Spectre Black by J. Carson Black Page B

her, he felt her gaze on his back.
    He’d walked here. Duncan’s Donuts was only five doors and one four-lane bridge down from The Satellite INN.
    He stood just outside the shop, taking in the air, looking at her car, but not looking. Clearly, the FBI agent had targeted him for some reason. Maybe she suspected he had something to do with Jolie’s disappearance. Or maybe she thought he was the guy who shot the militia guy at the checkpoint. There were plenty of maybes. It was her turn to make a move.
    And he’d give her that chance.
    He stood just to the side of the door, pulling a cigarette from the pack he always carried. He didn’t smoke, but it was a good piece of stage business—a reason for him to pause.
    The door’s bell jangled behind him.
    “How long will it take me to find out what you’re really up to?” she said. Her voice was low but musical, with an underlying sarcasm. He liked it. She stood next to him, eyes forward, taking in the view.
    Landry pushed the cigarette behind his ear. He did not look at her. “Do we know each other?”
    “I know you,” she said, staring at the parking lot. “I’ve run into your kind before, plenty of times. You think you’re fooling people, but you don’t fool me. You can dress like a cop but that doesn’t mean you are one.”
    “I’m not such a bad guy. I’ve been known to grow on people.”
    “That kind of thing takes time, and I’m a busy person.”
    Landry removed the cigarette from his ear and flicked it into the parking lot. “Then I guess we have nothing to talk about.”
    He crossed the lot and followed the road back toward the motel.
    He’d spent some time studying the horse whisperers. The famous one, Monty Roberts, once got a deer to follow him over miles and miles of open country. It took patience, but the main thing the man did was never pursue the deer. He made it so that the deer wanted to pursue him. The animal never felt threatened. And Landry had learned that to walk away would very often lead his intended target to him.
    It did this time, too. She fell into step beside him. Landry smiled.
    She repeated the line she’d used before. “How long will it take for me to find out what you’re up to?”
    “What I’m up to?”
    She continued to keep her eyes forward. He walked fast, but she had no trouble keeping up. Expensive shoes with sensible heels: practical. They took the sidewalk on the four-lane bridge spanning the riverbed. It was well past eight and there were few cars on the bridge at this time of the morning. The clean soap scent of her followed the breeze—sometimes strong, sometimes faint, sometimes non-existent.
    “So what do you think?” Landry asked, walking faster.
    “What do I think about what?” She had to take a fast stutter step every now and then to keep up with him. He was tall and had long legs—no one said life was fair. “You’re a cop.”
    Landry said nothing, but increased the pace. She took faster stutter steps.
    “Who are you with? Sheriff’s or PD?”
    He said nothing.
    “Or an outside agency?” She stopped, wiped at a bead of sweat on her cheek. Beautiful. Even the sweat bead was beautiful before she mashed it with her beautiful finger. He noticed her nails. Deep purple, engraved with turquoise fleurs-de-lis .
    Landry stopped as well. She was tall, but he was taller. She tipped her face up to him and he felt the thrill again, only this time it wasn’t in his stomach, but in his groin. A thrill down deep in the muddy bottom silt of him.
    “I’m retired,” he said.
    She came closer, mashed up close against him, lifted a manicured hand and touched him.
    Landry felt the thrill. It was like a short, sweet carnival ride. He felt a lot of things. But the one that screamed at the top of its lungs was the wire. It thrummed like a guitar string all the way up his body.
    “Where’d you say your motel was?” she said.

    It was great and it was awful.
    Thrilling and stupefying.
    She hit every note.
    There