Cat Playing Cupid

Two officers behind the van grabbed him. He shoved them away, his rage surging, jerked open the van doors and leaped inside, his mind a cold blank, not wanting to think what he would find.

The body was covered with a sheet. The face covered, a hank of brown hair hanging down. A sheet pulled over her face as if…as if…Kneeling beside the stretcher, he reached over, ignoring the medic's hand on his shoulder. When the medic held him back, he straightened up and spun around swinging.

The medic grabbed his arm. Tall, ski

He folded the sheet back. Didn't want to look, and was drawn to look, to touch her face…

He went limp. Felt Dallas supporting him.

Ryder. It was Ryder. Ryder Wolf lay there, not Lindsey. Ryder, blood congealing on her face, blood gluing her shirt to her chest. He stared at her, shocked with relief.

She'd apparently taken a glancing shot to her cheek and jaw, the flesh and bone were torn, clotted with drying blood. There was a second, close shot to her chest. Her blouse was torn open where the medics had staunched the wound with gauze. He looked at her for a long time. Thanking God that this was Ryder. Wondering if he'd burn in hell for his joy and gratitude at someone's death. But Lindsey was safe, Lindsey was alive.

Wasn't she? Where was she?

Stepping down out of the van, he realized Dallas was still holding his arm. He looked around, past the cops and security people, past the tangle of vehicles, sca

"Where is she? Where's her car?"

Dallas pointed. The tan Mercedes, circled by yellow crime scene tape. A man was coming toward him carrying a black satchel, a stoop-shouldered man wearing a mussed suit, his tie loose over the open collar of a rumpled white shirt, a man who held out his hand to Dallas.

He watched and listened to Dallas greet Emmett Brassen, the San Jose medical examiner. None of their conversation seemed to make sense, they could have been speaking in Swahili. Brassen complained about the contamination of the crime scene, then headed for the Mercedes. Mike, behind him, approached Lindsey's car, where cops and a plainclothes detective were working, and now he was afraid again.

But if Lindsey were hurt, they'd have her in the medics' van. Was she in the car, at an angle where he couldn't see? Approaching the Mercedes, his stomach twisted.

He stopped where he could see in through the car's open door. No one in the driver's seat. It was covered with blood. Bloody Levi's jacket bunched up on the passenger seat, a plain Levi's jacket like the one Lindsey had worn this morning. He could not see a purse. Had she carried a purse this morning? He looked into the backseat, saw that it was empty. Moving away, he sca

He had no notion that someone else had already sca

SEEING NO BODY, Joe had returned to the shadows beneath the Mercedes, where he at last picked up Lindsey's scent trail, carefully sorting it out from Ryder's and Ray's scents and from the aromas of the many officers. Ducking behind wheels and pillars, he had tracked Lindsey until he lost her at the curb, where her trail vanished abruptly. He sniffed the curb and sidewalk for a long time, trying to find her again among the scents of hundreds of pedestrians, and sidestepping those caring folk who were sure he had escaped from his cat carrier and should be bound for the hold of some unknown flight, who wanted to pick him up and take him to security.

Had he simply lost her scent? Had she made it to another level of the parking complex, or maybe inside the terminal? Or had she gotten into a car at the curb? Had Ray Gibbs doubled back after shooting Ryder, found Lindsey trying to get away, and forced her in at gunpoint? And had taken her where in the stolen Audi?

From behind a pillar, Joe watched Mike and Dallas and the other officers searching for Lindsey, watched Dallas place a number of calls and talk with various officers and airport perso

"Fla

"We're on our way," he said. "Be careful, stay out of sight. Get out of there, now. Out the back, there has to be a back entrance. Stay out of his way until the law gets there."

Clicking off, Mike stood gri

"How did she…?"

"She followed him in a cab," Mike said. "The fare took most of her cash. She's convinced he didn't see her. Said there were several yellow cabs on the freeway, and her driver kept well back.

"Said that when Gibbs drove around to Fisherman's Wharf, her driver followed on the next street. Said Gibbs was driving really carefully, taking his time. Saw him go in the hotel. She's across the street in a restaurant, thinks he took a room at the front, saw a curtain pulled back and said it looked like Gibbs at the window."

Dallas accessed his phone list, hit the number for SFPD, and made sure there were officers on the way. Then he called San Francisco's detective division and got a detective he knew. As he laid out the scenario, setting in place some backup to the street patrol, Joe Grey moved fast for Dallas's Blazer. He wasn't going to be left behind on this one. Not in this godforsaken airport, forty miles from home.