Ryan Lock Series Box Set 2

by Sean Black

Not that any of that mattered right now. If Ty having served kept Chris happy, and his suspicions at bay, all the better for finding out what kind of place this really was, and whether Donald Price really did have cause to be concerned about his daughter.

  25

  It was the middle of the afternoon, and it was baking hot. Not the optimal time of the day to be getting teenage girls to run outside. But right now, Ty, or Mark, was the FNG (the f—ing new guy) and, as such, he wasn’t about to point out to Chris that running in these conditions was just plain dumb. Maybe if you were a fighter on the last stretch of cutting weight before a bout it made sense. Other than that, it was just plain stupid, bordering on dangerous. The human body could cope with a lot, but dehydration could get you into trouble real fast.

  The group of teenage girls from Chris’s dorm was already lined up as Chris and Ty rounded the corner. Ty scanned the faces.

  Bingo.

  In the middle of the line of girls was Ruth Price. He was ninety-nine percent certain it was her. Her hair was cut short, but he’d studied the photographs her father had provided long enough to make the positive identification. Unsurprisingly, it turned out that divorced fathers like Donald Price had no shortage of pictures. Lock had also managed to cull some very recent ones from a couple of social-media accounts.

  So, at least the first part of Ty’s mission was already completed, and he hadn’t even officially started working at Broken Ridge. He had established that Ruth Price was here. His tiny body cam would provide official confirmation. He angled his feet so that the lens would capture her face.

  On the walk outside, Ty had excused himself to go use the bathroom. Inside, he had switched out the data card on his cell phone that he was using to archive the body-cam footage. He’d also checked that it had been recording. So far, so good.

  On the way out, he’d also put on his shades. He was glad that he had. Not only did they shield his eyes from the sun’s brutal glare, they also allowed him to do a quick assessment of Ruth, without it appearing too obvious.

  Compared to the slightly pale, puffy Goth teen last glimpsed on social media, she looked in good shape. Her skin was tanned to a light brown, she had lost ten to fifteen pounds, and her posture was much improved. Overall, her skin looked clear, and she seemed to be in better physical health.

  On a purely visual assessment he’d be able to tell Lock and their client that Ruth Price seemed to be in good shape. Not just holding up, and uninjured, but better than she had been before.

  But that was on a first pass. Watching her stand, hands behind her back, feet spread shoulder wide, there was something else about her appearance that was impossible to miss if you actually looked properly. It lay in her eyes.

  In the social-media pictures taken just before she’d left for Broken Ridge, she was out of shape and had bad skin and posture. That was all true. But she had seemed happy as she mugged for the camera and goofed around with her high-school friends.

  Now, she was tan and trimmed down, but her eyes seemed dead. Like she’d checked out of human life. The look didn’t even qualify as sullen. Or bored. It was an absence of anything, more than a presence of something.

  It was a look Ty had seen before. It was a deadness that he associated with some kind of trauma. It gave him immediate cause for concern.

  Chris tapped his shoulder. “You want to lead the run?”

  Ty half turned toward his new colleague. “Sure, I can do that. What’s the usual route?”

  Chris pointed out toward the eastern horizon. “There’s a dried-up riverbed about a half-mile or so that way. I usually run them down and back. Y’know, just as a warm-up.”

  Given the group in front of him, it didn’t sound to Ty like a warm-up. He reminded himself that he was there to gather intel. And by leading the group he’d get to set the pace, maybe ensure that everyone made it back warmed up rather than passed out.

  Ty walked to the center, ten paces back so everyone could see him. He clapped his shovel-sized hands together. “Okay, ladies, we’re going to run down toward the dried creek and back. I will lead. Do not get out in front of me. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir,” they all said in unison.

  “Okay, let’s move out,’ he added, feeling slightly ridiculous to be talking to a bunch of teenage girls like that.

  But, he’d figured, Chris wanted to see a performance, and they’d hired him because of his military background, so if their expectation was a drill sergeant straight out of Central Casting then that was what they would get.

