she had managed to walk out of an airport carrying a gun made him uneasy. She was a bit too wily for Jardine’s taste. He reminded himself that these were just little potholes on the approach to his triumph. She had picked exactly the sort of place he would have, where the odd sound now and then wouldn’t make anyone nervous because every ten seconds a jet plane came over so low you could see passengers’ faces in the windows.
She said, “Room eleven.” He got out and walked toward the door, listening for the sound of her feet behind him. He couldn’t hear them, so he was not sure how far away she was—not sure enough. He stopped at the door and she reached around him and held out the key. She was close enough, but he could feel the barrel of the gun against his back. “You’ll open the door, turn on the light, and step in where I can see you. Don’t turn around.”
He wanted nothing so much as to be indoors and out of sight with the door locked before he made his move, so he obeyed. In a few seconds, things would begin to go his way.
“Make yourself comfortable,” she said. “Lie on the bed on your back.”
He sat and swung his long legs up onto the bed. “This could be a night to remember.”
She raised the pistol a little so it pointed at his chest and stood at the foot of the bed, where he couldn’t get at her.
“Just a little joke,” he muttered. “What do you want?”
“Take one of the wrist restraints out of your back pocket.”
His eyes widened. How had she known? He had let them hang out because he had wanted them to be ready, and then forgotten. Fool. “You don’t need those.”
She said, “It’s for your safety. If I know you can’t reach me, I might not get startled and shoot you. Put it around the bed frame and your left wrist.”
As he connected his wrist to the steel frame, he was already trying to work out the way to free himself. He could lift the frame off the slot in the headboard and slide the restraint to the end, but to do it, he had to get his weight off the bed. Maybe she would have to use the bathroom. “There. Satisfied?” He tried to sound patronizing.
She said, “I’m going to try to make this quick and simple. You know who I am, and I know who you are, so we won’t waste any more time on that.”
“What are we going to waste time on?”
“Tell me about Brian Reeves Vaughn.”
He smiled. “If you tell me about Rhonda Eckerly.” He studied her face for a reaction. “Or about Mary Perkins, or Coleman Fawcett, or Ronald Sitton.”
She frowned and shook her head. “Silly me. I forgot to tell you how this works.”
She took out of her purse a small silver picture frame and tossed it to him.
It was the photograph of his mother taken on her eightieth birthday. He was outraged. “You’ve been in my house.”
“I found that on the mantel in your living room, and it looked as though it might have sentimental value. I figured you might want to keep it, so I brought it … just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
She looked at her watch. “It’s now one-thirty. You can usually drive the speed limit at this time of night. If you do, you can make it from here to your house in twenty-eight minutes.”
“So?”
“At two-thirty, the electric timer on the coffee maker in your kitchen will turn it on. The pot is filled with gasoline, and the heating element under it is covered with black powder. I’m betting it won’t burn the whole house down before the fire department gets there.”
“What if it does?”
“Then I will have wasted a lot of money on the heroin that’s in your bedroom. But that’s okay. There’s some in the garage too.”
She was bluffing. She had to be bluffing. But the picture of his mother staring him in the face reminded him: she had been there. He smirked. “You telling me you flew in with heroin, too?”
The way she shook her head gave him a sinking feeling. “No,” she said. “I didn’t know where to buy it in L.A., but Artie Macias did.”
“Artie Macias?” It was a grave injustice. Maybe when he had taken Artie Macias in, he had been rougher with him than he’d needed to be. But Jardine wasn’t the one who had jumped bail. And Gary the bondsman had offered to pay extra if an example got set for the rest of his customers.
“Yes,” she said. “When I told him who it was for, he couldn’t do enough. He said to make sure you knew who got it for you.”
He stared at the ceiling. He had thought this was his lucky night. “So if I don’t tell you what you want to know, you don’t let me go in time to get there by two-thirty. My house burns down, and the firemen find a lot of heroin.”
Her eyes were steady and unblinking. “Then you get to see what it’s like to be a runner instead of a chaser.”
He stared at the ceiling again, the muscles in his jaw working. He hated her. He wasn’t sure whether he was going to kill her tonight, but he sincerely felt he should. He knew that was absolutely the wrong way to think. She knew things that could make him rich in a day. He would give maybe ten thousand dollars for the pleasure of breaking her skinny neck. Ten million was too much to waste on one night of pleasure. He had to keep her alive, so he would have another chance. In fact, he admitted to himself, he had to do what she said or he was in trouble.
“The time is going by,” she reminded him.
He looked at her, beginning to feel the seconds now. He had to do this and get out of here. “I don’t know where he is.”
“I didn’t ask,” she said. “I want to know why he’s running.”
Jardine’s brain began to work again. “He came to you, didn’t he? He wants you to hide him.”
Jane said, “If we both answer questions, it’s going to take twice as long.”
Jardine took that as a confirmation. Brian Vaughn had run out of ideas on his own, and somebody was about to cash in on him, so he had inquired about hiring professional help. It was actually funny. She wasn’t sure he met her standards. “You don’t even know who he is?”
“This is a lot of trouble to go to if I know,” said Jane.
“Why did you pick me?”
“Because of the way you work. Most bounty hunters get hired to find somebody in particular. You’re one of the few who just sits in one place and watches faces. In order to do that, you need to have a current list of which faces are worth money. You tell me why Brian Vaughn’s is, and I’ll let you go home and unplug your coffeepot.”
Jardine stared at the ceiling again to focus his thoughts, but he found it took more strength than he had to overcome the awareness of each second ticking by. What if tonight was one of those nights when CalTrans decided to repave a section of the freeway between here and his house? “The reason you couldn’t find any Wanted posters on Brian Vaughn is that he hasn’t been charged yet.”
“Charged with what?”
“Murder.”
Jane nodded. It was what she had expected. “Where is he wanted?”
“Well,” said Jardine, “he isn’t, exactly, but he is. The police in Boston found a car with a deceased young lady in it. When they did the tests, they found that she had been freshly fucked.”
“Raped?”
“Not sure,” he said. “That’s always the theory when they’re dead, but she had all her clothes on right. No signs of a struggle, but her blood showed a fatal dose of a sedative. The car, it turned out, wasn’t hers. It belonged to Brian Vaughn.”
“Did they arrest him?”
“Here’s where we get into things I heard that I can’t swear to. He was rich—old money. He lived on an estate in some little town outside Boston. I heard the local police brought a detective or two from Boston out to the estate with their hats in their hands to inquire whether he might have something he’d like to get off his chest. It seems he wasn’t at home. But while they were on the way from the station to the house, some caretaker called to report that
