The Shadow Hunter by Michael Prescott Read Free Book Online

man. Hickle focused on his face and identified him as Howard Barwood.
    He had never seen Howard Barwood in person before. On previous occasions Kris had not been accompanied by her husband when she went to work. Hickle was surprised the man was here today.
    He studied Howard, a silver-haired, grinning, thick-necked fool who had won a woman he could not possibly deserve.
    Hickle felt a band of tension tighten across his chest. Briefly his hand went to the shotgun again, but the distance was much too great, of course.
    Anyway, Howard might have Kris now, but he would not have her for long.
    Hickle contented himself with this thought as he watched the bodyguard lead the Barwoods toward the studio door. At the door Howard stopped to say something to Kris, then leaned forward, clasping her by the waist, and kissed her.
    Kissed her.
    “You fucker,” Hickle whispered, his voice hoarse with outrage. “Don’t you do that. Don’t you even touch her. Don’t you
dare
.”
    The kiss lasted only a moment. Then the door opened, and the Barwoods went inside. The door swung shut behind them.
    Hickle kept the binoculars fixed on the door for a long time. He was not seeing the door. He was not seeing anything at all except the memory of that kiss.
    He had watched Kris on TV for months, taping her shows, playing back the tapes frame by frame and freezing on her varied expressions. He had collected images of her from magazines and newspapers. He had watched her jog on the beach and had caught glimpses of her in the windows of her home.
    But he had never seen her with her husband. He had never seen him kiss her perfect mouth.
    He lowered the binoculars. His hands were shaking. It took him a moment to recognize that what he felt was rage.
    Kris belonged to him, whether or not she would acknowledge the fact. She was his, by destiny. She was his, not that other man’s. That man had no right to hold her. Had no right to meet her lips with his.
    Hickle shut his eyes, but it didn’t help. Now he saw the two of them in bed together, Mr. and Mrs. Barwood, Kris naked, Howard mounting her, the paired bodies shivering, Howard driving in deeper, rutting like an animal, and Kris liking it, liking what he did to her, asking for more—
    His eyes opened. He blinked at sunlight and blue sky. All of a sudden he knew he had to get the hell out of here. And he knew where to go, what to do.
    He started the car and drove away, avoiding the studio gate so the guard wouldn’t catch sight of his car. He hooked up with the Glendale Freeway and proceeded north to the Angeles National Forest. Near the town of La Cañada Flintridge there was a secluded section of the woods, which he had discovered during an aimless drive last year. A brook whispered through a sunlit glade at the end of a dirt road.
    He parked. When he got out of the car, he took the duffel with him.
    He marched a hundred yards into the woods, set down the bag, and removed a pair of sound-insulating earmuffs, which he slipped over his ears, and the shotgun and two boxes of shells.
    His first shot scared up a flurry of birds. After the second shot there was only stillness and the muffled echo of the shotgun’s report.
    The gun had a four-shell capacity. He emptied it and reloaded, then repeated the process. Deadfalls of timber and drifts of small stones were his targets. But really he had no targets. A shotgun was not a weapon to aim; it was a weapon to point. The wide spread of shot would wipe out anything in the direction of the blast.
    What he sought was not accuracy but familiarity with the weapon. He needed a feel for its range, power, recoil. It must be part of him, an extension of his arm and shoulder. When the time came to use the gun for real, he would get only one opportunity, and he couldn’t fail.

5
    The Wilshire Royal was one of the more expensive buildings in Westwood, and Abby’s mortgage payments were insanely high, especially given how little time she actually spent at home. But