by Sean Black
“I will.”
“How are you holding up? Have you been hurt?”
The kidnapper came back on the line. “She’s fine. Don’t be late to the next location. Do everything we ask, don’t talk to anyone else, and she’ll stay that way. Break any of those rules and she’s dead.”
He clicked off. A second later an incoming text pinged on the screen with a fresh set of coordinates. He walked back into the dining area and headed over to Ty. Their coffee was on the table, but the food had still to arrive.
“We gotta go.”
Ty looked at him like a kid who’d just been told that Santa would bring them coal and switches instead of a new bicycle. “Now?”
“Now.”
Ty got to his feet as he laid down enough bills on the table to cover the food they’d ordered but wouldn’t get to eat. He shook his head as he stared balefully in the direction of the kitchen. “Man, when we finally get to these motherfuckers, I’m really going to lay down some pain.”
He followed Lock toward the door and out into the cold of the parking lot.
49
Eighteen minutes later, they rolled up a dirt track not too far from the freeway. On one side was a stand of trees, on the other a barren stretch of open ground. Up ahead was a single-story house. To one side, a chain-link dog run ended in a concrete kennel. On the other side of the house he could just about make out the rear end of a burned-out car.
Slowing to a crawl, Lock parked next to the kennel. That way anyone who was watching them from inside the house wouldn’t have a clear line of fire toward the car.
This run-down ranch house in the middle of nowhere posed a different question than either the prison or the courthouse. Why the hell were they here?
His cell phone rang. The by now familiar voice at the other end of the line started speaking before he had the chance to say anything.
“The front door is unlocked. Go inside. Alone.”
The call terminated. Lock relayed to Ty what he’d just been instructed to do.
“I don’t like it. Why they want you to go in there alone?”
He didn’t know. But there was only way to find out. “If they wanted me dead I’m sure they could have killed me by now.”
“I don’t know, Ryan.” He stared at the house. “This place creeps me out. Let me come in with you.”
He didn’t disagree with him. It had a serial-killer vibe.
“It’ll be fine,” he said. “And if it’s not . . .” He grabbed his Maglite from the glove compartment, handed Ty the car keys and got out.
Rather than walk to the front of the house, he skirted round to the back of the property, passing the empty dog run. He’d been asked to go inside, but no one had said anything about using the front door.
Behind him, Ty had already gotten out of the car and taken up position, his gun drawn, ensuring that the car remained between him and the front of the house. If he had to come out in a hurry, Ty could provide cover as well as alert him to anyone else trundling down the dirt track toward them.
Pushing on, he made it to the rear of the house. Like the front, the blinds had been drawn to cover every window. No lights were on. A few feet away he saw a 48-gallon wheeled plastic trash can. He lifted the lid, and shone the Maglite inside.
His cell-phone screen lit up. He took the call.
“Stop fucking around and go inside, like I asked you to.”
He shifted the beam of the torch from the trash can to the rear of the house. A camera was mounted above the back door.
“Okay, enough of the cloak-and-dagger bullshit, what’s inside?”
“You’re starting to try my patience.”
“The feeling’s mutual. What’s inside?”
“You’ll know it when you see it.”
Switching the Maglite to his left hand, he kept the beam trained on the camera. He pulled his SIG from its holster and fired a single shot at the camera. It shattered into tiny pieces.
“I’m done playing games,” he said.
There was silence for a few seconds. “There’s a folder on the kitchen table. Everything you’ll need is inside.”
“Thank you.” He terminated the call.
A few seconds later Ty appeared from the other side of the house. “You okay?”
“Fine. Just trimming back some of their remote surveillance,” he explained, flashing the torch beam back across the distended wires of what had been the security camera.
“You checked out the car?” Ty asked him.
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
“There’s a body in back. Looks like a woman, but who knows? It’s pretty badly torched.”
His stomach lurched again before he remembered that he’d only just spoken to Carmen, so whoever was in the car, it couldn’t be her. He walked up to the back door, ran the beam of the Maglite around the frame, checking if it was booby-trapped. With Ty a step behind him, he pushed the door with the toe of his boot.
It swung open. He walked in, through a utility room with an old washing machine, and into the kitchen. There on the table, as promised, was a folder. He picked it up, and quickly flipped through the contents before handing it to Ty.
Ty thumbed through the pages from front to back. His face didn’t betray much of anything, apart from some lingering resentment at having been torn away from a meal. He passed the folder back to Lock.
“So? What do you think?” Lock asked.
Ty took a deep breath and exhaled loudly as his partner flicked through the pages. “It’s gonna be tough, but it’s achievable. What’s your take?”
“They could have given us some more time to plan but, yeah, it’s doable.”
* * *
Two minutes later, they were back in the car, the folder on Ty’s lap as they bumped back down the rutted track. Lock looked over to his partner. “And what do you really think?”
For safety’s sake, they had both assumed that the discussion they’d just had in the kitchen was being relayed back to the kidnappers.
This time Ty didn’t hesitate before giving his answer. “I think we’re royally screwed.”
