“I know what you’re thinking, Wendy.”
A wave of light-headedness passed over her. She felt as if his fingers had been prying inside her brain. “I’m not thinking anything.”
“Oh, yes, you are.” He sounded amused. “It’s written all over your face. Little Red Riding Hood thinks she’s found the golden opportunity to get away from the Big Bad Wolf.” The gun pressed deeper into her side. “But you’re wrong, Wendy. Very wrong. Fatally wrong. I warned you about what would happen if you tried anything. I made myself explicitly clear. Didn’t I? Didn’t I? ”
“Don’t kill me,” she breathed, the words coming out so spontaneously she was astonished to hear them.
“Don’t make me,” he answered coolly. “Lock your door.”
She depressed the lock.
“Good. Now if you have any thoughts of making a break for it when we stop for gas, consider this. You’re wearing a safety belt. Your door is locked. It’ll take time to unbuckle that belt and unlock that door. A full second, at least. How long do you think it will take me to put a bullet in you?”
She didn’t answer.
“How long?”
“Okay,” she whispered. “I understand.”
“You yell for help, you honk the horn, you do anything out of the ordinary-and you’re dead.”
“I understand,” she said again, more sharply.
The Ford coasted down the mountain into Studio City. A few blocks ahead, the bright orange ball of a Union 76 sign hung against the sky like a setting sun.
“Pull in there,” he ordered.
She guided the Ford onto the asphalt and pulled up alongside a full-service island, then shut off the motor, silencing Rosanne Cash, who was singing about a runaway train. Wendy knew about trains like that. She was on one right now.
“What now?” she breathed.
“When the attendant asks, you say you want a full tank.” He was buttoning up his brown coat to conceal the policeman’s uniform underneath. “And remember what I told you.” The gun snaked behind her, the metal cylinder of the five-inch barrel hard against her lower back.
She cranked down the window, waited for an attendant to arrive, and asked him to fill the tank.
“Check the oil?” he asked briskly. “Tire pressure?”
A painfully false smile distorted her face. “No, thanks.”
The attendant hooked up the gas-pump nozzle, then squeegeed the windshield with broad vigorous strokes. As he was scraping off the soapy water, Wendy turned toward the passenger seat.
“I don’t have any money with me, you know,” she whispered.
“That’s all right.”
“What are we going to do? Drive away without paying?”
“Wendy.” He looked genuinely distressed. “That would be immoral. Of course we won’t do anything like that.” With one hand he fumbled in his coat pocket and gave her a well-worn wallet. “There ought to be enough in there to cover it.”
The attendant rang up the total. Wendy handed him a couple of bills through the open window.
“Thanks,” he said as he dug in his pocket for change. “Nice set of wheels.”
He was looking right at her. She looked back. Their eyes met. In that instant she considered trying to signal him somehow, with a facial expression or a whispered word or… or something.
Courage failed her. She could imagine the shuddering blast of the gunshot as it tore through her spine.
“We like it,” she said with another faltering smile.
“Yeah, they really built ’em back then. What is it, a sixty-two?”
“Sixty-three,” the Gryphon said helpfully from the passenger seat.
The attendant nodded. “Nice condition.”
“Well,” the Gryphon said politely, “I’ve always believed that if you take care of your car, it’ll take care of you.”
“Hey, you know it.” The attendant handed Wendy her change. “Have a nice one.”
Wendy started the engine and steered the car out of the service station, rolling up the window. The deadly pressure on her back eased.
“Congratulations,” the killer told her. “You’re a very smart girl.”
She took a breath. “You never answered my question,” she said softly. “What’s going to happen tonight?”
“Oh, nothing so awful.” He was smiling again. “We’re going to get to know each other a little better, that’s all. We’ve been enemies, and now we’re going to be friends. And something more than friends.”
Her voice was a whisper. “Something more?”
“Lovers, Wendy,” he breathed. “That’s what we’ll be. And I promise you, once you’ve known my passion and my power, then you will love me too.”
25
Delgado was still at Cedars-Sinai when the Dodge Aries was found in the alley.
He’d arrived at the hospital at nine-fifteen, twenty minutes after Wendy’s abduction, having left most of the task-force detectives at the scene of the wreckage with instructions to comb the area for clues. The chance of finding anything significant on the fire-ravaged mountainside was remote, but no possibility could be overlooked.
Plainclothes and patrol officers were crowding the lobby and parking garage of the medical center’s North Tower when Delgado entered, accompanied by Tom Gardner and Rob Tallyman. Delgado hunted down the detectives in charge. They were Frank Nason and Chet Gray, who had taken him on a tour of Elizabeth Osborn’s house two weeks ago.
“Fill us in on what happened,” Delgado said brusquely.
“He came and took her,” Nason answered, outrage in his voice. “The nerve of the bastard-he put on Sanchez’s uniform and just waltzed right in here and signed her out.”
“Fed the receptionist and the guards some cock-and-bull story about taking her to the station for safekeeping,” Gray added. “Detective Delgado’s orders, he claimed.”
“The staff must have gotten a look at him,” Delgado said.
Gray nodded. “Yeah, the IdentiKit artists are sharpening their pencils, but I don’t think they’re going to come up with much. The nurse on duty remembers he had brown hair and he was tall. The guards say the same thing.”
“And the uniform,” Nason said. “They remember that, for all the good it does us.”
“Nothing else?” Tom Gardner broke in impatiently. “Nothing specific?”
Nason spread his hands. “You know how it is. One dude in uniform looks like any other.”
“He would have been counting on that,” Delgado said grimly.
“Yeah, he’s smart, all right,” Tallyman muttered. “And he loves taking chances, spinning that wheel.”
“From what we can tell, even Miss Alden was fooled,” Gray said. “No one observed any indication that she left under duress.”
“How the hell did he even know where to find her?” Gardner asked.
“That one’s easy.” Nason shrugged. “Every TV and radio asshole in town has been broadcasting that information all morning. You should see these TV creeps doing their live stand-ups on the steps outside.”
“Freedom of the press,” Gardner hissed. “Fucking First Amendment gets on my fucking nerves.”
“Funny how his cover story matched your orders,” Tallyman told Delgado thoughtfully. “You think he was monitoring the police band and picked it up?”
Delgado shook his head. “I delivered those orders by landline. And the black-and-white was told to keep it
