Pike glanced at his watch to note the time, then turned toward the sandwich shop, thinking he could make it to her in less than six minutes.

“Are they at your shop now?”

He heard voices behind her and pressed the accelerator harder.

“Ms. Rayne? Are you safe?”

“They broke the window, and—Yes, I’m all right. I guess it happened last night. Oh, man, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have called. Wilson is—I’m sorry, I have to go.”

Pike eased off the accelerator, but continued to their shop, and once more pulled into the gas station across the street. He left his Jeep, and went to the curb for a better view. The front window was mostly missing, and the front door was now propped open with a black garbage can. A young man with a two-by-four was calmly breaking what was left of the glass from the frame. A woman wearing a bright aqua dress stood nearby, pointing out the remaining glass teeth as if directing him which to knock out next. Shadows moved inside, but Pike couldn’t tell whether Dru Rayne was one of them.

Pike studied the surrounding area, but saw no one who looked suspicious. Mendoza would still be in jail awaiting arraignment, so Gomer or Mendoza’s banger friends had probably been behind it. Offering up a little payback for his arrest.

Pike walked along the sidewalk for a better view of the surrounding buildings. No one drew his attention, but an inner radar slowly pinged with the weight of watching eyes. The young troops Pike knew, fresh back from the desert, called it spider-sense, taking the term from the Spider-Man movies. They told him if you humped the desert long enough you developed a sixth sense that tingled like angry ants when the crosshairs found your skin. Pike had humped jungles, deserts, and pretty much everywhere a man could hump for most of his life, and now he felt the tingle. He turned in a slow three-sixty to clock the storefronts and rooflines and passing cars, but saw nothing. Then the feeling ebbed like a receding tide until it was gone.

The station manager came out of his office when Pike returned to his Jeep. He looked worried.

“You aren’t going to leave it here again, are you? You tied up my pump for more than an hour yesterday.”

“Not today.”

The manager looked relieved.

Pike drove along the alley behind Wilson’s shop, parked beside the Tercel, and let himself in.