50
When it comes to revenge, most people lack one key quality: imagination. Have someone cut you off while driving, and you might, if you’re having a really bad day, fantasize about running them off the road, or pulling them out of their car to punch them in the face. Usually revenge fantasies are fairly basic. They extend no further than causing discomfort, inconvenience, pain or suffering to the object of their wrath. What Freya Vaden and her fan club of white supremacists had cooked up was altogether more sophisticated.
In twenty-four hours she was to be transported from the Central California Women’s Prison in Chowchilla to the Merced Courthouse to attend a preliminary hearing for the murder of Ginny Browell. In return for Carmen’s safe release they wanted him to facilitate Vaden’s escape from custody.
Kidnapping Carmen was more than revenge. It was revenge with a greater purpose: revenge that gave them leverage over Lock. Who better to aid Vaden’s escape from custody than someone highly skilled in close-protection security? Better yet, by having him do it, he would be committing a series of criminal acts. The fact that the woman he loved was being held by these maniacs would cut little ice if he ended up shooting a US marshal in the line of duty.
If he was lucky, he could free the woman without blood being spilled. But that was unlikely. There was no way a team of US marshals charged with escorting Freya Vaden from Chowchilla to court were going to stand idly by while he took her. They would respond with lethal force. To achieve the mission, he would almost certainly have to respond in kind.
The absolute best outcome he could hope for, if he wanted to save Carmen’s life their way, involved committing a laundry list of crimes that would see him behind bars for life, or spending it on the run, condemned to an ever-present fear of a knock on the door.
Unless . . .
51
Detective Stanner threw the fo
lder onto the conference table. Outside, dawn was breaking over downtown Los Angeles as the city’s commercial center slowly ground back to life. Ty sat next to Lock at the opposite end of the conference table from the assembly of law-enforcement officers. They waited for Stanner’s response to what Lock had just told them, which was close to everything.
“You’re a very lucky man, Mr. Lock,” Stanner said finally.
There were many words that could have been applied to his situation. He wasn’t sure “lucky” was one of them. Right now, he certainly didn’t feel lucky.
He leaned back in his chair, trying to find some relief from the knots of pain that had formed in his shoulders and lower back. “How do you figure that, Detective?”
The woman sitting to Stanner’s left, Special Agent Mirales from the Los Angeles Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, stepped in to answer the question for him. Mirales was only about five feet three inches tall, but she came with a fearsome reputation and a string of high-profile convictions that ran all the way from human trafficking to white-collar fraud.
Stan Petrovsky, from the US Marshals Service for the Central District of California, was next to her. He was in charge of prison services for the marshals. It would be his guys and gals who were charged with escorting Freya Vaden to court and back to Chowchilla. Usually the marshals’ prisoner transport service extended only to inmates in the federal system, but the CDCR (California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation) had balked at such a high-risk prisoner movement. The Feds, no doubt still bristling from Vaden not being their prisoner had graciously offered to step in.
“We’ve been following you. The prison. The courthouse. We’ve had eyes on you and Mr. Johnson the whole time,” Mirales said.
His face must have betrayed his surprise. He usually knew when he was being watched. It was something he looked out for, even when he wasn’t actively worried. Spotting a recurring vehicle or a face that popped up a little often for it to be mere coincidence was second nature to him.
“Drones,” Mirales continued, by way of explanation. “They’re way more effective than boots on the ground, and the government doesn’t have to pay them overtime.”
He felt himself bristle. He tried to dampen it down, but it was a struggle. “I’m flattered, all this technology to follow me around, but you haven’t found Carmen.”
“It hasn’t been for lack of trying,” said Mirales, doing her best to sound placatory.
Stanner sounded way less apologetic. “Count yourself lucky that you jumped the way you have. If you’d tried to go through with this without letting us know you’d be looking at a world of pain. We saw you outside the prison, and at the courthouse. It didn’t exactly take a genius to figure out what was going down.”
Lock stared at Stanner. “That’s just as well.”
He shrugged off the jibe with a smirk. “Smart guy.”
Ty’s hand thundered down on the conference table. The vibrations went all the way to the floor. The retired US marine levered himself up from his chair and stalked toward the other end of the table. Stanner visibly sank back in his padded conference chair.
“The only question that need concern us right now is how we’re going to handle business in a way that no one gets hurt.” Ty stood directly over Stanner. “And no one includes Carmen, motherfucker. You feel me, Detective?”
Cops aren’t easy to intimidate. That goes double for homicide detectives, like Stanner. But they don’t usually have a six-feet-five, 240-pound marine, who grew up in Long Beach, standing over them, glowering, with his hands bunched into fists. Stanner’s face paled.
Mirales stepped in to play peacemaker. “I think we’re all agreed on that.”
Ty wasn’t going to be easily defused. He kept glowering down at Stanner. “Are we?”
Stanner cleared his throat. Probably nerves. “Yes. Carmen’s safety is a priority.”
