Sudden Prey

target next to the window at the end of the main hall. If he pulled an arrow to the right, she thought, it’d go right through the window shade and glass, out over the fire escape and into the roof of the next building . . .
    She was sitting on the bed when LaChaise stopped breaking records. A moment later, LaChaise and Martin were shouting at each other, and she heard the thumping of heavy bodies colliding in the front room. She ran to the door and down the hall again, and found Martin on the floor, on top of LaChaise, with a heavy arm around LaChaise’s neck. LaChaise was facedown, and trying to get to his hands and knees.
    “Let me up, you motherfucker,” LaChaise roared.
    “Can’t do that; can’t do that,” Martin was saying urgently. “We need the goddamn TV . . .”
    He saw Sandy and said, “Tried to kick in the TV.”
    “Fuckers don’t do nothing but lie,” LaChaise said, but he sounded calmer.
    “But we need to see what they’re saying, and what happens with the cops,” Martin said.
    After a moment of silence, LaChaise said, “Let me up. I won’t kick it.”
    Martin nodded. “All right.”
    Martin stood up, between LaChaise and the television, and LaChaise grunted as he stood up, a tight grin: “You kicked my ass.”
    “You’re drunk as a skunk.”
    “Well, that’s true,” LaChaise said. “But you’re pretty fuckin’ drunk yourself.” Sandy moved away, stepping back toward the bedroom, but LaChaise turned and saw her and said, “What’re you lookin’ at?” and then, “Hey, wait a minute.”
    Sandy padded back toward the room, looking for a place to hide, and heard LaChaise say to Martin, “If I can’t kick the TV, might as well jump me a little puss.”
    Sandy turned around inside the bedroom: looking for a way out. There wasn’t any. LaChaise came to the doorway and leaned in, and she said, “Dick, don’t.”
    “Bullshit,” he said.
    “I won’t fuckin’ move. I’ll lie there like a brick. And if I get a chance to kill you, I will.”
    He stepped toward her and she thought he’d hit her. Instead, his eyes wavered, and he said, “Fuck you,” and staggered away.
    She shut the door. Had to get out. Had to.
     
     
     
    LUCAS AND SLOAN brought Weather into the back of the hotel, while Sherrill and Del brought in Jennifer and a TV3 crew. Weather went to fix her hair and check makeup, and Jennifer, standing aside with Lucas, muttered, “I wouldn’t let Weather look at this Sherrill chick too long.”
    “What?”
    “Give me a break, Davenport. Never in your life would you fail to appreciate the young woman’s qualities.”
    “Well, I do appreciate them,” Lucas said stiffly. He suddenly felt like an asshole, broke down and grinned. “But I’d never do anything about it.”
    Jennifer looked at him in an appraising way, and said, “Maybe you really have changed.”
    “Yeah, well . . .”
    Weather came back out and they went down to the lobby for the interview, a two-minute no-brainer on the cops’ families suffering from cabin fever, how it felt to be barricaded inside. Jennifer did another quick interview with Sloan’s flustered wife, and then went out the back door with her protection.
    “That should do it,” Weather said, when they got back to her room.
    “I hope so. I hope they’re watching television,” Lucas said. “Jen says they’ll run the tape every time they do the updates.”
    “Are you still angry with me?” Weather asked. She sounded slow, depressed.
    “No. I never was as much angry as I was . . . cranked up,” Lucas said.
    She patted the bed: “You need to get some sleep, I can see caffeine leaking out of your eyes.”
    “Maybe a few hours,” he agreed.
     
     
     
    SANDY COULD HEAR LaChaise talking to Martin, both of them still drinking. She got up twenty times to go to the window, to look at the ledge. Long way down. Higher than the hayloft in the barn. She’d lie on the bed, close her eyes, try to rest. Nothing worked.
    Eventually, the talk in the living room stopped, and the television was turned off. She went to the window, looked out again. Then a sudden THUMM-whack outside her door. Martin was at it again, shooting the bow down the hall. He fired it twenty times, then quit.
    The apartment was quiet for a half hour, an hour, the hands creeping around her watch. She went back to the door, listened, cracked it, looked out. If she could get sheets—or if she could just get out the door, for that matter. The men had been very