WHAT SHOW AM I MISSING? I wondered. I jumped up from the table, my pulse already racing.
“Who left this?” I asked the people in line. “Did anybody see who put this note down here?”
The woman whose book I’d just signed pointed back into the crowd. “She went thatta way, Sheriff!”
“What did she look like?” I asked. “You sure it was a woman?”
“Um . . . straight dark hair. Black shirt. Jeans. I think? Like everybody else here. Looked female.”
“And glasses!” someone else said. “She had a blue back-pack!”
“Alex”—Bree came back in my ear—“what’s going on over there? Did something just happen? What the hell happened?”
“Bree, we’re looking for a woman. Definitely a female. Black shirt, jeans, glasses, a blue backpack. I need you and Sampson to cover the exits. Let Baltimore PD know what’s going on. She left me a note from DCAK.”
“We’re on it!”
A ripple of excitement spread inside the crowd as I began to push my way through a tightening knot of people. Not everyone wanted to let m
e pass, either. Several of them closed in on me, trying to find out what was happening, where I was going, asking me questions I didn’t have time to answer at the moment.
I waved them off as best I could. “This isn’t a game now! Anyone see a woman in a black shirt and glasses go this way?”
A kid smelling of marijuana giggled out a response. “Man, that’s half the people here.”
The crowd shifted again, and I thought that I saw her—at the far end of the lobby. I moved the kid and a few others out of my way. “Let me through here!”
“Bree!” I was running now. “I can see her. She’s tall. White. Carrying the blue backpack.”
“And female?”
“I think so. Could be a disguise.”
When I reached the next corner, the suspect was already more than halfway down a long corridor, running toward the exit at the far end.
“Police! Stop! Stop right there!” I shouted at her, and I had my gun out too.
Whoever she was, she didn’t even look around as she slammed through the door. It swung back hard, then burst into an opaque web of broken glass.
“East parking lot!” I told Bree and Sampson. “She’s outside! She’s running! It’s a woman!”
Chapter 68
A STRONG WOMAN TOO! She’d completely shattered the door on the way out. What kind of woman was that? A very angry one? A crazy lady? A collaborator with DCAK or another copycat?
Pellets of glass showered around me as I pushed through the exit door. Where the hell was she now? I didn’t see her anywhere outside. No one running.
A few streetlamps overhead left plenty of shadow around the narrow parking lot. The row of cars directly opposite me showed no sign of life, though.
On my left, the pavement ended abruptly and gave way to an empty stretch of lawn.
Then I heard a sports-car engine fire up. The revving noise came from somewhere off to my right. I stared hard into the semidarkness.
Headlights blinked on, then two shining eyes came right at me. Fast!
My Glock was still out, and I figured I had time for at least one shot. I squeezed the trigger. A bullet punctured the car’s windshield with a pock sound. The speeding vehicle kept coming. Right at me! I dove and hit the hotel wall, then rolled onto the asphalt. Banged the hell out of my shoulder and my chin.
I fired another shot. A taillight shattered. It was a small coupe, I saw now. A blue Miata. A neighbor of mine had one, and I recognized the size and shape.