It was as if I was staring at a ghost, something that might not really be there, something phantasmagorical and ethereal. But she was there, in the flesh, real as hell, and she was heading up the escalator to the second floor.
After I got over my initial shock, I processed what I was seeing. Veronica was wearing a long blond wig and a long flowing white dress. She might have even gone unnoticed had I not spent the long drive up to San Francisco memorizing every detail of her face.
And so, despite the wig, and the distance between us, I immediately recognized the strong jaw and her challenging eyes. The blond girl was tall, too, as tall as Veronica would have been.
It was her; I was sure of it.
And so far, no one else seemed to notice.
She stepped calmly up onto the very escalator I had planned on using, and as she slowly ascended, I saw that she was sporting a guitar case strapped to her back. I seriously doubted there was guitar inside.
I considered my options. There weren't many, so it didn't take long. I could find the closest policeman, convince him that the guitar-wielding blond was a delusional psychopath. Or just follow her up myself.
I decided on the latter. I was, after all, a man of action.
As she continued to ascend, I picked up my pace and just as I reached the escalator, a very large elderly couple stepped on before me. Damn. Veronica reached the top of the escalator and made a right. She flashed me a view of her strong profile, and then she was gone, out of my line of sight.
Double damn.
It was at that moment, as I was about to impolitely push through the elderly couple in font of me, that an icy chill coursed through me. I shivered as goosebumps rippled along my forearms.
Someone was watching me.
I glanced around for the source of the feeling. I didn't have to look long. Below, staring up at me from behind the table draped with the red tablecloth, a squinting James P. Storm was watching me ascend.
I shivered and looked away.
She was gone. Or, rather, I had lost her. Shit.
At the top of the escalator, I hung a right and moved quickly through an area of low tables and oversized gift books. The third floor, like the other two, was laid out in a perfect square, with the center open. A low glass wall gave shoppers a view of the floors below. From up here, I could see the book signing taking place below, with a clear view of James P. Storm smiling and talking pleasantly to a young reader. The winding line of humanity looked a little like the Great Wall of China.
As calmly as I could, I checked each row and aisle for signs of the girl. I made a full circuit of the top floor and soon ended back at the escalator landing, with no sign of Veronica anywhere.
I stood there, confused. Maybe I was losing my mind. Maybe I had imagined the girl. The third floor seemed darker than the other floors, and quieter, too, since all the action was taking place on the floor below. Still, there was a handful of people up here. The elderly couple that had blocked my ride up the escalator were holding hands and laughing and moving slowly down one of the aisles. A man and woman were sitting together cross-legged in an aisle, reading. An elderly man was flipping through a magazine, sitting in a reading chair. A young man holding a laptop case strolled over to the brass railing and looked down, a bemused smirk on his face.
I continued scanning. As I did, my heart thumped once in my chest, then twice. Hard. Something was going to happen. I could feel it. Either that, or I was going to keel over and die right here of a heart attack.
So where the hell had she gone?
The bathrooms were all downstairs on the first floor. Up here, there was only a single Employees Only door, with a keypad.
Maybe she had the code.
I doubted it. Confused, I began systematically searching each corner of the upstairs, one after another, and when I got to the fourth and last corner, I found it.
The guitar case. Leaning against the far end of a bookcase. Hidden unless one ventured deeper into the corner, as I had done.
I hurried over to it, opened it. Inside was a blond wig and a white dress and no guitar.
"Ah, hell."
As as I ran out from behind a tall bookcase, the first person I saw was the young guy with the laptop case. He was still standing near the railing, on the opposite side of the room. I noticed he was no longer smiling bemusedly. Instead, he was unzipping the case and pulling something out from within. It was most certainly not a laptop.
No. It was a small, stainless steel crossbow.
And the young man wasn't a man.
It was Veronica.
She had, of course, cut her hair in a boyish way and was wearing men's jeans and t-shirt, both of which had been hidden beneath the long white dress. Enough of a disguise to temporarily throw me off, especially since I had been locked on to finding a blond girl in flowing white dress.
"Veronica?" I shouted. "Stop!"
She had just rested the weapon on the brass railing, when her head snapped up. She scanned the area, spotted me from across the open space. She frowned, and then went back to her crossbow, squinting along its sights and ignoring me.
Now I was running, not as fast as I would have liked, and certainly not very gracefully. I barreled recklessly around the first corner, dashed down an aisle crammed with reading glasses and cheesy-looking Velcro book covers.
Veronica was now on my right, carefully taking aim. Ignoring me completely.
The overweight old couple looked up, startled, as I swept past them. I dodged a low wooden bench at the last second. Back in the day I would have hurled it. Now, it was all I could do to just avoid it and not fall flat on my face.
Already I was gasping for air.
"Veronica, stop!"
But she didn't stop. Instead, she was taking careful aim.
I turned the final corner. Now she was directly in front of me, about thirty feet away, ignoring me completely. The metallic crossbow gleamed brilliantly. I realized too late that she could have just as easily turned the weapon on me. If she did, there was nothing I could do.
I also realized that I was now holding my own gun. I had no intention of using it, but maybe it would help convince her to stand down.
"Stop!" I shouted. "Or I'll shoot!"
Yes, I actually said that. But she didn't stop. She didn't even acknowledge me.
Instead, she pulled the trigger.