“Perhaps there’s a way we can have our cake and eat it too,” Lock said.
“Meaning?” Stanner asked.
“Freya Vaden stands trial for the Browell murder, and we ensure Carmen’s release.” He took a moment, then revealed what he hoped would be the clincher. “And we round up these guys before they do any more damage. I mean, how many bodies are they responsible for now, that we know of?”
There had been the rookie cop in the parking structure, the building security guard, Sergeant Miller, and the lady whose body had been found in the burned-out car. She had turned out to be a mother with four children, all of whose lives had been irrevocably altered by those assholes. There would be more deaths to come if they weren’t stopped. He was in no doubt about that. The longer this had gone on, the less they’d had to lose, and the more reckless they had become.
Vaden’s fan club gave the distinct impression that they were all out of fucks. Right now it was the one thing he had in common with them.
“So, what are you suggesting, Mr. Lock?” That question came from US Marshal Petrovsky.
Lock took a deep breath. What he was about to suggest would be a hard sell. Law-enforcement organizations were all about control, and he was about to ask them to surrender what control they had to him.
“Allow me to do what they’ve asked. I free Freya Vaden from custody.”
The reaction from the other end of the table was a mixture of disbelief and bewilderment. Stanner laughed. Mirales and Petrovsky were satisfied with merely looking horrified.
“You said you’ve been using drones to have eyes on him. You can use that same technology to follow Vaden straight to these guys. Carmen’s released and you can go in and scoop them up.”
“Just like that?” Stanner smirked.
“No, not just like that. We’ll have to sell the ambush and her rescue properly. Make it look convincing. That’ll be the key to this.”
“Do you really think they’re going to release Carmen?” The question came from Mirales.
“I don’t know. But I do know that if I don’t play along they’ll likely kill her. Carmen’s a means to an end for them. It’s me they want to drag into the middle of all this.”
Petrovsky put down the pen he’d been doodling with. “So, assuming I were to agree to this, how would you play it? I mean, I don’t doubt your abilities. You’re highly trained, but so are my guys. They’re not about to let go a high-value inmate like Freya Vaden just because you and Johnson here roll up on them.”
Lock wasn’t about to argue. He already knew that this was going to be the most difficult part of what he had in mind. They had to make the escape look convincing without anyone actually getting hurt. Even if the kidnappers weren’t able to watch it go down, Vaden would be right there. If she smelled a rat, the exchange of her for Carmen could go south rapidly.
The exchange itself was another area fraught with difficulties. But for now he still needed to sell his plan to the three law-enforcement officials.
“I agree,” he told Petrovsky. “And if this is going to work we have to make sure it looks like the real deal. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s doable.”
Stanner waved a hand in his direction. “Okay. So, for the sake of argument, how are you going to do this?”
“Here’s what I have in mind.” He got up, walked across to the whiteboard on the opposite wall and picked up an erasable marker pen. “But before I get into the details, there’s something else we all need to start thinking about.”
“What’s that?” asked Mirales.
He took a breath. “Why now?”
“What do you mean?” said Stanner.
“Well, she could have attempted an escape before. She has friends on the outside. Go on any white supremacist forum or messageboard on the internet. She’s a rock star. So why try to get out now?”
Petrovsky leaned back in his chair. “Why not now? The motive’s been there since day one. Why would anyone choose to spend their life in prison if they had a chance to escape? Maybe it’s just taken this long for her to see an opportunity. Browell was
the opportunity.”
Lock’s eyes narrowed. He wasn’t buying it. “There’s something else going on here. She needs to be out for some reason.”
That drew a smirk from Stanner. “What? Like killing the president?”
Lock let the sarcasm wash over him. Glancing toward the window, he gave a slight shake of his head. “There’s something else.”
52
In her single-inmate cell in the secure housing unit at Chowchilla, Freya Vaden woke a little after three in the morning. She lay there in the darkness, unable to get back to sleep. She felt as excited as a little kid on Christmas morning. Or how she had always imagined that must feel. Her own Christmases, like the rest of her childhood, had been bleak, filled with abuse of every description.
But she had decided not to let it define who she was, or what she could become. That was why she had created Chance ‒ a kick-ass, white race warrior, who would lead her people to salvation. So if Freya was excited to the point of feeling sick, Chance was cold inside: focused; calm; ready for war.
And the best part of all of this? Her rescuer was the man responsible for putting her here in the first place. The man who had denied Chance her destiny those years ago in San Francisco when he’d foiled not one but two attempts to kill the president.
What could be more perfect, more poetic, than being freed by Ryan Lock? Not that she expected him to go along with their proposal. He would try to double-cross her, she was sure. But she wasn’t worried about that. Lock’s betrayal was already built into their plan.
Someone tapped three times on the pipe that ran the length of the six cells in this part of the unit. It was Clarissa. She’d also been moved to the isolation cells after they’d killed Browell. Not that she’d been charged with anything for her part. And not that Chance cared too much either way. What were they going to do? Sentence her to another life-without-possibility-of-parole? Bring it on.