Pike was returning to his Jeep when a tan Ford Explorer turned onto the gravel drive, stopped at the chain, and beeped. The man in blue came out of the front building, unhooked the chain, and the Explorer pulled into the parking lot. A blond woman and a man in a black T-shirt got out of the Explorer. She was chunky and middle-aged, with hair so blond it was almost white. The man was younger, with lean muscles. He lifted a case of bottled water from the Explorer’s backseat, and the woman took out a grocery bag. The groceries and water suggested people were spending much time in the building.

They were heading for the corrugated building when three men came out. The last man out held the door, but the first man was a big man who moved like he wanted to knock the woman out of his way.

The corner of Pike’s mouth twitched.

The big man was Michael Darko.

Chapter 36

36

PIKE KEPT DARKO IN sight at all times. Crossing the parking lot, moving between and around the parked vehicles, Pike did not look at anyone or anything else. Pike was locked on.

Pike slipped behind the wheel of his Jeep, lowered the sun visor, then started the engine. None of the three men looked toward the enormous Do-It-Yourself parking lot across the street. They would have seen nothing if they had. The Jeep was just another tree in a two-hundred-tree forest.

Pike used a pair of Zeiss binoculars to confirm the man was Darko. He was. Darko was thinner than in the picture Walsh showed Pike, and looked in better shape, as if he had been working out. His mustache was gone, and his hair was shorter, but the wide eyes and sharp sideburns were unmistakable. As Pike watched, Darko lit a cigarette, then waved the cigarette angrily, pacing with stop-and-go bursts in front of the two men.

Pike wondered if Darko had spoken with Grebner, and if he was preparing to change locations. If so, Pike would have to act quickly. Pike studied the three men and gauged the range at a hundred forty yards. At one hundred yards, the bullet from his .357 would drop about three and a half inches. At one-forty, the bullet would be down almost eight inches. Pike could make a center-of-mass shot, but he wasn’t going to shoot. Pike wanted Rina’s kid, and he wanted the truth about Frank. Darko knew the answer to these things, and Pike was certain he could make Darko talk.

Darko flicked away his cigarette and stalked back into the corrugated building. The other two men followed. Pike pulled out of the Do-It-Yourself lot like any other customer, drove two blocks, then swung around and went back to the Mom’s Basement, where an eight-foot cinder-block wall separated the storage location from the scrap yard.