Deadly Pursuit by Michael Prescott

had me tied around his little finger like some fucking bimbo?”
    “Did you ever see him hide anything or cover up something he was looking at?”
    “Uh-uh.”
    “Did he have a scrapbook, photo album, Polaroids?”
    “Not that I ever saw.”
    “Did he act strange at times?”
    “Strange, how?”
    “Secretive. Defensive. Paranoid.”
    “That’s not the way ...” Her lashes batted, and a small crease of concentration appeared above the bridge of her nose. “Well, there was one kind of weird thing.”
    “Tell me.”
    “Well, see, one time I walked in on him when he wasn’t expecting me. He’s on the phone. Sees me and goes ballistic. Says I should ring the goddamn doorbell next time. I say, then what’d you give me a goddamn key for?” She shrugged. “Doesn’t sound like shit, but man, it felt really bizarre. I mean, he never gave a crap whether I rang the doorbell any other time.”
    “Which room was he in?”
    “Uh ... the bedroom.”
    “Who was he talking to?”
    “I don’t know. He must have hung up right after.”
    A knock on the door, and Peter Lovejoy stuck his head in.
    “Just got off the phone with Drury.” Deputy associate director. “He wants us on a plane to Miami ASAP.”
    “I’m not finished here.”
    “How about letting Baxter take the rest of Miss Tate’s statement?” Linda Baxter was a street agent in the L.A. office.
    “Right.” Moore smiled at Sheila. “Got to run. Sorry.”
    “Is Jack in Miami? Is that why you’re going there?”
    “We don’t know where he is,” Moore said, rising. She left before Sheila could press her with another question.
    Lovejoy was already heading for the elevator, wiping his runny nose. Moore caught up with him in the hallway. “My things are at the hotel.”
    “Mine, too. We’ll pick them up on the way.” He checked his watch. “It’s eleven-forty. Delta has a redeye to Atlanta at twelve-fifteen. We can connect with an eight-twenty flight to Miami and get in at ten a.m. Eastern time.”
    “Can we stop off at Dance’s apartment first?”
    “Why? The girlfriend tell you something?”
    “She may have.”
    The apartment building was only a few blocks east of the FBI office. Moore watched the Wilshire corridor blur past. It reminded her of Phoenix at night. Tall modern buildings, elegant landscaping, many lights. Wealth built beauty; she’d always known that.
    And the absence of wealth ... She knew about that, too. The Oakland projects. The urine-stained stairwells, the caged light bulbs, the concrete walls of her mother’s apartment, beading with sweat on summer afternoons.
    The worst part of poverty was the grinding ugliness of it. That feeling of never being clean. She wondered if Sheila Tate had ever known that feeling, or ever would.
    She turned to Lovejoy at the wheel. “How positive are we that Jack flew to Miami?”
    “Maybe eighty percent. Miami P.D. got the flight attendants out of bed to look at his mug shot. One of them is almost certain she remembers him.”
    “Wearing glasses?”
    “Right. And blue jeans. Just like Mr. Markham said.”
    Hugh Markham represented a lucky break for the task force, and a bad break for Jack Dance. Sixty-eight years old, a retired bus driver, he ate lunch at a Burger King in Encino every day, usually lingering over the L.A. Times . Said his wife was grateful to have him out of the house for a while.
    Markham was a people-watcher. In thirty years of driving for RTD, he had seen a parade of characters pass in and out of the bus’s folding doors. He noticed things.
    He had been watching when a man in a blue business suit, carrying two shopping bags, entered the restaurant via a side door and disappeared immediately into a rest room. For a few minutes Markham tried idly to guess what line of work the man was in. It was a game of his.
    Then it occurred to him that the man was taking a long time to come out. He found this mildly interesting. He went on watching the rest-room door over the top of