The Innocent: The New Ryan Lock Novel

by Sean Black

  As she got within a foot of him, he pivoted hard and brought up his elbow, striking her hard on the jaw. She tumbled backwards and fell against a wooden chair. He went to pull her up. She kicked out hard, catching his shin. He lost balance for a fraction of a second. It was enough. She half crawled, half ran past him.

  Lock went after her. She was headed for the bedroom. He eased back a little, letting her push through the bedroom door. He already knew what she was going for.

  He stood in the doorway as she ripped open the bedside cabinet, pulled out a gun and leveled it at him. Lock stared at her. He reached into the pocket of his jacket. He withdrew his hand, and opened his palm to reveal a half-dozen bullets. ‘Games are over, Kelly. You’re going to tell me where I can find him.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  Lock palmed the bullets from her bedside gun back into his pocket and came out with his cell phone. He held it up so she could see the screen. ‘Then I have the FBI on speed dial.’

  ‘And if I help you?’ she asked.

  Her asking the question was a good sign. But whatever he said now had to be credible. ‘You can have a head start getting out of here. Best I can do.’

  ‘And Daniel?’

  Lock said nothing.

  ‘Your friend Tyrone would be dead by now if it wasn’t for my brother,’ said Kelly.

  That made sense to Lock. From what Ty had said, Reeves and Tromso had been picked off. But, then, so had a bunch of other people whose only crime was … what? Hell, the kid from the frat had been out looking for Jack Barnes. What had he done to deserve being shot?

  ‘Your brother needs help,’ said Lock.

  ‘And you think he’s going to get that in prison?’

  ‘He’s going to hurt more people, Kelly. We both know it.’

  Eighty-eight

  Ty killed the call from Lock, and spun the wheel of the SUV hard as he pulled a U-turn. Next to him, Malik stirred. Exhaustion had taken him down hours ago.

  ‘We there?’ Malik asked. His eyes were flecked with red. He rubbed at his temples. ‘My head is killing me.’

  Ty plucked a bottle of water from one of the cup holders and tossed it to him. He caught it one-handed. ‘Taking a detour,’ said Ty. ‘You ever hear of a guy called Daniel Svenson?’

  Malik shook his head. ‘The surname, yeah, place is full of Svensons, but a Daniel Svenson? No.’

  ‘His sister’s the cop. Daniel’s her brother. He was one of Becker’s victims way back when. And we need to find him.’

  Malik unscrewed the cap of the water bottle. ‘They’re going after him?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ said Ty.

  Twelve minutes later, Ty turned off the small country road they had been driving down for the past mile and onto a dirt track with ditches at either side. They headed for a stand of trees, and drove through an open farm gate. A mutt greeted their arrival, chasing alongside and barking.

  Ty scanned the low ranch house ahead. He looked for movement – the twitch of a curtain, a door opening. He was starting to think that maybe he should have dropped Malik off before now and let him hitch-hike back into town, but time wasn’t on their side, and he still didn’t fully trust Malik not to do something stupid.

  He stopped twenty yards short of the front porch and parked their vehicle side-on. He started to get out. ‘Give me five minutes. If I’m not back by then, get out of here.’ He dug into his pocket. ‘Here. Call Ryan when you get a safe distance away. His number’s the first on the list.’

  ‘The hell I will,’ Malik said, reaching for the door handle. ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘No, you ain’t.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Malik, ‘from what you’ve been told, this guy’s pissed at people here for looking the other way. Well, I didn’t. And look what it cost me. He’ll talk to me.’

  ‘And if he won’t?’ asked Ty.

  ‘I’m not scared of dying,’ said Malik. ‘You?’

  Ty thought about it. ‘Hell, yeah.’

  Together they exited the vehicle and walked toward the house. Lock had given Ty only the briefest run-down of Daniel’s military background. That had been enough. If he was still here, and he wasn’t in the mood, they were both likely dead already.

