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  Shadow Woman

  ( Jane Whitefield - 3 )

  Thomas Perry

  Jane Whitefield is a name to be whispered like a prayer. A shadow woman who rescues the helpless and the hunted when their enemies leave them no place to hide. Now with the bone-deep cunning of her Native American forebears, she arranges a vanishing act for Pete Hatcher, a Las Vegas gambling executive. It should be a piece of cake, but she doesn't yet know about Earl and Linda--professional destroyers who will cash in if Hatcher dies, killers who love to kill . . . slowly. From Vegas to upstate New York to the Rockies, the race between predator and prey slowly narrows until at last they share an intimacy broken only by death. . . .

  From the Paperback edition.

  Amazon.com Review

  When her latest client, a Las Vegas gaming executive who has lost the trust of his criminally-connected bosses, asks for help, Jane Whitefield gets him out of town with a spectacular display of casino magic. Then she keeps her promise, gives up her dangerous trade, marries her loyal doctor, and settles down to live peacefully in upstate New York. As if. Fifty pages into Thomas Perry's third book about Whitefield--who uses a mixture of her Seneca ancestors' wisdom and a lot of modern muscle and computer smarts to make people in danger disappear--her client screws up. Jane's highly developed code of honor makes her leave her bridal bed to rescue him from an eerily psychotic Los Angeles couple who use everything from sex games to attack dogs to track him down. Previous paperbacks in this first-rate series are Vanishing Act and Dance for the Dead.

  “A THRILLER THAT IS BOTH LITERATE

  AND COMPELLING … THE ENDING

  IS TERRIFIC.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “In this superb book, with its surreal description of the glitter and fakery of Las Vegas, Thomas Perry’s peerless heroine, Jane Whitefield, engineers a disappearance worthy of the Miraculous Miranda. A wonderful mix of plot and character, Shadow Woman dazzles like a house of mirrors.”

  —MARTHA GRIMES

  “Perry shares with very few writers the specific skill of writing about pursuit. He is powerfully adept at pacing, retaining and renewing suspense, all the while keeping track of how a character thinks and acts through the long, difficult problem of staying alive against great odds. It is no less than a delight to watch Whitefield in action.… Shadow Woman is the best of the three Jane Whitefield novels thus far, and the first two were merely wonderful.”

  —Newsday

  “The suspense of the chase gives this moody thriller its power.”

  —The Boston Globe

  “Another masterfully invented detective story … The suspense is unrelenting.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  “A UNIQUE HEART-POUNDER.”

  —The Hartford Courant

  “Rewarding … Perry infuses his novel with everything he’s got: some introspection, some magic, lots of action.”

  —Newark Star-Ledger

  “Perry is creating a niche as enticing and solid as Dean Koontz or Tom Clancy with Indian guide Jane Whitefield.… Perry’s strength as the third-person narrator is a knack for breakneck pacing, a wry unobtrusive wit that sets perfect hair-raising scenes, and inventive plotting with clever twists. He manages to build suspense, pull surprises, and keep his characters in such imminent danger that he seems ready to sacrifice a hero at any moment.”

  —Memphis Commercial Appeal

  “Swift plotting.… The overall story is so good that the climax comes much too soon.”

  —The Seattle Times

  “From the disappearance of Pete Hatcher during a Las Vegas magic show to the satisfying denouement, Perry’s third Jane Whitefield thriller delivers in full: a well-paced and complex plot, intriguing characters (including a chillingly psychotic couple who make a living as killers), and enough suspense to keep the pages turning all day.… Perry leads his readers on a galvanizing chase along a twisting, thrilling course.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “A WONDERFULLY HARROWING PAGE-TURNER.”

  —Wichita Eagle

  “Perry excels at chase scenes.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Excellent writing … Shadow Woman is the third and the best in this series featuring Jane Whitefield.… The writing is crisp, the characterizations of the homicidal couple terrifying, and the tension relentless. In Jane, the author has created one of the strongest female protagonists in current fiction. Highly recommended.”

  —Sunday Montgomery Advertiser

  “Perry is an accomplished veteran who’s created a nifty, compelling tale that’s hard to put down and a unique heroine whose clever struggle for survival is tough to top.”

  —Lansing State Journal

  “A humdinger of a thriller … The talented Perry is back with another top-notch crime novel filled with high-octane action and featuring cool, calm, confident Jane Whitefield, the mysterious ‘guide’ who helps the downtrodden and desperate ‘disappear.’ ”

  —Booklist

  By Thomas Perry:

  THE BUTCHER’S BOY

  METZGER’S DOG

  BIG FISH

  ISLAND

  SLEEPING DOGS*

  VANISHING ACT*

  DANCE FOR THE DEAD*

  SHADOW WOMAN*

  *Published by Ivy Books

  Copyright © 1997 by Thomas Perry

  For my mother

  my sister

  my wife

  my daughters

  Any person, whether old or young, male or female, might become possessed of an evil spirit, and be transformed into a witch. A person thus possessed could assume, at pleasure, the form of any animal, bird or reptile, and having executed his nefarious purpose, could resume his original form, or, if necessary to escape pursuit, could transmute himself into an inanimate object.

