Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(102)

Except that without lights, at night, the cameras wouldn’t be much use.

I used a BB gun from across the road. Far enough that I wouldn’t trip the sensors. Aiming not at the bulbs but at the motion sensors underneath, each marked by a tiny red light that I assumed meant they were on and working. Like a pair of eyes in the darkness. A harder shot, a much smaller target, but doable because of the twin red dots. And worth the effort. The sensors would be less obvious when cracked. The floodlights were there to facilitate the cameras, not the other way around. Meaning the lights didn’t have any camera pointed at them. Two shots did it. The two red dots disappeared. The vertical rods on the gate were easy to grab. I climbed up, swung one leg and then the other over the spikes, and let myself down on the other side.



* * *



Gregg Gunn’s house was perched high up on a hill. The house glowed like a spaceship. Low-slung, modernist architecture, all long, clean lines and sweeping expanses of glass. A glowing blue pool and emerald hot tub sat upon terraced hills in front of the house. If this was what the gated parts of Woodside looked like, no wonder it was up there in the per capita charts or whatever the economists used to measure that kind of thing.

Gunn’s Tesla was parked outside. The only car in the circular driveway. I moved quickly. There were surely more cameras. I tried the front door. It was locked. I walked down the side of the house and saw another, smaller door. The kind of informal entrance that a homeowner would use day-to-day when coming in with bags of groceries.

This door opened.

I found myself in a vast, icy kitchen, impersonal as a laboratory. Cold recessed LED lights pinpricked down. The eight-burner stainless steel Wolf range looked like it had never been used. The floor was moody gray tile, travertine, maybe. Someone had gone and dug up a granite quarry and spread it liberally for the countertops. The counters seemed untouched, as if a crumb would be a traumatic new experience. I walked through the kitchen into a living room that was furnished with Japanese touches, soft earthy tones and bamboo floors, several silk screens taking up corner space. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows and a glass sliding door looked onto a wide stone patio. I could see the blue from the pool and, far below, points of light from other homes.

I found him in his study, although there wasn’t a single book anywhere in the room. A gleaming samurai sword hung against one wall. Another silk screen embossed with Japanese characters. Gunn sat behind a walnut desk, dressed casually in a black T-shirt and yoga pants, one of those cold-pressed juice bottles next to him. His expression was contemplative, as though he was pondering the world’s weightiest problems and making considerable progress.

The only thing wrong with the image was the hole in his forehead.

I looked around carefully. I was alone. I walked over to take a closer look. A single gunshot had killed him. A vertical line of blood had traveled from the wound, down over the right eye, along the cheek and chin, and finally onto his shirt. The back of his head was in worse shape. Stickiness over the brown curls of his hair. There was a stainless-steel Colt revolver on the desk, close enough to his right hand that it was impossible to tell by looking if it had fallen out of his hand or been placed there. It might have been loaded, or not. I wasn’t going to find out. There was no way I’d put my hand on that gun.

I noticed a spattering of marks on the upper half of his face, like freckles. Gunpowder burns. A close-range shot, suggesting suicide. Equally, someone could have just walked up and stuck a barrel in his face. Impossible to tell whether he had shot himself or someone else had.

I had shown up with a long list of questions. I had been looking forward to a long talk. We wouldn’t be talking after all.

The house was quiet.

It was time to go.



* * *



I found a pay phone in town. When Mr. Jade answered he sounded dispirited, but his tone changed when he recognized my voice. “Nikki? Is that you?” His words were eager. “We’ve been wondering when we’d hear from you. Have you found anything?”

“Doesn’t sound like you have.” Usually I didn’t like rubbing it in. But it was the FBI, and I couldn’t resist. I might never have the chance again.

“We’re desperate,” he admitted. “We have no idea what’s going to happen tomorrow, much less how to stop it. We tried everything. Whatever Karen Li had for us, it’s gone.”

“That’s because you’ve been looking for the wrong thing this whole time.”

Mr. Jade sounded almost plaintive. “What do you mean?”

“I mailed you something. It will reach you soon, in the next couple of days. Just in case we don’t get a chance to finish this conversation.”

Now he was more confused. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“Because there’s still something I have to do tonight. If I can.”

He started to say something, but I wasn’t done. “In the meantime, I’m going to start by giving you an address belonging to a certain CEO. Probably not a bad idea for you to pay him a visit.”

Now he was frustrated. “That’s easy for you to say. Whatever corners you might have cut, there are rules. For us, anyway. You know that we can’t just show up and walk in without a warrant.”

“You can if someone tells you a crime has been committed.”

“But no one—”