Robert Crais - The First Rule

“Yes, I know.”

She wet her lips. She stared down the length of the street into the dark. Two people walked along the broken sidewalk, enjoying an after-dinner stroll.

Pike said, “You should go in.”

“Come in with me. I would like it.”

“No.”

“Yanni will leave. I will tell him. He doesn’t care.”

“No.”

The hurt came to her eyes.

“You don’t want to lay with a whore.”

“Go in, Rina.”

She considered him for a moment, then leaned across the console and kissed him on the cheek. It was a quick kiss, and then she was gone.

Pike didn’t go home. He cruised the length of the Strip, taking it slow, then turned up Fairfax to Hollywood, then up again into the residential streets at the base of the canyon.

The park was closed at night, but Pike left his Jeep and walked up the quiet streets. The air was rich with winter jasmine, and cold, and grew even colder as Pike squeezed around the gate and entered the park.

The canyon was his. Nothing and no one else moved.

Pike climbed the steep fire road, rising above the city, walking, then walking faster, then jogging. The ravines were pooled with ink shadows, and the shadows enveloped him, but Pike did not slow. The brittle walls above him, the ragged brush and withered trees beside him, and the plunging slope below were sensed more than seen, but the invisible brush teamed with moving life.

Coyotes sang in the ridges, and eyes watched him. Eyes that blinked, and vanished, and reappeared, pacing him in the scrub.

Pike followed the road up, winding along the ravine to the end of the ridge where the lights of the city spread out before him. Pike listened, and enjoyed the crisp air. He smelled the rough earth, and jasmine and sage, but the strong scent of apricot overpowered everything else, and was sweet in the raw night.

He heard a whisper of movement, and metallic red eyes hovered in space, watching. A second pair of eyes joined the first. Pike ignored them.

The canyon was his. He did not reach home until just after sunrise, but even then did not sleep.

All-american best price gas was a ragged dump in Tarzana. Six pumps, no service bays, little mini-mart with a middle-aged Latina holed up behind a wall of bulletproof glass.

Cole and Stone went in first, Cole scouting the surroundings, Stone pretending to put air in his tires while he checked out the people in and around the station. Pike waited two blocks away until they called. Pike heard them through his Bluetooth earbud, which he would wear while he did what he had to do, Cole and Stone providing security.

Cole told him about the woman.

“One female. Strictly counter personnel.”

Pike didn’t like the idea of terrorizing an innocent woman.

“Will we have a problem with her calling the police?”

“Rina said no. These places get held up like any other gas station, so the employees are schooled to call their manager, not the police. That’s the front man who runs it for Darko.”

Stone, who was conferenced in, spoke up.

“That’s all well and good, but what if she’s got a shotgun behind the counter?”

“Rina said no. Listen, they’re selling diluted gas and they have skimmers on all the pumps. They don’t want the police sniffing around.”

Stone said, “Maybe Rina should rob the place.”

Pike said, “I’m rolling.”

Pike pulled up to the pumps outside the mini-mart, giving the woman inside a clear view of his Jeep. He wanted her able to describe it accurately.

Pike went inside, and immediately saw a security camera hanging from the ceiling behind the glass. He wondered if it worked, then decided this didn’t matter. He gave the woman his name and told her he was there to give Mr. Darko a message.

She looked confused.

“Who’s Mr. Darko?”

“Doesn’t matter. He’ll still get the message.”

“You don’t want gas?”

“No. I’m going to adjust the pumps.”

“They didn’t tell me about this.”

“Mr. Darko will explain.”

The emergency cutoff switch for the pumps was on the wall outside the door. Pike cut the power, then pry-barred the cover off each pump register. They didn’t come easily, leaving the metal bent. The woman behind the glass expressed no surprise when she saw what he was doing. She simply picked up her phone as if something like this happened three or four times each day, and made a calm call.

Six pumps, two sides to each pump, twelve card readers.

The skimmer sleeves were obvious, having been fixed around the white plastic reader track with duct tape. Every time a customer slipped a credit or debit card into the reader, the card also tracked through the skimmer, which read all the same information, storing it in a green circuit board wired to the sleeve. Pike tore off the sleeves and circuit boards, and stowed them in a plastic bag. He left the pump registers broken and open.

A woman driving a silver Lexus SUV pulled up while Pike was working.

He said, “The pumps are being serviced.”

She drove away.

Eight minutes later, the skimmers were stripped from the pumps and Pike was finished.

They could wait around to see who would show up, but Pike wanted to maintain the pressure. He wanted to flush them into his sights.

They took a long break for breakfast, and hit the next station three hours later. Down Home Petroleum (proudly independent!) was a cheesy little station in North Hollywood that was older and smaller than the All-American Best Price, and so dirty it looked like a smudge.

Cole and Stone rolled in first, just as they had before, and this time it was Stone who spoke in his ear.

“Two dudes inside, bro.”

“Soldiers?”

“Dunno. Young, white, and skinny, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t packing.”

Cole, listening in on the conference, said, “Surrounding streets clear.”

“I’m in.”

Pike rolled, once more pulling up to the pumps.

The Down Home was too low-rent for a glass barrier. A tall Anglo kid sat behind a counter, unshaven, shaggy, and looking as if he’d rather be having surgery. Had a friend keeping him company. A shorter, stockier guy about the same age kicked back in a chair propped against the wall. Pike heard them talking when he entered, and recognized accents similar to Rina’s, though not as pronounced. A flicker of recognition flashed in their eyes when he mentioned Darko, and the kid behind the counter raised his hands.

“Hey, man, I just work here.”

His friend smiled stupidly, incredulous.

“Dude. Are you robbing us?”

The counter kid glared lasers at the friend.

“Shut up before you get us killed.”

Civilians, or so far out of the loop they might as well have been.

Six pumps, twelve skimmers, eight keypads rigged to steal PIN numbers. Pike figured they knew the pumps were rigged, or knew enough to guess, but neither tried to interfere. Pike was gone in seven minutes, and met up with Cole and Stone at the Studio City park.

When Stone saw the number of skimmers Pike had collected, he whistled.

“Man, we should bill LAPD for this.”

They killed the next two hours at Cole’s house, then rolled down through the canyons to Hollywood. Super Star Service was located on a seedy part of Western Avenue, just north of Sunset. It was smaller than the Tarzana station, having only four pumps split between two pump islands, and shared its property with a taco stand. The stand was doing a vigorous business.

As Pike waited for Cole and Stone to recon the area, it occurred to him this was their last target. If Darko’s enforcers didn’t show, they would have to come up with something else. That’s when Cole spoke in his ear.