The Shadow Hunter

whispered. “I saved your ass back there.”
    “Yeah, you saved me.” Travis’s face, lit harshly by the flashlight, was all hollows and crevices and bright, staring eyes. “I owe you for it. Maybe later I can buy you a beer. At the moment we have more immediate issues to deal with. Abby’s trapped, but not defenseless. She carries a thirty-eight Smith, five shots, and a five-shot speedloader in her purse.”
    “How do you know what she’s got in her purse?”
    “Because I know her. It’s what she always carries. She’s wasted two rounds already, so she’s got eight left. How’s your ammo holding up?”
    “Eight rounds to go.”
    “No spares?”
    “Not with me. I left my duffel upstairs.”
    “Eight shots is plenty. Just conserve ammo. My Beretta was fully loaded—sixteen rounds in the clip, plus one in the chamber. I fired three times, so I’ve got fourteen shots left. Between us wehave twenty-two shots, and she has eight. If we play this smart, we can get her to use up her remaining ammunition. Then she’s helpless, and we move in and put her down.”
    Hickle licked his lips. “Okay, how do we do it?”
    “Cover the first doorway. I’ll cover the second. We take turns firing one shot apiece into the office. If we’re lucky we might nail her. There can’t be much cover in there; from what I can tell, it’s an empty room. Even if we don’t hit her, she’ll have to fire back. We count her shots. When she’s used all eight, she’s history.”
    “Why not go in after she’s fired three shots? She’ll be reloading.”
    “Probably she’s already replaced the rounds she wasted. Play it safe. Don’t take any chances. Not with her.” Travis switched off the flashlight, darkening the hall. His voice reached Hickle like the whisper of a ghost. “Remember, one shot at a time. Save your ammo. The whole point is to outlast her.”
    “I got it, I got it,” Hickle breathed, teeth gritted. He was impatient to get started. Here and now he hated Abby more than he hated Kris. It would be so damn good to make her dead.

55
    Working by feel, Abby had found the speedloader in her purse and fumbled two rounds out of it, dumping the two expended shells in the Smith’s cylinder and tamping in the replacements. She had five shots again, but five shots didn’t amount to much against two armed men.
    Her purse also contained a cell phone, but calling for help was not an option. If her pursuers heard her voice, they could pinpoint her position in the office and fire through the wall. Anyway, the police would never get here in time to save her. She was on her own. Ordinarily she valued her independence, but not tonight.
    In the hall the flashlight winked off. She heard movement outside. It sounded as if her two adversaries were splitting up. She listened, bent almost double to make a smaller target, her heart beating in her ears. She wished she had light. The wish was irrational, since she couldn’t use any light without exposing herself to enemy fire. She wished for it anyway. She didn’t want to die in the dark.
    Through the first doorway, a purple muzzle flash and a cough of rifle fire. Hickle, coming in. She fired twice at the doorway and scrambled across the floor to a new hiding place as Travis’s handgun spat out a single shot from the second doorway. She whirledon him and fired once more, then bolted to another corner and waited, the gun shaking in her hands.
    They hadn’t entered. She had been sure they were mounting an attack. Now she saw it differently. They’d fired in order to panic her into using ammunition. It had worked. It would continue to work. She had to return fire, keep them out of the doorways, or they could shoot at will until a lucky hit took her out.
    She removed the three cartridge cases from her Smith and replaced them with unexpended rounds from the speedloader. Five shots, all she had left.
    From the first doorway the rifle cracked again. This shot landed close. She heard it puncture the drywall a yard from where she knelt. She scurried to her left and fired once, not at Hickle but at the second doorway. There was a chance that Travis had stepped into the doorway to take his follow-up shot. She might get lucky.
    She didn’t. The Beretta fired at her, Travis targeting her muzzle flash, but she was already rolling into another corner of the office, and the shot missed.
    She had four rounds now. The odds were stacked high against her. She needed to even things out. There