Ryan Lock Series Box Set 2

by Sean Black

  33

  With Lock’s words of caution from the previous evening still at the front of his mind, Ty climbed onto the bus to take him back to Broken Ridge. Today would be his first day on the job. He had kept on the motel room, but he would be living at the academy. At least for the next three days and nights.

  He’d taken a last-minute decision to pack his gun. He doubted he’d need it but it was always better to be fully prepared. In any case, no one had told him he couldn’t have a gun with him. If someone saw it, and he was asked, he was sure he’d be able to explain it. This was not a part of the nation where having a handgun was seen as out of the ordinary. It wasn’t like he planned on sticking it on his hip and strutting around the academy with it there.

  Because cell-phone coverage in the area was best described as patchy, he’d agreed to check in with Lock when he could. Meanwhile, Lock would be in town, asking questions, and getting more of a feel for how the locals saw Broken Ridge. He was also scheduled to meet with at least one former employee who’d been shut down from speaking publicly about the place by an NDA (non-disclosure agreement), but who seemed to harbor serious concerns. Needless to say, Broken Ridge had described her as a disgruntled former employee with an axe to grind.

  On the bus, Ty kept an eye out for the little old lady. He didn’t see her. Apart from a couple of sleepy-eyed farm laborers, he and the driver were the only people on the bus. The driver, the same one as the previous day, had given him a look when he’d seen Ty’s bag, but hadn’t said anything.

  Ty decided to sit up front. Maybe the driver could use a little help to start talking. Once they’d pulled away, he leaned in a little.

  “I’m kind of nervous. Starting a new job today.”

  The driver glanced back at him for a split second. “Congratulations.”

  “First real job since I came out the military. Tough economy, I guess. Been looking for a while.”

  “Tell me about it,” said the driver.

  “You serve?”

  “Never got the chance.”

  Ty had heard that one a lot. It always came from people who wouldn’t have taken the chance if it had come along. Which was fine. The military wasn’t for everyone.

  “So, the people at this place seemed like good folks. I’d heard some mixed stuff. Y’know, like they’d had some problems.”

  The driver’s eyes flicked in the mirror toward Ty and beyond him to the two dozing farm laborers. “Yeah,” said the driver. “I really wouldn’t know too much about it. The people there pretty much keep themselves to themselves.”

  “Guess they don’t use your bus, then.” Ty laughed. The driver seemed cagey and Ty figured it was best to back up and keep it light.

  “No, sometimes they do. I’ve had the odd runaway.”

  Ty’s ears pricked up. “Oh, yeah? What do you do?”

  “Drop ’em off in town, and call the Sheriff’s Department. They usually come, pick ’em up and bring ’em back pretty damn quick.”

  “Pretty damn quick, huh?” said Ty, pushing his luck a little.

  He needn’t have worried. The driver was warming to the topic. “Oh, yeah, anything out there and the sheriff is real responsive.”

  “How come?”

  The driver laughed. “Boy, you are new around here, ain’t you? Well, maybe I can save you putting your foot in it. The lady that’s in charge, Gretchen, the sheriff’s her brother-in-law. Plus, and this is between us, with the kind of money that place makes, I’m guessing the school kicks in some bucks. Tax base is kinda narrow out here to keep things running. Hey, you know what they charge at that place?”

  Ty did. In fact, when Lock had told him, he’d made him repeat it and then write it down because he’d refused to be believe it. Tuition at an Ivy League college was probably cheaper. “No, what?”

  The driver repeated the number that Lock had given him. Ty let out a low whistle. “No kidding.”

  “Yeah, crazy, ain’t it?” said the driver. “I guess, though, if you have that kind of cash and you’re worried about your kid, it makes sense. Better than them ending up dead in a ditch somewhere, pregnant at sixteen, or jacked up on drugs.”

  “Yeah,” said Ty. “Better than any of those things.”

  34

  As Ty stepped off the bus, he checked his cell phone for a signal. There was a single bar out of a possible five. He decided to give it a shot. He pulled up Lock’s number on the display and tapped the call icon.

