Next Victim

by Michael Prescott

  Tennant left the bewildered woman and her consort without explanation. Pierce might still be here. After meeting her contact, she could have gone to some other part of the hotel.

  He led his team to the pool area. No one was there.

  "Coffee shop," he snapped.

  She must be here somewhere.

  "Nice ambience, the Century Plaza, but I’ll still take the MiraMist. We’re, what, a half mile from the beach? You can’t beat it." Donald Stevenson leaned back on his stool. "Who knows? Maybe I’ll retire here."

  "That’d be nice."

  "If I could afford it." He laughed. "Property taxes alone would eat me alive. And then, wouldn’t you know, with my luck I’d be out here six months and they’d have the Big One and this whole town would slide into the fucking ocean."

  "I guess you can never be completely safe anywhere," Pierce said with a smile.

  No luck.

  Tennant and his squad had searched every public space in the Century Plaza Hotel. Amanda Pierce was nowhere—unless she had checked in.

  Tennant returned to the lobby and asked the desk clerk if he had seen a woman matching Pierce’s description enter the hotel within the past ninety minutes. Answer: No.

  Outside, the two valets stood pondering the unmarked bureau cars. Tennant asked them the same question.

  One of them had seen her. A cab had dropped her off. She’d started to walk toward the hotel—then when the cab was gone, she’d retraced her steps. He’d thought it was kind of weird.

  "Where’d she go?" Tennant barked.

  "Nowhere. That’s the thing. She got into another taxi."

  Tennant closed his eyes. She had known the first cab might be traced, so she’d led her pursuit to the wrong hotel.

  "Did you see what kind it was?" he asked hopelessly.

  "What kind?"

  "Checker Cab, Yellow Cab?"

  "Sorry, sir. I didn’t notice."

  "Do any security cameras cover this area?"

  "This is a hotel, not a jail."

  Not a jail. Of course it was not a jail. The way things were going, Amanda Pierce would never get anywhere near a jail.

  Tennant turned to face J&B, Wilkins, and Dante, all gathered behind him. They’d heard everything. He tried to marshal his thoughts, to think of a plan of action, some order to give, but nothing came to him.

  "She could be anywhere in the city," Bickerstaff said, his voice hollow.

  "We lost her," Jarvis added.

  Possibly for the first time in his life, Jack Tennant felt like an old man. "We lost her," he echoed, turning away.

  14

  It was after one-thirty A.M. when Donald Stevenson finally asked if she would like to see the Malibu view from his room. She said yes, of course she would. He smiled, thinking he’d scored a conquest, when all he’d actually done was ensure that the Malibu view was the last sight he would ever see.

  The kill would be quick and quiet, and she would leave him there to be discovered, eventually, by the housekeeping service, while she took his wallet—cash, credit cards, bank card—and the keys to his rental car. There might be other valuables in his luggage. She would take whatever she could get, then relocate to another part of the city, someplace in the broad, flat interior, far from the sea. From the safe haven of a motel, she would try to arrange a new meeting.

  Her plan could be salvaged. Despite setbacks, the chance of success remained high. All that was necessary was for Donald Stevenson of Aurora, Illinois, to die tonight, and for Amanda Pierce this was no hardship at all.

  They rode the elevator to the sixteenth floor. He led her to room 1625 and unlocked it with his card key. The drapes trembled in a breeze from the balcony. The room was cool, almost chilly, lit by a single bedside lamp.

  Pierce stepped inside, then hesitated, reluctant to let go of her suitcase. But it would look odd if she continued to hold it. Carefully she placed it on a desk chair and joined Stevenson at the sliding door.

  "You can see all the way up the coast," he said with a theatrical gesture at the panorama framed in the glass.

  "You’re right. It’s a great view."

  "You on the other side of the hotel?"

  "Uh, yes."

  "They stuck you with a view of the street. Next time you’re in town, ask for this view specifically."

  Looking away, she studied the room. She noticed a suitcase on a folding table, a coat in the closet, a ten-dollar tip already left out for the maid. She reminded herself to take the ten dollars when she departed with his wallet and keys. No point in wasting it on the help.

