The Shadow Hunter

move, barely breathed.
    When a dim red light flickered in one of the windows, she knew what it was. Hickle, restless, testing the laser sighting system.
    “You’re so sly,” Abby breathed, “but so am I.”
    She saw the beam alight on the balcony railing, then jerk a few inches higher, pressing a faint dot of light against the glass door a yard to her left. The dot crawled toward her. Carefully she closed the curtains and let the red dot slide over the fabric, some of its glow bleeding through to stamp a pale tattoo on her face.
    After a moment the light winked out.
    Hickle was now sure he had been wrong about the car. It must have belonged to some maid or some teenage kid—anybody but Abby. She had not come home yet.
    But she would. Soon.
    He simply had to wait. He would not give up. This time he would not fail.
    Abby left the condo, locking the door. As she rode the elevator, she took a quick inventory of the contents of her purse. Gun, spare ammo in a speedloader, microrecorder, mini-flash, cell phone.
    On the ground floor, she bypassed the lobby and ducked into the small gym, empty on a Saturday night. The gym’s rear door opened on the street behind the Royal, which Hickle couldn’t see from his firing site. She headed down a side street, intending to cross Wilshire a few blocks away and circle around to the tower.
    As she walked, she fished the phone out of her purse and, after a moment’s hesitation, speed-dialed the second number in the unit’s memory.
    Ringing at the other end. Two rings, three, and the click of a pickup.
    “Hello?” Travis said. She had reached him at home.
    “Paul, I’ve located Hickle. He’s in Westwood. He’s—well, he’s stalking me. Nice turn of events, huh?”
    “Abby, slow down—”
    “No time to slow down. I’ve
found
him, Paul, I’ve found him…and now I’m going to need your help.”

49
    Travis arrived in Westwood fifteen minutes after Abby’s call and saw her standing, purse in hand, on a back street behind the office tower. The building loomed over her, sixteen floors of unfinished commercial space, untenanted except for one very temporary occupant.
    He couldn’t decide whether to be angry or pleased. True, he had expected Hickle to take care of this job. Travis’s instructions had been explicit, and even an amateur ought to have been able to fire a laser-sighted rifle accurately at a distance of a hundred feet. Something had gone wrong, though in their brief phone conversation Abby hadn’t revealed any details. Still, she was alive when she ought to be dead, and this fact disturbed him.
    On the other hand, things hadn’t worked out so badly, had they? He had been given the opportunity to take care of matters personally. He expected to enjoy it.
    Travis parked his Mercedes down the street, then patted himself to be sure neither of the handguns he was carrying had printed against his jacket. In his shoulder holster was a Beretta 9mm, the gun issued to most TPS personnel. If Abby noticed the Beretta, itwas no big deal; under the circumstances she would expect him to be armed. The second gun was the one he couldn’t let her see.
    Tucked inside his waistband near his spine, hidden by the jacket’s flap, was the Colt .45 from Howard Barwood’s bungalow.
    He got out of the car, closing the door quietly, and approached Abby at a brisk walk. “Where is he?” he asked, keeping his voice soft, as if he had no idea that Hickle was on the tenth floor of the tower, well out of earshot.
    Abby glanced at the building. “Up there.”
    “You sure?”
    “I saw him sighting me with the laser beam on his rifle. He’s staking out my condo, planning to make like a sniper.”
    “How could he—” Travis knew it was a mistake to play dumb. “Of course. Barwood’s in real estate. And he knows your last name. He passed along your home address.”
    “Looks that way.”
    “You said you actually saw the laser? Then Hickle must have seen you.”
    “No, I kept my place dark and peeked through the curtains. I don’t think he’s fled yet.”
    “Why didn’t you call the police?”
    “And tell them what? That I think a strange man is aiming a laser beam at me from the building across the street? They’d send out the men in white coats with the butterfly nets.”
    “You could’ve told them it’s Raymond Hickle.”
    “Sure. How many reports about Hickle do you suppose they’ve received since this story hit the airwaves? My bet is, he’s been spotted