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but Pike held him close. Haddad did not want to see what Orlato had seen. He did not want to see his death coming.
    “Did the Syrian kill him?”
    “I don’t know! Orlato and Ruiz and I, we left with the bodies. The others, they were to hold him for the Syrian.”
    Pike pressed the gun hard into Haddad’s forehead.
    “A prisoner?”
    “Yes!”
    “Was the Syrian going to kill him?”
    “I don’t know! These men, they told me the Syrian thinks your friend is a federal agent.”
    “How long ago was this?”
    “Three hours! Maybe four!”
    “When was the Syrian coming?”
    “I don’t know!”
    “Five minutes? Five hours?”
    “I don’t know! I can take you to the house! Maybe they still wait!”
    Pike studied Haddad, then lowered the gun.
    “Yes.”
    Stone returned, and shook his head.
    “No IDs or credit cards on the stiffs. Thirty-two hundred in cash. I took it. Registration shows the Caddy belongs to a Joan Harrell of San Diego. None of these shitbirds looks like a Joan.”
    Haddad said, “Everything is stolen. He has thieves who get cars and trucks for him.”
    “Keys?”
    Stone held up the keys.
    “Yeah, man. Good to go.”
    “Drive.”
    “We’re taking Mr. Green Teeth?”
    “He knows the way.”
    Stone ran hard for the Escalade.
    Pike clipped the plastic binding Haddad’s ankles, but left his wrists bound. Pike pulled him to his feet.
    Haddad said, “You are not killing me?”
    “Not yet.”
    The big Escalade thundered up in a cloud of dust. Pike pushed Haddad into the back seat, and climbed in behind him.
    Stone powered away even as Pike closed the door. Driving hard. Pushing. They bounced over brush and rocks, and neither of them gave a damn if they tore the Escalade apart.
    Haddad said, “This is not the way.”
    Stone said, “Shut up.”
    Pike said, “Faster.”
    They ran hard toward the mountains, driving without lights. They had to move fast or Cole would be lost.

5.
    It was full-on dark when they reached Pike’s Jeep, covered by brush in a low wash, two-point-two miles away. Pike pulled Haddad from the Escalade, proned him in the dirt, and wiped their prints from the Caddy while Stone cleared the brush. They rolled on in less than three minutes, Pike driving the Jeep, Stone in back with Haddad, the Escalade abandoned. They crept across the desert by starlight and moonglow that made the brush glisten.
    Thirty-eight minutes later, they approached a small ranch-style home on a street of similar homes at the outskirts of Coachella, California, the most eastern of the desert communities. Two-car garages, rock lawns, clean sidewalks, streetlights.
    Haddad said, “This one. On the right.”
    “Cole is inside?”
    “When I left.”
    Stone said, “You better not be lyin’.”
    It was nine-oh-five P.M. Early. Every house on the street showed light and life except this one. It looked like a corpse.
    Stone said, “Shit, it’s fucking deserted. That place is black.”
    “The windows are covered with dark plastic and wood.”
    “So every light in the house could be lit, and we wouldn’t see it?”
    “Yes. Or hear what goes on. The windows are all like this. We screw them shut so the
pollos
can’t open them, then cover them with the plastic and wood.”
    Pike glanced in the rearview.
    “Civilians?”
    “I don’t understand.”
    Stone jabbed him with the rifle.
    “Women and children, dipshit. A family. You got innocent people living in there, or just dead men like you?”
    “No one lives there. The house was empty.”
    Stone said, “Who pays the bills? Water? Power? This shit ain’t free.”
    “Maybe the Syrian. He gives us the address. We come, make it ready with the boards and plastic, and bring the
pollos
.”
    Pollos
. Spanish for “chickens.” As if the people they murdered weren’t human.
    Pike circled, and approached the house from the opposite direction. He slowed as they passed.
    “How many guards were with Cole?”
    “Two. Washington and Pinetta. If the Syrian is