The Shadow Hunter

a safe.
    She tapped the combination into the remote control. The front of the TV swung ajar, revealing the array of compact disks. The first one that interested her was the Barwood disk. She handed it to Kris.
    “Your life story is on there,” she said, “and Howard’s too. The assets he tried to hide from you—you’ll find some leads in tracking them down. Get a good accountant on the case.”
    Kris handled the disk in its plastic sleeve. “Travis had been investigating our background?”
    “Not just yours. Everybody’s. Including mine.”
    Abby found the disk with her name on it. “This is what I wanted to see.”
    The other item in her backpack was a portable computer. She switched it on and loaded the disk labeled “SINCLAIR, ABIGAIL.”
    “Maybe I shouldn’t look at this,” Kris said as Abby began navigating through the data.
    “Don’t be shy. We have no secrets from each other. Travis tried to use us both. It’s only fair that we see what he was up to.”
    The disk contained dozens of scanned articles on the Corbal case. Travis had obsessively collected them. He seemed to feed his frustrations on every insult and innuendo directed at TPS.
    The articles held little interest for Abby. She was looking for photos. She found them in a folder marked “JPEG,” a standard photo-compression format. When she opened the folder, dozens of thumbnail images appeared in a checkerboard pattern.
    Images of her.
    There she was, leaving the lobby of the Wilshire Royal to go for a walk. There she was, dining at a coffee shop in Westwood Village. There, visiting a park in Beverly Hills. There, playing tennis on a Sunday afternoon. And more: washing her car, shopping at a mall, strolling on Santa Monica Pier, hiking in Will RogersPark. Standing on the balcony of her condo—a shot taken from the office tower across the street, the same vantage point Hickle had chosen.
    No wonder Travis had been able to guide Hickle to the tower. He had been there himself. Watching her. Photographing her, just as Hickle had snapped Polaroids of Kris jogging on the beach.
    “He was stalking you,” Kris whispered. “Like Hickle stalked me.”
    Abby nodded. She was not surprised. Travis had said he’d been watching her on the night when he tried to drown her in the Jacuzzi. She’d had the feeling it wasn’t the first time his obsessive hatred had drawn him close.
    He had taken photos with a long lens, probably using a digital camera, then had simply stored the images on the CD. His private collection. She remembered the dozens of photos of Kris that Hickle had cut out of magazines and newspapers and tacked to his bedroom walls. Travis had been doing much the same thing, driven by the same compulsion.
    “He could have taken a shot at you whenever he liked,” Kris said. “When you were on the balcony…or walking in the park…”
    “I’m sure he was tempted more than once. But he was cautious by nature. He was waiting for his best opportunity. He was biding his time.”
    “Like Hickle,” Kris breathed.
    ‘They were more alike than different, it appears.”
    “But why? Why did he hate you so much?”
    “Because I failed him. He had trained me, mentored me, and then I made one mistake and nearly cost him everything he had. This house with the canyon view, his office suite in Century City, his glamorous friends, the A-list parties—he saw it all slipping away, and he blamed me.”
    Kris shook her head slowly. “We both know how to pick ’em, don’t we?”
    “Maybe next time our luck will be better.” Abby smiled. “It can’t get much worse.”
    Before leaving, Abby gathered up the remaining CDs, dumping them into a plastic garbage bag. She took them with her when she said good-bye to Kris outside the house.
    “Thanks for keeping my name out of the news,” Abby said.
    “It’s the least I can do. And I mean that literally. Thanks, Abby. And…take care, will you?”
    “I always do. It’s how I’ve stayed alive this long.”
    On her way home Abby stopped in an alley in West Hollywood and buried the bag at the bottom of a trash bin. There were secrets on those disks no one had any right to see.
    That evening she took a walk in Westwood Village, window-shopping aimlessly. When she saw the bar that served good piña coladas, she went inside. The piña colada remained her one weakness. At least she liked to think it was her only one.
    She sat at the bar, the glass raised to her lips, thinking of Travis and his