by Sean Black
The FBI and the LAPD had far greater resources than he and Ty had: of that there could be no doubt. Despite his run-ins with them, they were one of the most professional and well-run law-enforcement agencies in the country. However, their size and their command structure meant that, in a situation like this, they would be behind Lock and Ty in their speed of response. Also, they were hampered by protocol, and by constitutionally guaranteed things, like Miranda rights and search warrants.
Bottom line: the LAPD, like any police force, was in the business of catching the bad guys and placing them in front of a jury. Lock had only one objective: to save the woman he loved.
His decision was made.
He turned towards Raven. ‘No more lies. It goes no further than this vehicle, but I have to know the truth.’
She started to speak but he cut her off. ‘The truth. You know Clayton Mills. I could see it in your eyes this afternoon. I bet Hill could as well. That was why they wanted to put you two together in that café.’
She took a deep breath. ‘I never asked for any of this.’
Rage surged inside Lock. ‘Any of what? Cindy’s head cut off? A cop and his wife killed? Carrie kidnapped? He’s doing it for you. Or his buddy Reardon Galt is.’
‘He did Fairfax for me. That’s all.’
Lock was shocked. ‘That’s all? Fairfax was murdered, and you’re saying he did it for you?’
‘It wasn’t like that. I met Clayton in a club. He was working security for the girls. Fairfax was hassling me, wouldn’t leave me alone. I didn’t ask Clayton to kill him. Clayton was just supposed to frighten him off. But things got out of hand.’
‘So he did kill him?’
Raven nodded, tears streaking her face. ‘But no one knew about it apart from me. Then he got caught on a parole violation for something dumb, and I thought that was the end of it.’
‘Then the letters started?’ Lock prompted.
Raven nodded. ‘First from Clayton, saying how he hoped I was waiting for him. Then his cellmate must have found my letters because he started writing to me too. I thought about telling Clayton but I knew he would have killed him.’
‘So why did you write back? Why didn’t you just go to the cops?’ Ty asked.
‘I was there when Fairfax died. Clayton said that if I went to the cops, he would tell them about it. Tell them that I had practically begged him to kill Fairfax.’ She turned to face Ty. ‘I couldn’t take the chance of going to prison. Not with Kevin to look after.’
‘You think they’re competing for you?’ Lock asked.
Raven scratched a nail across her nose. ‘I don’t know. All I know is that people are being killed and everyone is acting like it’s all my fault.’
Lock stared out at the rain, thinking of Carrie and what she was going through. He’d had a bad feeling about this job from the start, and he’d been right. He hadn’t trusted his instincts and now there was a terrible, terrible price to pay.
‘I need to pee and I can’t wait,’ Raven said suddenly.
‘You’ll have to,’ Lock said. ‘You can go when we get somewhere quieter.’
‘I can’t. If I don’t get out, I’m going to pee in the car.’
Ty glanced over. ‘I’ll take her.’
‘Okay,’ said Lock, grabbing Raven’s arm as Ty opened the driver’s door. ‘Leave your bag here and remember – if you do anything stupid, it’s not just Carrie who gets hurt.’
Ty gave Raven his windbreaker to hold over her head as they made a dash across the waterlogged street towards an International House of Pancakes. By the time they reached the door of the restaurant they were both soaked and Ty pulled her in under the canopy.
‘Listen, you made your choices a while back and now you have to live with them. I’m all out of sympathy for you, so whatever Lock threatened you with, you can double it from me,’ he said.
She stared at him, drops of rain running down her face. ‘You wouldn’t hurt Kevin.’
Something like shock must have flickered across Ty’s face because Raven put a hand on his arm. ‘He’s gonna hand me over to this sicko in return for Carrie, and walk away, isn’t he?’
Ty shook his head. ‘We’ll get you out as well.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Raven hissed. Taking a small step back, she brought her knee up into Ty’s groin with as much force as she could muster before taking off down the street, water detonating up from the puddles as she sprinted through them.
Across the street, Lock watched Ty go down in agony. He moved into the driver’s seat, but Ty had taken the keys with him. Fuck.
He reached over to open the door and get out as Raven fled. He’d skirt round the block in the other direction and try to head her off. But as he got out of the truck his phone rang. He jabbed down on the answer button.
‘You have her ready for me?’ the man on the other end of the line asked, as casual as someone ordering a takeout meal. ‘The clock’s ticking.’
Sixty-four
Lock started towards the alley, then stopped. Alleyways were for someone wanting to hide. Raven knew she had two men looking for her and that if she tried that she’d be found. It might take a few minutes, but it would happen.
She could have easily burst through the doors of the Pancake House and screamed the place down. A black guy chasing her who looked like Tyrone did? Hell, there would have been a line of people to call the cops.
But she hadn’t. Because she was up to her neck in this. Because what she wanted was escape, and people don’t escape in alleyways.
Lock raised his cell to his ear. ‘Forget the alleyway, Tyrone. What’s the next street?’
‘Bentley,’ said an out-of-breath Ty.
‘Okay, make for that.’
‘Roger.’