  Lewis Henry Morgan, League of the Iroquois, 1851

  1

  Pete Hatcher pushed through the warm, dry night air that was trapped between the tall hotels and casinos, feeling the stored heat from the sun still rising from the concrete to his ankles. He had tightened his back muscles to keep his spine straight and his shoulders back, but it felt like a pose, so he tried to lose his self-consciousness and slouch a little. It was hard to do anything for so many days without ruminating on the way it must look, what they must think about it. He had tried to look formidable and alert, as though he would be hard to kill. The idea was worse than childish. It was the reaction of an animal trying to convince a predator that he wasn’t weak enough to take down just yet.

  The part of Las Vegas that he loved was the Strip, with the exaggerated shapes of its giant buildings lit up in candy colors that burned against the blue-black desert sky, but being downtown like this was different. The carnival neons and incandescents glared from all sides and bounced off asphalt and concrete, then washed across the faces of the people walking with him as a dead yellow-gray that cast deep shadows in their wrinkles and sunken eyes.

  He followed a couple who seemed to sense it. Each eyed the other and the woman became uncomfortably aware that the ghastly light that had skinned the life from her beloved’s cheek must have done the same to her own. She bravely forced a smile that only gave her face deeper hollows and the bared teeth of a skull. The pair reached the roofed-over mall, retreated to the nearest glass door, and escaped into the soft blue of a bar lit with the twinkle of tiny star-white bulbs. When they had taken a few steps into the cool, machine-made air, Pete saw them both give a little shrug-and-shudder to be sure none of the leftover street magic was clinging to them.

  Hatcher followed them through the bar into the big casino, then skirted the margin of the gaming floor, ignoring the din of the bells on the slots and the rat
tle of coins in the collection pans that bounced off the walls above his head to excite the customers. He moved deeper, staying far from the blackjack tables and crap tables, where bright overhead lights shone on the green felt and turned the dealers’ starched white shirts into semaphores. He stepped to the little window in the wall a few feet apart from the cashiers’ cages.

  He said to the middle-aged woman behind the glass, “There was supposed to be a ticket for the midnight show left for me.”

  “Your name, sir?” He had somehow assumed she would know his face, but her expression was only attentive.

  “Pete Hatcher.”

  Hatcher took the ticket and read the seat number while he was still in the light, then handed it to the girl in the fishnet tights and frock coat at the door and let her lead him into the show. Hatcher never looked back to see whether the two men were still following. They were.

  The round walls of the room were lined with big plush booths in three tiers, and the space in front of the stage crowded with rows of long, narrow tables arranged like the spokes of a wheel so nobody in the cheap stackable chairs along them could see better than anybody else.

  The woman he had been told to call Jane was already seated in the dark booth when he got there. She was thin, with gleaming black hair braided behind her head, a long, graceful neck, and bare shoulders that showed no trace of a line in the tan and made him want to believe that she was in the habit of sunbathing naked. He felt an unexpected, tearing pain when he looked at her, so he glanced at the stage. This was what he was about to lose—not the money or the fancy office or the clean, hot desert air. It was the women, ones like her. They weren’t ever from here, but this was where Pete had always found them. It was as though they were the winners of some quiet beauty contest, judged not by a bunch of potbellied Chamber of Commerce types but by the women themselves, before they were even women. They seemed to take one look in the mirror and know that the creature looking back at them didn’t belong in Biloxi or Minneapolis.

  The woman said, “Pete?”

  “Yes?”

  “Kiss me.” He turned in surprise and she was offering him her cheek in that strange way the best of them did, so he could press his lips against that incredibly smooth place just in front of her ear and smell the fragrance of her hair. He lingered there for a moment to whisper, “I thought we were blending in. You mean beautiful is the worst you can do?”

  She ignored the question, drew back to end the kiss, and said, “Good enough. Dates want you to kiss them; hookers don’t. If the management thinks I’m in business, they’ll have their own people watching me. Did you know you’re not alone?”

  “I haven’t been alone in two weeks,” he said. “My phones are bugged, my apartment, even my car. When I’m asleep they switch on a camera with an infrared lens that’s above the smoke detector in my ceiling.”

  “That’s a very good sign,” said the woman. “If the bugs and cameras had disappeared, that would be a very bad sign. It would mean they expected that pretty soon the police would be taking a close look at everything you used to own.”

  “It’s not the sort of sign that makes me want to rush out and buy next year’s calendar.”

  “Don’t worry about what didn’t happen,” said the woman. “Worry about what you have to make happen.”

  “What?”

  “The instant that the box opens—”

  “What box?”

  “Just listen. When the box opens, you get out and walk—do not run—to the exit door that’s facing you. Go outside, get into the black Ford that’s parked in the reserved space at the end of the lot. Drive north on Route 15. It will take you to St. George, Utah. That’s about all the time I can buy you. You’ll still be an hour from Cedar City. Don’t stop to pee or something, just keep driving. There’s a small airport in Cedar City, and your ticket is reserved at the Southwest Airlines desk under the name David Keller. From now on, that’s you. The papers I promised you are in the wallet under the seat of the car. There’s a suitcase in the trunk. You’ll just make your flight, and you’ll be in Denver before daylight.”

