Shadow Prey (31 page)

Lucas looked around the diner. Paint was peeling off the ceiling and a black mold was attacking the seams of the aging wallpaper. "Because they've got to fry it and that ought to sterilize it," he said under his breath.

She glanced around and suddenly giggled, and Lucas thought he might be in love.

After breakfast, when they were back in the car, the talk slowed and Lily moved her seat to a reclined position. Her eyes fell shut.

"A nap?" asked Lucas.

"Relaxing," she said. Her breathing grew steady, and Lucas drove on. Lily dozed but didn't sleep, opening her eyes and sitting forward at turns and stops. After a while, she found the steady soft vibration of the car had become arousing. She opened her eyes just a crack. Lucas had put on sunglasses and was driving with a steady, relaxed watchfulness. Now and then he turned his head to look at passing attractions that she couldn't see from her low position. She reached out and put a hand on his leg.

"Uh-oh," he said. He glanced at her and grinned. "The animal is alive."

"Just thinking," she said. She stroked his thigh, her eyes closed again, letting herself feel the coarse weave of his jeans.

"Dammit," Lucas said after a few more minutes. "My dick is going to break off." He pushed himself up in the seat, reached down the front of his pants and changed things around. She laughed, and when he sat down, she put her hand back in his lap. He was erect, his penis reaching up beneath his fly to his belt.

"Ooo, too bad we're in a car," she said.

He looked over at her, grinned and said, "You've played this game before?"

"What game?" She stroked and he pushed her hand away.

"You're done," he said. "It's my turn. Take off your panty hose."

"Lucas..." she said. She sounded shocked, but she sat upright and looked out the car windows. They were alone on the rural highway.

"Come on, chicken. Off with the pants."

She looked at the speedometer. A steady sixty miles per hour. "You could kill us."

"Nope. I've played before."

"Mr. Experience, huh?"

"Come on, come on, you're bullshitting now. Off with the pants. Or live with the consequences."

"What consequences?"

"Deep in your heart, you'll know that I know you're chicken."

"All right, Davenport." She pushed herself off the seat, and with some difficulty pulled off her panty hose.

"Now the pants."

She pushed herself up again and took off her underpants.

"Here, I'll take them," Lucas said. Without thinking, she handed him the pants; he quickly dropped his window and threw them out.

"Davenport, for Christ's sakes..." She was looking back down the highway where the underpants had disappeared into a roadside ditch.

"I'll buy you new ones."

"Goddamn right," she said.

"So now you lean back and close your eyes." She looked at him and felt a blush crawling up her face. "Come on," he said.

She leaned back and his hand touched her thighs, the fingers just trailing along, from the joint of her hip to her knee, and back again. It was warm in the car and she felt the blood moving to her groin. Her mouth dropped open and the warmth continued to build.

"Oh, boy," she said after a few minutes. "Boy..."

"Moan for me," he said.

"What?"

"Moan for me. One good moan and Davenport stops the car."

She reached over and touched him. He felt huge under the jeans and she giggled. "I've got to stop giggling," she said lazily. She reached out again; then Lucas hit the brake and she rocked forward.

"What?" She looked wildly out the window.

"Jeffers petroglyphs," he said. "I've heard about them, but I've never seen them."

"What?" Lily was gasping, like a fish out of water. The car rocked as Lucas pulled into a grass-covered parking area. She pulled her skirt down.

"Indian carvings on some exposed rock," Lucas said. There were two other cars in the parking area, although a sign said the petroglyph monument was closed for the season. Lucas hopped out of the car and Lily got out on her side. In the distance, across a fence, they could see a half-dozen people looking down at a slab of reddish rock.

"Must have climbed the fence," Lucas said. "Come on."

Lucas vaulted the gate, then helped Lily clamber over.

"Christ, this is the last time I wear a dress on the road. And I feel so bare... you and your fucking games," she said. "From now on, it's tennis shoes and pants."

"You look good in a dress," he said as they walked up a graveled path. "You look terrific. And you look great without the underpants."

The petroglyphs were scratched into the flat surfaces of exposed red rock. There were outlines of hands, drawings of animals and birds, unknown symbols.

"Look how small their hands were," Lily said. She stooped and placed her own hand over one of the glyphs. Her hand was larger.

"Maybe it was a kid or a woman," Lucas said.

"Maybe." She stood straight and looked around at the rolling prairie and the adjoining cornfield. "I wonder what in the hell they would have been doing out here. There's nothing here."

"I don't know." Lucas looked around. The sky seemed huge, and he felt as though he were standing on the point of the planet. "You've got this rise, you can see forever. But I suppose it was really the rock. Further out west, there's an Indian quarry. It's old. The Indians would take out a soft red rock called pipestone. They made pipes and other stuff out of it."

The petroglyphs were carved on a gently sloping hillside and Lucas wandered with Lily down the slope, passing the other visitors. The others were on their hands and knees, tracing out the glyphs with their fingers. One woman was doing a charcoal rubbing on brown paper, transferring the designs. Two of them said hello. Lucas and Lily nodded.

"We've got to get going pretty soon if we want to make that meeting," Lucas said finally, glancing at his watch.

"Okay."

They walked slowly back to the car, the prairie wind blowing Lily's hair around her face. At the fence, she put one foot on the wire, and Lucas caught her from behind and squeezed.

"One small kiss," he said.

She turned and tipped up her face. The kiss started small and turned warmer, until they were dancing around slowly in the tall grass. She pushed him away after a moment and, breathing hard, looked down.

"These shoes... these heels, I'm going to twist my ankle."

