The Shadow Hunter

pulled the trigger.
    Nothing happened.
    The gun was empty.
    He registered this fact, and then a pistol’s report rang out from the roadside, the bullet slicing past him, inches away.
    The man with the handgun. Coming.
    Hickle turned and fled.
    He had no choice. There were no more shells in his pockets.
    Another crack of pistol fire behind him. He reached the far side of the road and dived into the woods, stumbling over something that got caught up in his feet. His duffel bag.
    There might be more shells in the bag, but he had no time to dig for them. There was the rifle, fully loaded, but he couldn’t pull it out and take aim, not with an armed man pursuing him.
    Anyway, he had lost his chance. Even if he could kill Kris’s protector, the other TPS agents must already be rushing to the scene, and so was the guard, and the police too—everybody.
    It was finished.
    Hickle slung the duffel over his shoulder and charged through the trees, head down, panting hard.
    He tried not to think about what had happened, how close he had come, how badly he had failed. He knew that if he thought about it, he would simply stop running and fall on his face and cry like a child, because the world had cheated him and life was so terribly unfair.

36
    Travis pursued Hickle a few yards into the woods and saw him disappear among the eucalyptus trees and the deep drifts of weeds. Briefly he considered following, but looking after Kris was his highest priority. He doubled back and found her kneeling, dazed, on the pavement, her face streaked with tears, eyes wide and unblinking.
    “Goddamn it,” he snapped, anger overcoming compassion, “why the hell did you leave cover? What made you do that?”
    She didn’t answer, and of course she didn’t have to. He knew what had made her scramble away from him when the bullets started flying. She had lost her nerve. She had heeded the blind impulse to put distance between herself and gunfire. In consequence she had blundered into Hickle and had nearly gotten killed.
    Travis steadied himself. Gently he clasped her shoulder. “You okay, Kris?” he asked in a softer voice.
    She looked at him. “I thought I was strong,” she whispered.
    He understood. She was a veteran of the news business. She had covered earthquakes, gang wars, sadistic slayings. She had believed she could handle anything. But tonight when thegunshots were aimed at her, when she was at the center of the story, she had cut and run like a panicky child. She wasn’t as tough as she’d imagined. It was a painful lesson, but she would survive, and to Travis, her survival was all that mattered.
    Not far away he heard sirens. The local residents and the guard at the gatehouse must have called 911 when the shooting started. Malibu contracted its law enforcement services to the LA County Sheriff’s Department. The nearest sheriff’s station was miles away in Agoura, but evidently a couple of squad cars had been in the area.
    He looked up and down the road. The two TPS staff officers stationed at the guest cottage, Pfeiffer and Mahoney, were approaching fast. Every light was burning in the homes that lined both intersecting streets. Nothing like a little midnight gun battle to wake up the neighborhood.
    Circling the car, Travis found Drury sprawled on the macadam, his knees twisting slowly, blood soaking through the left sleeve of his jacket. Hickle had unloaded the shotgun at the driver, but most of the spray had gone wide. A few steel pellets had caught Drury in the arm and shoulder. There was blood loss but no arterial spurting. The angle of the arm inside the jacket suggested broken bones, possibly a shattered elbow.
    “It’s okay, Steve,” Travis said, knowing the man couldn’t hear. “You’ll be fine.”
    The sirens grew louder, then whirred to a stop. Travis saw the gate rising to admit a pair of sheriff’s cruisers.
    “Status?” That was Pfeiffer, arriving with his Beretta unholstered, his eyes glassy with an infantryman’s thousand-yard stare. Mahoney came right behind.
    “Hickle ambushed us and fled,” Travis said crisply. “I don’t think he’ll be back. He scored a lucky hit, incinerated the car. Nailed Drury in the shoulder. Mrs. Barwood is okay, just shaken up. Where’s the husband?”
    “We told him to stay put,” Mahoney answered. He lowered his voice to add, “He didn’t need much persuading.”
    Travis nodded, unsurprised that Howard Barwood was reluctant to throw himself in the line of