Pike drove to the small lot where he normally parked. Only three cars were in the lot, and he recognized all three. He stopped but did not shut off the engine. The grounds were landscaped with palm trees, hibiscus, and sleek birds-of-paradise. Pike studied the play of greens and browns and colors against the stucco walls. Larkin said, "What's happening?" Pike didn't answer. He saw nothing out of the ordinary, so he shut off the engine. "I'll be thirty seconds. Stay here. Don't move."

Pike slipped out of the Jeep before she could answer and trotted up the walk to his door. He checked the two dead-bolt locks and found no sign of tampering. He let himself in and went to a touch pad he had built into the wall. Pike had installed a video-surveillance system that covered the entrance to his home, the ground-floor windows, and the parking lot. Each of the six cameras made a digital capture every eight seconds.

Pike set his alarm, let himself out, and trotted back to the Jeep.

Larkin was still under the dash. She said, "What did you do?"

"I don't know anything about these people. If they come here, we'll get their picture, and I'll have something to work with."

"Can I get up?"

"Yes."

When they passed back through the gate, no one appeared in the rearview mirror. Pike turned toward the Albertsons. Larkin climbed out from under the dash and fastened her seat belt. She looked calmer now. Better. Pike felt better, too.

She said, "What are we going to do now?"

"Get the new car, then a safe place to stay. We have a lot to do."

"If you're not a bodyguard, what are you? Bud told my father you used to be a policeman."

"That was a long time ago."

"What do you do now? When someone asks what you do, say you're at a party or a bar, and you're talking to a woman you like, what do you tell her?"

"Businessman."

Larkin laughed, but it was high pitched and strained.

"I grew up with businessmen. You're no businessman."

Pike wanted her to stop talking, but he knew the fear she had been carrying was heating the way coals heat when you blow on them. This was a quiet time, and the quiet times in combat were the worst. You might be fine when hell was raining down, but in those moments when you had time to think, that's when you shook like a wet dog in the wind. Pike sensed she was feeling like the dog.

Pike touched the side of her head. When he touched her, her lips trembled, so he knew he was right. "Whatever I am, I won't let anyone hurt you."

"You promise?"

"Way it is." He smoothed her spiky hair.

She didn't say anything more for a while, and Pike was thankful for the silence.

ROBERT Crais is living the American Dream. As an award-winning novelist and the creator of one of crime fiction's most popular detective duos, he has it all, including a home in the Santa Monica hills of Los Angeles, the city where dreams are made.

Crais's story began in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he grew up in a blue-collar family in which three uncles and two cousins were police officers. Crais initially planned to pursue a career in mechanical engineering, but at age fifteen, he bought a secondhand paperback of The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler. Reading that book changed his life. He knew then that he wanted to write, and he began to devour the work of authors such as Dashiell Hammett, Robert B. Parker, and John Steinbeck. He dropped out of college just shy of graduation and headed to Hollywood in the early 1970s to pursue his dream of writing.

A lean period of amateur film-making and selling short stories followed. His first breakthrough came when he sold a script for the television show Baretta. He began scriptwriting for other shows, including Quincy, M.E.; Cagney and Lacey; and L.A. Law. Before long, he picked up an Emmy nomination for his work on Hill Street Blues. "Television had an enormous impact on my novels," says Crais. "There are many lessons I learned that I still carry with me, such as characterization, the importance of dialogue, and how to drive a story forward."

What Crais didn't like about scriptwriting was the lack of freedom to create exactly what he wanted. "It was always someone else's characters, always a collaborative effort," he said. In film and television, "the writer is never truly responsible for what you see. There are a lot of fingers in that pie. And when it comes out, there are good things in it and things that are not so good."

So Crais walked away from his lucrative job to pursue his true goal. "For me, writing is about freedom, and novels were always the dream. Books are my Disneyland, my personal amusement park. I get to design whatever I want." His first two attempts were, he candidly admits, awful, and they remain unpublished. But the death of his father in 1985 triggered an idea for his debut, The Monkey's Raincoat (1987), and it proved to be the catalyst that propelled him to fame.

In that novel, a woman walks into Elvis Cole's office in search of her missing husband. She is so dependent on her husband that she cannot function in everyday life-an all-too-familiar scenario for Crais. "My parents were married for fifty years and had a traditional marriage. My mother never paid any bills and hadn't even used a credit card." The plot allowed Crais to explore some personal issues, and he began to imbue his work with deeper emotional authenticity. "Novel writing is about human beings and what lies beneath their surface. Every one of my books has that subtext." Despite warnings from Crais's own agent that the era of the traditional white male detective was over, The Monkey's Raincoat won the Anthony and Macavity awards and was nominated for an Edgar. Over the next decade, Crais's fan base grew, skyrocketing in 1999 when L.A. Requiem made the bestseller list.

The Watchman marks the eleventh outing for Crais's detective duo Joe Pike and Elvis Cole. In this novel, Crais explores their characters even more deeply-especially Joe Pike. "I think they reflect what's going on with me and the world as I see it. I'm showing sides of Joe Pike I've never revealed-what it's like being Pike from the inside. This is one seriously dangerous dude. A complex man, and a cat you definitely don't want on your case."