The Shadow Hunter

them is probably Hickle’s new set of wheels.”
    Wyatt studied her with narrowed eyes for a long moment. “You don’t plan to go looking for him, I hope.”
    “No.”
    “Then why do you need that information?”
    “He tried to kill me once. He may try again. If he’s looking for me, I’ll stand a better chance of spotting him if I know what vehicles to watch out for.”
    “How could he come after you? He knows only your Hollywood address, and you’re not going back there.”
    Abby shrugged. “Haven’t you been watching the news? Howard Barwood is suspected as Hickle’s accomplice. Don’t you think Howard could find my home address if he wanted to? He knows my name. He used to be in real estate.”
    Wyatt looked away, his face pained. “I never thought of that. Which makes me feel pretty goddamned stupid.”
    “You’ve probably had a few other things on your mind. So can I have the info?”
    “Yeah, hold on, I’ll get it.”
    He left the office and returned with a BOLO sheet. “Until we can nail down which vehicle he lifted, we’re not releasing these details to the media. We don’t want some hothead opening fire on a teenager who took one of these cars for a joyride.”
    “I don’t intend to open fire on anybody.” Abby copied the details from the Be on Lookout form into her notepad. The stolen vehicles were a ’96 Civic, an ’87 Mustang, and a ’92 Impala.
    “I’m sure you don’t,” Wyatt said, not sounding sure at all. “But if you see any of these cars, call me. No heroics, please. Not this time.”
    “I hear you.” She flipped her pad shut and handed back the sheet. “One other thing. Do you know if Culver City PD is watching Howard Barwood’s bungalow?”
    “They’ve put an unmarked car across the street. If Barwood shows, they’ll grab him. Did you tip them off?”
    “Travis did. I asked him to, if Howard fled.”
    “How’d you—” Wyatt dismissed his own question. “No, don’t tell me how you knew about the bungalow. I don’t want to know. So it sounds like you anticipated he’d run.”
    “It occurred to me. He’s weak, I think. Like a kid who’s never grown up. A crisis would shake him. He’d panic. That’s my reading of him.”
    Wyatt nodded. “It comes back to what we were talking about in that bar the other night—how there aren’t too many grown-ups in LA. Except I don’t know too many overgrown kids who try to have their wives knocked off by a stalker.”
    “People are complicated,” Abby said softly, thinking of Travis and his attempted seduction of Kris. “They can always surprise you. Even the ones you think you know best.”

46
    It was fully dark, nearly 7:30 P.M. , when Abby reached Westwood. A block from the Wilshire Royal she turned onto a side street and cruised through the hilly residential neighborhood, looking for any of the three stolen cars. Nonresident parking was prohibited on most of the streets, and there weren’t many vehicles for her to look at. None matched any entry on the list.
    She wondered if she was being paranoid about this. Hickle might not know her home address. Even if he did, he might have higher priorities at this moment than revenge. His survival was at stake. He was a hunted animal. By now he could be across the border or holed up in a motel in the desert.
    Then she shook her head, recognizing this train of thought for what it was—a dangerous rationalization. She was tired and wanted to rest. She was trying to convince herself that it was safe to let down her guard, safe to go home and curl up on her sofa and listen to soft music. It was what she badly wanted to do, but what she wanted and what she needed were not necessarily the same thing. Intuition had saved her life on other occasions. She could not afford to ignore it now.
    Her intuition insisted that Hickle had not forgotten her. He had learned where she lived. He was close.
    The condominium board of the Wilshire Royal had been displeased when plans were announced to raise a sixteen-story office tower directly across the street. The building, the board members correctly prophesied, would be an eyesore. It would block the views from all the units facing Wilshire. It would reduce property values.
    Their petitions and protests had been ignored. The building had gone up, a charmless monolith with dull black walls and narrow slits of windows. The Black Tower, people had inevitably called it. Then when the building was nearly completed, the developers had