Cole frowned at the page.

“Guess they don’t teach penmanship in thug school.”

Cole glanced at the plane tickets and maps, stacked them with the spiral notebook page, then examined the watch. His eyebrows went up when he read the inscription.

“George as in George King?”

“It’s a sixty-thousand-dollar watch.”

“I can run the serial numbers.”

Cole put the watch on the maps, then turned to the phones. Pike had made a list of the outgoing and incoming numbers in each phone’s call history. He had labeled the phones JORGE and LUIS. Jorge had made only six calls, all to Luis’s number. Luis had made forty-seven calls to nineteen different numbers. Cole glanced at Pike’s list, then the two phones.

“Which is which?”

Pike touched one phone, then the other.

“Jorge. Luis.”

Cole turned on the phones, then studied their buttons.

“Too bad we don’t know the passwords. We could hear the messages. If they have messages.”

“Leave them on. Maybe someone will call.”

“Maybe you calling that guy wasn’t the world’s greatest idea. He’ll probably dump the phone and buy another. He’s probably already thrown it away.”

“They would have known we had the phones when they found Luis and Jorge. I wanted to stress him.”

Cole glanced at the girl to make sure she wasn’t listening, and lowered his voice.

“You’ve killed seven of his people. He’s slugging Maalox.”

“Now it’s personal. Better this way.”

“What if he figures it’s so personal he goes back to Colombia?”

“I’ll go after him.”

Cole glanced at her again.

“But you don’t think the guy you spoke with was Meesh?”

“There was the accent. It was slight, but I could hear it. French, maybe. Or French with Spanish. Yesterday I thought he couldn’t be Meesh, but now I’m not sure.”

“Why?”

“How does a thug from Denver sound? His file didn’t mention an accent, but those briefs leave out a lot.”

Cole skimmed the numbers again.

“Okay, even if they dump their phones, I might be able to do something with this. These nineteen numbers mean he called nineteen phones, and those phones called other phones. Not all of these phones are going to be throwaways. I’ll talk to my friend at the phone company. Maybe she can get call records from the other service providers. Sooner or later we’ll hit real phones listed to people with real names.”

Pike caught the girl watching him. The morning show hosts were talking about a paternity suit filed against a movie star, but she hadn’t been paying attention.

Pike said, “How’re you doing?”

“I’m real good.”

She turned back to the television.

Cole had returned to the airline tickets and was making notes of his own. Neither the maps, nor the tickets, nor the little scraps of paper contained a breakthrough clue, something like a hotel receipt signed by Alexander Meesh, but Pike had not expected anything so direct. Cole would have to run the numbers just like Chen was running the guns. Sooner or later something would pay off and Pike would be closer to Meesh. Pike was patient with the process. The chase was about gaining a single step. Then you gained another. Pretty soon you had the guy in your crosshairs. It was all about gaining the one single step.

Pike left Cole to check the front windows. The cousins’ Beemer remained in its spot, and the street and the houses were normal. No new cars had appeared, and no strangers lurked in the bushes. Nothing seemed out of place.

Even though it was still early, Pike felt the day warming and saw what the heat would bring. A light haze hung in a fading sky. By noon, the air would be rich with hydrocarbons and ozone, and would eat at their skin like invisible bugs.

He turned from the window. The girl was staring at the television, but had been watching him again. He caught the motion as her eyes went back to the screen.

He said, “We’ll turn on the AC today.”

“That’s great. Thanks.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m good.”

Pike wondered why she still wasn’t looking at him. It wasn’t like her. She didn’t seem angry and wasn’t giving him attitude. She just wouldn’t look at him when he was looking at her. Pike checked to see Cole was still working, then went to the girl. He stood so close she had no choice but look up at him.

She said, “What?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“What?”

“Last night. Forget it. We’re okay, you and me.”

“I know.”

She seemed even more uncomfortable, but made a smile as Cole called from the table.

“I found something.”

Cole was tipped back in the chair, holding up the spiral notebook page.

Pike said, “You can make out what he wrote?”

“Not the words, but I got most of the numbers. Look-”

Pike went over, and this time the girl came with him. Cole smoothed the page on the table, and pointed out one of the numbers. 18185.

Pike said, “Like he started to write a phone number, but stopped.”

818 was the area code for the San Fernando Valley.

Cole said, “This isn’t a phone number. It looks like he started to write a phone number, but it’s an address-”

Cole put one of his handmade maps over the spiral page, then looked at Larkin.

“This is your street. The number jumped out because I’ve been making my notes by address.”

Larkin said, “I’m at 17922.”

“You’re three blocks north in the 17900 block. The numbers get larger as you go south. This is where you had the accident-”

Cole touched a place on the street where he had made a small X to mark the accident, then tapped the building next to it.

“-and this is 18185, right on the alley they were backing out of when you nailed them.”

Cole had written each building’s address in small block numbers. 18185 was the abandoned warehouse at the mouth of the alley.

Pike said, “When did Luis arrive in-country?”

Cole checked the dates on the airline ticket.

“Not until four days after the accident. The feds had already been all over the area. Larkin was back with her father in Beverly Hills, and the wreck was old news. If they were lining up on Larkin, they would want her loft and her home in Beverly Hills, but why would they care where the wreck happened?”

Pike knew Cole was right. Luis and his hitters would have had no reason to check out the accident site.

“So maybe he wasn’t sent to the wreck. Maybe he went to the building.”

“We should take another look.”

Pike went for a long-sleeved shirt as Cole gathered up his work. When Pike was buttoning the shirt, he caught the girl watching him again. He had been thinking about what to do when he left her once more, but now he decided.

“You can stay here if you want. You don’t have to come sit in the car.”

The girl looked surprised, then glanced away again as if the weight of his eyes was painful. The Larkin he had seen dancing on the bar hadn’t been awkward or uncomfortable, and neither had the Larkin in the desert, but this was a different Larkin. Pike sensed she wanted to say something, but hadn’t made peace with what.

She said, “I’d like to come. If that’s okay.”

Not telling or demanding. Asking.

Pike said, “Whatever you want.”

Five minutes later they went to the cars.