Lock alternated between a fast-paced walk and a jog, hands dug into the pockets of his jacket as the rain tumbled all around him. He took another right at the corner of Sardis and Bentley, scanning for cabs that would provide Raven’s most likely passage out. She could have stepped into the traffic and flagged down a passing motorist, but again this would almost certainly have alerted the cops. By her actions Raven was revealing herself: every decision she made peeled away another layer until, Lock figured, only her guilt would be left visible.
He saw her halfway down the block, pressed into a doorway, eyes scanning the street. He kept close to the storefronts.
Loosening into a walk, he reached behind his back and pulled out Ty’s SIG, keeping it low and down by his side. He called to her as the traffic slid past them on the rain-drenched street, angling the gun in his hand so she was sure to see it. ‘He didn’t say whether he wanted you alive or dead, and right now I’m not fussed either way.’
He had forty minutes to get Raven into the car and to the drop-off point up in Topanga Canyon. Over that by even a minute and Carrie was definitely dead.
‘I got her,’ he told Ty. ‘Go get the Ford and bring it round.’
Raven’s shoulders slumped and she stayed put while he closed in on her, Lock wondering what he had become, and whether the moral chasm between him and the man who held Carrie was still as wide as it had once been.
Sixty-five
Clayton Mills had the music cranked up loud, the bass line from Kool and the Gang’s original version of ‘Ladies Night’ moving the floorboards underneath his feet. Hell, yeah, the feeling was right, he thought, as he slung a T-shirt on and headed for the window at the back of his apartment, levered it open and crawled out.
He landed with a hip-shuddering thump, his left boot almost slipping out from under him on the damp grass. He looked around. The rain had driven everyone, even the small knot of local kids that had come to his door earlier trick-or-treating, from the streets.
The van was still parked across the road, but no one would be able to see him here where the building catty-cornered to the next apartment block. There was a wall to negotiate so he put on his gloves and hauled himself over. Then it was a straight walk to the ca
r he was using, a piece-of-shit 1989 Camry, which was one of the easiest cars there was to steal. When he’d first seen it parked here it had seemed like a sign from God. Mills had learned so many things from the penal system over the years – jacking cars wasn’t the half of it.
More than anything he’d learned about people. How to read them. What drove them. And how to use those two pieces of knowledge to get them to do what he wanted them to. That was what the other cons had never understood about him. His command of a situation wasn’t physical. There were plenty of guys in the pen who were physically stronger or more violent than he was. No, his strength was psychological.
Back in Pelican Bay, he had taken a lot of shit for sharing with Reardon Galt because of what Galt was inside for. By rights, he should have sliced and diced him that first night in the cell. But he had never quite understood how a guy who’d taken some asshole bank manager’s family hostage, and maybe beaten the snot out of the guy in front of his family, could feel morally superior to another guy just because he hadn’t slipped his hands into the bank manager’s wife’s panties while he was doing it.
Kids … well, kids would have been different. He wouldn’t have stood for sharing with a cellie who’d hurt little kids. But a little misunderstanding between a man and a woman? Well, shit happened. It happened between guys in the pen, and no one was lining up to dish out a beating to the guys inside the joint who forced their affections on another man.
So, Mills had let Galt live, even kept an eye out for him, and they’d started to get along. And Galt, it turned out, had had his uses. He was out before him for a start. He could use him to clear the decks.
What had taken Mills aback, though, was how seriously Galt had taken to his task. Once he was outside the gates, Mills had had no direct control over him. He’d gotten inside Galt’s mind, and maybe he’d done it too well because all he’d asked the man to do was take care of business – to make sure that Raven was nice and single for him getting out. But Galt had taken his instructions way too literally and Cindy had been the surprise.
Back in the pen he’d known all about Galt writing to Raven. He’d thought it was funny and something he could use. He’d promised Galt that he would get to spend some time with Raven too. He had lied.
What was that saying? Two’s company and three’s a crowd? Well, Mills had no desire to share Raven with anyone, least of all Reardon Galt. But before he got to that, there was some business to take care of. Tricky business with that motherfucker and his bodyguard buddy. He’d need Galt for that. Later, maybe not so much.
First things first, though, Mills thought, the engine of the Camry turning over. He had to get to Topanga Canyon.
Sixty-six
To dry their clothes Lock had the truck’s heater running full tilt as, next to him, in the driver’s seat, Ty edged steadily along the winding canyon road. A flimsy sheet metal barrier was all that separated them from a near vertical drop to the canyon’s floor. Rain continued to pour and a muzzle flash of lightning broke somewhere out over the Pacific. The water carved gullies from bone-dry soil and rock as it tumbled down from the mountains and splashed on to the narrow road.
Lock hauled up a canvas bag and started to dig inside. A few seconds later he came up with what looked like a matt black nail gun or one of those devices you bought at the hardware store to locate wires or studs in your walls.
Raven studied it for a moment. ‘What the hell’s that?’
‘It’s what might just keep you alive tonight. It’s an RFD tracking device. Or, rather, it’s the device I’m going to use to implant an electronic chip under your skin so we can find you. Don’t worry, you’ll barely register it going in.’
‘And what about it coming out? I started out not wanting to be stalked and I finish up with something inside me that’s registering my every move.’