  “What about the other stuff?”

  “Everything you’ll need at first is in the suitcase. The diplomas, honorable discharge, bank books, and so on are in your new apartment.”

  “And?”

  “And what?”

  “That gets me out, but what about you? They’ve seen you with me. They’ll have nobody to take it out on but you.”

  Her eyes settled on him in puzzled curiosity, studied his face for a moment as though they had found something rare and unfamiliar there, then drifted toward the stage. “I’m good at this, and you couldn’t help me anyway. Don’t think about me. Think about what you have to do.”

  “Anything else you haven’t told me?”

  “Volumes,” she said. “I like to spend more time with my runners before I set them free, but you don’t have it to spare. All you really need to know is that if you never make a mistake you’ll live forever. Right now, just concentrate on tonight. If you live through this, you’ll catch on.”

  “What if they’ve got somebody waiting at the back door for me?”

  She placed her long, thin fingers on his hand, and her voice went soft and low, like a mother talking to her child. “Then hit him fast, and hurt him as badly as you can. He won’t have the stomach for a one-on-one fight for keeps. It takes much more courage to spend two weeks pretending you don’t know you’re in trouble than it does to join a pack stalking a lone man. I’ve been watching you, and I’ve been watching them. You can do this.”

  He sighed, but his lungs had taken in so little air it came out in a shallow puff. “I sure hope you’re right. I assume you took your fee out of the money when you took it to Denver?”

  She shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way. A year from now, maybe two, you’ll think about the way your life is. And you’ll remember how you felt tonight. And then you’ll send me a present.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “How do you know that?”

  “I don’t. But over the years I’ve gotten a lot of presents.”

  As the house lights dimmed, Pete raised his eyes to see where tonight’s shadows were. He found them in the tier above, seated in a booth where they could catch a glimpse of him in profile whenever they wished. He leaned back, hiding his face from them, but the woman gently leaned on his back and pushed him forward as she whispered in his ear, “Let them see you. Keep your face where they can see it.”

  A small projectile spitting sparks like a comet streaked over their heads. It exploded at center stage in a loud bang and a billow of lighter-fluid flame six feet high, followed by a fog of dry-ice smoke that quickly spread from curtain to curtain and drifted over the footlights into the audience.

  A bright spotlight beam appeared and frantically swept across the wall of smoke, trying to penetrate it and find some solid object. In a moment a few wisps seemed to congeal and resolve themselves into the shape of an old, bent, wizened woman in bulky rags, leaning on a cane. She hobbled forward out of the fog haltingly, then seemed to notice the audience for the first time. Pete looked at the people around him. They were hushed with surprise, as though they had forgotten that they had bought tickets and sat here sipping watered drinks waiting for this.

  The old woman glared at them, then gave a low unearthly cackle and lifted the cane into the air. As it reached the height of her shoulder it shortened and narrowed, and as it went over her head it was clearly a wand.

  She tapped herself on the top of the head and the rags instantly incinerated in a flash of sparks and smoke. The spotlight fought its way through the smoke and found in her place a young, shapely woman who stood erect and wore a sparkling gold spandex skin that seemed little brighter than her mane of honey-blond hair. The deep, resonant voice of the announcer shouted, “Ladies and gentlemen … Miranda!” and then was drowned in music and applause.

  Pete leaned to the side and said, “She’s got my attention.
I hope she’s got theirs.”

  The woman beside him watched his eyes. “If she doesn’t yet, she will. She used to strip.”

  Miranda paced the empty, dim stage like a cat, doing the impossible for the willfully gullible, receptive crowd. First she reached into the air and began plucking things out of it: white doves that couldn’t have been hidden in her brief costume and flew out over the audience, then returned to a perch at the back of the stage; a single rose that she tossed over her shoulder onto the floor; then, one after another, four rabbits. It was as though she were completing the compulsory round of a conjurers’ competition, executing a sampling of the standard tricks.

  Only slowly did it occur to the audience that something strange and unplanned was happening. The rose she had thrown behind her was changing. It grew longer and longer, then arched upward a little. Then it began to writhe and slither. Miranda produced a magician’s top hat, put it on her head, then took it off and held it before her stomach. The rabbits, one by one, ran toward her, leapt into the hat, and disappeared inside it. She collapsed the hat and flicked it offstage like a Frisbee.

  The audience was distracted. The rabbit trick was a bit out of the ordinary, but the audience was captured by that rose. It was now seven or eight feet long. The petals had fallen off, and now it arched its back, slowly raising its head behind Miranda, and spread its hood. It was a king cobra, its green-black skin looking oily in the lights. As she took her bow, it coiled to strike. Miranda seemed to sense something was bothering her audience. She frowned at them, then reached up into the dark air again, produced a pearl-handled revolver, pivoted gracefully, and shot the serpent through the eye. It jerked spasmodically, then fell. A wind passed across the stage, swirling the smoke in little eddies. The snake crumbled into dry flakes that blew away, leaving only a new, fresh rose in its place. Miranda squeezed the pistol in her hands until it became a ball the color of mercury, threw it into the air, and watched it explode.