Robert Crais - The Watchman

Vahnich dropped his gun. The gun fell, but nothing else moved. Vahnich had made his decision. He would take his chances with the courts.

Vahnich called from behind the girl.

“I dropped it. I’m giving up. I surrender.”

Bud shouted the instructions Pike had heard a hundred times.

“Raise your hands above your head. Raise them high! Lace your fingers on your head!”

Vahnich raised his hands. He laced his fingers on his head. The girl still had not moved, and neither had Pike.

Pike said, “Larkin. Go to your dad.”

She started toward Pike.

“Go to your father.”

She ran to her father.

Vahnich said, “I give up!”

Bud had come out from behind the pot. Cole was covering the men they had shot. Pike crabbed sideways across the yard until he was between Vahnich and the girl, his gun never leaving the eye.

Behind him, Bud said, “Joe. Son, the police are coming.”

Pike said, “Larkin, you okay? You good?”

“He was going to kill me. He was-”

“I know.”

Bud said, “Officer Pike-”

Pike pulled the trigger. The gun made a loud pop that sounded hollow in the open air. The body fell.

Pike walked over to secure their weapons. He checked the bodies. All three were dead.

Bud was staring at him with his hands at his sides as if he had been drained of life. Conner Barkley was holding his daughter. Cole tucked his own pistol into his waist as he came over.

Cole said, “You okay?”

“Sure. How’s that leg?”

“Better. At least we didn’t get shot this time.”

Pike went to the girl. Conner watched him coming, and Pike saw he was crying. Billionaire tears looked like everyone else’s.

Pike placed his hand on Larkin’s back and whispered.

“I won’t let them hurt you. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

She turned to him then and hugged him. She buried her face against his chest, and Pike rested his chin on her head. Bud was watching him. Bud looked sad and disappointed.

Pike said, “I still hate bullies. Live with it.”

Pike was holding the girl when the police arrived.

Ocean Avenue was lit with smoky gold light that time of morning, there at the edge of the sea. Pike ran along the crown of the street, enjoying the peace and the rhythm of his body. It was three fifty-nine that morning. No cars had disturbed him for more than two miles, and the coyotes did not pace him. He was the only beast in the city, but this was about to change.

She turned onto Ocean at San Vicente and roared toward him through the darkness. He recognized her new car, so he stayed on the center line and did not break his stride.

Larkin zoomed past, swung around, and idled up alongside him. She had gotten a pearl white Aston convertible. The top was down. She had kept the short hair, but had gone back to red. She grinned the lip-curling smile. Pike was glad her confidence was back.

“Only a lunatic runs this early.”

“Only a lunatic driving this early would find me.”

“I asked your boy Cole. Since you won’t return my calls anymore.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I think he wants to kiss me.”

“Uh-huh.”

Pike had stopped returning her calls. They had talked often in the weeks following the incident, but he didn’t know what more he could say.

She said, “Can you talk while you run?”

“Sure.”

She took a moment to get it together, then told him what she came to say.

“I’m not going to bother you anymore. Now, just because I’m not calling you doesn’t mean you can’t call me if you change your mind. You can call whenever you want, but I get it you want me to stop, so I’m going to stop.”

“Okay.”

The old flash of anger darkened her eyes.

“My friend, that was WAY too easy. The least you could do is pretend.”

“Not with you.”

The car idled alongside him. Pike caught a glimmer on the bluff, and wondered if it was a coyote.

After a bit, she said, “Do you believe in angels?”

“No.”

“I do. That’s why I go driving like this. I look for angels. They only come out at night.”

That was something else Pike didn’t know how to answer, so he said nothing.

She looked up at him.

“I’m not going to call anymore because that’s what you want; not because I want to stop. You probably think you’re too old for me. You probably think I’m too young. I’ll bet you hate rich people.”

“Pick one.”

Larkin smiled again, and Pike was glad to see it. He loved her in-your-face smile. But then her smile faded and her eyes filled, and he didn’t like that so well.

She said, “You probably think I’ll get over it, but I won’t. I love you. I love you so damn much I would do anything for you.”

“I know you would.”

“I’d even stop calling.”

The Aston Martin roared away, its engine screaming with pain.

Pike watched her taillights flare. She turned east on San Vicente, and raced toward the city.

Pike said, “I love you.”

He ran alone in the darkness, wishing the coyotes would join him.

TURTLE ISLAND

GULF OF THAILAND

182 DAYS LATER

Jon Stone gazed out over the azure gulf and dreamed of ships at sea. Sailing ships of the late 1700s; not these silicon-chip water-rockets any geek could sail, but wooden ships built by hands and sweat, and sailed by men who lived by their belief in monsters. Jon imagined his ship rounding the point, a forty-gun frigate, himself a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, bound to the mast by duty and honor here on the far side of the world. Those were days of beauty, and Jon Stone wished he had been part of it.

The dude’s house had put him in the mood; top-of-the-line, no-expense-spared new, for sure, but with a wild, primitive freedom that screamed for those earlier times. The walls were these big plantation shutters that could be pushed aside so the inside and the outside were one, opening the house to the sea and the jungle and a warm breeze that smelled of flowers caught in a woman’s hair: a neo-plantation tropical palace overlooking the Gulf of Thailand-the beautiful chaos of the jungle bowling away to a coconut orchard, the orchard giving way to an immaculate white beach and the blue-on-blue sweep of ocean and sky, all of it like a rich boy’s fantasy of Tarzan’s tree house, maybe, or one of those African manors where British admirals retired.

Jon so totally dug it.

Jon Stone was thinking about the ships when a single muffled wump from the far side of the house broke the silence, just the one sound, like a baseball bat smacking onto a bed.

Stone sighed, knowing his time here was short.

He said, “I dig this house, man. I could live here.”

Jon spoke clearly but did not expect an answer. It was a big-ass house with no one around to hear.

Jon walked through the open wall to the edge of a beautiful limestone deck and squinted down at the beach. Another three or four days, the beach would be jammed with bands and insane women.

“Full moon parties, bro. Cat in Big Buddha, he said they have’m every full moon. Seven, eight thousand people show up, all these bands and shit-food, booze, whatever. It’s these tourist chicks. The chicks go wild, he said; just the one night, these crazy chicks thinking, What, what happens here stays here? Oh, man. We should stay, bro.”

But no one answered, not way up there in the jungle. It was a long way to town.

The latex gloves made his hands sweat, so his hands were itching. Jon checked his watch, then started back through the house.

A staff of four usually worked at the house. A cook, some butler dude, a maid, and a full-time gardener. The gardener had two extra guys come to help with the big stuff every Tuesday. Every Friday a pool guy came to bleach the infinity pool, and an extra housekeeper came to help with the floors. Jon had patterned their movements for three weeks and arranged events so none of them would show up today.