"All right. Let's go." He helped her over the fence, then followed. As they walked to the car, he slipped his arm around her waist.

"I'm still turned on from fooling around in the car," he said.

"Hey. It's only three hours back to the Cities," she said playfully.

"And about two meetings after that."

"Tough luck, Davenport..."

He led her around the car, opened the passenger-side door, caught her by the arm, sat in the car and pulled her on top of him. "Come on."

"What?" She struggled for a moment, but he pulled her in.

"They can't see us from the road, and those other people are looking at the rocks," he said. "Face me."

"Lucas..." But she turned to face him.

"C'mon."

"I don't know how..."

"Just bend your knees up and sit, that's good, that's good."

"The car's too small, Lucas...."

"That's fine, you're fine. Jeez, has anybody ever told you that you've got one of the great asses in Western history?"

"Lucas, we can't..."

"Ah..."

She sat astride him, facing him, her knees apart, just enough room to move a half-dozen inches, and he began to rock, and she felt the morning's play coalescing around her. She closed her eyes, and rocked, and rocked, and the orgasm gathered and flowed and washed over her. She came back only when she heard Lucas say, "Oh, man, man..."

"Lucas," she said, and she giggled again and caught herself. She never giggled and now she was giggling every fifteen minutes.

"I needed that," he said. He was sweating and his eyes looked distant and sated. The door was partway open, and Lily looked out the window, then pushed it open with a foot and eased out onto the grass and pulled her skirt down. Lucas followed awkwardly, zipped up, then leaned forward and kissed her. She wrapped her arms around him and pushed against his chest. They swayed together for a moment, then Lucas released her, looking dazed, and half staggered around the car.

"We better get going," he said.

"Right... okay." She got into the car, and Lucas started it and found the reverse gear. He slowly eased out onto the roadway, watching for traffic. The road was empty, but Lucas was preoccupied, so Lily saw them first.

"What are they doing?" she asked.

"What?" He looked in the same direction she was. The people who had been looking at the petroglyphs were lined up along the fence, facing them, repeatedly slapping their hands together.

Lucas stared for a moment, perplexed, then caught it and threw back his head and laughed.

"What?" asked Lily, still puzzled, looking at the line of people across the fence. "What are they doing?"

"They're applauding," Lucas laughed.

"Oh, no," Lily said, her face flaming as they accelerated away. She looked back and after a moment added, "They certainly got their money's worth...."

Chapter
2O

In the car, Barbara looked him over.

"Why am I doing this? Driving you?"

"I'm looking for a guy," Shadow Love said. "I want you to talk to him on the telephone."

"You're not going to do anything, are you?"

"No. Just want to talk," Shadow Love said. He turned away and watched the street roll by. It took an hour of cruising and a half-dozen stops, with Barbara growing increasingly anxious, but Shadow Love finally spotted Larry Hart as he went into the Nub Inn.

"Let's find a phone," Shadow Love said. "You know what to say."

"What're you going to do?" Barbara asked.

"I want to talk to him. See what he's getting. If there's any possibility that we'll be seen, I'll call it off. You can wait out of sight down the road. If anything goes wrong and they grab me, I just won't show up and you can drive away."

"All right. Be careful, Shadow."

Shadow Love glanced at her. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. She knows what's coming. The pistol he'd used to kill Yellow Hand pressed into his side. His fingers touched the cold stone knife in his pocket.

Hart took the bait. Barbara called him at the Nub Inn, explained that she'd seen him go inside, and said that she had some information. But she was scared, she said. Scared of the assassins, scared of the cops. She was an old client of his, she said, and knew him by sight. She said she'd meet him by the green dumpster outside the sheet-rock warehouse by the river.

"You've got to come alone, Larry, please. The cops scare me, they'll beat me up. I trust you, Larry, but the cops scare me."

"Okay. I'll see you in ten minutes," Hart said. "And don't be scared. There's nothing to be scared of."

She looked through the glass of the phone booth toward her car. Shadow Love was slumped in the passenger seat, and she could just see the top of his head. "Okay," she said.

It took Hart fifteen minutes to get out of the inn, into his car and down to the warehouse. "There he is," Shadow Love said as Hart pulled over to the curb near the warehouse. They watched as he got out of the car, locked it, looked around and began walking cautiously toward the dumpster at the corner of the building.

"Drive around the block, like I told you. I'll look for cops," Shadow Love said.

Nothing moving on the street, nobody sitting in parked cars. Shadow Love took a breath. "Okay," he said. "Up behind the warehouse. And then you go on down where I showed you, and wait."

When they finished circling the block, they were on the back side of the warehouse. Shadow Love got out of the car. "Take care," Barbara said. "And be quick."

As she drove away, Shadow Love walked across a vacant lot littered with construction debris to the warehouse. He slipped carefully around the corner and was then directly behind the dumpster. Through a narrow space between the warehouse wall and the dumpster, he saw, for just a second, the dark sleeve of a man's coat on the other side. Hart was wearing a black jacket. Shadow Love touched the pistol under his shirt and stepped around the dumpster.

"Larry," he said. Hart jumped and spun around.

"Jesus," he said, his face stricken. "Shadow."

"It's been a long time," Shadow Love said. "I think I saw you a time or two out on Lake Street, after you graduated."

"Yeah, long time," Hart said. He tried to smile. "Are you still living around here?"

Shadow Love ignored the question. "I heard in the bars that you've been looking for me," he said, stepping closer. Hart was bigger than he was, but Shadow Love knew that Hart would be no contest in a fight. Hart knew it too.