  Malik stepped ahead of Ty. His right foot was an inch shy of the bottom step leading up to the porch when Ty grabbed him and pulled him back. Malik stumbled. Ty held up a hand to silence his friend. He bent down and examined the fishing line that been strung across the step. It disappeared into some bushes.

  Ty slowly parted the leaves of the undergrowth. He glanced back at Malik. His friend’s eyes widened as they checked out the green chunk of metal shaped like a butterfly’s wing that was rigged to the fishing line.

  ‘What the hell is that?’ Malik asked.

  ‘Something that will most definitely ruin your day,’ Ty told him. More specifically, it was a Russian-manufactured anti-personnel mine. The rigging was crude. It would have taken moments for someone who knew what they were doing to disarm it. But it could do one hell of a lot of damage. The butterfly mine also told Ty that Daniel wasn’t home, and that there were plenty more nasty surprises where that one had come from. People tended not to land-mine their front porch. Neither did they rig boobytrap windows – as the two small piles of sawdust on the nearest ledge where someone had drilled into the frame tended to suggest. Ty was just grateful that Daniel hadn’t mined the driveway. He turned back to their vehicle.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said to Malik. ‘And watch where you’re putting your feet.’

  Eighty-nine

  Five thousand tiny lights flickered along Wolf Road as the people of Harrisburg walked in silence toward the stadium. Parents pushed babies in strollers, elderly couples walked arm in arm, but mostly the crowd was made up of college students, their youthfully earnest faces lit from underneath by the battery-powered candles they held. Heads down, their breath misting in the freezing night air, Malik’s team of college basketball players held pictures of their coach’s dead family as they led the athletic department toward the stadium.

  At the head of the parade, Allan Laird walked arm in arm with his wife. In his free hand, he carried a wreath. It would be laid in remembrance of those who had died. Behind him came the great and good of the college administration staff, along with the college chaplain and the leaders of the three main churches in Harrisburg.

  Beyond the candlelight parade, the town was bathed in darkness. As a mark of respect for the victims, it had been agreed that the street-lights would be turned on at the conclusion of the remembrance ceremony. Until then only a few homes in every street had their lights on.

  In the stadium parking lot, a half-dozen satellite trucks were parked up. A couple of reporters gave breathless updates to camera. Institutional corruption, college sport, a presidential hopeful and a mounting body count, not to mention the sleaziest of sexual overtones, had ensured national and international interest. Movie studios and publishers were already circling, ever ready to translate unimaginable human misery into dollars. No detail would prove too debased, no moment too salacious, that they wouldn’t pore over it in ghoulish detail.

  Daniel Svenson looked down at the people directly beneath him from the metal walkway that ran around the edge of the stadium’s roof. He smirked at the crowd’s forced solemnity, the furrowed brows and glistening eyes as, one by one, they trickled into the stadium and began to take their seats. In the distance a minor cavalcade sped along Wolf Road – a Town Car sandwiched between two police vehicles. Of course, thought Daniel. Every theatrical production needed its star attraction. And every star insisted on making the most dramatic entrance possible.

  The crowd parted as the vehicles pushed slowly to the main entrance. A bodyguard opened the back door of the Town Car and Governor Andrew Becker climbed out, all teeth and tan, his features arranged so that they conveyed just how bad he felt about what had happened. Daniel could imagine him practicing his pained look in front of the mirror, a
coterie of advisors suggesting minute facial adjustments.

  Daniel shouldered his rifle and studied Becker through the scope as Allan Laird stepped forward to shake the governor’s hand. Cameramen jockeyed with the crowd. College kids held up their cell phones to snap a picture. Two people held up great slabs of iPads to do the same. It was as much as Daniel could do not to burst out laughing. He lowered his rifle. He could have killed them both where they stood. No one could have stopped him. But that would have been too easy.

  He stepped back from the overhang and took ten steps toward the access door. He dug out a key and opened the padlock he had placed there prior to the security sweep of the stadium.

