Wicked Prey

in armor. Lucas said, “All right. We don’t know exactly what she looks like, so wait until I call. As soon as she knocks on the door, we rush the stairs, both guys come up, put the guns on her, and then we pop the door and we’ve got her three ways. You gotta remember, maybe she’s got a gun in her hand, planning to hit Shafer as soon as he opens up. So take care.”
    “If the other guys are with her?” one of the SWATs asked.
    “You don’t take any chances,” Lucas said. “You order them on the ground and you keep your weapons on them. I don’t think the whole bunch will come over—that’d be too conspicuous. But there might be one in the car, maybe another one comes up the stairs with her. Take care: they’ve already killed four cops, so a few more won’t make any difference to them.”
    Lucas and Shrake would be in Shafer’s original room. Shafer would wait in the motel room they were gathering in, and as a precaution, they’d handcuffed him to a bed rail, which pissed him off. “I’m like one of you guys.”
    “It’s for your own safety,” Lucas said. It wasn’t, but they were like magic words and temporarily shut him up.
    Jenkins and one of the SWAT guys would rush the front stairs, another of the SWAT guys would literally block the second stairway: they’d wedge an office chair between a down-railing and the door, so the door couldn’t be opened. The SWAT guy was there just in case.
    Two more SWAT guys were waiting in a minivan in the parking lot. They would block and then check the woman’s car after she got out.
    “If she comes in,” one of the SWAT guys said.
    “She’s coming; she bought it,” Lucas said.
    * * *
    AN HOUR and twelve minutes after the phone call, another minivan rolled into the parking lot, and slowly down the line toward the office, and parked in a handicapped slot.
    “Dark-haired woman in a minivan,” one of the parking-lot SWAT guys called to Lucas. “But she parked in a handicapped slot. She’s got a handicapped tag in the window.”
    “Watch her. That’s a known behavior, and they grabbed Weimer from a van,” Lucas said. “She might want to keep the van close so she can run.”
    “She’s out,” the SWAT guy called. “Dark hair, ponytail, sunglasses, she’s got a scarf over her head . . . big purse. She’s looking the place over. I mean, she’s really looking the place over. She’s going in . . .”
    “That’s her,” Lucas said. “Everybody, set. Block the back door.”
    * * *
    JULIET BRIAR, who thought Randy loved her, who thought she wouldn’t do this anymore—she thought about Letty, who suggested that maybe she could become a nurse, and overnight, caring for Randy, she’d almost thought of herself as a nurse—and here she was, and she knew the guy was going to want a blow job, because that’s what you gave guys for their birthdays. She felt the gorge rising at her throat, cast her head down, and walked toward the stairs.
    Randy couldn’t see any further than the two thousand dollars.
    Randy couldn’t see her at all, if there was money around.
    * * *
    AT THE top of the stairs, she lingered, just for a second, then walked down the carpeted hall which smelled like smoke and beer and maybe a little pee. Found the number, took a breath, knocked.
    A man appeared at the end of the hallway, wearing a helmet, carrying a gun, and he screamed at her, “On the floor. On the floor, on the floor . . .”
    “What?” Her hands came up, in surrender.
    “On the floor . . .”
    And the door popped open and another man was there with a helmet and gun, pointed at her face. “On the floor . . .”
    * * *
    ACROSS THE road, across a chain-link fence, behind a fast-food joint, Cohn and Cruz watched two guys in armor first block, and then rush, Briar’s minivan.
    “There you go, sugar bun,” Cohn said.
    “Cops,” Cruz said. She put the car in gear. “Don’t call me sugar bun.”
    The cops all stood around and looked at the weeping Briar, and Lucas said, “They were looking at us. They sent her in, and they were looking at us.” He laughed, a sour sound. “Man: we took it right in the shorts.”

18
    THEY CUFFED THE WOMAN, WHOSE NAME was Juliet Briar, and took her down to the room where they were holding Justice Shafer, sat her down on a bed and told her that she was in a world of hurt.
    “You don’t even know what they’ll do to you in that women’s prison, they got wall-to-wall bull-dykes . . .” Shrake went on for a while, but