Robert Crais - The sentry

Pike said, "Who are you talking about?"

Vincent brought up his gun. Vincent was fast, but didn't quite make it.

Pike shot him three times in the chest, a tight little group the size of a clover. Pike walked over, picked up his gun, then shouted for Cole.

"He's down. Higher than you, twenty yards in from the road."

Pike searched the body before putting away his.357.

Cole called from below.

"You good?"

"Good. I'm going to Dru."

Dru. Pike said her real name, quietly and to himself.

"Rose."

Pike jogged back across Mulholland, and found Rose Platt squatting beside Rainey. He tried to understand what he felt about her, but he mostly felt nothing.

Rose stood when she saw him, and Pike slowed to a walk. She still had the eyes. Smart, and complicated, and completely alive. Maybe that's what drew him to her. The life in her eyes.

She said, "He's dead."

"I'm sorry."

Rose picked up Rainey's pistol, stepped over his body, and opened the Prius.

"Rose."

She smiled, the smart eyes glittering.

"You're not going to do anything."

Pike stopped, hoping she wouldn't push it.

"Put down the gun."

"I can't give up that kind of money. I lived like a rat for that money. Don't you see? It's mine."

"Three hundred thousand isn't that much."

She cocked her head, and something played in her eyes that left them angry.

"If only you knew."

She turned back for the car, and Pike started toward her.

"Rose."

Her gun came up, and Pike went for his weapon, but two shots snapped past him even before his gun cleared its holster.

Pike saw the bullets hit her, how her shirt puckered and rippled. He saw her eyes flutter, and her mouth open as if she didn't know what had happened. She reached up to touch something that wasn't there, then fell.

Pike did not go to her. He turned and saw Elvis Cole, still holding his gun. Pike saw the tears spill down Cole's face. Pike watched his friend cry, and neither of them moved.

Daniel Daniel saw dancing lights, and thought they were Cleo, but the lights raced toward him, right up to his face, then tromboned away fast as a gunshot, then snapped into hyper-sharp focus. Daniel saw branches. Branches, pine needles, twisted gnarled deformed warped scrub oak branches like arthritic fingers with leaves.

Tobey cried, "Daniel?"

Cleo whimpered, "Daniel?"

Daniel felt himself shrinking, like the world was growing larger and he was getting smaller, and Tobey and Cleo were farther away.

Daniel said, "Guys?"

Tobey said, "We're looking, dude, where are you?"

Cleo said, "Daniel, aniel?"

Daniel struggled to get up. He fought like a werewolf with a zombie eating its neck, but the zombie was winning.

"Tobey? Cleo? Where are you, you, you?"

Daniel tried to keep his eyes open, but the light grew so bright it turned black.

Tobey screamed, "Daniel, come back!"

Cleo shrieked, "Where is he, is he, is he?"

Daniel tried to answer, but could not, and knew the boys heard only silence.

Tobey said, "Cleo?"

Cleo said, "Tobey?"

"Going?"

"Gone."

Daniel no longer felt his body, or the earth beneath him, or the air that kissed his skin. He felt like nothing within nothing, and knew he would miss the guys, Cleo and Tobey, his only true and dear friends.

Pike sat on the Venice Boulevard bridge, looking down Grand Canal at the house. He sat on the concrete base of a light pole with his legs dangling down, which you weren't supposed to do, but Officer Hydeck was leaning on the rail next to him.

She said, "You spend a lot of time here."

Pike nodded.

"I see you here a lot, man. You doing okay?"

"I'm good."

Hydeck adjusted her pistol.

"What do you think happened to the money?"

"Rainey said they spent it."

"Who knows? Remember the North Hollywood bank robbery, those idiots with the machine guns? There's three-quarters of a million dollars those guys stole, nobody knows where it is. It happens. This criminal money? It disappears."

Pike didn't respond. Hydeck was okay, but he wanted her to leave him alone.

"Hey, you know what? I don't know if you've heard yet. Those assholes who killed Button and Futardo? You hear about them?"

Pike knew Futardo had killed one of the men, but the other was missing.

"What about them?"

"They used to be DEA agents. The one who called himself Straw, his name was Norm Lister. That other cat was named Carbone. They worked the Rainey case way back in day one. Lister, he was fired, and the other resigned. I guess they decided to go for the gold, huh?"

Pike recalled the files he had taken from the Malibu. Most of the reports had been written by Lister.

Pike said, "Too bad about Jerry. Futardo, too."

"She was a nice gal. Posthumous Medal of Valor."

Hydeck finally pushed away from the rail. She settled her gun.

"Okay, bud, I'm history. I'll see you around."

Pike looked at her.

"Thanks for helping out like you did."

"You're not supposed to sit there with your feet hanging over."

Hydeck smiled, and ambled back to her car.

Pike went back to staring at the house.

The federal and state investigators from Louisiana had come and gone. They had interviewed Pike, and shared their information. They denied Rainey's assertion he had stolen only eight-point-two million, and related multiple accounts from arrested participants that Rainey had stolen a minimum of twelve million and as much as eighteen million dollars from the Bolivians. Pike believed them. Rainey's nature was to lie, so Pike had no doubt he continued lying until the end.

Rose Platt convinced him.

Pike swung his legs around, pushed off the wall, and walked to the Sidewalk Cafe. He sat in the outdoor area, two tables away from the one he had shared with Rose Platt.

The young waitress there, the one with the dimples, smiled when she saw him. He was a regular now.

"Green tea?"

Pike nodded.

Pike sipped the tea, and stared through the passing people at the ocean without seeing them or the water or anything else. He thought about nothing except the warmth of the tea and the cool ocean breeze, and how good the sun felt as it melted into the horizon.

When the sky was dark, Pike paid his tab and returned to the canals. He followed the sidewalk along the canal past the Palmers and checked Jared's window. Jared was up there, wearing headphones and swirling to a rhythmic, unknown beat.

Pike moved on, stepping onto the tiny dock at the back of Steve Brown's house, where the kayak hung on twin wooden posts.

Jared told him Steve Brown would return by the end of the week. Jared had also told him other things, like how Rainey would sit on the little dock at night, and how he'd go out in the kayak at night, and how Jared had twice seen Rainey wading in the canal at night.

Always at night.

But it was Rose who convinced him, with the things she said at the end, how she couldn't walk away from that kind of money, how she had lived like a rat for that money. The way she had looked at him when she thought she would lose it. If only you knew.

Pike wondered if she had known where it was, or if Rainey told her in the moments before he died. Either way, she seemed to be talking about much more than three hundred forty-two thousand dollars.

Pike ran his hands over the kayak's smooth skin, then lifted it from its hooks. Pike knew the money wasn't in the little boat because he had checked it two days ago, but he enjoyed the feel of its weight.

He set the kayak back on its hooks, then sat on the dock. It was a nice night, cool, and the water would be cold.

Eighty-five concrete stones lined the bank from one side of the property to the other, arranged in five staggered layers of seventeen blocks each. Pike knew this because he had counted them when the water was down. He had returned at night twice, and waded to the center of the canal, where, at its deepest point when the tide was high, the water reached his neck. He had probed the bottom and the plants that grew there in feathery clouds, then began checking the blocks to see if any were loose or movable.