The Shadow Hunter

by Michael Prescott

  She dropped her suitcase and the FedEx package onto the ottoman of an overstuffed armchair. The apartment’s furnishings had been chosen primarily for comfort, with no concerns about consistency of style. She liked a chair she could sink into, a sofa softer than a bed. Throw pillows and quilts were tossed here and there, along with the occasional stuffed polar bear and fake macaw, all contributing to a general impression of disorder. Her decorating skills were limited at best, but she had managed to find two paintings that pleased her. Both were prints purchased out of discount bins. One was a late work by Joseph Turner, the landscape dissolving in a bath of light, and the other was one of Edward Hicks’s many studies of The Peaceable Kingdom, predator and prey as bedfellows. The Turner had a spiritual quality that touched a part of her she rarely accessed, and the Hicks, with its naive optimism, simply made her smile.

  Briskly she opened the curtains and the glass door to the balcony, airing out the room. Her apartment faced Wilshire; she was high enough to be out of earshot of most traffic noise.

  In the kitchen she drank two glasses of water. Flying always left her dehydrated. She found blueberries and peaches in the freezer, defrosted them in the microwave, and dumped them into the blender along with a dollop of vanilla yogurt and some skim milk two days past its expiration date. A few seconds of whirring reduced the blender’s contents to a bluish, frothy sludge, which she poured into a tall glass and drank slowly, pausing to swallow assorted vitamin and mineral supplements.

  Leaving the kitchen, she changed into a white terry-cloth robe and ran the bathwater. Briefly she considered pouring bath oil into the tub, but ruled against this indulgence. She was about to strip off the robe when the intercom buzzed.

  She answered it, irritated. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Stevens is here to see you,” one of the lobby guards said.

  “Okay, Vince. Send him up.”

  Stevens was the name Travis used when he stopped by. The guards weren’t supposed to know that Abby had any connection to the security field, and Travis’s name had been well publicized recently.

  She waited, wondering why Travis had returned.

  When the doorbell chimed, she opened the door, and he stepped inside without a word.

  “Hey, Paul. Forget something?”

  “Not exactly. I changed my mind.”

  “About what?”

  “The urgency of my return to the office.”

  She smiled, relaxing and at the same time feeling a rush of pleasant tension. “Did you?”

  “What’s that they say about all work and no play?” He took a look around the apartment. “Place looks the same as I remember it.”

  “Hasn’t been that long since you were here,” Abby said, then realized she was wrong. It had been weeks, and not only because she had been traveling. Even when she was in LA, she had seen less of Travis in the past few months—since the Devin Corbal case.

  He circled toward the balcony. “I see your view hasn’t improved.” Late last year an office tower had been erected across the street, coal-black and butt-ugly and, so far, unoccupied; some financial or legal screw-up had interrupted construction during the finishing stages.

  “I’m used to it,” Abby said, “though I have to admit, it doesn’t do a lot for the neighborhood. All that vacant office space…”

  She stopped. Both of them were silent for a moment, and she knew Travis was thinking of the empty offices in the TPS suite. She wanted to kick herself.

  But when Travis turned away from the balcony, he was smiling. “Do I hear water running?”

  “I’m drawing a bath.”

  “Sounds intriguing.”

  “I don’t think there’s room for two.”

  “Have you ever tested that hypothesis?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “You should. Why don’t you see if the water’s gotten hot?”

  “Why don’t I?”

  She left him in the living room and retreated down the hall to check the tub. It was half-full and the perfect temperature. The air in the bathroom was sensuously humid, thick with steam. Bath oil didn’t seem like a bad idea anymore. When she added it to the water, a lather of white bubbles sprang up, reflecting the overhead light in a bevy of rainbows. She took off the robe, hung it on the back of the door, and lowered herself into the tub. The space was cramped, and she thought pessimistically that she’d been right: there wasn’t room for two.

