descend to the swimming pool.
Gambling on the second outcome, Elizabeth walked quickly to the steps and headed down, never looking back.
Two children splashed in the shallow end of the pool. A thirtyish couple, no doubt the kids’ parents, shared drinks at a poolside table, laughing softly at some intimate joke. An older man lounged in a foaming spa nearby, a white cap tilted on his head. The moon was out, white and full, and woven around it was a vast wreath of stars.
Briefly Elizabeth wished she could just stop here, recline on a lounge chair and forget everything she knew and everything she suspected.
Let Cray go. Let the world fix its own problems; God knew, she had enough problems of her own. It would be so good to rest, and she’d had so little rest in the last twelve years.
She did, in fact, sit on a lounge chair, but only to rummage through her purse in an elaborate pretense of looking for some lost item.
The ruse was getting old, and she was beginning to worry that she had miscalculated about where Cray was likely to go, when she heard footsteps on the stairs.
His footsteps. She knew it, even without looking. Footsteps that were quick and light, preternaturally nimble.
A flicker of black, and he passed the spot where she was seated, heading down a pathway.
She got up and followed.
Part of her knew it was reckless to press her luck any further. In the crowded street fair the risk had been acceptable. Here at the resort there was too much open space. She was liable to be seen at any time.
But she had to do it. This was her responsibility, and hers alone. The whole city was afraid of the man who’d murdered Sharon Andrews, but only Elizabeth might know his name.
The path was lit by small lanterns at ground level, glowing like the luminaria set out at Christmas in many local neighborhoods. The ambient light blended with the pale radiance of the moon. She could see Cray easily, fifty feet ahead.
He passed between two buildings. Someone sat on a second-floor balcony smoking a cigarette. Through a ground-floor window a TV was visible, casting a blue flicker on a large bed with an ornate headboard.
Elizabeth thought of the motel where she was staying. The bed sagged, the TV didn’t work, the toilet had a funny smell. In the afternoons she heard noises of frantic passion through the walls; the adjacent rooms seemed to be booked by the hour. For this opulence she was paying nineteen dollars a night.
She wondered what it cost to stay at this resort for just one day. As much as she could earn in a week, probably — if she had a job. Which, at the moment, she did not.
Cray seemed to know where he was going. Elizabeth kept her distance as he crossed from one path to another, skirting a second swimming pool, smaller and less busy than the first.
On the prowl. He hadn’t found what he wanted in downtown Tucson’s crowded streets, so he was looking here. Hunting prey.
She couldn’t imagine how he meant to handle the abduction, but he would find a way. He had experience in such things.
Or perhaps he was just a lonely man taking a nighttime stroll on the landscaped grounds of a resort. Perhaps he had no sinister purpose.
She wanted to believe this. She wanted to leave Tucson and resume the life she’d led, and to feel no pang of conscience on sleepless nights.
Ahead, Cray went down a short flight of steps and disappeared amid the mesquite trees and weedy underbrush. A sign read FITNESS TRAIL.
Elizabeth hesitated at the top of the staircase. The trail seemed empty and dark. A good place for an ambush. Suppose he had seen her in the bar, after all. Suppose he was deliberately leading her here, to the edge of the resort, away from more public places.
Well, she was ready for that.
She opened her purse and reached inside for the Colt.22 she’d bought at a pawnshop after arriving in Tucson. It was a small gun, lightweight but fully loaded, and she knew how to use it.
She had used a gun once before.
The thought made her tremble, and for a moment she worried that she couldn’t go forward, that the old memories might swamp and capsize her, as they sometimes did.
Not tonight. Tonight she had to be strong.
There might be a life at stake, the life of some woman who was a guest at this hotel, a woman who would be kidnapped and killed and buried in the wilderness, like Sharon Andrews.
She slung the purse over her shoulder to free her hands. Holding the Colt down at her side, out of sight, she descended the staircase and advanced along the trail.
Immediately she spotted him. He was not lying in wait for her. He was moving quickly, at a brisk walk, perhaps working off the effects of the two drinks. She followed, taking care not to make a sound.
Foliage hemmed in the trail on both sides. Moonlight glistened on cactus needles, pale as ice. A saguaro, its thick arms outspread against the sky, loomed like a monument in the night.
Cray increased his pace, almost jogging.
She hurried to catch up, but she couldn’t run without being overheard.
The trail curved. Cray shrank and vanished, lost to sight behind stands of prickly-pear cactus and palo verde trees.
She risked a short sprint, hoping to close part of the distance between them, and then she rounded the curve and stopped.
Dead end.
The trail finished here.
And she was alone.
But she couldn’t be. Cray had to be somewhere nearby.
Unless he’d left the trail and continued through the brush, and why would he do that?
He must be hiding.
This
Her gun came up, gripped in both hands, and she spun in a full circle, then back again, daring the darkness to attack her.
There was only silence and the strange, pensive stillness of the desert in moonlight.
If Cray was here, watching her, he had not chosen to show himself. Maybe the gun had scared him. Or did he have a gun of his own, a silenced pistol, and even now was he drawing a bead on her, ready to take her down with one shot…?
She had to get away, get away now.
The gun was shaking in her hands. He must be laughing at her. Enjoying her stupid panic even as he lined her up in his sights.
She took a backward step, then turned to confront him if he was behind her, but he wasn’t, and she ran three yards down the trail and turned again, certain she had heard him or heard something, but there was no noise, no movement, and finally she couldn’t take it any longer and she broke into a reckless run, gasping as she retraced her route along the trail in a blur of moonlight.
Once or maybe twice she blundered off the path, and sharp teeth bit her, teeth that were cactus spines or the pointed tips of agave leaves. Pain surprised her but did not slow her down.
She was out of breath and shaking all over when she reached the staircase and climbed back to the path.
Amid the lights of buildings and pathways she remembered the gun in her hand. Clumsily she stuffed it in her purse, leaving the clasp unfastened so she could grab the.22 instantly if she needed it.
Voices floated to her — a family walking back to their room. The same family she’d seen earlier, the kids in the swimming pool and the parents drinking at a poolside table.
As they passed her, the father looked at her strangely, and the younger child, giggling, was shushed by his
