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 let himself be photographed had been captured on a security camera at the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank.

Pike stared at the picture, and Walsh read the stare. Walsh smiled for the first time, but it was nasty and mean.

“Yeah, baby, that’s him. Killed your boy, Frank. Killed those little kids. The young one, Joey? Was he named after you?”

Pike sat back, and said nothing.

“You know where he is?”