Read Certain Prey for Free Online

on the desk. “Is that enough?” L ATE THAT AFTERNOON, on the open-air balcony of her fabulous apartment, a gin and tonic in her hand, Carmel worried: gnawed a thumbnail, a bad habit she’d carried with her since grade school, chewing the nail down to the quick. For the first time since the infatuation with Hale Allen had begun, she stepped outside of herself and looked back.
    She’d often told her clients, those who were more or less professional criminals, that they could never think of all the possible ways to screw up a crime. However many ways you cover yourself, there’s always some way that you are not covered.
    Carmel had considered the possibility of killing Barbara Allen herself. She’d never killed anything before, but the thought didn’t particularly bother her. She could pull the trigger, all right. But the devil was in the details, and there were too many details. How would she get a gun? If she bought one, there’d be a record of the purchase. She could use it and throw it away, but if the cops came asking for it, “The dog ate it” would be insufficient.
    She could steal one, but she could get caught stealing it. And she’d have to steal it from one of two or three people she knew who had guns, and that might point a finger at her. She could try to come up with a fake ID—a crime in itself—but she was memorable enough that a gun-store clerk, asked later about the purchaser, might well remember her, especially if prompted by a photo.
    Then there was the killing itself. She could do it. She could do anything she put her mind to. But, as she’d warned her clients, mistakes, accidents, or even random chance could ruin even the best-planned crime. With murder, in the state of Minnesota, a mistake, accident or random error meant spending thirty years in a nonfabulous room the size of a bathtub.
    In the end, she’d decided the least risky way was to go with a pro. She had plenty of untraceable cash stashed in her bank deposit box, and she had Rolando D’Aquila, the connection. She also had a safety margin. Neither her connection nor the shooter could tell the cops about their involvement, because that would make them as guilty of first-degree murder as Carmel herself was. The shooter, even if she were eventually run down, would be eminently defensible in court: as a competent professional, she was unlikely to leave obvious clues, and would have no apparent previous connection with the victim.
    So Carmel was probably safe; but after a few moments of reflection, drink in hand, she decided to stay away from Hale Allen for a while. Let him recover from the murder; let the cops talk to him—they would, of course. Since she’d never demonstrated her infatuation to Hale, there was no reason to think she’d become involved from that direction.
    She was working out the various possibilities, her thumbnails red with blood, and raw, when Rinker called. T HE LINE WAS Carmel’s unlisted home-business number, and nobody called who didn’t already know her. “Yes?” she said, picking up the receiver.
    “I need to get some money from you.” The woman on the other end had a dry, mid-South or Texas accent, the corners of words bitten off. But there was also an undertone of good humor.
    “Are you okay?” Carmel asked.
    “I’m just fine.”
    “You make me a little nervous,” Carmel said. “I’d prefer to see you in a public place.”
    The woman chuckled, a pleasant, homey sound rattling down the phone line, and she said, “You lawyers worry too much—and you ain’t gonna see me, honey.”
    “Maybe,” Carmel said. “So how will we do it?”
    “You have the money with you?”
    “Yes, that’s what Rolo said.”
    “Good. Get in your Volvo, drive down to the University of Minnesota parking lot at Huron and Fourth Street. That’s a big open lot, lots of students coming and going. There’s a ticket-dispensing machine at the entrance. Park as far as you can from the pay booth, but park in a spot