Sudden Prey

the gun . . .
    Sandy heard the cops shouting, heard somebody banging toward the seats. She peeked: the man in the photos was a hundred feet away, running right toward her. He knew where she was. She began to crawl down the space between the seats, got to the stairs, scrambled up them, hands and feet churning.
    “Sandy Darling, stop,” Stadic screamed. He brought the shotgun up, centered it on the back of her head and jerked the trigger. The shot boomed inside the stadium and he saw her go down. Had she gone down before the shot? Had he hit her?
    Somebody shouted and he turned, dizzy, and a cop fired a pistol and a chair splintered behind him.
    Then he saw the woman, scrambling, disappearing into a stairwell. He ran that way, and somebody fired another shot at him, but Stadic had lost it.
    The woman, he thought. If he could just get the woman. He forgot about the phone: he thought about the small figure disappearing into the stairwell.
    There was his problem. The woman.
     
     
     
    DAVENPORT APPEARED, LARGE, hair standing out from his head as though somebody had deliberately mussed it, his long black coat dangling down his legs. He was a quarter of the way around the stadium, a pistol in his hand. “Stadic, goddamnit . . .”
    But Andy Stadic, too many days with no sleep, one inch from having pulled it off—Stadic was locked into a loop. Find the woman. He jerked the shotgun toward Davenport and pulled the trigger, once, twice, three times, four, and then the gun was empty. Lucas dropped and the shotgun blasts rattled harmlessly off the seats twenty yards away. Not even close. The cops farther up the dome fired three more shots, missing.
    Stadic ignored them, dropped the shotgun, drew his pistol, a Glock nine-millimeter, and ran up the stairs, into the stairwell, going after the woman.
    And he found blood.
     
     
     
    A SMEAR ON the concrete, then a dribble. He’d hit her with his quick shot. He followed the blood around the corner and up. She’d moved to the next tier. Somebody was screaming at him: “Stadic. Stadic . . .”
    Not Davenport, one of the other cops.
    He was so close.
     
     
     
    SANDY WAS HURT. She didn’t know whether she’d been hit with shotgun pellets, or pieces of the plastic chairs, but she was bleeding from the right hip, thigh and calf, and maybe from her back. Her back hurt, anyway, a scratching pain, like a cut.
    She emerged on the second level, saw a TV booth to her left. Try to hide. She ran to the booth. The door was locked. She went back down the stairs, thinking she might hide in the seats again—and noticed that the booth window was open. She stood on the back of a seat, and pulled herself in.
    Not a broadcast booth, but a camera position. Empty, except for a heavy camera stand. No playoff games this year. She crouched below the window and listened to the cops yelling out in the stadium.
    THE THOUGHTS WERE making a little tune in Stadic’s head: get the woman, fuckin’ Davenport; get the woman soon as you can . . .
    He ran up the stairs, paused, looked for blood. Heard the cops calling behind him: “Where’d he go? Get out in the goddamn concourse . . . I think he went up.”
    More blood. Yes. Going up.
    He followed, poked his head out of the stairwell, and a cop at the far end shouted, “There he is. He’s up on top.”
     
     
     
    LUCAS RAN UP a stairwell, paused at the top, and peeked. Stadic was in the next well, with a pistol. Lucas poked his head around the corner and yelled, “Andy. Give it up, man.”
    “Fuck you, Davenport.” Stadic swiveled and fired.
    “You caused this shit.”
    Somebody shouted, “He’s gone, he went back down.”
     
     
     
    STADIC JUMPED BACK into the stairwell, paused a second, then came back out: and caught him. Lucas, hearing the other cops yelling, had come out of his stairwell and was headed down the aisle toward him. Stadic had his gun up: Lucas’s gun was out to his side, as he balanced himself trying to run down the too-narrow row of seats.
    Stadic fired and Davenport flipped over, went down between the chairs.
     
     
     
    WHEN SANDY HEARD Lucas shout, she stuck her head up and peeked. Stadic was twenty feet away, Davenport beyond him: she recognized him from TV, the funny shock when you realized that the TV image actually represented a person. Then Stadic fired and Davenport flipped over the chairs, going down.
    Sandy looked wildly around the booth, saw the TV stand. The camera mounting-head was fixed to the end of a