unexpected onlooker nearby. But no, the environment was entirely favorable. A few automobiles hissed past, uncaring, on the streets, and a small group of weary workers clumped at the bus stop a full block away. Probably even a scream would go unacted upon.
He hastened his steps, starting the rush that would close the distance as she reached her vehicle. In moments she would be in the shadowy gap between the car and the van, fumbling in her shoulder bag for her keys, diverted, ultimately vulnerable. Moments later, with wrists, mouth, and ankles taped, she would be under a concealing blanket on the floor of his vehicle.
But then the tall brunette stepped past the driver's door of the Lincoln. Turning abruptly at the front bumper, she put her back to the concrete bulkhead of the parking lot. Allowing her briefcase and shoulder bag to slip to the ground, she faced him, her arms loosely crossed over her stomach. In the dimness, she seemed to be smiling a wry, derisive smile.
"Morally, I should just let nature take its course," she said, her voice a contralto rich with the same wry derisiveness, "but I really don't need this kind of complication in my life." Her voice dropped an octave. "So I'll say it just once. Go away and leave me alone."
She...was...discounting...him. She viewed him and all his arts and efforts an irrelevancy to be shooed away. The elemental hate at the core of his being boiled up, sweeping away his warped pretensions.
His hand plunged into his pocket, the box cutter's razor wedge of blade snicking open as he drew it. He stepped forward, spitting out his first vile epithet.
She moved, her arm sweeping in a flat, inhumanly fast blur. Something struck him sharply in the abdomen with a soft whucking sound. For a moment there was just the shock of impact; then came the impossible, searing pain. Instinctively he dropped the box cutter and clutched at the agony, his fingers closing over the slender metal haft of a knife buried in his stomach.
This...was not...in the plan.
His legs buckled, and he went to his knees on the cracked asphalt, the bits of gravel biting through his trouser legs, faint echoes of the agony in the center of his body.
Paralyzed by the pain, he heard footsteps click closer with deliberation. "Excuse me," that wry, now utterly terrifying voice said, "but I believe that's my property."
Then the boot heel rested against his shoulder, putting him flat onto his back with a sharp shove. There was a final impossible explosion of pain as the blade was twisted from his punctured stomach, and all consciousness faded.
A few minutes later someone dialed 911 from a waterfront public telephone and asked for the police department. The dispatcher picking up the call heard a pleasant contralto voice say, "You will find a recently retired rapist in the C lot of the ferry terminal. He needs an aid car rather badly. If you do a DNA match with the BART attacker, you may be pleasantly surprised."
Valentina Metrace, professor of history, PhD, Radcliffe and Cambridge, hung up the phone and walked back to her car at the curb. As the sleek sedan whispered toward the Redwood Parkway, she called up a disk on the CD player, and a Henry Mancini collection pulsed softly from the multiple speakers.
Fourteen miles into the North Bay wine country, the Lincoln turned off the highway and drew up in front of a steel grille security gate in a gray-pink stuccoed perimeter wall. An understated bronze plaque was mounted beside the gate:
SANDOVAL ARMAMENTS COLLECTION
Museum Hours: 10:00 to 5:00 Tuesday through Saturday.
The dab of a key card retracted the power gate, granting the professor entrance. She eased the car down the entrance loop road, past the F2H Banshee jet fighter banking on its gate guard pedestal, and the Matilda infantry tank on its display slab, to the turnoff drive that led to her quarters.
The Sandoval arms collection had been initiated at the turn of the previous century as the personal hobby of the wealthy scion of one of the old Californio families. Over the four generations since its inception, it had taken on a life and a justification of its own as one of the largest historical archives on weaponry and the tools of warfare in the United States.
A number of perks came with its prestigious curator's position, including the neat little California mission bungalow behind the sprawling complex of display buildings, libraries, and restoration laboratories. Parking in its carport,