The Shadow Hunter

call the police, there’ll be a commotion, and our subject will see it or hear about it.”
    “Usually men like Hickle are paranoid to begin with,” Abby added. “It doesn’t take much to push them over the edge.”
    Howard shook his head. “So don’t have them sit in a car. Have them watch Hickle from the building across the street.”
    “The risk of detection is still too high,” Travis said. “A successful stakeout is extremely difficult to pull off over any extended period of time. Somebody will see the binoculars in the window or intercept a radio transmission or wonder about the food deliveries to a vacant apartment or hear something through the wall. Neighbors talk, word gets around, and before you know it, the surveillance team’s cover has been blown.”
    “And if their cover is blown,” Abby said, “so is mine.”
    “There’s another factor,” Travis said. “You’re assuming Hickle stays put. Suppose he and Abby go out together. We’d have to follow. That’s not a job that can be done with a single vehicle or even two or three. To keep Hickle in sight at all times without being spotted ourselves, we need a minimum of a half dozen cars rotating in and out of the pursuit, sometimes hanging back in traffic, sometimes moving ahead to intercept him at points where we expect him to go.”
    “And if he takes me to someplace crowded, like Third Street Promenade on a Saturday night,” Abby said, “then TPS would need twenty agents to cover every exit and byway. Hickle could lose the pursuit without even trying, and I wouldn’t even know I was unprotected. Besides, in most cases, if things get ugly, it all happens so fast that a backup detail across the street wouldn’t reach me in time anyway.”
    “So things do sometimes…get ugly?” Kris asked, sounding more curious than concerned.
    Abby flashed on a gunshot in an alley, a voice saying,
We lost him
.
    “Now and then,” she said evenly. “It comes with the territory.”
    Howard shook his head. “How exactly do you expect to protect yourself against a psychopath like Hickle?”
    “I’m trained in self-defense. If a subject turns violent I know how to respond.”
    “Abby can take care of herself,” Travis said. “She’s one of the most competent people I’ve ever worked with.”
    This surprised her. She glanced at Travis with a small, secret nod of appreciation.
    “Well,” Howard said, “she’d better be.” He fixed Abby with a stare. “How many cases have you handled?”
    “More than twenty over the past two years.”
    “I would think you’d want to quit while you’re ahead.”
    “You mean while I’m alive?” She smiled.
    Kris was studying her. “How about the Devin Corbal case? Were you in on that one?”
    Abby had anticipated this question and was ready with a response. “No, I was in San Francisco at the time, protecting a radio shock jock who’d made too many enemies.”
    She hated to lie to a client, but if she told the truth, she would be off the Barwood case, and most likely Travis would lose Kris as a client. And she knew that this was a loss he could not afford.
    Anyway, no one would be able to prove she’d lied. She had escaped from the vicinity of Lizard Maiden before the police could secure the scene. The TPS bodyguards had said nothing about her. Sheila Rogers, now in custody awaiting trial, had received a concussion during the tumble down the alley stairs and remembered nothing of Abby’s assault. The bartender recalled that Sheila had been sitting with a nameless woman friend, but he had not reported his encounter with her, no doubt because he didn’t want to admit that he had tipped off Sheila to Devin’s whereabouts. In short, there was nothing to link Abby to the case.
    Nothing but her conscience, which assailed her nightly with images of Devin Corbal sprawled on the pavement in a spreading pool of blood.
    “Even so”—Howard crossed his arms and looked past Abby at Travis—“I want to go on record as saying I’m against this.”
    “Your wife is my client,” Travis said evenly.
    “I know that. It’s her safety at stake. Her decision. But if it were up to me…” He didn’t finish.
    “Howard,” Abby said, “I appreciate your concern, but this is my job. It’s what I do.”
    “You’re a pilot fish. I remember.” He looked at her, no amusement in his eyes. “There’s just one thing about those fish. Sometimes they get a little too close to the shark they’re swimming