  Slipping inside, he moved swiftly along the narrow metal walkway, and lay down. A hundred and fifty feet below, people were still taking their seats. At the far end of the stadium a photo-montage of the dead was thrown up onto a screen. In front of it was a podium from which the speakers would address the crowd.

  Half a dozen cops stood at various points inside the auditorium, thumbs hooked into their belts, their eyes scanning the crowd for Daniel Svenson. Daniel studied each of them in turn. He was glad they were there. They gave people reassurance but, in reality, they might as well have been cardboard cut-outs for all the good they would do when it came time for the real show to start.

  Ninety

  Their faces shadowed by Harrisburg basketball hoodies, Ty and Malik walked out of the players’ entrance tunnel as the crowd took their seats. Ty hit the answer icon on his cell as Lock’s name flashed on the display.

  ‘We’re about to hit start,’ said Ty.

  ‘Any problems?’ asked Lock.

  ‘All good so far. You?’

  ‘We just got here. Should know in five minutes,’ said Lock.

  Lock braked slowly as the lumbering Chevy reached the bottom of the track leading to the cabin where Weston Reeves had almost killed Ty. He switched off the engine and glanced across at Kelly Svenson, who was next to him in the passenger seat, her hands cuffed behind her back. ‘We’ll walk from here.’

  He got out, came round, opened her door and helped her out. Ty had already brought Lock up to speed on the security measures Daniel Svenson had put in place at his house. Lock hadn’t survived this long to get blown sky high by a jerry-rigged IED in Minnesota. He pushed Kelly in front of him, using his left hand to guide her forward. With his right hand he drew his gun.

  As they stepped onto the track, Lock let her walk ahead. He waited until she was twenty yards clear, then followed her. He wasn’t exactly proud that he was using Kelly as a human mine detector, but the situation was as it was.

  It took them five minutes to reach the cabin. He closed in behind her as they got within a hundred yards of it.

  ‘Okay, call for him,’ Lock told her.

  She stayed silent.

  Lock jabbed his gun into the small of her back.

  ‘Daniel?’

  A moment passed. Lock jabbed her again, a little harder this time.

  ‘Daniel! It’s Kelly. Come on out.’

  There was no answer from the cabin. Lock decided to try another tactic. ‘Daniel,’ he shouted, raising his SIG and pressing it against Kelly’s temple. ‘I have your sister here, and if you don’t come out in the next ten seconds, I’m going to blow her head off.’

  Ninety-one

  A bank of television cameras, photographers and reporters hunkered down in front of the stage as Minnesota’s governor, Andrew Becker, strode purposefully toward the lectern. It took a moment for the crowd to settle as the stadium lights faded until only the stage was lit. They had already been softened by speeches and prayers, and a long, carefully crafted apology from Laird that had danced between contrition and admitting legal liability. But Becker’s speech was the big gamble. It had been his brother, Aubrey, who had visited this chaos on Harrisburg, and the stench clung to him. Now he planned to do what any modern career politician would do under the circumstances: make himself out to be the real victim.

  The governor’s hands clasped the podium as he surveyed the crowd. He cleared his throat. The silence was close to complete. He took out a silk handkerchief from the top pocket of his suit and dabbed his eyes.

  ‘My advisors told me not to come tonight,’ he lied. ‘But I figured I owed it to everyone here, and the people of this great state who have placed so much trust in me, to be here to honor all of those affected by this horrific—’

  He felt something hit his chest. There was a burst of flashes from the photographers. He looked down to see orange paint spattered all over his suit. Confused, he looked around for the source, but the auditorium was dark beyond the podium. He could hear a couple of police radios crackle nearby. The others on the stage looked at each other.

  It’s only paint, he thought. Someone had obviously thrown a paint pellet at him. He tried to wipe it off the tips of his fingers. It wouldn’t budge. He decided to continue. If he skulked away now, that would make the news. It was better to go on.

  He held up his hands. ‘I understand that people are upset.’

  This time he heard the dull thud of the Airsoft gun as another paint pellet sailed through the darkness and hit Chancellor Laird in the same spot, slap-bang on his heart. The governor looked around as Laird’s wife darted in front of her husband, fussing over the mess the paintball had made of his suit.

