The Shadow Hunter

the suit and took a large bath towel with her as she went downstairs to the lobby. She crossed the parking lot to the spa area. The gate was closed, but she discovered that the lock was broken, and she didn’t need to use her apartment key. A sign warned that the Jacuzzi was to be used only by residents of the Gainford Arms and only between the hours of 8 A.M. and 10 P.M. She checked her watch. The time was 10:15. Well, there was nobody around to complain that she was breaking the rules.
    The kids who’d partied here had left the place a mess. Empty beer bottles ringed the tub. Potato chips and pretzels were scattered around, and near one of the cheap lounge chairs lay the uneaten remnant of a Twinkie.
    “Slobs,” Abby murmured. She set down her purse and the towel on the lounge chair, then took off her wristwatch and her sneakers. Finally she eased herself into the tub. The water was still frothing and gurgling; the kids had neglected to turn off the jets when they left.
    Eyes shut, she rested her head against the concrete rim of the tub and let the hot bubbling water massage the small of her back.
    She had not rested, really rested, in much too long. The New Jersey case had been tricky, and then Travis had called her back to LA as soon as it had ended. There had been almost no downtime.
    She wondered if she had been wrong to accept the TPS case. True, she desperately wanted to prove herself to Travis, make amends for the Devin Corbal disaster, if she possibly could—but she might be driving herself too hard. Fatigue was the real enemy in a profession like hers. Fatigue could be fatal.
    After this one, she promised, she would take a vacation. Maybe head over to Phoenix and look up some old friends. Hike in the Superstition Mountains, ride a horse on a dusty trail, be a kid again.
    Yes, she would do all those things…when this job was over…
    She felt herself drifting into the alpha state on the threshold of sleep. Her thoughts fuzzed out and grew distant. All tension left her, and there was only a humming meditative sense of calm.
    Then a sudden lurch forward, water over her head, the hot jets stinging her neck—
    She was submerged in the tub, the surface only inches away but out of reach, because she couldn’t rise.
    Someone was holding her down with a strong hand clutching the top of her head, gripping her hair in tangled bunches.
    She tried to grab the hand that held her, knowing she could inflict instant pain by bending back one of his fingers or squeezing the tender ball of flesh below his thumb, but with his free hand he deflected her attack.
    If she could only see him—
    But she couldn’t, she was underwater, blinded by the lights ringing the interior of the tub, and above her was only darkness and she couldn’t see anything, and there was no air.
    She struggled to duck lower, pull free, but he had her by the hair and wouldn’t yield. She braced both feet against the bottom of the tub and pushed hard, fighting to overcome the downward pressure that kept her submerged, but he had the advantage of leverage.
    A cry of frustration burst out of her in an explosion of bubbles, blending with the jets of churning water.
    The cry cost nearly the last of her oxygen. She would black out at any moment, and then he would simply have to hold her down until her lungs flooded with water in a final instinctive breath.
    But she couldn’t die this way, facedown in a Jacuzzi, surrounded by empty beer bottles and trash—
    Beer bottles.
    A weapon.
    With her last strength she raised her arm out of the water and groped behind her, along the rim of the spa.
    Her hand closed over the neck of a bottle.
    She tilted it, smashed it against the concrete, then jabbed upward with the broken, jagged end.
    Instantly the hand holding her down withdrew.
    She stabbed again, blindly, not sure if she had made contact the first time—then surfaced with a hoarse, spluttering gasp.
    Sucking air into her lungs, she spun in the tub, looking everywhere for her assailant, but all she saw was the gate clanging shut.
    In the parking lot—running footsteps, fading out.
    She leaned against the side of the tub, fighting to control her breathing, then noticed that she still held the beer bottle in her hand.
    She examined the jagged end for blood, found none. She saw no red droplets on the concrete surface of the spa area.
    The bottle had merely scared him. She hadn’t inflicted a wound. Too bad. Blood could be tested and matched to an eventual