There was the sound of footsteps moving away, and Stahl felt relieved. They must have tested the steel bars over the skylight and realized they couldn’t enter through it. Then there was a flare of light from above the skylight like a slow, silent explosion that lasted a few seconds and went out. The intruders had only been stepping back and turning away to protect their eyes. Stahl just had time to whisper to Hines, “Thermite!” Hines understood that the mixture of aluminum powder and iron oxide was cutting through the steel. Hines heard the sound of a steel bar clattering onto the safety glass above them. She moved her finger to the trigger.

The glass of the skylight showered the floor, and the living room was illuminated by the rapid muzzle flashes of an automatic weapon firing down into the room. The bright, continuous flashes looked like the flame of a blowtorch as the shooter moved his weapon back and forth, sweeping the room below.

Stahl and Hines held their fire and waited for a shot. Then a man dropped from the empty frame of the skylight. He landed on his feet near the couch. Stahl fired three rounds that hit the man squarely in the chest and pounded him off his feet to the carpet. There was more wild automatic fire from the skylight, probably intended to keep the defenders’ heads down.

Instead, both Hines and Stahl fired their M4 rifles at the skylight as rapidly as they could pull the triggers. The automatic fire from above stopped. They both watched the skylight, hoping the man still up there would be visible for a second as he moved to get a better firing angle.

While they watched, the man they had shot popped up from beside the couch and aimed a burst of automatic fire at Stahl where he crouched in the doorway. Stahl dived back into the spare bedroom and saw a line of bullet holes appear in the bedroom wall as the man fired through it.

Stahl heard a single shot from Hines’s M4 near the kitchen and the automatic fire stopped again.

Stahl dashed from the bedroom and nearly overran the man. He could see that the man was wearing body armor under his shirt, but Hines had shot him through the skull while he was firing at Stahl.

He found Hines resting her left elbow on the marble counter at the edge of the kitchen. When a rifle muzzle poked down into the room at the edge of the skylight, she fired four shots at the spot where the shooter must be.

Stahl came close to the counter and beckoned. She moved around it after him and then out the steel door into the underground garage. Stahl let her through, then closed the door quietly so the intruders wouldn’t be sure he and Diane had retreated.

Stahl went past the parked cars and along the rear wall of the garage until he reached a door with a pair of surveillance cameras mounted on the ceiling about ten feet to either side. He looked up at the camera to his left, making sure his face was visible to anyone watching the monitor. Then he knocked, waited, and knocked again, but there was no response. He said, “The security guys aren’t in there, or they would have opened up for us.”

“Where could they be?”

“There’s a hallway on this level that runs the length of the building, and a couple of short alcoves off it that go to outer doors.”

“Can we get access to them anywhere?” Hines asked.

“Only if they’ll open up,” Stahl said.

They moved to the metal barrier that had closed the entrance to the garage. Stahl went to the barrier and tried to use a crack between sections to look out at the driveway and the bit of the front lawn near the sunken driveway ramp.

“I can’t see anything,” he said. He hurried to his car and used the butt of his rifle to break the driver’s side window. He reached in and pressed the remote control on the dashboard and the barrier began to rise like a garage door. They both ducked outside, and then up the driveway. As it curved and rose, they saw the body of a man in a dark uniform lying near the side of the building. There was a door open behind him. They scanned the area, but didn’t see anyone else, so they trotted to him. When they got there, they could see his throat had been cut.

“I know him. That’s one of the security guys. It looks like they lured him out to investigate something and then overpowered him.”

Hines pointed at the way his legs had been pulled into the doorway and left there to prop the door open. “Do the security hallways lead to the roof?”

“Yes,” Stahl said. “There are stairs at the ends. That’s probably how they got to our skylight.”

“It looks like they’re still in there.”

They stepped past the dead man into the short hall to the main corridor and continued across it to the only door. Stahl moved to the left by the doorknob, and Hines knelt in front of the door with her rifle at her shoulder. Stahl swung open the door, but there was nobody visible, so they rushed in together, ready to fire.

There was nobody standing. There were security monitors on the wall, and Stahl moved closer to see if he could spot any of the intruders, but the only monitor that wasn’t covered in static patterns or black was the one that showed this room. And then he saw the second body. As he came around a desk, he stepped close to it. The other security guard must have been waiting to hear from his partner when the intruders came in the door behind him and cut his throat too. Stahl sidestepped to keep from stepping in the blood. “Let’s head for the roof.”

They went out to the long corridor and hurried along it until they reached the stairs to the roof. They climbed to the trapdoor set into the ceiling, and Stahl pointed to a bolt that had been opened and was still open. Hines nodded.

