He pauses for a long time, and then he says, “Gentry . . . I’m going to tell you something about me.”

I sigh. “Knock yourself out.”

“I was South African military, Fourth Special Forces Regiment. As a recce I saw action in the Congo and the Central African Republic, plus some other shit I’m not talking about.”

“Good. Because I couldn’t care less.”

Jaco sniffs out a short laugh. “My point is, when I left the military, I went into intelligence. For three years I chased down every Gray Man sighting or potential Gray Man sighting in Africa. A couple hunts in the Middle East, others on the Indian subcontinent. Hell, I even went to Bangladesh on a lead.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Never been to Bangladesh.”

He acts like he doesn’t hear me. “But intel work was a fookin’ bore. No Gray Man, no action, no test of the mettle like I’d gotten in my twenties as a recce.”

To this I say, “Any chance I could get you to tell me why you called?”

Another laugh from the South African, but I can tell in his voice he’s stressed. He ignores me again and keeps up his story. “No other options for a bloke like me but to go into corporate security. I thought it would be tiresome and monotonous, but it was even so much worse than that. So when my company was contacted by a corporation in the Consortium, when I started gettin’ the full picture of what this is all about, when me and my boys started working tough, demanding jobs to keep this entire bladdy enterprise afloat . . . I was like, ‘Yeah. That’s more like it.’”

“You’re a piece of shit. You know that, right?”

He ignores the comment and continues. “I love my job, Gentry, is what I’m saying. But now . . . now I’m up against you, the one prize I’ve wanted for years and years. Can’t believe how lucky I am that you got drawn into this whole thing.”

I shake my head at this. “I bet Kostopoulos and Babic wouldn’t consider themselves lucky. Does the Director know you see my arrival in California as a positive turn of events?”

Now Jaco laughs maniacally into the phone. “I see the glass as half-full. The Director wouldn’t get it, he’s not like us, not a huntsman. He likes his food caught and cleaned and carved and served to him on a china plate. You and me, on the other hand, we don’t care about the dish. We only care about the art of the pursuit, the thrill of the kill.”

“You’re right about that. So why don’t you let Roxana go, and then you and I can hunt each other into oblivion.”

“Nice try, but if you got your girl back, I can’t be sure you wouldn’t just slip away, Gray Man style. No, mate. I need the lamb on the stake for the lion to come for it.”

“You’ve told your boss she’s a bargaining chip, but that’s not it, is it? You are holding on to her so that I keep coming for you.”

Jaco says, “Bingo.”

A.J. hands me a cup of coffee from the McDonald’s on the corner, and I take a swig. Normally I would benefit from the caffeine almost immediately, but this asshole has me so amped I have plenty of energy. I say, “I’m going to be on top of you, soon. My face in your face, while your life is leaving you through a hole in your chest. And, as you’re bleeding out, I’m going to ask if you’re still so happy to have me chasing you.”

“Keep tellin’ yourself that, Gentry. It will bring us closer.” Almost to himself he says, “I love my job.”

I’m tired of this testosterone-infused back-and-forth, but I’m trying to get something out of him I can use. He seems to think I’m going to appear in front of him any minute, but the truth is I’ve only got his boss narrowed down to an area some hundred miles in diameter.

But before I can try to pull intel out of him, he says, “Until that day, Court.” And then the line goes dead.

Shit.

* * *

• • •

As the bodyguard worked on pulling coffee mugs out of a cabinet and pouring milk into them, Roxana looked out the window at the back of the property and thought it looked like images she’d seen of Versailles. The pool, the marble deck, the foliage and setting: it was idyllic.

9102 Jovenita Canyon Drive. What a strange place for the devil to live, she thought.

She’d seen the address on the way in; all she had done as they drove was try to find street signs, notable buildings, and other things that would help her direct her sister to her, should the opportunity arise. But while pulling into the drive they stopped a moment for the gate to open, and right in front of her she saw the street address on the massive mailbox.

If she had harbored any lingering doubts that she would be killed by her captors, they disappeared when she realized no one around her had any qualms about her knowing exactly where the Director lived.

She knew she was a dead woman now, there was not a shred of doubt about it, but she still held out faint hope that she could reach out to her sister before she died.

On the walls around her in the kitchen she saw pictures of the Director, a man she now knew was named Ken, and his family. A girl of about fifteen stood with her younger brother and sister in one; they all held oars and life preservers in front of a swiftly moving mountain stream as they smiled at the camera. In another, the same kids—younger—stood lined up back to front on skis with an impossibly gorgeous snowcapped mountain chain in the background.

Her eyes drifted back out to the rear of the property, and she was surprised by a hint of movement through the sliding glass doors to her right. There, on the first story of a detached white two-story building covered in vines next to the pool, she saw a brown-haired girl pass in front of a window. Not once, not twice, but repeatedly. The girl seemed to be carrying items back and forth, appearing and then disappearing from view.

She was the right age to be one of the girls Roxana had seen along the pipeline over the past two weeks, but this one didn’t look familiar to her.

The foreign man watching over her poured coffee in cups and insulated tumblers, draining the pot. As he finished, one of the South Africans entered the kitchen.

“We don’t have time for that, mate.”

“Your boss isn’t my boss, and my boss says to get some coffee in his men. Watch the merch while I pass these around the house.”

The man Roxana had heard referred to as Lion Two sighed. “Got any left for me?”

“Be my guest.” The bodyguard grabbed four mugs and started out of the kitchen. On his way into the living room, he looked back to the South African. “She’s tied up. Just don’t let her go anywhere.”

“Hurry it up, then.”