by Sean Black
Padre bit down on his bottom lip. Chance was prone to getting herself all het up. Usually over nothing. He loved the woman. Worshipped her. But she was hard work at times. Always making a mountain out of a molehill.
“Who knows what?”
“What do you mean who? Lock. He knows. He knows about Jackson. That beaner bitch told him. She wasn’t supposed to. What with her being my lawyer and everything, but she did.”
Padre choked back a laugh. Somehow he doubted that client-attorney confidentiality was still in play if you kidnapped your lawyer and put her through the kind of shit they had. What was Chance going to do? Make a complaint to the California State Bar?
“So what? So he knows? There’s nothing he can do about it.”
The nose of the truck eased across the sidewalk and into the driveway. Padre pressed down on the brake pedal and came to a stop behind one of the other vehicles, a stolen Camry that he planned to use for the attack. The side door into the house was open.
Sloppy, he thought. He’d told the guys to keep it closed and secured at all times. The last thing they needed was some curious neighbor wandering inside uninvited.
Chance was still hyperventilating. “Just chill, will you?” Padre said, climbing out of the cab.
He pushed open the door and shouted for the guys. There was no response. The sole of his right boot slipped out from under him. He looked down to see blood smeared across the linoleum floor. It trailed back into the house, thick and copper red.
“I’ll call you back,” he said.
Chance started up hollering again but he killed the call, pocketed his cell phone and drew his gun, staying tight to the door frame as he pushed toward the hallway and saw a pair of legs protruding from one of the rooms.
Padre raised his gun, pushing it out ahead of him, his finger on the trigger. “Rance?”
No answer.
Padre kicked against the boot sole. No reaction. He stepped into the doorway, sweeping the room with his gun. Only when he knew the room was clear did he glance down.
The dead body was a kid named Wylam. New to the movement. Not the brightest star in the sky. Padre should never have left him with such an important task. But he’d figured that having Rance in the house as back-up would be enough. Problem with that was Rance had a habit of slacking off when his buddy Point wasn’t there. That must have been what happened here.
“Rance!” Padre called out again.
Still no response.
Padre knelt down next to Wylam. He’d been shot twice. Once in the chest and once in the head. Both bullets had hit dead center. No prizes for guessing who’d fired them.
The sound of footfalls. Padre stilled, dialing into the sound. Sounded like it was coming from the basement.
Padre smiled. If Lock thought he was going to play hide and seek in a basement, he had another think coming.
Reaching up to the webbing underneath his jacket, Padre’s hand closed around a grenade. Chance would be pissed that he’d killed Lock but that was too bad. He’d never liked this whole idea of using Lock. It carried way too much risk, as had just been proven.
There was revenge, and then there was being plain dumb. Allowing a man like Lock to keep breathing when it was easier to kill him was dumb.
With the grenade in one hand and his gun in the other, Padre stepped out into the corridor. Measuring each step, he moved slowly toward the basement door.
80
His mouth covered with a thick binding of grey duct tape, his hands cuffed to a rack of metal shelves that were secured to the wall, Rance tried desperately to free himself. His shouts and screams were muffled by the tape. He thrashed one way and then the other. He kicked out at the shelves, trying to topple them from the wall.
Light spilled down the steps leading into the basement as the door opened. Rance redoubled his efforts to free himself. Straining as far as he could, he tried to see who was at the very top of the stairs. He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the hulking silhouette. Padre. Lock must have fled after he’d overpowered him and brought him down here.
Everything was going to be okay, Rance told himself. Padre would realize he was down here, free him, and then they could go hunt down Lock. Or at least get the hell out of there before the cops arrived.
He began to shout Padre’s name, but the duct tape transformed words into guttural, nondescript noises. Then an air-conditioning unit in the opposite corner of the basement started up, drowning him out entirely. No matter. He was safe now.
81
It was too dark down there for Padre to see anything clearly. And he was damned if he was going to shine a torch and give Lock the easiest kill shot of his life. There was only one way to deal with a rat like Lock.
Padre pulled the pin from the grenade, kept the safety lever pressed down. “Burn in hell, asshole.” He drew back his left arm and gently tossed the grenade under-arm down into the basement, the safety lever popping up as the grenade released from his grip.
Slamming the basement door shut, he ran as fast as he could down the corridor. Seconds later there was an almighty bang as the grenade exploded, letting loose all hell, and shaking the walls around him.
Padre reached up to his pocket, and pulled out a pack of smokes. He tapped one out, holstered his gun and fumbled for his lighter. He flicked it. The flame appeared. He lit the cigarette and took a long, slow, satisfying drag. The smoke filled his lungs. He exhaled slowly.
Someone was behind him. He could sense them. Instead of turning, he eased his hand into the front of his jeans, feeling for his cell phone. He edged it out, tapping on the last number dialed before easing the phone back into his pocket.
A second later, his suspicions were confirmed as he felt the chilling unmistakable sensation of a gun barrel pressing into the back of his skull.
“Make any sudden moves, and I’ll blow away what little brain you have,” said Lock.
