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feet until he was standing on his hands in the middle of Ocean Avenue.
    Pike felt peaceful, and held his balance with a perfect center.
    He lowered himself straight down until his forehead touched the street, then pushed upright again, doing a vertical pushup, not for the effort but to feel his body working. His shoulder tingled where the nerves were damaged and would always be damaged, but Pike lifted himself without strain.
    He lowered his feet and stood, and saw that the coyotes were back, watching, street dogs at home in the city.
    Pike shouldered the ruck and continued with his run. In fourteen hours, he would be driving north to pick up the girl and see Bud Flynn for the first time in twenty years, a man he had deeply and truly loved.
     
     
    Fifteen hours later, Pike arrived at the remains of a church in the high desert.
    The church had no doors or windows and now was broken stucco walls with empty eyes and a gaping mouth a mile off the Pearblossom Highway thirty miles north of Los Angeles. Years of brittle winds, sun, and the absence of human care had left it the color of dust. Graffiti marked its walls, but even that was old; as much a faded part of the place as the brush and sage sprouting from the walls. It was a lonely place, all the more desolate with the lowering sun at the end of the day.
    A black limousine with dark windows and an equally black Hummer were parked nearby, as out of place as gleaming black jewels. They had been unseeable when Pike turned off the highway, here at the edge of the desert.
    Pike braked his Jeep facing the two vehicles. Blacker shapes moved behind the tinted Hummer glass, but Pike saw nothing within the limo. Pike was settling in to wait when Bud Flynn and another man appeared in the church door. This man was overweight, with a face like a block and lank hair he pushed from his eyes. He appeared nervous, and went back inside the church as Bud, smiling, came out, stepping into the dwindling sun across twenty years and two lifetimes.
    Pike had not seen Bud since the day in the Shortstop Lounge when Pike resigned from the LAPD and wanted Bud to hear it manto-man, them being as close as they were. Bud had asked if Pike had another job lined up, and Pike told him, but Bud had not approved. He reacted like a disappointed father angered by his son’s choice, and that had been that. Pike had signed on with a professional military corporation out of London. He was going to work as a professional civilian soldier, he said—a security specialist. Bullshit, Bud said—no better than a goddamned criminal: a mercenary.
    Now, seeing Bud, Pike felt the warm touch of earlier, better memories, and climbed out of the Jeep. Bud was older now, but still looked good to go.
    Bud put out his hand.
    “Good to see you, Officer Pike. Been too long.”
    Pike pulled Bud close and hugged him, and Bud clapped Pike on the back.
    “I’m in corporate investigations now, Joe. Fourteen years; fifteen this March. Business is good.”
    “You use mercenaries as investigators?”
    Bud looked uncomfortable and maybe embarrassed, both of them thinking about that day in the Shortstop, but he plowed on.
    “Sometimes the investigation part leads to security work. A friend gave me Stone’s name. Stone has former Mossad and Secret Service agents on tap—people experienced with high-risk clients. I was looking for someone like that when he floated your name.”
    Pike glanced at the Hummer. The low carriage showed the weight penalty that came with armor and bullet-resistant glass.
    “The girl in there?”
    Jon Stone had explained the bare bones of it when he called back with the directions: A young woman from a well-to-do family had survived three murder attempts and Bud Flynn had been hired to protect her. Period. Stone knew nothing else because—correctly, Pike thought—Bud Flynn felt Stone did not need to know more. It was enough for Stone to know the girl was rich. A person with Pike’s resumé could command top