  No luck. It wouldn’t connect.

  He kept walking along the road toward Broken Ridge, his bag slung over his shoulder. As he went he started to tap out a text message for Lock that he could send as soon as he got a signal. He was sure there was some kind of cell-phone coverage in the area, it was just patchy.

  Gretchen being related to the local sheriff was hardly surprising. In small, isolated communities those kinds of connections were far from unusual. By and large, people in this type of place tended to stick together. That went double when you factored in the money that a school like Broken Ridge brought into the local community.

  As Ty finished up his brief text message to let Lock know about the local sheriff’s connection to the school, all kinds of things were suddenly clicking into place. Such as why a school where three people had either died suddenly or been killed had been allowed to remain open.

  That particular death had been explained, but knowing the connection between the school and local law enforcement, maybe the explanation didn’t quite hold up. The staff member who had been killed was a young woman in her early twenties, by the name of Kelsey Reese.

  Kelsey had taken a job at Broken Ridge immediately after graduating from college in California. Six months into her time at the school, she had been walking alone near it. In fact, she’d been on the dirt track Ty was walking on now when she had been shot once at close range. She’d bled out before anyone found her.

  A local man, Willard Lowsen, had been arrested. He had confessed to killing Kelsey. It was a confession he later retracted, but by then it was too late. He was already serving the first year of a life sentence without possibility of parole. Willard had been talking about making an appeal against his conviction when two members of a notoriously violent prison gang had stabbed him to death in his cell.

  Before the murder, Willard Lowsen had already had a stack of convictions, and had only just been released from prison for a sexual assault. From what Lock had told Ty, no one was going to miss him. And certainly not enough to ask any questions. He’d had motive, and he’d had opportunity. DNA on the murder weapon, and on the body of Kelsey Reese, matched to him. It was pretty much a slam-dunk, even without the confession he later claimed had been beaten out of him by the local sheriff.

  A couple of bars showing a signal finally appeared on Ty’s cell phone. He was about to hit the send button on the text to Lock when he heard the rumble of an engine closing in fast from behind. He stepped off to the side of the track as a pick-up truck ground to a sudden halt. The rear tires threw up a plume of dust. Ty had to cover his mouth with his hand to avoid catching a lungful.

  The driver leaned over to the passenger side of the cab, his face obscured by a ball cap pulled down low over his eyes. Ty turned slightly so that he was side on to him. The driver took off the cap, and Chris Fontaine grinned like an idiot at him.

  “Sorry, man, I went to see if I could give you a ride from town, but the motel manager told me he’d seen you getting on the bus,” he said.

  That was weird, thought Ty. Chris hadn’t mentioned anything about picking him up. Neither was he sure that he’d mentioned where he was staying to the man. Although, to be fair, when it came to places to stay in the nearby town, it was a pretty narrow field. Ty wondered what else Chris had asked the motel manager.

  Chris popped open the passenger door. “Hop in.”

  “Thanks.”

  He had already decided that the less he said, the less chance there was he would slip up on his cover story. At the same
time, he realized that it would only get harder to maintain his new identity as time went on. He would start to relax, and that was when he was most likely to make a mistake.

  There was still something he felt he needed to say to Chris. It would be in keeping with the person he was pretending to be. Someone who really needed this job right now. What was it that actors always talked about? The character’s motivation.

  “Listen, Chris, about yesterday, I kind of feel like I owe you an apology.”

  Chris glanced across at him, puzzled. “For what?”

  “Well,” Ty began, “I know you were really rooting for me to get this gig.”

  “I was. Believe me. Positive male role models are really hard to come by for these kids.”

  Yeah, no kidding, thought Ty.

  “It’s easy enough for us to find women to work here, but guys are another story,” Chris continued.

  “Anyway,” Ty cut in, “I really appreciate all your help. I just didn’t want you thinking I was trying to step on your toes yesterday. Y’know, with that kid who was pretending she’d hurt herself.”