82
With the SIG still pressed into the base of his skull, Lock hustled Padre outside. Even in a neighborhood this crime-ridden a grenade exploding in a basement was still sufficient to warrant further investigation.
Lock reached round and opened the passenger door for Padre.
“Scoot over, you’re driving,” he told Padre.
“You’re the boss,” said Padre, who seemed to have collected himself after the initial shock of realizing that he’d just fragged his buddy Rance in the basement, rather than Lock.
Padre settled behind the wheel. “Where we going?”
“Take me back to the place where you’re holding Carmen.”
Padre side-glanced him. “Sure thing.”
Padre fired up the engine. He threw the truck into reverse, and began to back slowly out of the driveway.
“What’s the address?” Lock snapped. He wanted to see if there was any hesitation on Padre’s part. There was nothing to stop him driving somewhere else to buy time.
“One forty North Orange Avenue.”
Lock conjured up where it was in his mind’s eye. It tallied, at least roughly, with the kind of distance they’d driven before. Padre had reeled it off without pause. If it was a lie it was a credible one that had been expertly delivered.
Padre got to the end of the street. He pulled up to a stop sign. An LAPD cruiser was heading in the opposite direction, toward the house. No doubt to investigate.
“Take a right,” Lock instructed him.
“No problem,” Padre said, spinning the wheel, and heading in the opposite direction as the cop car sped past them. “I don’t want to be pulled over any more than you do.”
Lock didn’t reply. Padre had a point. They had at least one aim in common. To get to the other safe house without incident.
83
Cell phone in hand, Chance flew out of the bathroom. She’d been in the shower when Padre’s call had come in. Thank goodness she had looked over at the sink when she had or she would have missed the screen lighting up with the incoming call. Turning off the water, she had stepped out of t
he shower and picked up the phone. She’d listened long enough to hear Padre give Lock her location. The rest she had pieced together. Somehow Lock must have gotten the drop on Padre. It was only a matter of time before he, the cops or both would arrive to try to rescue his damsel in distress.
Throwing on clothes over her still damp body, Chance shouted to the others. She flung on a holster, motored through into the room where Carmen was being held, and lifted her to her feet. She began to hustle her outside as the others grabbed their gear.
Two vehicles were parked at the side of the house. Chance would take Carmen and one of her men ‒ he could keep an eye on Carmen while she drove. The lighter they traveled, the less likely it was that she’d be stopped.
“What’s going on? Where are we going?” Carmen asked, as Chance opened the rear door of a nondescript red Nissan sedan.
“We’re going to take a little trip to the beach,” Chance said, slamming the door, and hot-footing it around the car to the driver’s door.
84
Lock reached over and cuffed Padre’s left hand to the steering wheel of the truck. He reached down toward Padre’s pants pocket.
“Woah! You ain’t my type, dude,” Padre protested, as Lock plucked the cell phone from his pocket.
Lock tapped the screen and pulled up the last number called: Chance’s, seven minutes before, for the past six minutes and forty seconds. He had only noticed it when Padre had reached down to terminate it ‒ he had seen the screen lit and realized what had happened.
Lock pocketed Padre’s cell, and raised the gun in his hand so that the barrel was pressed hard into Padre’s temple. “You just made a big mistake,” Lock told him.
Padre continued to smirk. “How you figure that?”
“You would only have called Chance if you’d given me the correct address. If you’d lied, or were driving me somewhere else, you had no reason to take a risk like that.”
As he spoke, Lock watched Padre’s jaw tighten and his eyes narrow. It was confirmation that what his theory was fact.
“Either way, it’s too late. By the time we get there, she’ll be long gone. So will your girl. Too bad, huh?”
“Guess you outsmarted me,” Lock told him.
Padre glanced at him. “You’re being mighty gracious about it.”
“Guess I am,” said Lock, pulling back the barrel of the gun, and leaning against the passenger door. “Pull over here.”
Padre side-eyed him warily. “What?”
“You heard me.”
Padre slowed the truck and pulled over to the curb. They were on a quiet street with barely any through traffic. A wall ran down one side, a chain-link fence on the other, fronting an abandoned lot.
“Switch off the engine, but leave the keys in the ignition.”
Padre did as he was told. Lock leaned over and unlocked the cuffs, the gun back at Padre’s head in case he made any sudden move to fight or flee.
“Okay. Now get out. Nice and slow.”
The smirk had returned to Padre’s face. He clearly couldn’t believe his luck. Lock was not only admitting defeat, he was giving him his freedom.
Padre opened the door. Lock slid over the driver’s seat. Needing no further encouragement, Padre stepped away from the truck. He walked toward the back. Lock followed him out through the open door.
Padre was walking slowly down the street. He turned as he heard Lock get out.
“You forgot something,” Lock said, holding up Padre’s cell phone.
Padre eyed him warily, the way he might regard an aggressive dog that had stopped baring its teeth and begun to wag its tail.
“You sure?” Padre asked.
Lock ignored the question. “Here, take it,” he said, extending his arm to full stretch.
Padre took three more steps as a truck with gardening equipment and a couple of day laborers sitting sleepily in back drove around them.