  Then he came in. He had left his clothes outside, and she saw him through the steamy haze. He bent over the tub and kissed her, and she felt a small disturbance in the water as he slid his hand into the bath to caress her breast. It was a slow circular caress—the light touch of his fingers, the firmer pressure of his palm—and then with his other hand he was stroking her hair, her neck, the lingering tension in her shoulders.

  “I still think you won’t fit,” she said mischievously.

  “We’ll see.”

  Travis reached behind her and turned off the tap, then stroked the lean, toned muscles of her back. The bathwater, leavened with oil, was smooth, supple, some exotic new liquid, not ordinary water at all.

  “I’ve missed you,” Travis said.

  She was briefly surprised. He was never sentimental.

  “I…” Why was this so hard for her to say? “I missed you too.”

  The water rose around her. He entered the tub, straddling her, his knees against her hips, as the water sloshed lazily around them and stray bubbles detached themselves from the lather to burst in small pops. “I’m not sure the circumstances allow for much finesse,” Travis said apologetically.

  She giggled. “Finesse isn’t always essential.”

  They rocked gently in the water and steam. She let her head fall back, her mop of wet hair cushioning her against the tiled wall. In the ceiling the exhaust fan hummed. The faucet dripped. She heard her heartbeat and Travis’s breath.

  “Abby,” he said.

  She shut her eyes.

  “Abby.”

  He was inside her.

  “Abby…”

  Pumping harder. Driving deeper.

  Her back arched, lifting her halfway out of the water, and her hair spilled across her face in a dark tangle, and distantly she was aware that she’d banged her head on the damn tiles, but it didn’t matter.

  He withdrew himself and held her, the two of them entwined amid soapsuds and lacy, dissipating tendrils of steam.

  “Told you I’d fit,” Travis said.

  She couldn’t argue.

  In late afternoon Abby woke in the familiar half-darkness of her bedroom. She propped herself up on an elbow and looked for Travis, but he was gone, of course. He had returned to the office. She supposed it was considerate of him to have departed without waking her.

  Dimly she recalled leaving the bathtub when the water had gotten cold. She and Travis had toweled each other dry, and the vigorous rubbing had segued into more sensual contact, and then they were on top of her bed, and somehow the covers got kicked off and things had proceeded from there. This time the circumstances had allowed for considerable finesse.

  She had dozed off afterward. And he had made his exit, gathering his clothes from the living room, where no doubt they had been neatly folded and stacked. He had fit her into his schedule, at least. He had found a slot for her between lunchtime and his afternoon appointments.

  She shook her head. Unfair. What had she expected him to do? Cancel everything, spend the day with her? He was trying to salvage a damaged business—and not incidentally, keep some of the most famous people in LA alive.

  Anyway, she had never asked for more from him. She liked her space, her freedom. Maybe she liked it too much for her own good.

  She got out of bed and threw on a T-shirt and cutoff shorts. Barefoot, she wandered into the kitchen and opened a can of tuna fish. Slathered between thick slabs of date bread, it made a pretty good sandwich. Normally, when eating alone she would watch TV or read, but there was nothing on TV at this hour, and the
only immediately available reading matter was Travis’s report. She almost got it out of her suitcase, but stopped herself. “All work and no play,” she mused.

  Travis had said that. He’d been right. She could permit herself a break from work. Even so, she found herself eyeing the suitcase as she ate her sandwich at the dining table.

  “You’re a workaholic,” she chided. “This job’s gonna kill you if you don’t let go of it once in a while.” Unless, of course, it killed her in a more literal fashion first.

  A lot of negative energy was in the air all of a sudden. She popped a CD into her audio deck. The disc, selected at random, was a Kid Ory jazz album from way back when. She listened as the Kid launched his trombone into “Muskrat Ramble,” but she knew the song too well to fully hear it, and her thoughts drifted to other things. College. A January thunderstorm, and in the rain she broke up with Greg Daly. He was pushing too hard, getting too close. Even then, she’d needed her space. For her, it had always been that way.

