slipping past her and stealing this particular item right out of the washing machine.
His prize. His little piece of her, to touch and smell and kiss…
Abby shivered. She had a sudden urge to grab the poor, wrinkled, soggy thing that hung on the showerhead and abscond with it, but she couldn't.
If it was missing, Hickle would know she had been in here.
She would have to leave it. And she would try not to think about what he would use it for.
She left the bathroom and braced herself against the bedroom window, preparing to climb through, and then she looked past the railing, down at the parking lot.
Hickle's car was there.
It was parked under the carport, headlights off.
Hickle himself was nowhere in sight. He must already be inside the building, maybe riding the elevator to the fourth floor.
Get out, a voice in Abby's mind yelled.
Hickle would be enraged to find her here. And he was armed; he'd taken the duffel bag. Her Smith amp; Wesson was a poor match for a shotgun.
Unless she killed him instantly, he would have time to pump out a couple of shells, and at close range even a single shotgun blast would literally tear her apart.
'Oh, that's good, Abby,' she hissed, scrambling through the window.
'Keep thinking those happy thoughts.'
She was on the fire escape. Her instinct was to scurry to the safety of her bedroom, but she couldn't leave until the window screen had been replaced.
Installing the screen from outside was harder than she'd expected. She got hold of it through the gap she'd cut in the mesh, then jammed the top of the screen into the frame, but the bottom stubbornly refused to snap into position. The panel was large and awkward, difficult to maneuver, especially with the Venetian blind in the way, jangling and clattering.
She heard a squeal of hinges. Hickle's door, opening in the other room.
He was home.
With a last effort she wedged the screen in place.
Footsteps inside the apartment. He was coming into the bedroom, probably to put away the duffel bag.
She ducked low. No time to crawl away. She hugged the wall.
The blind swung and rattled in the bedroom window.
Hickle would surely notice. He did. She heard the complaint of the floorboards as he approached to investigate. She unclasped her purse and curled her finger over the Smith's trigger.
The blind opened, brightening the fire escape. She pressed close to the brick wall under the windowsill.
Across the iron railing loomed Hickle's shadow, large and misshapen.
His head tilted at a funny angle. He was peering out, surveying the night.
If he glanced down, he would see her. She waited, not breathing. She thought again of what a shotgun shell would do to her at this distance.
Like a grenade going off in her chest.
He might have spotted her already. Even now he might be removing the shotgun from his duffel, preparing to fire, while she huddled like a child playing hide-'n'-seek. It took all her willpower to remain motionless.
His shadow shifted. She saw a movement of his arm as if lifting the shotgun-Then there was a metallic clatter and a fall of darkness, and she realized he had merely reached up to pull the cord that closed the blind.
The tramp of his footsteps retreated. He had not seen her. He must have concluded that a gust of wind had set the blind swaying.
Close one, Abby thought. Kind of thing that really gets the blood circulating.
She slipped inside her apartment, then spent the next few minutes reacquainting herself with the experience of being alive and intact and ambulatory. Her throat was dry, and the back of her neck was stiff with tension.
When she checked the current programming on the closed-circuit TV monitor, she saw Hickle pacing his living room. He was agitated. He was angry.
She dialed up the volume, trying to catch the words he muttered under his breath.
'Can't trust anybody,' he was saying.
'Can't trust him… or her. Can't trust either one.'
Abby didn't like the sound of that.
Travis stepped out of the shower, throwing on his -L robe, and heard the chime of his doorbell.
Seven-thirty in the morning seemed early for visitors.
He rarely had company anyway. He lived on a twisting dead-end street in the Hollywood Hills, in a ranch- style house cantilevered over a canyon-a good house for entertaining, but he preferred to pass his time alone.
He wedged moccasins onto his feet and padded down the hall, pausing in an alcove before a video monitor that displayed a view of the front steps. Abby stood there in a rumpled blouse and jeans. His first thought was that she looked different. There was something about her expression, something hard to define. Then he realized it was the first time he had ever seen her looking scared.
He shut off his alarm system and opened the door.
'Hey,' he said.
'Hey' She entered without another word. She hardly seemed to see him at all.
'Everything okay?' Travis asked, knowing it wasn't.
'Not exactly.' Abby sidestepped into the living room and tossed her purse on the sofa but didn't sit.
'Hickle may have an accomplice.'
'Accomplice?'
'Or an informant. I don't know for sure. Actually I don't know anything for sure.' She paced, her Nikes squeaking on the hardwood floor. Sunbeams slanting through the deck's glass doors lit her trim, nervous figure. She had been to the house many times over the years, though rarely without calling first. Travis was always struck by how well she fit in here. His decor was sleek and functional in a starkly modernistic style, and Abby suited it- Abby with her slender legs and narrow waist and supple, elongated neck.
'I think you should sit down,' Travis said quietly.
'You seem a little stressed.'
She ignored him.
'I should be stressed. I was up half the night. Couldn't go to sleep until Hickle did. I watched him on the monitor till finally he nodded off after three a.m.-'
'Okay, slow down and take it from the beginning.'
She let out a rush of breath and made an effort to speak calmly.
'Hickle got a phone call last night around eight-thirty. He left his apartment, taking his shotgun, and drove off. I lost him. I don't know where he went or who he might have made contact with. When he returned, he was obviously upset. The surveillance nukes picked up a lot of murmuring about not being able to trust anyone. It's possible somebody tipped him off.'
'About you?'
'Yeah.'
'You think he knows you're a plant?'
'He may' Travis approached her slowly.
'If he knows about you…'
'It could send him over the edge. I'm aware of that.
See why I didn't sleep until he did? Even then I maxed out the volume on my audio gear so if he got up in the night, I'd hear him. I was afraid he'd do something extreme.'
She took a breath.
'There's something else.'
'Yes?'
