Wicked Prey

but I can feel it . . .”
    “He treats you like a goddamn dog,” Letty shrilled.
    “Not anymore; he really needs me now.”
    “What if he starts in again?” Letty asked. “What if he gets his stick out?”
    “He won’t. He won’t.”
    “Ah, God. Juliet, he’ll put you out there again,” Letty said. “You’ll be trolling for old fat guys again.”
    “You just don’t believe,” Briar said, and then, “I gotta get back. He’s really hurt.”
    * * *
    WHEN BRIAR got back to Whitcomb’s room, she found him scratching on a piece of printer paper with a ballpoint. “Where the hell you been?”
    “I got your ice cream,” she said, and passed the carton to him, with a plastic spoon. He took it, and she asked, looking at the paper, “What are you doing, honey?”
    “Making a plan. I been fuckin’ off, no help from you and Ranch, but we’re going after that Davenport bitch when I get out of here. No more fuckin’ off.”
    Briar looked at the plan: a list of words in handwriting so cramped, with letters so tiny, that they were illegible.
    “You don’t have to read. It’s my plan. You do what you’re told.”
    * * *
    LUCAS JAMMED the Porsche in a slot in the short-term parking lot, ran into the underground ramp, carrying his overnight bag, flashed his ID across the counter at the Northwest Airlines ticket agent, said, “Plane leaves in twenty minutes, I gotta be on it . . .”
    With his ticket in his pocket, he jumped the security line, and one of the TSA security guys got him a ride on a handicapped transporter, and the driver ran him out to the gate.
    The gate attendant was standing at the door, the plane already loaded. She smiled at him as he hustled down the ramp and on board, and a flight attendant said, “Cut it close,” and she smiled and shook her head, and he was in his seat.
    Breathing hard.
    He’d gotten the call no more than forty-five minutes earlier, that the Los Angeles cops thought they had a positive ID on the woman. Her name apparently was Elena Diaz, and she had an address in Venice, which the cop said was on the West Side, whatever that meant. More details coming; a couple of intelligence guys were going over to take a look, and a request for a search warrant was being considered.
    “Have I got time to come out?”
    “Nothing’s going to happen for at least a couple of hours, maybe longer,” the LA cop said. “Got to get our shit together, figure out what we’re doing.”
    Lucas made a call, found out about the flight, called his housekeeper, got her to pack for him, and dashed across town and out to the airport.
    Not until the plane turned down the runway did he remember how badly they frightened him, and here he was, strapped to a rocket, and then the plane blasted off and he was in the air, no books, no magazines, no pills.
    Three and a half hours to LAX.
    When he crawled off the plane at the other end, he turned on his cell phone and it lit up. He first returned the calls to Los Angeles, to the cop’s cell phone. The cop answered, and Lucas identified himself, and the cop said, “There’s been a fire . . .”
    “Ah, shit.”

15
    THE LOS ANGELES COP SAID, “Get outside Northwest, over where the Hertz vans stop. I’m in a black-and-white Toyota FJ.”
    Lucas went outside, spotted the FJ and walked over. The cop, whose name was Lance Barr, and who looked like the third banana in a so-so cop film, poked the door open for him; they shook hands and Barr said, “Nice threads for a Minnesota cop.”
    Barr looked pretty good himself, in a tan suit and white shirt, with an ice-blue tie and high-shine brown oxfords. He was wearing skinny sunglasses under his gelled black hair. Lucas said, “We have a special suit for a guy traveling to the Coast. Gives us a chance to get out of the Pendletons.”
    “I suspected that—but I’m a detective,” Barr said, and he pulled out and they headed east into a lot of blacktop.
    “What about the fire?” Lucas asked.
    “Well, sometime early this morning, about, mmm, six o’clock or so, this chick’s house goes up in smoke. The bottom floor, anyway, and most of the top floor. That’s before we were even looking at her. Her next-door neighbor was up and heard the place go—said it sounded like a gas explosion—and the silly asshole ran in there with a fire extinguisher and put some of it out. He said he was afraid the girls were in there.”
    Two women lived in the house, Barr said, but one was traveling, the neighbors