  The governor was confused and angry at the interruption. ‘Folks, can we remember that this is a memorial service for the victims?’

  The same sound echoed through the stadium as another paintball slammed against the chest of one of the trustees who was seated next to the governor’s wife. ‘Security? Can we have the lights—’ said the governor, as the crowd’s murmurs grew louder and the paintballs kept coming, the next one slamming into one of the campus cops stationed next to the stage.

  The lights came on full blast. People in the crowd squinted. The cops were busy scanning the crowd for the source of the disturbance. The photographers were on their feet, rushing the stage for a better angle of the governor and his paint-spattered suit.

  Then, as quickly as they had come on, the lights went out. The entire stadium was plunged into total darkness. A young woman screamed. Murmurs gave way to the sounds of panic. People began to move, heading for the exit but stumbling over each other in the dark.

  The only thing visible were the spatters of paint. They glowed with a fierce luminosity, marking out each of the four people who had been hit by the pellets.

  A second later there was a loud bang and a blinding light as a flash-bang grenade was tossed into the middle of the crowd. More people screamed and scrambled from their seats. The sound of a single gunshot rang out. The orange paint adorning the governor’s suit gave way to blood as a single round slammed into his heart, killing him instantly.

  Ninety-two

  Lock watched Kelly Svenson close her eyes as he began the countdown from five. Daniel had until then to step out of the cabin and give himself up.

  ‘Five.’ He allowed a second to pass. His heart was thumping. Kelly took a long, slow breath.

  ‘Four.’ Another second elapsed.

  Lock moved his finger to the trigger, and counted off three. ‘Last chance,’ he shouted toward the cabin.

  Tears were rolling down Kelly’s cheeks. ‘Two!’ he said.

  He started to tighten the trigger. Kelly screwed her eyes tighter still. He could feel her body tense. She bit her lip. Slowly he eased the pressure so that the barrel of the SIG was no longer pressed against her skin.

  ‘One!’

  At the last second, he snapped the gun down and to his right, and shot into the ground. The sound echoed back toward them. Kelly was sobbing now.

  ‘He’s not here, is he, Kelly?’ he said to her.

  She shook her head.

  He reached up and swiped the tears from her eyes with his thumb. ‘Look at me.’

  She opened her eyes.

  ‘You would have let me kill you? For what?’ said
Lock.

  Her voice fell to a whisper. ‘I made him a promise.’

  Lock raised his SIG again. ‘Did you pinky-swear when you made it?’ he said. ‘Listen to me, this shit’s real. People are going to die. Playtime is over. I don’t have time to reason with you, or tell you how sorry I am that this happened to you and your brother. We’re past that, and I’m not going to let more innocent people die because of Aubrey Becker and what he did. So, you’re going to stop yanking my chain, and tell me where Daniel is before anyone else gets hurt.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Lock, ‘you will.’

  She stared at him, defiant. ‘No, you won’t. You wouldn’t shoot a woman. Especially not one who’s handcuffed.’

  ‘You think?’ said Lock, aiming the SIG at Kelly’s right foot and pulling the trigger. Kelly shrieked in pain. Nothing in the cabin stirred. She fell backwards. Lock let her. She writhed around on the ground, screaming, barely able to breathe. Lock stood over her, and aimed the gun at her left knee. ‘I’m going to keep shooting until either you’re dead or you tell me.’

  She started to speak only to be stunned back into silence as a series of explosions boomed their way toward them from the valley below. Lock whipped round to see a plume of black smoke rising from the stadium.

  Ninety-three

  A mother clutching a toddler stumbled and fell as people forced their way toward the exits. Together Malik and Ty fought their way through the crowd, picking people up and tossing them out of the way. Malik reached the woman first, and hauled her back to her feet as Ty grabbed the howling little girl she’d been holding. Ahead, a dense mass of bodies was pressed up against a door as more people piled in, adding to the mêlée.