Shadow Prey

She was standing above him, her face pale as winter, looking down at Hood. “Right on the bridge of his nose.” And although her voice was brave, she sounded ineffably sad. Lucas got to his hands and knees, then to his feet, wobbling.
    The team leader helped him strip the tape off his head, and turned to look at Lily. “You okay?” he asked.
    “I’m okay,” Lily said.
    “How about you?” the negotiator asked Lucas.
    “Fuck, no.” Lucas took a couple wobbly steps and Lily slipped an arm around his waist. “It could take a couple of minutes. I was a dead man.”
    “Maybe he would have let you go,” Lily said, looking back at Hood’s body.
    “Maybe, but I don’t think so. Billy Hood was an angry man,” Lucas said. “He was ready to die and he wasn’t going alone.”
    He stopped and turned and, like Lily, looked back at the body. Hood’s face wasn’t peaceful in death. It was simply dead, and empty, like a beer can crushed on the side of a road. A red-hot anger washed through Lucas.
    “God damn, we needed him. We needed the motherfucker to talk, the stupid shit. The stupid shit, why’d he do this?” He was shouting and the ERU team was looking at him.
    Lily tightened her grip around his waist and gave him a gentle push toward the house across the street.
    “Did I say ‘Thank you’?” Lucas asked, looking down at Lily.
    “Not yet.”
    “You could have blown my fuckin’ brains out, Rothenburg. And I’ve got all kinds of shit buried in my face.”
    “I’m too good a shot to have hit you. And the shit in your face is better than shotgun pellets behind your ear,” she said.
    “So, thanks. You saved my ass.”
    “I accept your abject gratitude, and while it’s not enough . . .”
    “I’ll give you all the gratitude you can handle. You know that,” he said. The hair on the top of her head brushed against his cheek.
    “Fuckin’ men,” she muttered.

CHAPTER
12
    Lucas sat on a stack of newspapers.
    “Are you all right?” Daniel asked, squatting beside him. Lily realized that he was trying to be gentle but didn’t know how.
    “In a bit,” Lucas said.
    Larry Hart came in, saw them and stopped. “The whole area is surrounded by media,” he said. “Channel Eight had a camera on a roof down the street. They had the whole thing on the air, live. Everybody’ll be looking for you and Lily.”
    “Fuck that,” said Lucas, his elbows on his legs, his head hung down to his knees. “Has anybody talked to Jennifer?”
    “I gave her a call right after Lily took Hood out,” Daniel said. “She was watching. She sounded pretty calm. She even tried to screw some details out of me, for their newscast.”
    “Sounds like Jennifer,” Lucas said. He thought about the shotgun behind his ear and gripped his knees. “If you can get somebody to take the Porsche back to my place, maybe I could sneak out in a squad . . . .”
    “Sloan’ll take it,” Daniel said. Lucas nodded and dug the keys out of his pocket. “We’ve got more problems. I hate to bother you with them . . . .”
    “Jesus, what?”
    “The St. Paul water patrol took a body off the Ford dam this morning. It got hung up on an abutment. It’s an Indian. He was carrying an ID that said ‘Richard Yellow Hand.’ ”
    “Aw, fuck,” said Lucas.
    “We’d like you to take a look. We’re not sure yet . . . well, we’re pretty sure, but he was your snitch . . . .”
    “All right, all right, all right . . .”
    “I’ll go with you if you want,” Lily offered.
    “Uh, you better not,” Daniel said, looking up at her. “We’ll have some shooting reports to make out. You’ll have to talk to our attorney, you not being a certified police officer in Minnesota . . . .”
    “What . . . ?”
    “No, no, there won’t be any problems,” Daniel said hastily. “But there’s some bureaucratic rigmarole to go through. Jesus, I wish I had a cigar.”
    “So I look at this body . . .” said Lucas.
    “There’s something else,” Daniel said, almost reluctantly. “They did another one.”
    “Another one?” asked Lily. “Where?”
    “Brookings, South Dakota. It’s just coming in now. The fuckin’ state attorney general. They were having some kind of harvest-festival thing and they had these polka dancers. This guy, the attorney general, always went to the polka dances because he knew he’d make the local TV. A gunman was waiting for him.”
    “Our friend with the braids?” asked