Page 13 of Dodge

Breathing slowly now. Calm. Prepared.

Prepared to kill.

No car doors slammed. He’d left it open for the silence. An old trick. There was the faint sound of a footstep, gritty. Marlowe had decided not to stuff plugs into her ears; she needed to hear his approach and would just have to endure the stunning blast of the gunshots.

Her soul hummed with ecstatic anticipation.

Constant Marlowe lived for moments like this.

Come on ...

And here he was.

A shadow appeared beneath the door.

He didn’t move for a long moment. On the one hand, he would be thinking—as she hoped—that she was gone. On the other, he’d wonder if this was a trap and she was waiting for him.

Marlowe believed she and her adversary were equally intelligent, equally skilled at strategy and tactics.

Then something curious happened.

He was whispering. And someone whispered back.

Twopeople?

What was this about?

So, her enemy had backup.

The door lock clicked as a key card was pressed next to it. He’d sweet-talked the desk clerk into giving him a copy.

Her right index finger, tipped in black polish, slipped from outside the trigger guard to inside. This gun had a very light pull.

Five seconds passed.

Ten.

Her teeth were clamped tight, impatience growing to irritation.

Come on in, both of you. Plenty of ammunition to go around.

Another whisper? Hard to tell. Might have been the wind. The shadows beneath the door vanished. A moment later two car doors slammed, an engine started and the tire squeal announced an urgent departure, robbing her of the chance to run outside and empty her weapon into the back of his head.

Goddamn ...

Marlowe exhaled long, closing her eyes, lowering her head in anger. She safety’d the gun, put it into her waistband and began to dig through her backpack.

“What was it?” Tony Lombardi asked.

The marshal didn’t answer; he was concentrating on piloting his rental car quickly along the road the motel was located on. Squinting and glancing from the road ahead to the hillside on their left and back again.

He skidded the Chevy onto a badly maintained road that ascended steeply. At the top, he made another left and, after a short drive, stopped on the crest of the hill overlooking the Western Valley Lodge.

Greene climbed out and nodded for Lombardi to do the same. The men peered down at the motel.

“I want to see if her lights go on or a curtain moves.”

“You think she’s there? But her car?”

---