Cray peered into the salt-rimmed margarita glass, turning the thought over and over, marveling at it, fascinated and afraid. It made no sense. The very idea was preposterous, an inversion of the normal order of things.
He knew who and what he was. He was a predator. More than that — the essence of all predators. He was cruelty and stealth, he was hunger, he was quickness in the night. He was rapacity personified, the universal wolf. He hunted and he killed, and to him screams were music.
No one hunted him.
He was not prey. That role was left to others who could play it better. Who had played it again and again on many secret nights, year after year.
Others, like the woman across the room.
He watched her without turning his head, using peripheral vision. At a distance of thirty feet her profile was hard to discern clearly. She had a round, childish face, and her blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail. Her small, pale hands fidgeted on the table. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, reached tentatively for her drink and then pulled away.
Nervous. Vulnerable.
A deer at a water hole.
And he — he was the lion in the tall grass.
Yet tonight the deer stalked the lion.
He could almost understand it if she were a cop. But an undercover cop was a professional, trained to shadow a suspect without being noticed. This woman’s technique was clumsy. Twice, on two separate nights, she had looked directly at him and caught his gaze.
She was no cop. She was an amateur.
If she knew or even suspected who he was, then why not call the police, tip them off, let them handle it?
Well.
He would have to ask her, that’s all.
Cray relaxed, his frown of concentration easing into a smooth, unreadable expression again.
Things were fine. No problem. He had needed a victim, hadn’t he? Now he had one.
Before he played with her, he would make her talk. She would tell him everything. Then he would start her running, and he would follow, predator and prey in their proper roles again.
He had not yet touched his second margarita. Calm now, he lifted the glass and licked salt from the rim, then settled back in his chair and mouthed a silent toast to the mystery woman.
2
Elizabeth Palmer watched the man at the window table as he finished his second drink. She was relieved to note that he’d looked in her direction only once. If he had noticed her, if he’d recognized her from one of the previous nights, then surely he would have sneaked another glance her way.
Her fingers tapped nervously on the tabletop until she became aware of their senseless drumming and made herself stop.
She was probably safe. Wearing different clothes, her face shielded by a hat, her corner table in shadow, she must look like a different woman to him.
Or maybe she was just kidding herself.
She’d known there was a good chance she would be spotted eventually. She could beat the odds for a while, but not forever. And if Cray was on to her…
She didn’t like to think about that possibility. If Cray was the man she feared he was, then her fate would be the same as that of the other women.
Elizabeth couldn’t guess exactly what he did with them, what sort of mental or physical torture he inflicted before the kill, but it would be bad, and there would be no escape.
And at the end, of course, he would take his victim’s face.
The thought chilled her. She hugged herself. She had thin, pale, lightly freckled arms prone to goose bumps, and she held them tight against her body, her wrists crossed over her small, shy breasts.
Being in the same room with him was hard. She wanted to get up and run, as she had run from him once before.
Was she crazy to have run so far, and for so long, and now to seek him out and risk everything, merely to confirm a suspicion that might be groundless?
You must be really brave, Elizabeth, she told herself. Or really, really stupid.
Maybe it would have been better not to enter the bar at all. She could have waited outside, hoping to catch Cray when he left.
But she’d tried that strategy a week ago, after tailing him to a bikers’ bar on Tucson’s dangerous south side, and when he departed, she’d nearly missed him.
She couldn’t afford to take that risk. Didn’t dare let him out of her sight.
Because, if her suspicion was correct, he was getting ready to try something.
She could almost feel it, sense it, as surely as she could sometimes sense the gathering electricity in the air before a summer thunderstorm.
She touched the purse in her lap, feeling the small hard shape of the most important item inside, simply to reassure herself that it was there.
Surreptitiously she studied Cray. She had not been this close to her quarry at any time since her return to Tucson.
He had been thirty-four when she’d first known him. He was forty-six now. His profile was sharper, more angular, than she recalled. He’d lost weight, but although lean, he was far from scrawny. His long shirtsleeves did not quite conceal the sinewy muscles of his arms, and his tapered slacks wrapped his strong thighs and calves like a second skin.
Black shirt, black pants. He’d worn the same outfit every time she’d followed him. He was a man in silhouette, a living cutout of the night.
Last Saturday, shadowing Cray in the hectic downtown streets, catching glimpses of him in the crush of people, she’d seen the way he carried himself — the long, liquid strides, the loose swing of his wide shoulders, and always his head turning slowly from side to side as he scanned the crowd.
He had reminded her of a panther, sleek and black and lethal, a hungry animal on the hunt. She’d imagined he was sniffing the air, picking up the scent of prey.
But of course she could be all wrong about him. That was the thing to keep in mind. John Bainbridge Cray might never have killed anyone.
In the whole time she had watched him, he’d done nothing worse than make a few forays to Tucson nightspots. On such outings he was always alone, which was unusual, and he kept to himself in crowded places, never seeking company.
But aloofness was no crime. Eccentricity was no crime.
Even what he’d done to her, so many years ago…
No, even that was not a crime. Or, if it was, it was a crime for which there was no name, a crime that could never be proved.
Her fingers were drumming the table again. She stopped herself. Her hands were always doing that, fidgeting and worrying at things. Restless, undisciplined hands.
