Shadow Prey

"I got no sympathy for you," Sloan said. "You're the luckiest motherfucker on the face of the earth. Cothron said you walked right into the Crows' guns, like Jesus walking across the water, and never anything happened."

"I can't remember too well," Lucas said. "It's just all fucked up in my head." "Yeah. Well, take it easy." "Sure." Lucas nodded and limped away down the hall.

The Porsche had three bullet holes in it, each in a separate piece of sheet metal. Lucas shook his head and climbed in.

The night was not quite cold. He ran down through the Loop, in sync with traffic lights, and made it out to the interstate without stopping. He was flying on automatic: east across the river, off at the Cretin Avenue exit, south down Cretin, right to Mississippi River Boulevard, south to home.

Je

Her car was in the driveway, a light was on in a window of the house. He pulled into the drive and jabbed the transmitter for the garage door opener. As he waited for the door to open, she came to the window and looked out. She had the baby on her arm.

"I freaked out," she said simply.

"I'm all right," he said. He was limping from the lost heel.

"How about the other guys?"

"One dead. One pretty busted up. The Crows are dead."

"So it's over."

"Not quite. Shadow Love got away."

They were staring at each other across the narrow space of the kitchen, Je

"We've got to talk. I can't just walk away from you. I thought I could, but I can't," she said.

"Man, Jen, I'm fuckin' crazy right now. I don't know what's going on…" He looked around wildly, the peaceful neighborhood hovering around them like a joke. "Come on," he said. "Come on and talk…"

Shadow Love had heard about the shootout on his radio, and now he waited in a thicket just over the lip of the slope that went down to the river. He'd pla

When the door went down, Shadow Love walked fifty feet down the street, into the shadow of a spreading oak, and hurried across the street, through a corner of another yard and into the dark space beside Davenport's garage. Front doors were usually stout. Back doors, on garages, usually were not, since they didn't lead directly into the house. Shadow Love slipped around the garage to the back door and tested the knob. Locked.

The door had two panes of inset glass. Shadow Love peeled off his jacket, wrapped a sleeve around the middle joints of his fingers and pressed on the glass, hard, harder, until it cracked. There was almost no noise, but he paused, counted to three, then put more pressure along the crack. Another crack radiated out from the pressure point, then another. Two small pieces of glass fell almost noiselessly into the garage. Shadow Love stopped and checked the night around him: nothing moving, no sense of anything. Still using the jacket as padding, he pushed his little finger through the hole and carefully pulled two of the larger shards of glass from the door. In another minute, he had a hole large enough to reach through. He turned the lock knob and eased the door open.

The garage was not quite pitch dark: some light filtered in from the neighbor's house in back, enough that he could see large shapes, such as the car. With his left hand on the Porsche's warm hood, he moved carefully toward the door that led into the house. His right hand was wrapped around the pistol grip of the M-15. Once he was lined up on it, he would blow the knob off the door, and he'd be inside in a matter of a second or two…

He never saw the shovel hanging from a nail on the garage wall. His sleeve hooked the blade and the shovel came down like a thunderclap, hammering into a garbage can, rattling off the car and onto the floor.

"What?" said Je

CHAPTER 28

"The basement," Lucas snapped.

He grabbed Je

In the garage, Shadow Love, stu

Lucas took the stairs a half-second behind Je

"Workroom," Lucas shouted, flattening himself against the stairwell wall, his gun hand extended up the stairs. "Get under the workbench."

Shadow Love's next two shots blew open the door from the garage, the slugs ricocheting through the kitchen. The door was at an angle to the stairway. Lucas fired three shots through the opening, hoping to catch Shadow Love coming in. There was a clatter in the garage, then a whip-quick series of flashes with the crack of the rifle. Lucas slid to the bottom of the stairs as the vinyl flooring came apart at the top of the stairs, the slugs slamming into the slanting head-wall over the steps. Shooting from the garage, with the rifle, Shadow Love had the advantage: he could fire down with a good idea of where his shots were going, but Lucas couldn't see to shoot up. Shadow Love knew that. The garbage can rattled and Lucas risked a quick step up and put two more shots through the wall where the can was. Shadow Love opened up again. This time, the shots were angled down into the stairwell. Though they were still overhead, Lucas was forced out of the stairwell and into the workroom, with the door left open.

Shadow Love controlled the stairs.

The garage stank of burnt gunpowder, auto exhaust and gasoline from the lawn mower. Shadow Love, panting, squatted by the step into the house and tried to figure the shots he'd taken. Eight or nine, total: better count it as nine. The gun was loaded with a thirty-shot banana clip, and he had one more clip in his jacket. He might need everything he had-they might not be enough-if Davenport barricaded himself in the basement.

The black spot was there, and he could feel the anger cooking in his heart. There was a very good chance that Davenport would kill him. The cop was on his home ground; he was well trained; and Shadow Love felt his luck had broken when he'd failed with the New York woman.

Still he had to try. The black spot grew, calling him in, and the anger rode into his veins like fire.

Je

"What are we doing?" she cried. "What are we doing?" "The St. Paul cops should be coming in. We've only got to hold out a few minutes," Lucas said. "He'll have to make a move or get out. You stay put."