Stahl lifted the trapdoor a half inch and tried to crane his neck to look in three directions. After a few seconds he reacted to something. He threw the trapdoor off the opening, popped up, and fired. Then he pulled the trap closed again while there was a barrage of automatic weapon fire. He closed the bolt and pulled Hines down the stairs with him.

They ran along the corridor all the way back to the control room. He said, “There are at least five still up there on the roof, and maybe others in some of the other apartments. We should get out of here.”

“I’ve got a spare key hidden in the gas cap of my car.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before I broke a window in my car?”

“I didn’t know you were going to do that.”

“Let’s take your car and get out of here,” said Stahl.

“Right.”

They left the security control room. Hines went to her car while Stahl slipped out of the garage and moved along the sloping driveway to the lawn. He prepared to open the gate manually when a pair of headlights appeared at the end of the block—then another and another.

The cars were three big black SUVs, but he couldn’t see any white markings or police equipment on them. Could they be cops? Three cop cars wouldn’t all come in from the same direction.

He crawled to the front of the building near the door propped open by the dead security man’s body, and watched from behind the shrubbery. A moment after he reached a hiding place in the foliage men began to appear from the building. He saw three men hang from the edge of the roof and drop to the lawn. The front door of his condominium opened and two men half-carried, half-dragged out the body of the man Diane had shot in his living room.

He heard running footsteps, and five men ran out of the security hallway past the dead guard. He saw other men emerge from dark places all over the property in twos and threes and head for the street.

The two men with the body set it on the lawn only a few feet from Stahl. He knew they were going to get others to help pick it up and take it with them to one of the SUVs.

He crawled out a few feet on his belly, took his cell phone out of his pocket, and reached under the body armor of the dead man. He slid the phone under the man’s belt and into the front of his underwear. Then he withdrew, creeping backward into the dark entrance to the building, and became still.

Four men ran back from the edge of the street and lifted their fallen comrade. When they reached the three SUVs that had pulled up at the curb, they loaded him into the rear cargo space of the last one.

The three SUVs began to move. As soon as they were down the block, Stahl got up and ran to the driveway and into the garage, where Hines was sitting in the driver’s seat of her car.

She said, “What did you see?”

He said, “They’re leaving in three black SUVs. If we don’t find out where they go, we’ll never find them.”

“Get in,” she said. “We’ll go after them.”

“Hold on,” he said. “Give me your phone.”

She took her phone out of her pocket and handed it to him. “What happened to yours?”

He said, “When I bought our new phones, I programmed them to locate each other.”

“I know.”

He pulled her door open. “Get out. I need your car.”

She got out.

“I put my phone on that dead guy’s body, and I’m going to use yours to track it. Tell the cops to get Almanzo and have him track me on your phone.” He got into her car, started it, and drove out to the driveway. While he waited for the gate to open he turned on Diane’s phone and engaged the GPS locating application.

A map of the nearby area appeared on the screen followed by a red dot with a circle around it. The dot was heading for San Vicente Boulevard. He began to drive up the street toward San Vicente, but not fast enough to intercept the three vehicles, or to pull within sight of them.

Stahl looked at the dashboard of Diane’s car. Diane had filled the gas tank recently. He was not surprised. She was a woman who had lived alone for years and learned early in life to keep a car’s tank full, change the oil, and keep the tires properly inflated. It wasn’t a stupid car. It wasn’t sporty and eye-catching. It wasn’t cute and underpowered. It was a simple black Toyota Camry with a decent-size engine.

He put Diane’s phone in the holder she’d installed on the dashboard for it, so she could talk or use the GPS for directions with her hands free. When he had to stop for the next red light, he reached for the M4 he’d left leaning against the passenger seat. He removed the magazine and looked at the slot along the front to count the copper-jacketed noses of the rounds inside. He’d fired twelve rounds, which left him eighteen.

His Glock 30 pistol held only ten .45 rounds and one in the chamber. He had another ten in his spare magazine.

Stahl had no intention of engaging in a gun battle with these men. He might as well shoot himself here and save the drive. But it felt better to have something to fire if he made a mistake. He might be able to delay his death for a while.

The tracking signal on Diane’s phone was strong. He followed a course parallel to the one the dozen men were on. Before long he could see that they were heading northeast consistently, not speeding or taking reckless chances. The symbol of Stahl’s phone stopped at some intersections and went steadily through others, which meant they were obeying traffic signals. They were being careful not to appear to be fleeing.

They crossed Wilshire Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard, and Hollywood Boulevard. They climbed into the hills at Crescent Heights, and stayed on the road as it became Laurel Canyon. He checked the screen of Diane’s phone often as he drove, careful on the winding road to stay back where the vehicles he was following couldn’t see him.

He couldn’t be sure the vehicles were together anymore. He had slid his phone into the dead man’s clothes. All he had was a fairly reliable indication that he was following a corpse.