  He turned and set a slow jogging pace. The girls fell in behind. Ty didn’t look back, just kept moving. The pace would probably seem slow until the heat set in.

  The jog down didn’t take too long. By the time they reached the dried-up creek, Ty was sweating from the heat. Run, jog, sprint or just stand, this kind of heat would make you break a sweat. That was why no one but gringos would be crazy enough to go running at this time of day, unless someone was chasing them.

  Chris caught up with him. “Maybe we could pick it up a little on the way back. They’re barely out of breath.”

  “Sure thing,” said Ty. “I heard you say ‘warm-up’, was all.” He locked eyes with Chris as he said it.

  Chris held up open palms. “Totally get that. I should have been clearer.”

  This was the male dance. Each of them working out who was the alpha relative to the other. Not that it was ever going to be close. But Ty didn’t want to push it too far. “Hey, I’m the new guy here. Why don’t you lead, show me the pace you like, and I’ll pick up any stragglers from the rear?” he offered.

  “I can do that.”

  Chris took off with no further instructions. An older brunette girl with a long ponytail, who looked almost college age, was first to take off after him. She practically raced off and, rather than falling in behind, ran beside him. Ty was fairly sure she was the same girl who had checked him out earlier. The other teenagers fell in behind.

  If Ty’s pace had been a little on the slow side, Chris Fontaine’s wasn’t. He set off like he’d just heard the bell ring for chow. The guy was a foot taller than most of the girls, with the stride to go with it. There was no way they were keeping up.

  As promised, Ty brought up the rear. He noticed that Ruth was holding her own. She was near the back, but not last or second last. That honor went to a short, overweight girl with brown hair cut into a bob.

  Among the pack of runners, Ty had noted her, too. She had stood out. Not just because she had the same dead expression in her eyes as Ruth Price and a few of the others. But because of the thin red scars, some small, but deep, and others long and thin that ran up and down her arms and legs: a tapestry of mental anguish turned inside out.

  Ty had to slow so that he was next to her. Her face was flushed from running, and she was sweating heavily. As he jogged alongside her, she stared straight ahead.

  “You’re doing good,” he said to her.

  She snuck a glance at him. “Thank you, sir.”

  His immediate reaction was to ask her to not call him sir. He already felt old.

  She was really struggling now. She looked like she might be about to throw up. But she kept going, albeit with more stumbling than actual running involved. Finally, she slipped, her left knee giving way under her. Ty caught her just in time, grabbing under her arm, and hauling her back to her feet. “You okay?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir. I’ll try harder.”

  She broke back into a jog, but she was limping. She must have pulled something when she’d slipped. Or maybe she’d twisted her ankle. The ground was hard and uneven. It was hardly a proper running track that absorbed some of the impact.

  “Okay, stop,” Ty told her. She did so, looking even more terrified than she had a moment ago. At least he knew there was still something there, beyond the abyss. “What’s your name?”

  “Harper,” she told him.

  “That’s your first name?” Ty asked.

  “No, si
r, my first name is Mary.”

  “Okay, Mary, if you’ve hurt your leg, let’s not make it any worse, okay?”

  “But if I stop running . . .”

  Her eyes were fixed on the rest of the group who were almost back to their starting point by now.

  “I ordered you to stop and I’m a member of staff. You’d be in more trouble if you disobeyed a member of staff, correct?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Okay, then you stopping is on me. Now, what hurts?” It seemed a strange question given all the scar tissue.

  “I think it’s my ankle.”

  Ty bent down. “Okay, let me take a look. Take your weight off.”

  He took her injured foot and got her to rotate it as best she could. From the way she reacted he was fairly sure it was a minor sprain. Nothing that a little rest and maybe an ice pack couldn’t cure.

  “Okay, Mary, you lean on me, and we’ll finish this up. Keep as much weight off that foot as you can. If you need me to carry you, you just holler.”

  Something approaching a smile flitted across her face. It was a little lop-sided, like she’d somehow forgotten to use that expression.

