The Sleeping Doll (Kathryn Dance 1)

But excited too. She had to admit that. The escape had been a total high. She'd never felt so alive, driving away from the motel. She thought about her husband, the boyfriends, her mother . . . nothing she'd experienced with any of them approached what she felt at this moment.

They passed four police cars speeding toward the motel. No sirens.

Angel songs . . .

Her prayer worked. Now, they were miles from the inn and no one was after them.

Finally he laughed and exhaled a long breath. "How about that, lovely?"

"We did it, sweetie!" She whooped and shook her head wildly as if she were at a rock concert. She pressed her lips against his neck and bit him playfully.

Soon they were pulling into the parking lot of the Butterfly Inn, a small dump of a motel on Lighthouse, the commercial strip in Monterey. Daniel told her, "Go get a room. We'll be finished up here soon, but it might not be till tomorrow. Get it for a week, though; it'll be less suspicious. In the back again. Maybe that cottage there. Use a different name. Tell the clerk you left your ID in your suitcase and you'll bring it later."

Jennie registered and returned to the car. They carried the cooler and boxes inside.

Pell lay on the bed, arms behind his neck. She curled up next to him. "We're going to have to hide out here. There's a grocery store up the street. Go get some food, would you, lovely?"

"And more hair dye?"

He smiled. "Not a bad idea."

"Can I be a redhead?"

"You can be green if you want. I'd love you anyway."

God, he was perfect. . . .

She heard the crackle of the TV coming on as she stepped out of the door, slipping the cap on. A few days ago she'd never have thought she'd be okay with Daniel hurting people, giving up her house in Anaheim, never seeing the hummingbirds and wrens and sparrows in her backyard again.

Now, it seemed perfectly natural. In fact, wonderful.

Anything for you, Daniel. Anything.

Chapter 42

"And how did he know you

were there?" Overby asked, standing in Dance's office. The man was jumpy. Not only had he engineered CBI's taking over the manhunt, but he was now on record as supporting the bad tactical decision at the motel. Paranoid too. Dance could tell this from his body language and his verbal content as well: his use of "you," whereas Dance or O'Neil would've said "we."

Stashing the blame . . .

"Must've sensed something about the hotel was different, maybe the staff were acting strange," Kellogg replied. "Like in the restaurant at Moss Landing. He's got the instincts of a cat."

Echoing Dance's thoughts earlier.

"And I thought your people heard him inside, Michael."

"Porn," Dance said.

The detective explained, "He had porn on pay-per-view. That was what surveillance heard."

The postmortem was discouraging, if not embarrassing. It turned out that the manager had, without knowing it, seen Pell and the woman leaving--pretending to be the two fishermen in the adjoining room--headed off for squid and salmon in Monterey Bay. The two men, bound and gagged in the next room, were reluctant to talk; Dance pried out of them that Pell had gotten their addresses and threatened to kill their families if they called for help.

Patterns . . . goddamn patterns.

Winston Kellogg was upset about the escape, but not apologetic. He'd made a judgment call, like Dance's at Moss Landing. His plan could have worked, but fate had intervened, and she respected that he wasn't bitter or whiny about the outcome; he was focused on the next steps.

Overby's assistant joined them. She told her boss he had a call from Sacramento, and SAC Amy Grabe, from the FBI, was holding on two. She wasn't happy.