“How about I try to find Rina and Yanni? There are way too many conflicting stories here—”

Cole was still talking when they heard the outside gate, and Pike went to the door. Rina stopped when she saw him, shielding the sun from her eyes with a hand. She was wearing a black T-shirt over the same jeans, the big purse slung over one shoulder, her bag slung over the opposite shoulder.

She said, “What you find?”

“Where’s Yanni?”

She scowled at him for not answering her question, then pushed past him into the guesthouse. She glanced at Cole as she put her bag on the table.

“He work for a living. They don’t give him time off to help find stolen children.”

Cole said, “Where were you?”

She upended her bag, dumping out freshly washed clothes.

“I went to wash. My clothes, they smelled like feet.”

Pike said, “You know Emile Grebner?”

“Of course, I know. He has fucked me many times.”

She said it as matter-of-factly as if she had told them her eyes were blue or her hair black, and refolded her laundry without pausing, as if this statement had no meaning. Pike thought maybe, for her, it had none.

Cole said, “How do you know him?”

“He have the big house in the hills, and would have girls for the parties. This was before Michael, when I was first here, fifteen, sixteen years old, I think. He like only Serbian girls, not American or Russian. He trust the Serb girls, and we speak like back home. That is where Michael first see me, up there. Why you want to know?”

“So you know he’s one of Darko’s authority men—a close associate?”

“I just tell you I know him. Are you not listening?”

Pike said, “Grebner told us the baby’s father is Milos Jakovich, not Darko.”

Pike watched her carefully to read her reaction. A deep frown cut lines between her eyebrows as if she was struggling with the language problem. She glanced at Cole, who was watching her just as carefully, then turned back to Pike.

“You are making this up?”

Cole said, “We’re not making it up. Are you?”

“Fuck you. You and the dog you walked in on.”

She turned back to Pike.

“This is bullshit. I know who the father is and Michael know, too. Grebner, he lies. Why he say this? Where you see him?”

Pike said, “Grebner believes it. Darko and Jakovich are at war over some illegal arms. Rifles. Do you know anything about that?”

“Michael hate the old man, this I know, but I don’t know nothing about this other thing. Why he say Michael not father?”

“Probably because this is what Michael told him. Is Jakovich the f ather?”

“No.”

“Could he think he’s the father?”

She drew herself up and gazed at Cole as if he was the scum of the earth.