  Chris took one hand off the truck’s steering-wheel and waved away the apology. “No problem. Don’t give it another thought. I’ve been suckered by some of these kids dozens of times. It’s easily done. And, you have to remember, some of them have had literally years of practice, pulling the wool over their parents’ eyes before they finally got called out on their bullshit and were sent here for us to straighten them out.”

  “Cool. I didn’t want you thinking . . . well, I don’t know what I was worried about you thinking. I just wanted you to know that I really appreciate the opportunity.”

  Chris gave a broad grin that allayed any of Ty’s niggling worries. “Man, we’re lucky to have you. That’s what I told Gretchen. And don’t worry about those two girls either. We had more trouble with them last night at the fire pit, and we had to put them in the time-out room.”

  Some questions immediately sprang to Ty’s mind, but he held off asking them.

  “Believe me, it’s been coming with those two,” said Chris.

  Before he got on to what time out involved, Ty figured he’d ask some more general questions. He knew that Chris would get off on playing mentor to the new guy.

  “So, when a kid comes in, can you tell how resistant they’ll be?” Ty knew from reading the staff manual that resistance was one of the buzzwords at Broken Ridge. It was revealing: it suggested the need to break down, to counter with an opposing force. It was a word that Ty was familiar with in a military context. It often cropped up when talking not just about an enemy force but interrogation. In fact, Lock had discovered that many of the psychological techniques used at private institutions, like Broken Ridge, were pretty much straight out of the CIA manual on enhanced interrogation techniques. They also had more than a passing resemblance to the techniques employed by cults. Techniques that were often highly effective, but that, according to psychologists, often came with a hefty price that was paid down the road by the person who had been exposed to them.

  “Sometimes,” said Chris. “But it can go the opposite way too. Like that kid Mary, for instance. She’s not openly hostile, like some of the students are, but her behavior can be a lot more difficult to deal with.”

  Ty decided to keep playing the eager student. “How do you mean?”

  Chris slowed the truck to a crawl. They were getting close to the ranch house, and Ty could sense him warming to the subject, keen to give the new guy the benefit of his experience.

  “It’s not confrontational,” said Chris. “She’s not going to cuss, or be deliberately disobedient. It’s more that she works the angles. Like yesterday, for instance, trying to get you to feel sorry for her.”

  “I see what you’re saying,” said Ty, even though he really didn’t. Or, rather, he did, but he didn’t agree. The kid had hurt her ankle. She hadn’t been faking. Maybe Ty had never done this job, but he knew the difference between those two things. “And what about the other young lady? What was her name?”

  “Ruth Price?”

  Ty nodded. “Yeah. You think she just got drawn in by it?”

  Chris laughed at that question. “No, she’s just straight-up trouble. Has been since day one. Doesn’t think she should be here.”

  Ty didn’t think it was wise to say anything to that. He stayed quiet.

  “She’s still in complete denial. That’s why we put her in time out with Harper. See if we can’t start to break her down,” said Chris, as he pulled up in back of the ranch house so that Ty could drop off his gear. “Course, then we build ’em back up again. Better than they were before. Like the military in that regard.”

  It was the military way to some degree. Ty could see that. But there was also one important difference. At least in America, the people who served their country in the military volunteered to do so. Here, they were all conscripts.

  Ty grabbed his bag and fell in behind Chris. They were headed for the dorm that Ty would be in charge of. He allowed Chris to go on ahead, and dug his cell phone out of his pocket. He still hadn’t sent Lock the text he’d drafted.

  Now, looking down at the screen, he could see there was no signal again. Chris, who’d been rambling on, suddenly turned back toward him. Putting the phone away quickly would only look suspicious. In any case, Chris couldn’t see the screen and who Ty was texting.

  “You’re out of luck,” Chris said to him, with a nod in the direction of Ty’s cell phone.

  “No signal?” asked Ty, looking skywards.