  "Want something from the minibar?" he asked.

  "No, thank you."

  She touched her belt buckle, thinking she could do it now, end this goddamn game. But the open balcony door worried her. If he cried out, his scream might carry on the night air.

  "It’s a little cool in here," she said, hugging herself.

  "Oh. Sorry."

  She nearly went for him while he locked the door and fastened the drapes. But her fingers fumbled with the belt buckle—perhaps she was more nervous than she had been willing to admit—and before she could work the mechanism, he had turned to face her again.

  "You’re a beautiful woman," he said.

  She smiled. "Every woman is beautiful at two in the morning."

  "Don’t say that. I’m being serious here. I mean…look at you…You’re just…wow."

  She wasn’t sure what to say in response, and it didn’t matter, because suddenly he was drawing her near and pressing his mouth on hers, gently at first, then with mounting heat, and she felt a rush of pleasure in her body that was almost dizzying.

  "Lucy," he said, his voice a whisper.

  She hadn’t planned to go all the way with this guy. Still, she was prepared to do what was necessary. She needed Donald Stevenson dead, and if she couldn’t kill him now, she would have her chance once he’d gotten his rocks off.

  "There a problem?" he asked, watching her, and she realized she hadn’t moved or spoken.

  "Not at all," she said, and with one deft hand she unbuttoned her blouse and shrugged it off, letting him see her white bra and the small hills of her breasts.

  She expected him to say something stupidly sentimental, but instead he just reached out and pulled her with him onto the queen-size bed, rolling on the floral spread. Slowly he stroked the cup over her left breast. His fingers were gentle, surprisingly dexterous—long fingers, she observed, with prominent joints and clearly defined blue veins. He did not rush to unhook the bra. He let his hand trace careless circles on the underside of her breast in a slow, teasing motion that tickled and made her warm.

  Finally he reached behind her and unclasped the bra, letting it fall away. Her breasts, paler than the surrounding flesh, rose and fell with her breathing.

  He was stroking her breast again, then cupping his hand to lightly squeeze…releasing the pressure almost before she felt it…then again, lingering a moment longer before the next release…again and again, finally drawing his fingers along the smooth sides of her breast and pressing his palm against the nipple and turning his hand slowly, and now the room was turning also, the bed in motion, the ceiling rotating like the blade of a fan, and she heard a moan tremble out of her throat, soft as a bird’s call.

  And still he hadn’t undressed, hadn’t even removed his jacket, even as he stripped the clothes from her. She understood that this was how he wanted it to be—himself fully dressed, while she was naked.

  He leaned closer on the bed and kissed her—not on the mouth, as she expected, but on her right eyebrow, then on her left, then on each eyelid, the bridge of her nose, its tip, and then lowering to her mouth but bypassing it for her chin, her neck, the hollow of her throat, everywhere but her lips, which wanted the kiss now, wanted it and waited as he pressed his mouth to her cleavage, her belly, and then he lifted his head and gave her the kiss she needed, his lips on hers, her mouth opening and their tongues meeting with a shock that was almost el
ectric.

  "It’s better," he said when he pulled gently free, "if you wait for it. If I make you wait. Don’t you think?"

  Other men had never made her wait. But he was right. It was better.

  "The Hindus know about love," he was saying as he moved his fingers slowly through her hair and brought a rush of tingles to her scalp. "They wrote a sutra on it, dedicated to Kama, the god of love. Have you read that book?"

  She shook her head no. He eased her onto the pillows, then removed her slacks, her underpants, using one hand only, while the other hand continued to touch her in new and unexplored places, and his voice whispered, "They say there are sixty-four arts of love, and a man skilled in all of them will be a leader of other men and of women."

  This was a strange way for Donald Stevenson of Aurora, Illinois, to be talking, but she couldn’t think too much about it, not when his hands were now stroking the insides of her thighs.

  "They know that love is powerful," he whispered. "Love is godlike, and gods have power…."

