
    “Jesus, if Hood’s awake and has the gun handy . . .”
    “He’d hardly have time to get at it,” Del said confidently. “You know that Jack Dionosopoulos guy, that big Greek with the ERU? Used to play ball at St. Thomas?”
    “Yeah.” Lucas nodded.
    “He’s going in first, bare hands. If Hood’s there with a gun in his hand, we got no choice. Jack goes down and the second man takes Hood with the shotgun. If there’s no gun showing, Jack takes him down. If he can’t see him, he hits the bedroom. Just fucking jumps him, pins him. Hood’s not that big a guy . . . .”
    “Fuckin’ Jack, he’s taking a chance . . . .”
    “He’s all armored up. He thinks he’s back at St. Thomas.”
    “I don’t know,” Lucas said. “It’s your call, but it sounds like Jack might have played too long without a helmet.”
    “He did it before. Same deal. Gang guy, needed him to talk. He had a gun in his belt when Jack went in. He never had a chance to pull it. Jack was on him like holy