  “That, and we use a jammer. Kids were smuggling in phones. Only way we could really stop them making calls was by installing one. If you need to make a call you can use the landline in the ranch house. Or you can walk back down to the road. It’s a complete pain in the ass at times, but it’s also kinda nice being off the grid.”

  Ty smiled politely, and followed Chris inside.

  35

  Mary was still asleep when Ruth woke. She managed to untangle herself from the other girl without waking her up. If they were going to be stuck in here all day, there didn’t seem much point in waking her.

  Ruth crossed quietly to the sink, and tried to turn on the tap. It took three attempts before she finally managed it. It coughed and spluttered before a trickle of sludgy brown water appeared. She waited until it ran clear, gathered some in her cupped hands and splashed her face a few times. The water was freezing cold, but it felt good against her skin.

  The night might have been cold, but she could already begin to feel the heat outside beginning to build. She wasn’t sure how hot the barn would get during the day. She guessed they would find out soon enough. At least they would be shielded from the direct sunlight.

  With Mary still fast asleep, Ruth took a few minutes to look around. There was a ladder that led up into a hayloft. Gingerly, she climbed it. She was halfway up when she heard someone outside and came down quickly as she heard someone removing the padlock.

  The barn door opened. Ruth’s heart sank a little as she saw who it was.

  Rachel. No doubt come to gloat.

  In her right hand, Rachel was carrying a brown canvas shopping bag. She stopped when she saw Ruth standing at the bottom of the ladder. Ruth put her finger to her lips and pointed at Mary, still asleep on the dirty mattress in the corner.

  She was half expecting Rachel to fetch some cold water from the sink and use it to wake Mary. She didn’t. Instead, she walked across to Ruth and handed her the bag. “Breakfast. I asked to be the one who brought it to you. I got you some extra stuff too from your lockers. Clean underwear. Toothbrushes. Toothpaste. A fresh bar of soap. That kind of junk,” said Rachel, keeping her voice down to a whisper so as not to wake Mary.

  Ruth took the bag from her, uncertain what to say to this new version of Rachel.

  “This whole thing is such bullshit,” Rachel hissed. “Chris is such an asshole.”

  “Okay, who are you and what have you done with Rachel?” ask
ed Ruth.

  Rachel smiled, although it might have been a smirk. Ruth was still a little too disorientated to tell.

  “Very funny,” said Rachel. She turned to the corner. “How’s Mary doing?”

  “I mean it,” said Ruth. “What have you done with Rachel?”

  Rachel took a step back. She crossed her arms, the body language of the Rachel that Ruth had come to know and hate. “I play the game, Ruth. That’s all. Hate the game, don’t hate the player. Now, do you want this stuff or not?”

  Ruth may not have trusted Rachel, but she wasn’t going to turn down breakfast and clean underwear. She took the bag as Rachel held it out. “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Rachel, sounding half bitchy and half sincere.

  “So if you’re just playing the game, how come you’re still here? You could walk out any time you want to.”

  “I could, but where would I go? My parents still don’t want anything to do with me. If I leave here I get fifty bucks and a bus ticket home. How long do you think that would last?”

  Ruth saw Rachel’s point. “But you’ll have to leave some time?”

  “I guess,” said Rachel. “I’m working on a few things. Making some plans.”

  Ruth peered into the bag. Rachel hadn’t lied. It was crammed full of stuff. Ruth even glimpsed a pack of cookies that she knew were Mary’s favorites.

  “Look, I know I’m a bitch,” Rachel said. “And that’s not me acting. Not all the time anyway. This place has been hard on me too. It’s set up so that we’re against each other, but I’m not making any excuses for how I’ve been.” She turned back toward the barn door. Before she stepped back outside, she stopped. “I’ll be back at lunchtime, if they let me. Make sure you hide any of the stuff I shouldn’t have given you.”

  36

  Chris had all the boys in Ty’s new dorm line up against the far wall. He reeled off their names as each boy took his turn to step forward. They ranged in age from around thirteen all the way up to seventeen. Apart from one African-American and one Asian, they were white.