  His hands moved in close to her sex and then eased away, and she knew he was teasing her again, as he had when he touched her breasts and when he kissed her. He was making her wait, making her want it, want him. She ought to have resented him for this exercise of power over her, but she felt no anger, no reproach, nothing but the ripples of warm and cold energy pulsing through her body like a disturbance in the clear waters of a pond.

  He lifted a finger to his lips, as if he meant to shush her, though she was making no sound. As she watched, he lowered the finger, and then she felt it slide down her belly to the vee between her legs, parting the moist lips. He lingered inside her, gently testing every niche, while his other hand curved behind her and kneaded the place where her buttocks met her back.

  She wanted him to go deeper, and because she wanted it, she knew he would not do it, not yet. But he surprised her, abruptly thrusting his finger into her depths, then just as quickly withdrawing. Another tease, and she should hate him for it, she really should.

  "Again," she breathed.

  "Beg me."

  She wouldn’t. It was crazy, humiliating. Who the hell was he to make her beg for anything?

  "Please," she said.

  Another thrust, two fingers this time, wet with her moistness, plunging in hard and fast, then pulling free.

  "Please," she repeated. She had no dignity. She hated herself.

  Two fingers again, probing deeply, and inside her the fingers curled, pressing the walls of her inner cavity as if sounding stops on a flute, fingers that searched for something and then found it, racking her body with a sudden terrifying plunge of pleasure that nearly stopped her heart.

  "Please," she gasped, not begging, not communicating, the word meaningless.

  After that, there were no more words in her mind. There was only the lightning stroke of pleasure—again—again—his hand in her, and her body shaking, writhing, wetness everywhere, his breathing and hers, a hand on her breast rubbing hard, her belly clenching, pain and joy and explosive colors flaring behind her eyelids, and at last when she couldn’t stand it any longer, he pulled his hand free and said, "Now for the real thing."

  A brief pause, and she realized he was putting on a condom, and then his cock was in her, and she felt its stiff curvature, its bursting pressure, and she almost screamed but his hand was on her mouth, muffling the cry, and at that same moment he released himself.

  For a long time afterward, Pierce lay still, fighting for control of her breath and her thoughts. Distantly she felt him pull out of her, then roll over to lie by her side. Even now he wore his jacket. A well-dressed lover.

  She didn’t look at him. She stared at the ceiling and tried to remember why she was here. She’d had some purpose, a secret intention.

  Oh, right.

  She had to steal his stuff. And first, he had to die.

  She almost regretted having to do it. The man was such a goddamn good fuck. Well, at least he would go out with a bang.

  Reaching beside her, she found her discarded slacks, the belt still strung through the loops. Carefully she opened the heavy belt buckle, with no fumbling this time, and took out the knife.

  She palmed it, the blade still safely retracted, and considered her options. A straight cut across the throat would be instantly fatal, but the carotid arteries would geyser. She needed a clean kill. Her best maneuver was to drive the blade into the torso below the rib cage on the left side, then angle it upward, puncturing the lung and perhaps the aorta. Even if the wound didn’t kill him at once, he would be too badly weakened to put up any resistance, and she could finish him with a slash across the back of the neck.

  Pierce rolled onto her side, the switchblade snapping open, and then his wrist closed over hers, wrenching hard, his fingers exerting painful pressure on the ball of her thumb until her hand opened and she released the knife.

  She stared at the dropped weapon on the sheets, at Donald Stevenson, at the cold amusement in his eyes, and she knew with sudden certainty that she had made a serious mistake.

  "Let me go," she said for no reason, except that the words seemed to come of their own will.

  "Not a chance," he said softly.

  She kicked at him and at the covers, trying to gain some traction and propel herself off the bed, but the covers merely skidded under her, bunching up at her feet, and then he was on top of her and there was a knife in his hand.

  Not her knife. Not a switchblade. This was a hunting knife, seven inches of carbon steel with serrated edges, and along the ragged line of the blade she saw dark flecks of dried blood.

