Fear the Night

suicide of his father, a New York City sanitation employee, Dante had spent time on the streets, then in the custody of a world-class competition shooter.

The boy’s relationship with Adam Strong, who possibly taught him to shoot, might have been surrogate son to father. Then Strong, like Dante’s real father, had committed suicide.

Dante was an Upper East Side New York resident who could probably afford an extensive firearms collection.

Dante might very well be a crack marksman.

Dante’s fingerprint was on Zoe Brady’s computer.

Gotcha!

Weaver knew she should act fast, not because Dante Vanya was likely to bolt, but because the longer she kept this hot information to herself, the more explaining she might have to do.

She was going to hold what she knew close, then act on it.

Zoe had been right about something else. It would be a career maker for any cop who made the Night Sniper collar.

And I have his name and address!

It took Weaver’s nimble and ambitious mind only a few minutes to decide on a cover story. She would stay with the one that had occurred to her even as she was talking with Zoe. After the arrest, she’d maintain that Vanya’s name had cropped up when she was investigating target shooters. She’d tracked down his address, then gone there to question him. During their conversation, she began to suspect him more and more as he’d become increasingly nervous and evasive, and when he panicked and bolted, she’d stopped him-either with a shout or a warning shot-then cuffed him and read him his rights. The fact that he ran would open all the legal doors and ensure his conviction.

The only problem was in getting him to bolt.

The only question was whether she would shoot him if he refused to bolt.

She was sure that if she had to make such a decision, it would be the right one.

56

Meg looked up from the sofa, where she’d been sitting watching but not seeing television with the sound off.

There was Amelia, back in the living room. Pretty college girl, showing some fear in her eyes. Meg thought it might be because the reality of the situation was catching up with her. Meg thought Amelia was that dangerous combination of young and nuts, not brave. In her place, Meg would have gotten as far away from New York and the Night Sniper as possible.

Amelia still looked a bit rumpled and disheveled from sleep, but this time she’d left the ice pack behind. She was wearing fluffy white slippers that made her feet look gigantic.

“Headache better?” Meg asked.

“Not much, and it’s constant. But I’m tired of lying around in the dark and waiting for it to go away.” Amelia’s gaze went to the silent TV. “Anything new?”

“New?”

“About the Night Sniper. You’re watching the news.”

“Oh! So I am. Not really, though. I was just sitting here thinking. Anyway, when there’s news on the Sniper, we should hear it before they do.” Meg nodded toward the anchorwoman mouthing silently on-screen.

“What were you thinking?” Amelia asked, wandering to the window and parting the drapes slightly so she could peer out.

“How best to keep you safe. Uh, stay away from the window, please.”

Amelia let the drape fall back in place. “I just wanted to peek outside, to reassure myself there still was an outside.” She smiled. “I know I’m a pain in the ass. It’s just that I’m not the type to hole up and wait for something to blow over.”

“I understand,” Meg assured her. “Neither am I, but sometimes people like us have no choice. You’d rather be going about your business as usual, and I’d rather be clamping the cuffs on the sicko who’s causing all our problems.”

“Most of our problems, anyway.”

Meg wondered what she meant by that. What kind of problems could a beautiful twenty-one-year-old woman have, other than being stalked by a serial killer? “It’s gotta be tough for you. We all know that. Your dad sure knows it.”

“He worries too much about me. So does my mom.”

Meg looked closely at her. She didn’t appear to be kidding. Only because a stone-cold killer’s vowed to take your life. “That’s because they both know the danger. So do I. It’s real, Amelia, believe me.”

Amelia hesitated, then nodded. “Oh, I know it’s real, but … well, I guess I’m a fatalist.”

Or a dramatist. Or twenty-one years old. “You’re not afraid?”

“I’m terrified. That’s why the headache, I suspect. That’s why I close my eyes but can’t sleep. But at the same time, it’s all on a certain level, almost like a bad dream. There’s no way I can get my mind around the idea that somebody really wants me dead so much that he’d risk his own life in an attempt to kill me. And if he does, what are the chances of him actually getting through my assigned bodyguards like you?”

“On the level? There’s some possibility. You’re a cop’s daughter. You understand that there’s at least some chance he can bring it off.”

Meg almost instantly regretted her candidness. Whether she was a dramatist or not, for an instant terror shone through Amelia’s pale features; she was an inch away from losing her composure and becoming a sobbing, terrified victim.

“I’m plenty afraid,” Amelia said, “but I refuse to give in to panic.” She took a deep breath and her entire body trembled. “The truth is, I just want it to end. To be over.”

“That’s what he wants,” Meg said. There had been something disturbing in Amelia’s voice. And it struck Meg that maybe that was how it worked-the intended victim’s fear finally manifested itself in a perverse cooperation with the killer. “I guess I’m a fatalist.”

The Sniper would know that and how to use it.

She decided not to mention this disturbing insight to Amelia. But it could be a problem, this condition of fear and impatience, resulting in an eager kind of resignation that made the victim complicit in victimization. It could lead to a sort of deliberate, inviting carelessness.

“What I mean is, I want the tension to end, no matter how.”

Meg stared at her. No, you don’t. Not really.

Or do you?

She watched as Amelia began to pace.

Now that she was here, Weaver was even more impressed by Dante Vanya’s address. His apartment was in the Elliott Arms, a soaring structure of glass and steel rooted in three stories of pale stone, with a tinted glass front and a maroon-awninged entrance flanked by twisted green topiary in huge ceramic planters. It took a lot to intimidate Weaver, but as she crossed the street from her unmarked and gained the attention of a rigid, brightly uniformed doorman, she felt like saluting.

The man was well over six feet, with the body of a weight lifter even though he was graying and probably in his fifties. He smiled at Weaver, but surveyed her suspiciously with steel-blue eyes as he held open one of the tall, tinted doors for her.

The lobby was gray marble veined in red, the elevators discreetly hiding out of sight around a corner. Another uniformed man, this one not so grandly clad, sat in the recess of an angle of marble that was a reception desk. A tiny, decorative shaded lamp sat on one corner of the desk, looking out of place in such a vast, cool area.