Zero Sum, Book One, Kotov Syndrome by Russell Blake Page B

satellite footage of
the area and isolate who entered between the hours of six and
eight-thirty.
    “He was such a gentle dog. You should
have seen him. A teddy bear.” Steven was choking up. God damn
whoever did this.
    “Call Doug at 24/7 Locks in Costa Mesa.
He’s in the book. He’ll fix you up and won’t charge an arm and a
leg. Try to get some sleep.” He took a few steps towards the door.
“I have a chocolate lab. I’d want to kill the son of a bitch if it
happened to me. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s just I can’t do
anything. I’m really sorry. Honest to God.” He seemed sincere, and
Steven recognized he was right. There was nothing more to be
done.
    “Thanks for spending the time,
Sergeant. I’ll call if anything else comes up.”
    “I’ll have a car drive by every hour or
so tonight just to keep an eye out. It’s a little slow – you’re
lucky it isn’t Saturday night.”
     
    Peter was having a hell of a time
figuring out why most of the Griffen data was inaccessible to him.
He’d been doing the PI thing long enough and knew enough people on
the inside of various law enforcement agencies to usually get all
the info he needed within a few hours. Not this time. He was
running into a lot of brick walls. And that set off his
alarms.
    This smelled different, and dangerous.
He kept hitting roadblocks, dead ends, sanitized reports,
stonewalling. He’d never encountered anything like it before,
outside of the top-secret, clandestine world of international
espionage. But this was a money manager, not the undercover station
chief in Uzbekistan, so why all the subterfuge?
    Peter was developing a nagging sense of
something far larger than what appeared on the surface. An iceberg
of shady dealings, of carefully crafted secrecy, of influence and
access far beyond what he’d expected. And that worried him. Why had
Steven taken on something this dangerous? Why invite a street fight
with unknown adversaries? Who needed this kind of grief?
    But that was Steven for you. Ever since
a boy, he’d been stubborn as a mule. Peter could still remember
times when they’d butted heads, Steve no more than twelve or so,
with that look of determination in his fierce little eyes; a look
that said, ‘Talk all you want, I’m still going to do it my way’.
That had been one of the primary reasons he’d steered Steven into
martial arts. The combination of discipline and physical demand was
perfect for his temperament and offered positive ways to channel
and develop his energy. If he didn’t figure out a way to get it
under rein, that quality could easily have gone down a more
destructive path. Steven liked to play by his own rules, and that
could turn criminal if he wasn’t guided correctly.
    Peter got up and walked over to the
coffee maker, pouring another cup into the oversized mug that was
his perpetual companion when he was working. His eyes absently
roved over the plaques, the awards lining the walls of his study, a
tribute to his skill and professional dedication. He’d been good at
his job, and responsible for a lot of twisted examples of humanity
getting locked up. He paced a little, then slid back into the worn
high-back chair that had been one of his few luxuries when he set
up his home office.
    Peter had always wanted a son, but
fickle chromosomes had conspired against him. That had been a
regret for years, but he’d mellowed with time and eventually made
peace with his lot in life. He was successful at a career he
enjoyed, with enough money to do anything he felt like, within
reason. He had a wonderful marriage, their union blessed with two
beautiful daughters, now long out of the house and through college,
making their own ways in the world. There were no
complaints.
    Steven represented the son he would
have wanted and Peter reveled in his every success. Over the years
he’d developed from a gangly, slightly rebellious kid into a
strong, confident alpha male, capable of anything he set his mind
to.