CHAPTER 36
IT ALMOST SEEMED to Michael that he could kill that woman by just drilling through her back with his eyes.
Bam. Bam.
He was keeping her in sight, walking at a comfortable pace. He was starting to wonder where her trek would end, where she’d hunker down for the night, when she picked up her pace and awkwardly trotted across Clay just before the light turned red.
Damn it. Goddamnit.
He was stranded on the sidewalk as traffic swept along between himself and her. The sidewalk across the street was opaque with a moving wall of pedestrians shuffling along beneath their umbrellas.
And then he lost sight of her.
He was sure that he could catch up with her—if he could still see her.
Michael wiped rainwater away from his eyes with his sleeve. He was so close. He might not be this close again anytime soon.
Kearny was one way, but he looked right and left, his usual overabundance of caution, then dashed off the curb into the street, shooting the gap between two vehicles. He narrowly missed getting clipped by a red sports car, whose driver leaned on the horn, letting him know exactly how close he’d come to buying the farm and everything around it.
But the risk had paid off. He was on the opposite curb unharmed.
But where was she?
He jogged ahead, cutting between couples, turning right onto Geary, weaving around a boisterous gang of drunkards leaving Hawthorne, a club teeming with customers.
And then there was a clearing in the field of umbrellas. Michael peered through the opening and saw her leaning against the 77 Geary building, adjusting the hood of her plastic poncho, setting her bags down at her feet.
A memory came to him. College graduation day. She hadn’t shown up. When he went to dinner with a few friends, there she was—rooting through the trash outside. He was humiliated.
His heartbeat was in overdrive. This was it.
He walked toward her, and when he was close enough to read the name Peking Bazaar on one of her shopping bags, he called out to her.
“Hey, hey. Imagine meeting you here.”
The woman looked up.
She gave him a gappy smile and the dizzy look of a person who couldn’t quite see straight.
She said, “Hi, good-looking. Got some change? I haven’t eaten today.”
His disappointment was fierce and sudden. The loopy female leaning against the wall of the historic office building wasn’t HER, wasn’t even close. Michael cried out, “Oh, shit.”
The woman’s ditzy look changed to concern.
She said, “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” he snapped.
He stood in that glistening clearing of sidewalk that would soon close around him.
“I’m just fine,” he said. “I do have something for you.”
Holding his umbrella with his left hand, he pulled his gun with his right. He was standing so close to the woman in the many-layered clothing under the shiny plastic wrapper he could almost count the beads of water on her eye-lashes.
He fired into her chest.
She gasped, “What?”