  She had talked about it with her father once. In memory she could see him clearly, squinting into the Arizona sun, nets of creases edging his calm hazel eyes. She had inherited those eyes, that exact shade, and perhaps the quality of remoteness they conveyed. Her father had been a contemplative man, given to long stillnesses. He ran a horse ranch in the desolate foothills south of Phoenix. One evening she sat with him in the russet tones of a desert sunset, watching massed armies of saguaro cacti raise their spiked arms against the glare, and she asked why the boys in school didn’t like her. She was twelve years old.

  It’s not that they don’t like you, her father said. They’re put off a bit. Intimidated, I think.

  This was baffling. What’s intimidating about me?

  Well, I don’t know. What do you suppose might be intimidating about a girl who can climb a tree better than they can, or shoe a horse, or aim and shoot a rifle like a pro?

  She pointed out that most of them had never seen her do any of those things.

  But they see you, Abigail. He always called her that, never Abby, and never Constance, her middle name. They see how you carry yourself. Anyhow, you don’t give them much encouragement, do you? You keep to yourself. You want solitude and privacy.

  She allowed that this was so.

  We’re a lot alike, Henry Sinclair said. We get to feeling crowded more easily than most. She asked him if this was a good thing. It is, he said, if you can make it work in your favor. When she asked how, he answered. You’ll figure it out.

  Had she? Sixteen years had passed since that conversation. Her father was gone, and her mother too. She was more alone than she had ever been as a child, and still she got to feeling crowded more easily than most.

  6

  In the evening, after a light supper, Abby went downstairs to the small gym adjacent to the lobby. She used the Stairmaster for a half hour, then left the building and walked into Westwood Village, where she browsed in a bookstore and bought a book on criminal psychopathology and a collection of old Calvin and Hobbes comics. She had never quite forgiven Bill Watterson for discontinuing that strip.

  Burnout, he’d claimed. She wondered how long he would last at her job.

  Mostly her visit to the Village was an excuse to do some people-watching. This was not only her job, it was her hobby. In college she had majored in psychology because the field suited her temperament. She wanted to observe people and make assessments without being required or even permitted to get close.

  Had she continued with her training, she would have been a licensed psychologist by now. But in the summer after her second year of postgraduate studies, everything had changed. She had met Travis.

  He was giving a lecture in Phoenix at the Arizona Biltmore. His topic: warning signs of violent psychopathology. He was not a psychologist, but as the head of a leading security firm he had the kind of hands-on experience that trumped book learning. She had read a profile of Travis in the Arizona Republic, which was still delivered to her father’s ranch, though her father was no longer there to read it. He had died that June, a week after she earned her master’s degree, and had been buried beside her mother in a family plot. Abby had returned to sell the ranch, a job that took longer than expected. Grief and the relentless summer sun had worn her down, and she looked for any excuse to get away. Travis’s lecture, open to the public, was the lifeline she seized.

  Even without a license, she was enough of a psychologist to know what Dr. Freud would have said about the developments that followed. She had lost her father. She was looking for another. Travis was older, an authority figure, and he came along at the right time.

  Whatever her motive, she went to the lecture. Travis was charming. It was not a quality he exhibited with great frequency, but that night he roused himself to eloquence. He told intriguing stories culled from the cases he had handled, mixing humor and suspense, while never allowing his audience to forget that the stakes in his work were life and death.

  Afterward she lingered with a group of attendees chatting with Travis. As the ballroom was clearing out, she asked her only question. You evaluate your subjects on the basis of their letters or phone calls, she said. I couldn’t do therapy that way. A therapeutic diagnosis requires one-on-one contact, usually over an extended series of sessions.

  The more extended, the better—at least as far as the therapist’s bank account is concerned, Travis said with a smile, and several people laughed.

  Abby pressed ahead. So even though your methods seem statistically sound, you can’t achieve the same degree of certainty in your evaluation as a working therapist, can you?

