Stealing Faces Read Online Free PDF Page A

circle, then back again, daring the darkness to attack her.
    There was only silence and the strange, pensive stillness of the desert in moonlight.
    If Cray was here, watching her, he had not chosen to show himself. Maybe the gun had scared him. Or did he have a gun of his own, a silenced pistol, and even now was he drawing a bead on her, ready to take her down with one shot ... ?
    She had to get away, get away now.
    The gun was shaking in her hands. He must be laughing at her. Enjoying her stupid panic even as he lined her up in his sights.
    She took a backward step, then turned to confront him if he was behind her, but he wasn’t, and she ran three yards down the trail and turned again, certain she had heard him or heard something, but there was no noise, no movement, and finally she couldn’t take it any longer and she broke into a reckless run, gasping as she retraced her route along the trail in a blur of moonlight.
    Once or maybe twice she blundered off the path, and sharp teeth bit her, teeth that were cactus spines or the pointed tips of   agave   leaves. Pain surprised her but did not slow her down.
    She was out of breath and shaking all over when she reached the staircase and climbed back to the path.
    Amid the lights of buildings and pathways she remembered the gun in her hand. Clumsily she stuffed it in her purse, leaving the clasp unfastened so she could grab the .22 instantly if she needed it.
    Voices floated to her—a family walking back to their room. The same family she’d seen earlier, the kids in the swimming pool and the parents drinking at a poolside table.
    As they passed her, the father looked at her strangely, and the younger child, giggling, was shushed by his mom.   Elizabeth   didn’t understand until she stopped at a fountain and caught her reflection in the water.
    She was a mess. She’d lost her straw hat somewhere on the trail, and her hair was windblown and tangled and studded with broken bits of leaves, and her face was inflamed with a wild-eyed, panicky stare that almost scared her.
    She looked like a street person or a drug addict—or perhaps just a girl who’d had a good roll in the hay.
    The thought coaxed a smile from her. She relaxed a little, then stiffened again, superstitiously afraid that by lowering her guard she had invited an attack.
    But there was nothing.
    “Stop it,” she whispered to herself. “You’re driving yourself crazy.”
    These were not the right words to use. She regretted them as soon as they were spoken. They touched a part of her that was still tender, still too easily liable to be hurt.
    She sat on the rim of the fountain and combed out her hair, allowing herself to be soothed by the simple, repetitive chore.
    Then she set off once more, searching the hotel grounds.
    Cray was here. Somewhere.
    She would find him.
     

 
    4
     
    But she didn’t.
    She wandered up and down the network of paths for more than two hours, the purse clutched tight, the little Colt within instant reach. She found the tennis courts, lit up but deserted. She climbed the stairs to an observation deck and found it empty as well.
    Cray was not loitering near any of the three swimming pools, he was not in the restaurant or in the bar, and the gift shop and the wellness center were closed.
    She even dared to try the fitness trail again, venturing along its entire length. Cray was not there either.
    At the trail’s dead end, where she had panicked before, she forced herself to probe the brush. With a pocket flashlight she swept a cone of amber light over   cholla   cactus and wild purple sage. She found no shoe prints, no sign of human passage.
    It was as if Cray had vanished into air. As if he had never existed at all.
    She didn’t like that thought.
    Briskly she doubled back along the trail. She wasn’t sure quite where she was headed until she found herself approaching the lobby.
    Then she knew that she meant to check out the parking lot.
    She wanted to see Cray’s SUV,