The First Rule by Crais Robert

Author:Crais, Robert [Crais, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2009-11-19T08:00:00+00:00

Part Three

It’s Personal

22

KELLY WALSH STOOD twelve inches from the table, close enough so he was forced to look up, but not so close as to touch the table. Pike recognized this as a controlling technique. By assuming a superior position she hoped to create a sense of authority. Like unplugging the camera. She was demonstrating she had the power to do as she wished, even at Parker Center.

Pike thought it was all a bit obvious.

Then she said, “Was Frank Meyer smuggling guns?”

This was the first time one of them asked a question that surprised him.

“No.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Sure sure? Or you just want to believe he wasn’t?”

Pike didn’t like this business about guns. He studied her face, trying to read her. Her eyes were light brown, almost hazel, but not. A vertical line cut the skin between her eyebrows, matched by a scar on her upper lip. No laugh lines, but no frown lines, either. Pike didn’t like her certainty.

“How did you find me?”

She made an offhand shrug, her face as flat as a Texas highway, ignoring his question.

“Okay, you’re sure. Personally, I don’t know, but I need a reason Darko killed him, and that one makes sense.”

“Guns.”

She pointed at herself.

“ATF. The F is for firearms.”

She studied him a moment longer, then cocked her head.

“You don’t know about the guns. You’re just in this to get some payback. Okay, I get it. That’s who you are.”

Pike knew she was trying to decide what to tell him, and how to play him. Same things he was thinking about her.

“Terrio lied about our not having anything that ties Williams to the earlier six invasions. We found a woman’s bracelet in his grandmother’s trailer that puts him with the Escalante invasion, and an antique Japanese sword that puts him with the Gelber invasion. We’ll probably find something in Renfro’s crib, too. The gun comps will be the icing, but these boys are our killers.”

Pike knew that Escalante was the second of the six previous home invasion/homicides. Gelber was the fifth.

“If you found these things only now, then you didn’t know Williams was involved.”

“No. Turns out Johnson was living with Renfro. That’s why no one could find him. Except for you. You did a good job there, Pike, finding these guys so fast. We hadn’t even come up with names for these guys, but you found them. I like that a lot.”

She reached into her inside jacket pocket, and fingered out a four-by-six-inch photograph. Pike saw a clean-cut African-American man, early thirties, high and tight hair, and a tasteful gold stud in his left ear.

“Special Agent Jordan Brant. Jordie was one of my undercovers. He was murdered twenty-three days ago trying to identify a takeover crew employed by one Michael Darko. This is Darko.”

She produced a second picture, this one showing a big man in his late thirties with wide-set eyes in a round face. He had black hair pulled into a short ponytail, a thick mustache, and long, thin sideburns. The man who would not

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.