  She parted her lips to shout for help. He slapped her into silence with a blow that nearly knocked her unconscious.

  Then there was only her hoarse breathing and a whirl of light and shadow and the pressure of tape on her mouth, sealing her lips, then more tape binding her wrists to the headboard.

  She was naked, gagged, bound, more helpless than ever in her life, and it made no sense. Who the fuck was this guy? What the fuck was going on?

  Maybe he was her contact, after all. Maybe he’d been instructed to kill her instead of paying her off. But that couldn’t be right. She hadn’t given him any information yet. And now her mouth was sealed, and she couldn’t tell him anything.

  It was crazy, just crazy….

  Crazy.

  The word quivered through her like a twitch, and she understood.

  He wasn’t her contact. He was a psycho—and probably a killer.

  For the past hour she’d been playing with this man, never suspecting that all the while he was playing a subtler game of his own.

  "Handy little item you’ve got," he said with a glance at the abandoned switchblade on the bed. "You handled it with a certain professional aplomb. But it appears you miscalculated. I’m the one who’ll cut…"

  With his knife he traced a line along her left forearm, raising a thin welt.

  "…and run."

  She tried to say something through the tape pasted to her mouth, but no words could get out, and she didn’t know what she could tell him anyway.

  He pulled on a pair of rubber gloves from his jacket, then fiddled with her knife, clicking it open and shut.

  On the desk chair across the room lay her suitcase. Pierce thought with bitter irony of its contents and what she could have done with them, the awful surprise she could have had for this man.

  He noted the direction of her gaze. "You seem awfully interested in your luggage. I wonder why."

  Getting up, he moved toward the desk chair. She saw him smooth out his jacket, adjust his collar, zip his fly.

  He opened the suitcase and groped among its contents. "Cell phone…toiletries…change of clothes…and this." He lifted out a sealed metal canister, ten inches long. "This is interesting."

  She watched him, trying to betray nothing with her eyes.

  "There’s liquid in here," he said. "If it’s nitro, I’m probably in imminent danger of blowing myself up."
He tossed the canister lightly. "But anybody can get hold of nitro. Nitro is no big deal. This is something else, isn’t it, Lucy?"

  He set down the canister and rummaged in the suitcase’s zippered pocket, where he found her two wallets—one containing her Lucy Mallone identification, the other her real documents.

  "Huh. Looks like Lucy isn’t even your name. Is it, Amanda?" He smiled. "So what have we got here? A lady traveling under an assumed name, with a professionally tricked-out belt buckle concealing a very high quality switchblade, carries a canister of liquid into the City of Angels. You know what I think you are, Amanda a.k.a. Lucy? I think you’re one of those bad people our government is always warning us about. I think…"

  Abruptly his smile winked out.

  "Forgive me. I got so wrapped up in my deductions—sherlockholmesing it, in James Joyce’s little neologism—that I almost lost sight of the main event. Let’s get to work, shall we?"

  From a side pocket of his jacket, he removed a portable cassette player and hooked it up to the clock radio on the nightstand. He turned on the player. Faint music came from the radio’s cheap speaker. He kept the volume low, inaudible from adjacent rooms, but Pierce could hear the music well enough as it played inches from her ear.

  "You like surf rock?" He nodded his head to the rhythm. "It was born here, on the left coast."

  He smiled.

  "Welcome to California."

  Pierce didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to think about what would happen next. Eyes shut, she listened to the music. She knew this song. The last song she would ever hear.

  It was called "Wipe Out."

  PART TWO

  15

  Tess was exhausted when she drove to her motel.

  At two o’clock in the morning, the streets were not too busy, but the rush of traffic in LA never fully stopped. She took the 405 Freeway north into the San Fernando Valley, exiting at Ventura Boulevard.

  Andrus had booked her into an extended-stay motel, the kind of place where relocated executives passed the time waiting for the moving company to arrive with their furniture. She couldn’t complain about the accommodations, but that term "extended stay" bothered her. She wondered how long her stay would be—and how many victims Mobius would claim before he was stopped.