Robert Crais - The First Rule

Pike studied her face, and knew she meant it. He nodded.

“Okay.”

“You agree? Darko is mine?”

“Yes.”

She put out her hand, he took it, and, for a moment, she did not let go.

She said, “If you kill him, I swear to God I will devote the rest of my life to putting you in jail.”

“I won’t kill him.”

She walked him downstairs herself. His Jeep was waiting. So were his weapons.

Pike turned off his cell phone as soon as he was alone. He stopped at the first large shopping mall he reached, cruised up to the top floor of the parking structure, then down, looking for tails. He found none, but he had found none before. He still didn’t understand how they followed him.

Pike left the parking lot the way he entered, and backtracked three blocks. He reversed course again, clocking the cars he passed, but found nothing suspicious.

Returning to the mall, he parked on the second floor of the parking structure, then inspected the underside of the Jeep. He found nothing, but still wasn’t satisfied.

He cleaned himself as best he could, then went into the mall. He bought a throwaway cell phone, extra batteries, and a prepaid calling card good for two hours. Seated on a bench outside a kitchen store, Pike spent ten minutes activating the phone and loading the prepaid calling time, then called Elvis Cole.

Cole’s phone rang four times, a long time for Cole because he didn’t recognize the incoming number.

“Elvis Cole.”

“It’s me. Where’s Rina?”

“With Yanni. I brought her back after our tour.”

“Do me a favor, and go get them. The ATF knows I was at their building, and suspects I was seeing a source. They want the source.”

Cole made a soft whistle.

“How do you know?”

“I just spent three hours with them.”

Pike sketched out what he found at Willowbrook, what happened when Walsh had him picked him up, and the information she gave him about Darko.

“This is no longer about some gangster murdering people in their homes-they’re bringing three thousand Kalashnikovs into the country. That’s why the Feds are involved.”

Cole said, “I’ll get them. You want me to bring them to my place?”

“For now. I’ll have a place for them by the time I get there.”

Pike phoned Jon Stone next. Stone’s phone rang five times before his voice mail answered, and Pike waited for the beep.

“It’s Pike. You there?”

Stone answered, talking loud over Nine Inch Nails.

“Fuck, man, I didn’t recognize the number.”

“Someone’s been able to find me without following me, Jon. That’s why I’m using a different phone. I think the Jeep might be bad.”

Nine Inch Nails vanished.

“You driving it now?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t come here. I’ll meet you.”

Twenty minutes later, Pike arrived at a car wash on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, and pulled around back to the detailing bays as Stone had instructed. In the rear of the car wash, they couldn’t be seen from the street.

Stone’s black Rover was in one of the bays, and two young Latin men were detailing a black Porsche in another. Stone was with them, laughing about something when he saw Pike arrive. He pointed at the empty bay on the far side of his Rover, and that’s where Pike parked. One of the young men was sleeved out with gang tats. Neither looked over as Pike climbed from his Jeep.

Stone opened the back of his Rover and took out a long aluminum tube with a movable mirror jointed to a pod containing sensors and antennas. Jon’s security work often required him to scan for explosives and multiplatform surveillance devices. Jon was a pro, and had the equipment to accomplish his mission.

He swept the pod under the Jeep, talking to Pike as he watched a dial in the handle.

“You find these fucks?”

“Found the crew. They were dead.”

“No shit. Who bagged them?”

“Their boss.”

“No honor among scumbags. What was the butcher’s bill?”

“Three. Their boss is still up, but these three are down. One more to go.”

Stone paused between the Jeep’s headlights, and studied the dial. After a moment, he continued on around the Jeep, making a full sweep of the vehicle until he returned to the front end. Then he put the pole aside, and wiggled under the engine.

“Here you go.”

He rolled to his feet, and showed Pike a small gray box the size of a pack of cigarettes.

“GPS locator. High-end piece made by Raytheon under an NSA contract. This is top-dollar equipment. Federal?”

“ATF.”

Stone grinned.

“Right now, there’s an agent with a laptop staring at a real-time map overlay. X marks the spot, bro-right here at the car wash on Santa Monica Boulevard.”

He tossed it to Pike.

“Three choices-kill it, toss it, or-my personal favorite-tack it to a FedEx truck and let’m watch it roll all over town.”

Pike didn’t want Walsh to know he found it or had even thought to look for it, but he didn’t want her watching his path. If he put it on another vehicle, she would realize what he had done within a matter of hours. Pike tossed it back.

“Kill it, and I need you to do something else.”

“For Frank?”

“Yes.”

“I’m there.”

Pike told him about the guns-three thousand Chinese AKs stolen from the North Koreans.

Pike said, “Jakovich didn’t steal them. He bought them from someone. See what you can find out.”

Stone hesitated.

“About Frank?”

“About the guns. Frank didn’t have anything to do with this.”

Stone hesitated again, but made a slow nod.

“I know a guy who knows a guy, but I want a piece of the hunt. I’ll help, but I want some trigger time. For Frank.”

“You got it.”

Pike drove to Cole’s house when he left the car wash, climbing the narrow canyon roads to the top of the hills, then along Woodrow Wil son Drive through a heavily wooded canyon. He decided Walsh had planted the locator on his Jeep the day they stopped him at Runyon Canyon. Maybe that was why they stopped him the way they did, to keep him clear of the Jeep until they finished installing the locator.

Pike wondered now if she bugged him to follow his own investigation, or because she believed Frank was involved with the guns. There would have been no reason for her to believe Pike was involved in an arms deal, but maybe she knew something Pike didn’t yet know.

The sky was deep purple when Pike pulled up in front of Cole’s A-frame and let himself into the kitchen. Pike liked Cole’s home, and had helped Cole maintain it over the years whenever Cole needed a hand painting, roofing, or staining the deck. Perched high in the canyons where it was surrounded by trees, Cole’s rustic A-frame felt removed from the city. Pike took a bottle of water from Cole’s fridge. A dish of cat food sat on the floor beside a small bowl of water. The house smelled of eucalyptus, wild fennel, and the flora that grew on the canyon’s steep slopes.

Cole, Rina, and Yanni were in the living room, watching the news. Rina’s bag was on the floor at her feet, along with a bag that probably belonged to Yanni. They glanced over when Pike entered, and Cole muted the sound. Yanni’s face was purple where Pike hit him.

Rina squinted at Pike as if she were sizing him up for target practice, then waved toward Cole.

“We are not going to stay here. It smells like cats.”

Cole arched his eyebrows, the arch saying, You see what it’s like?

Pike motioned Cole over.

“See you a minute?”

When Cole joined him, Pike lowered his voice.

“You were going to check out her story. What do you think?”