  With her arm around Ty’s waist, they walked back toward the others. Chris stood next to the girl with the long ponytail. Neither looked happy, which, as far as Ty was concerned, was too bad. Chris wore a pained expression while Ponytail Girl looked seriously pissed. Ruth was studying the ground, moving around a stone with the toe of her sneaker.

  “Mary here twisted her ankle,” Ty said. “We’re gonna go find her some ice before it starts to swell up.”

  Chris walked over to them. “Mark, can I speak with you for a moment in private?”

  “Sure.”

  The two men stepped away from the group of girls. “You recall what I said to you before about how manipulative the girls here can get?” Chris asked.

  Ty already knew where this was going, but he’d play along. It wasn’t every day he had someone call him out as being naïve. It was kind of entertaining. Ty had grown up in the ghetto. You didn’t do that, survive and thrive, by being easily taken in. “Sure, I remember,” he said.

  “Great,” said Chris, giving Ty an Atta-boy pat on the shoulder that, under different circumstances, might have garnered a different reaction. “So Mary here is, how do I say this? She’s kind of an attention-seeker. She doesn’t like to do the Phys Ed stuff, so she fakes being injured to get out of it.”

  Now the question was just how far Ty would let this go. He’d seen her trip and pull up. He knew she hadn’t been faking. And as for being an attention-seeker, that was kind of an interesting way of phrasing it. There was the usual teenage girl attention-seeking behavior that revolved around clothes, makeup and taking selfies, and then there was carving up your limbs with a razor blade so you could feel something. Ty wasn’t a psychiatrist. But he was fairly confident that the latter was a little more serious than attention-seeking, and should be treated as such.

  Lock had talked to Ty a lot over the years about “offering the victory.” What it came down to was allowing, when it suited your agenda, an asshole to be an asshole. Allow them to think they had the advantage over you.

  If Ty argued the point it could quickly go south. And, to figure out what was going on here, he needed to have Chris on his side. Chris was a talker, unlike the boss lady, Gretchen. He could learn a lot about what was really going on at Broken Ridge from him.

  “I get it,” said Ty. “Guess I have some learning still to do. I’m kind of used to people being straight up.”

  “Which is great,” said Chris, giving Ty another pat on the shoulder. “But here it can be a weakness.” He took a step back from Ty. “So are we good?”

  “Yeah. Thanks for the advice.”

  “Terrific.” Chris marched back toward the group of girls. Ruth was standing next to Mary, who was doubled over, rubbing her twisted ankle.

  “Okay, Harper, you can go run it again,” Chris shouted at Mary. He turned toward Ruth. “Price, you can go with her, seeing as how you’re so concerned.”

  Ruth started to object, but quickly shut up. Chris and Ponytail Girl glared at her. The others did their best to fade into the background.

  Out of instinct, more than anything, Ty started to move forward. He checked himself. If he intervened now he was pretty sure it would end with his employment, which had barely started, being terminated. You didn’t cut across your manager. Not on the first day.

  Ty stood, arms folded, and watched as Mary and Ruth set back out toward the dried-up creek a half-mile away. Chris walked behind them. Mary could barely move past a jog. She half walked, and half limped.

  At one point, Ruth went to help her. Chris barked for her to mind her own business. She stepped away.

  Behind his sunglasses, Ty took everything in. On his chest, the body cam recorded the scene.

  There was discipline. There was holding kids to account. There was building character through asking people to face adversity.

  What Ty was watching unfold in front of his very eyes was none of these. Not least because he could tell that Chris was getting off on the power trip. Ty could imagine someone with good intentions doing this. It wasn’t that either. This was a grown man proving what a tough guy he was by humiliating a couple of teenage girls.

  * * *

  By the time the two girls had made it back, Ty could see the pain of every step etched onto Mary’s face. Ruth Price was back to being checked out. She had shown compassion for another girl and paid the price.