Lock waited until the truck was out of sight. The street was silent. He raised the gun, aiming at Padre’s face.
Padre turned to run, his hands coming up to his face as he twisted. Lock pulled the trigger.
The bullet peeled Padre’s jaw from his face. Blood puffed out in a broad spray. Padre screamed, the sound muffled by his splintered jaw bone. Lock fired for a second time, this time catching Padre flush in the throat.
Padre fell, mortally wounded, but not yet dead. A hand reached up toward Lock in a gesture of supplication, pleading no doubt for Lock to deliver a third and final shot to end his suffering.
Lock tucked the gun away. His fingers tapped across Padre’s cell-phone screen, calling up Ty’s number. As he waited for his partner to answer, Lock got back behind the wheel of the truck.
In the side mirror, Lock watched as Padre, blood pouring from his neck and face, or what remained of them, crawled, fingers digging into the road, toward the back of the truck. He collapsed, rolling over on to his side, his hands clutching at his throat.
The truck’s engine turned over. Lock pulled away, leaving the dying man alone in the street behind him.
85
Jackson, can you please stop kicking the back of the seat?”
Alicia whirled round to confront Jackson who was swinging his legs back and forth in back of their Suburban. His eyes were glued to the screen of the games console that Jim had let him have for the drive back from Phoenix.
“Feet off the seat,” she scolded.
“Sorry, Mom,” he said, moving his feet and going straight back to his game.
They had been spending time with Alicia’s mom. At least, that was what they had told Jackson, but the truth was that Alicia had been spooked by the news about Freya Vaden, especially after the cops had swung by to make sure they were all okay.
Despite her husband’s having shrugged it off, the cops had been really interested when she had described the man she’d seen staring at Jackson a few weeks before. Especially when she’d told them she’d seen him a few times after that: once down by the pier when she was with Jackson, then outside his school, although the guy had disappeared pretty quickly on both occasions when he’d seen her staring at him.
The two officers had traded a look while she’d described him. When she’d asked if they knew who it was, they’d clammed up.
So, Alicia had figured there was no harm in a road trip that would get them out of Manhattan Beach for a while. But now Jackson had school, and Jim was insistent that he couldn’t miss another week. They’d had a huge row about it, but he had prevailed. So here they were, heading home, with Alicia hoping that Jim was right about her overreacting.
She glanced at him now. He took a hand off the wheel and patted her leg.
“It’ll be fine, honey. I promise you.”
“How can you promise that?” Alicia said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “She hasn’t been caught yet. Nor has that guy who was hanging around.”
Jim shot her the patronizing look he seemed to have perfected. “Only a matter of time. Anyway, the cops said they’d make sure that a patrol swung by the house regularly. We’re probably on the safest street in Manhattan Beach right now.”
86
Lock stopped the truck a half-block short of the address. He scanned the street before getting out. No one was paying him or the vehicle any kind of attention. It was one of those neighborhoods where people knew better than to take too much of an interest in what anyone else was doing.
He got out and walked quickly toward the warehouse. The area outside was empty. He went to the back, alert for movement from inside. When he reached the door, he pulled it open slowly. Broken glass crunched under his feet as he walked inside. He stopped for a moment, and listened, the Glock aimed at the floor.
Bringing the gun up in a two-handed grip, he moved to the open door and onto the warehouse floor. It was dark and the place smelled strongly of cigarette smoke. An overflowing ashtray sat on a small workbench next to an old couch that was held together with duct tape.
Lock walked across t
o a flight of metal stairs that led up to a mezzanine level with offices. The stairs clanked under his feet. He reached the top and moved down a gangway.
He came to an office and stopped. He pushed through the door and inside. Bending down, he lifted up a T-shirt. It was the one Carmen had been wearing when he had last seen her. He could still smell her on the fabric.
He got to his feet and exhaled. No blood. No bodies. A hasty exit. They had fled, and taken Carmen with them. She was alive, at least for now. He had an idea why she hadn’t been killed. Chance still needed her, and Lock could make an educated guess as to why that was.
He pulled Padre’s cell phone from his pocket and tapped Ty’s number again. This time his partner answered almost immediately, hitting Lock with a rapid-fire blaze of questions. Lock assured him that he was okay, and brought him up to speed.
“I’m on my way over there to get you,” said Ty.
“No need. I’m good. Listen, how close are you to downtown?”
“Close. Maybe ten minutes,” Ty answered.
“I have a job for you.”
87
Mike Mazarovitch opened the door of his BMW, eased himself into the driver’s seat that automatically adjusted its position to suit his frame, and tossed his briefcase over onto the plush leather upholstery of the passenger seat. As he sat back, he was suddenly aware of a hard piece of metal pressing into the back of his head. His heart pounding against his chest, Mike’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, taking in the black man who was holding a gun to his head.
“Look, man, take my wallet. The car too if you want. It’s no big deal. I’m insured.”
Ty smiled. “You think I’m mugging you? Or jacking your ride? That’s kind of racially insensitive, don’t you think?”