Stealing Faces - Michael Prescott [9]
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 was an ambush. Had to be. He’d led her to this desolate spot, and he meant to strike.
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