  She hadn’t meant to sound combative, but Travis took the question as a challenge and proceeded to defend his approach. He spoke for a long time. When he was done, the group broke up, and Abby headed for the lobby, feeling she had failed somehow or missed an opportunity.

  She was unlocking her car in the parking area near one of the city’s canals when Travis caught up with her. He came out of the darkness, striding fast, and she thought he was a mugger until the glow of a street-lamp highlighted his face.

  That was a good question, he said in a quieter tone than the one he’d used in a public setting. Truth is, I didn’t have a good answer. She told him he had covered himself well. He laughed, then asked if they could have a cup of coffee together.

  They lingered at a coffee bar on Camelback Road until after midnight, and when he said he was staying in town a few more days, she invited him to visit her at the ranch. It’s the real Arizona, she said. The Arizona we’re losing now.

  I wonder why things always seem most real to us when we lose them, he said softly. He could not have known about her father. Still, it was the uncannily perfect thing to say.

  His visit to the ranch the next day lengthened into an overnight stay. She had not had many lovers. There had been Greg Daly and one other young man—no one else, until Travis. And no one like him, ever. He was no college student. At forty he was a man of the world. And yes, he had several of her father’s qualities. He could be remote and aloof, even sullen. He could be hard. But where her father had always allowed at least a glimpse of his inner life, Travis kept his deepest self hidden. He was a brisk, uncomplicated man, or so he seemed. But the truth was that she could never be sure just what he was. He puzzled her. Most likely she posed the same mystery to him. Neither of them was good at opening up and revealing too much.

  When he returned to LA, they stayed in touch. He flew to Phoenix several times to see her as she concluded the business of selling the ranch. Then it was September, time to pursue her doctoral degree; but strangely, her studies bored her. She had spoken with Travis at length about the advantages of direct, personal contact with the stalkers his agency observed from afar. She had thought of a way to do it. On a trip to LA, over dinner at a seafood restaurant, she broached the subject.

  It would be dangerous, Abby, Travis said.

  I know.

  You’d have to be trained. There’s a whole
gamut of skills you’d need to acquire.

  I have certain skills. Not to mention a master’s degree in psychology, a higher than average percentage of fast-twitch muscle fibers, and a winning personality.

  Travis smiled, unconvinced. Why would you do this? You’re already qualified as a counselor. Earn your doctorate and your license, then open a private practice and rake in the bucks.

  That’s not what I want anymore.

  But why?

  It lacks excitement.

  There are things to be said in favor of a nice, quiet life.

  You don’t live that way.

  When did I ever become your role model?

  She didn’t answer.

  After a long time Travis said, If you want me to help you, I will. But I won’t say I have no misgivings. I don’t want to see you hurt. This was the gentlest thing he ever said to her, before or since.

  Her training took two years. She lived in a small apartment in an unfashionable part of LA. The sale of the ranch had given her enough money to support herself, and she took nothing from Travis. Nor did either of them ever suggest that she move in with him. She still wanted her space. She couldn’t say what Travis wanted.

  He sent her to a self-defense institute specializing in the Israeli street-fighting technique of krav maga. Most martial arts programs were glorified exercise routines blended with elements of dance; their usefulness in actual hand-to-hand struggle was limited. Krav maga was different. There was no beauty in it. It was a brutal skill that aimed at one objective—the immediate, unconditional defeat of one’s adversary by any means available. Abby had never used violence against anyone, and the first time she had to deliver kicks and punches to her instructor’s padded torso, she did it with trembling reluctance, her vision blurred by tears. After a while she learned not to cry. Inflicting pain was a necessary evil. She could deal with it. She could be tough. Like Travis. Like her father. She took acting lessons in Hollywood. She rode in a private detective’s surveillance van, monitoring radio frequencies. She accepted a variety of odd jobs—waitress, cashier, clerical worker, hamburger flipper—partly for extra cash, but mainly for a range of experiences to draw on when she went undercover.