Pike moved fast down the steep slope, slipping between and around dry brush at a hard run, then climbed the next finger. He stayed low around the outside shoulder to keep Mulholland and the van above him.

He rounded the shoulder into the next canyon, and paused to take his bearings. The next finger was ahead and above him, with Mulholland to his left. He picked two scrubby oaks as navigation points, dropped down through a sea of gray brush, then up an erosion gulley until he reached the lip of the ridge. He could not yet see the van, but knew he was midway between the van and Mulholland. He checked the time. Nine minutes. Rainey and Cole were rolling.

Pike climbed the last few feet, creeping low in the brush until he crested the ridge. The van was thirty yards away. He broke out the FLIR and scanned the area. The FLIR wouldn’t read a human through metal, but Pike wanted to see if Vincent was under the van.

The image in the view screen was a landscape of grays and blacks. The colder something was, the darker its image. The hotter, the lighter. The van was a shimmery gray shape, lighter than the background because of heat it absorbed from the sun. The sky above the horizon was black.

No one was hiding beneath or near the van.

Pike swept the FLIR toward the turnout. Nothing. He expected to find Vincent on the rise above the turnout, but no one was in the weeds.

Pike lifted out his cell, and whispered again.

“Give me three extra.”

Pike changed position to try a new angle, but again drew a cold read. No one was in the brush by the road, or along the turnout.

Pike slowly examined the surrounding slope. He checked the ridge from Mulholland to the van, then the uphill rise in the background, and that’s where Pike found him. The screen showed the bright gray shape of a man lying under a mound of sage, facing downhill in a prone sniper’s position. Pike lowered the FLIR, then checked the sage with his binoculars. The man was invisible in the sage, but Pike soon found the unnaturally straight edge of a rifle barrel sticking out from beneath the branches. A lovely place for an ambush.

Pike lifted his phone again.

“He’s on the rise above the van. Rifle.”

Cole whispered back.

“How long do you need?”

“Two minutes.”

“We’re almost there. If we stop, he’ll see us, and wonder why we’re stopping.”

“Two minutes.”

Pike dropped back down the slope and crabbed fast along the finger past the van and up the back side of the rise. He glimpsed the Prius turning onto the ridge as he crested the ridge, but slowed to maintain his silence.