The Shadow Hunter

was simply that his breath froze in his chest. “When?”
    “Yesterday. It was
True Confessions
time, at least for her.” Amanda smirked, then turned grave. “I shouldn’t find it funny. After all, she is my friend in some sense of the word.”
    She stood nude in the bathroom doorway, hips cocked, arms akimbo. Her collarbone stood out against the pallor of her skin. She was not as pretty as Kris, Howard thought irrelevantly. But she was young. “Why didn’t you tell me before now?” he asked.
    An insouciant shrug. “Slipped my mind.”
    “Well, what did she say, exactly?”
    “She thinks you’re fooling around. I promised her a heart-to-heart talk, but I didn’t follow through. It would be like a cat playing with a mouse. There might be a certain sadistic pleasure in it, but it’s not the sort of entertainment calculated to raise your self-esteem.”
    “No.” His voice was flat. “I guess not.”
    “I’m not saying she knows anything for sure. She has a hunch, that’s all—feminine intuition or whatever. Anyway, it’s good, isn’t it?”
    Good. What a word for her to use. “Is it?”
    “It makes it easier for you to tell her about us.” A frown pinched her face. “You
are
going to tell her, aren’t you, Howie?”
    “At the appropriate time.” He knew it sounded perfunctory, and that she would be angry.
    She was. “I sincerely hope you’re not getting the proverbial cold feet. I’ve taken a serious risk, you know. Your wife has more clout with the station than I do. She’s the bionic newsbabe, the six-million-dollar girl. What I’m trying to say is, she could get me canned, and if I don’t have anything to fall back on…”
    He held up a placating hand. “You’ll have plenty to fall back on. And you won’t be fired. It’s not going to work out that way.”
    “So how is it going to work out?”
    “For the best.” Howard sighed, suddenly tired. “By the way, you’re not the only one who’s taken a risk.”
    “No? What have you ever done, besides show up with a bulge in your trousers?”
    “I’ve done more than you know. More than you need to know. Now where are my goddamned shoes? I have to get—”
Home
, he almost said but caught himself. “I have to get going.”
    The time was almost ten o’clock, and it would take him an hour to get to Malibu from here. Kris would arrive at the beach house around midnight, and he wanted to be there well before she arrived. It had been awkward the other night, when he had come home later than usual, and she had already been there.
    She had asked him questions then—questions about his imaginary drive up the coast, and about how restless and agitated he seemed. Of course she suspected him. It was obvious now, though at the time he hadn’t allowed himself to see it.
    Well, it didn’t matter. It was too late for her, no matter what she suspected. Things were moving quickly to a conclusion, and soon everything would be resolved once and for all.
    He found the shoes in one of the dark corners the lamplight couldn’t reach. When he bent to slip them on, involuntarily he grunted, an old-man noise. He hated making noises like that.
    Amanda was his ticket to youth. Or if not Amanda, then some new companion, younger still and lacking any tattoos.
    But not Kris. Kris was the past. Kris was a dead weight dragging him down.
    He had to be rid of her. He would be.
    Soon.

28
    After Hickle left, Abby opened her bedroom closet.
    The VCR and audio deck had been recording continually, but the TV was off, the audio console muted.
    She turned on the monitor and speakers, then sat on the floor in a sloppy lotus position, resting her back against the bed, watching the monitor. She saw Hickle pace his living room before fixing a meal in the kitchen. She wondered if eating was a response to stress or if he simply hadn’t had enough dinner.
    He ate standing in the kitchen, almost out of camera range. When he was done, he left the cookware in the sink and went into the bedroom. She checked her watch. It was 9:40. Kris’s newscast would start in twenty minutes. She assumed he wouldn’t miss it.
    But he didn’t emerge from the bedroom. The surveillance microphone picked up no sounds of activity. She waited, feeling a new, prickling intimation of trouble.
    Another glance at her watch. Nearly ten o’clock. Still no sign of him. Strange. Ominous. If any part of his daily routine was sacrosanct, it was the ritual of watching Kris at six and