Lock started to load it with the chip. ‘It’s a straightforward procedure to have it taken out.’
Raven closed her eyes. ‘Go ahead. Believe me, I’ve had weirder things than that inside me.’
The chip itself was around 0.5 millimeters wide and the same height with a depth of around half of that. In other words it was smaller than a grain of rice, and the device popped it under the skin. It might leave a slight red mark or abrasion, so Lock had decided to put it near the nape of Raven’s neck where her long black hair would conceal it.
The only drawback with the technology was that he was going to have to stay within a certain range of the chip or he’d lose signal. He knew Carrie’s kidnapper would be looking out for someone following him. If Lock got too close to him, he might freak out and kill Carrie. If he stayed too far back, he’d lose the kidnapper entirely. Getting Carrie and Raven out alive came down to a grain of rice balanced on the edge of a knife.
‘Pull your hair up at the back,’ he instructed Raven.
She gathered it in one hand and shifted her hips in the seat so that he had a clear view of the back of her neck. He held the device up, pressing it to the skin.
‘Count of three, okay?’ he said to her.
‘Okay,’ she said.
‘One,’ he said, squeezing the handle on the device to launch the chip into her.
She jumped. ‘You said count of three.’
‘I lied. The more you tighten up the more painful it is,’ he explained, as her hand went up to the tiny reddening rise in her skin.
‘Don’t rub at it,’ he said, looking at Ty who was hunched over the wheel, picking out the road through the silvery tumble of rain past the headlights.
‘Is it okay if I ask a question?’ Raven said.
Lock shrugged.
‘What if you don’t find me in time?’ she asked, as, ahead of them, the silver rain cascaded through the light and disappeared into the jet-black void.
Sixty-seven
Carrie lay on the couch and listened to the rain battering at the windows. Gusts of wind came every few moments, whistling down the chimney into the tiny fireplace. Inside, everything was perfectly still, Carrie included.
The front door had slammed ten minutes ago, followed by the noise of a car engine turning over. The crackle of gravel, muted by the rain, had ebbed away to silence. Her kidnapper was gone.
He’d left Carrie on the couch, eyes dead, but heart still beating. She hadn’t even heard him lock the door on his way out. He seemed to have deemed her an item on his list that he didn’t have to worry about.
But Carrie had one thing going for her. After what had happened she wasn’t entirely convinced that she wanted to go on living. Before, such a thought would have seemed melodramatic. But not any more. It wasn’t that she felt suicidal. It was simply that she was floating in a place where not to live seemed equal to going on. If life was somehow premised on faith, which it always had been for Carrie, then in the past few hours she had shifted towards a position of agnosticism. Her indifference, she realized after a few minutes’ reflection, might give her the strength to get out of here.
If she wanted to live to see the sun rise, this was her chance. Before her kidnapper had left, she had heard him talking on his cell phone about an exchange, but she didn’t believe for a second that he would hold up his end of the bargain. Once he had Raven, he would kill her. Unless, of course, he chose not to come back to the house at all. But that didn’t seem likely, not the way he’d been talking. He’d told her that he wanted to be with her one last time before he left. With her and Raven. All three of them together. Carrie would rather die before she let that happen.
Pushing aside the tides of shock and nausea that were still washing over her, she began to work herself into a sitting position on the couch. With the way he had tied the ropes, even this much movement left her arms and legs burning with lactic acid. Finally, she ended up squatting on the edge. The mid-section of rope linking her arms and legs was the problem as it restricted her ability to stand, which presumably was the idea.
Unable to stay in the same position, there was only one thing for it. She a
llowed herself to fall face first on to the hard wood floor. She angled herself as she did so, protecting her nose and mouth but taking a hefty whack to the side of her head in the process. There was a loud booming crack, which could have been thunder but was as likely her temple meeting wood.
A shooting pain slammed all the way from the side of her head down her neck and then along her arm. She took a couple of deep breaths, then started on the next section of what she needed to do, visualizing it in her mind’s eye.
Using her elbow and knee she pushed herself across the floor, her view of the room skewed and distorted by the low angle. Then her foot found purchase and she discovered that, by pushing off on it, she could move maybe ten inches or even a whole foot forward. In between pushes she took two good breaths. Then on the third inhalation she would push off again.
Time was difficult to track. The thought of Galt walking back in seemed to accelerate it; the throbbing pain in her head slowed it down. No matter: all she had to do was count to three and remember to breathe.
The door leading into the kitchen lay open. She had already checked that before setting out on this epic voyage across the living room. Stone tile against her face marked her entrance. She stopped for a moment and rolled over a little more on to her back, seeking out a view of what was above her, and searching for a drawer that might hold cutlery – a knife.
The kitchen counter was in a single length against one wall. There were three drawers, each of equal depth and about six inches wide. She tried to move into a position where she might be able to raise herself back into a squat, which proved to be a hell of a lot harder than she’d thought it would be. On the couch she’d been able to use the drop to lower her legs. With all her limbs on the floor now and at an equal height, this wasn’t an option.
She stopped struggling, and took another moment to think it through as a wall clock ticked away nearby.