  There followed a series of exercises. Crunches, push-ups, planks. The group worked through them, Chris screaming at the slower ones or those who struggled. Ty moved among them, correcting bad form and trying to encourage them on. All the while thinking it was a bunch of horseshit. If you wanted to make sure that a person grew up to hate physical exercise, and completely avoid it as an adult, this was the best way to do that.

  Chris, meanwhile, seemed happy to be proving his point. “See what you can do when you put your mind to it, Harper,” he said to Mary, her face now streaked with tears.

  Finally, mercifully, it was over.

  “Okay, ladies, go get showered and dressed for dinner. And don’t be late.”

  As they headed back to their dorm, Chris glanced at Ty. “It’s tough love. It ain’t pretty. But it works.”

  Ty kept his own counsel.

  “You should stay for dinner, Mark,” Chris added.

  “I’d like that,” lied Ty, “but I have some things to do if I’m going to be moving my gear in here tomorrow.”

  26

  The bus ride back into town gave Ty a chance to cool down a little about what he’d just seen. Taking out the last part, where Chris had punished an injured kid for the crime of twisting her ankle, it hadn’t been all bad.

  But what if he’d been right about her faking it? Ty hadn’t known for sure that she was injured. Yes, she’d slipped and seemed to have hurt herself. But if that was her way of getting out of running, she could easily have faked a slip.

  As for the rest of it, it was hardcore. No talking, boys and girls separated, regular physical exercise that was mandatory. But it was hardcore compared to any regular school in the US. Some of which were, if people were being honest, like a zoo.

  Compared to many other parts of the world, Broken Ridge wasn’t all that hardcore. Having traveled the world, Ty knew that in many places school discipline was extremely strict. Go to places in Asia or Africa and the kids were literally terrified of their teachers.

  What else?

  The kids he’d seen had appeared to be in good physical shape. Hell, Ruth Price had looked a ways healthier than she had back at home with her mom. She was eating right, getting her vitamin D from being outside, and moving around; all the stuff that used to come as the standard package for a kid of Ty’s generation and before.

  There were no TVs, video games or cell phones that Ty had seen. Even the staff didn’t appear to be carrying phones
. Maybe that was down to lack of coverage in the area or maybe it was policy. He could ask Chris tomorrow. But those were all plus points in Ty’s book. Half the time people wandered around like zombies, their eyes glued to some screen or another.

  The teaching seemed kind of basic. Or non-existent. But then again, these kids had been sent to Broken Ridge to get their heads on straight. If they’d been using drugs or booze or doing whatever else, then presumably the priority was to fix that first. If they needed to, they could catch up on the academic part when they got home.

  The bus rolled to a stop. The door hissed open. An old lady got on with a shopping bag, the kind on rollers. The driver stood up to help her. Ty watched all this, impressed. He couldn’t imagine seeing something like that in LA. People on the coasts could rag on the ‘fly-over’ states all they liked, but out here there were good people with solid values.

  The bus pulled away. A County Sheriff’s patrol car rolled past it. The cop in front glanced at Ty for a second, then he was gone.

  Okay, Ty thought, so Broken Ridge was basic, but hardly a brutal regime. So why did he still have a nagging sensation in the pit of his stomach? It came back to Mary, the girl with the scars. But presumably that was why she was there. They hadn’t looked fresh. He would ask Chris about her history tomorrow, see what he could find out. It might allow him to ask about Ruth, too, seeing as how she’d got in trouble for helping out Mary. He’d run it past Lock first, but that could be a good way in. If he’d gone in asking questions about Ruth straight away, they’d have smelled a rat.

  The bus was moving through the edge of town. Although the place was so small that there wasn’t much distance between the edge and the center. It was early evening. The place wasn’t so much quiet as dead. There was no one out on the streets, likely because of the heat. Most people were probably cooling off in a local bar or at home having dinner with their family.

  The only place that looked busy, judging by the parking lot, was the place where Ty and Lock had eaten lunch. The food hadn’t been at all bad, which would explain the number of cars parked outside.