by Sean Black
Mike had heard the words, but he didn’t follow. “What?”
“A black man sticks a gun in your face and you automatically assume he’s just a stick-up man after your wallet and your whip?”
Mike started to half turn in his seat. “No, I mean, well, yeah, if someone puts a gun to my head. I don’t see what the color of your skin has to do with it.”
Ty’s hand clamped down hard on his shoulder. “The son that Freya Vaden gave up for adoption. Where is he?”
Mike’s expression shifted from raw fear through relief and settled somewhere near defiance. “I can’t tell you that. There’s such a thing as attorney-client—”
Ty’s hand moved from Mike’s shoulder. He shifted forward so that he was parallel to the man. He pressed the gun into his face. “You knew what this was about all along, didn’t you, Mike?”
Mike didn’t answer.
Ty shifted the gun into his open palm and smashed it hard into Mike’s face. His nose broke with a crack. Blood poured out of his nostrils and ran in two streams across his lips and down his chin. He reached a hand up to his nose. Ty grabbed it and shoved it back down, twisting Mike’s wrist back on itself for good measure.
“This isn’t a game,” Ty told him. “People are hurt. People are dead. So when I ask you again in a second to tell me what I want to know, you are going to tell me, or your life is going to get a lot worse. You feel me?”
Mike nodded. Ty released his wrist. Mike pulled out a handkerchief and used it to staunch the flow of blood from his nose.
“Now,” said Ty. “Where can I find the folks who adopted Freya Vaden’s son?”
* * *
Less than a minute later, the rear passenger door of the BMW opened. Ty got out. He stuck his head back into the cabin for a moment. Mike was still tending his broken nose.
“By the way,” said Ty, “call the cops or don’t. It’s up to you. But seeing as they have some of their own dead, you might want to think about the kind of welcome you’ll get.”
Mike glanced around, still dazed by what had just gone down. But his eyes signaled that he knew exactly what Ty was getting at. His calling this in would likely cause more problems than it would resolve. “You’ll leave me alone if I don’t say anything?” he asked.
Ty’s eyes made a final pass over the interior. “Good job you got the leather seats, huh? Easier to wipe down. Blood’s a bitch to get out of fabric.”
“I guess.”
Ty eased himself out, tapping on the car’s roof as he made to close the door. “Safe home now.”
88
Ty, what you got for me?” Lock asked, Padre’s cell phone in one hand, the other holding the truck’s steering wheel.
“Manhattan Beach.”
“Great. Text me the address.”
“You think we should call the cops?” Ty asked.
Lock had already considered it. “Not yet. Not while she has Carmen. It’s too risky.”
“Okay, brother, I’ll keep it on the down low. You want me to meet you there?”
“Yeah. Call me when you’re there, but don’t go near the address. Don’t want anyone else calling the cops.” Lock knew that Ty’s presence in white-bread Manhattan Beach would draw more suspicion than his own.
So did Ty. “I hear you,” he said.
89
Carmen sat in the front passenger seat of the red Nissan, her hands and feet secured, while Chance drove, wearing mirrored Aviator-style sunglasses, her hair tied up and covered with a baseball cap. Carmen had been surprised that Chance had ditched the others until Chance had explained to one of them that two females in a car were less likely to arouse suspicion.
Up ahead, Carmen spotted a sign for the next freeway interchange. Chance made a sudden lane change. The truck she’d just cut off blasted its air horn in reproach. Chance threw an arm out of the window, raising a single finger to flip off the driver. Steadying the Nissan, she hit the gas pedal, accelerating away as they passed directly under the sign that read “Manhattan Beach”.
90
Hunched over the steering wheel, Lock scoped out a parking spot next to a partially demolished home, the front of which was surrounded by chain-link fence, aimed at keeping any curious neighborhood kids out. Manhattan Beach was the land of the scraper, a phenomenon where people bought a perfectly good existing house, often for millions of dollars, bulldozed and replaced it with one of their design.
With the truck tucked into the curb, Lock counted down the houses to the one he was looking for. The driveway was empty, but the place had a garage so an empty space out front didn’t necessarily indicate that no one was home. He would just have to risk it.
He got out of the truck, and took a quick look at himself in the side mirror. He was a mess, bloodied, bruised, and just plain dirty. Maybe he’d been wrong: a tall, imposing African-American ex-marine would have blended better into the background than he would. But Ty wasn’t here yet.
Walking purposefully toward the Hallis residence, Lock watched for signs of movement. Apart from a lone jogger halfway down the block, the street seemed quiet. But he had walked into plenty of unpleasant surprises where the same could have been said. The cops, or people infinitely worse, might be lying in wait, with no interest in advertising their presence.
Lock made it to the driveway and kept moving. Loitering outside was not a good look. He headed down to a gate next to the garage. It wasn’t secured. He pushed it open and walked down a path. He came to another gate. On the other side was the backyard. This gate was padlocked. Lock took a few steps back, made a run, grabbed onto the top and hauled himself over.
Dropping down on the other side, he took a moment to scope out the yard. It was smaller than he would have assumed from the street. A trampoline sat in the middle of a small lawn. A smoker barbecue stood off to one side along with some patio furniture—a bench, two chairs and a picnic table.
Mounted just under the roof, an alarm box matched the one out front. From the make Lock knew that it wasn’t a dummy. He’d had the same system installed in a client’s property. It was good. Not entirely tamper-proof, no system was, but robust enough that entering without setting it off would take time and tools he didn’t have right now.
He took a step back, working out his next move. Time wasn’t on his side so there was only one. As long as he was quick, his method of entry could do double duty.
He walked to the back door, and used the butt of the Glock to smash through the glass. The alarm began to wail.
For the first time Lock was grateful for his recent bout of tinnitus, muffling the noise. He reached through and, using the key that had been carelessly left in the lock, opened the door.
He stepped inside, moving quickly through the house with the Glock drawn as an extra precaution.
No one was home.
He moved upstairs. The third door he pushed open with the toe of his boot was the one he needed. He stepped into the boy’s room, holstered the Glock and pulled out Padre’s cell phone.
91
Chance stood on the brakes. The red Nissan shuddered to a halt, Carmen almost faceplanting into the dash before the seatbelt locking mechanism kicked in. Up ahead, several Manhattan Beach Police Department patrol cars covered the entrance to the block they had been heading for.
Thankfully for Chance, if not Carmen, the two officers who were in the street were facing the other way and had missed the emergency stop.
Chance slapped a hand against the steering wheel and cursed. As she tried to assess her next move, her cell phone rang.
It was Padre. About time too.
She tapped the green answer icon. “Make it good because this whole deal is a shit show.”
“No kidding,” said Lock.
“You did this?” Chance asked.
“Did what? What’s the problem?”
Chance wasn’t about to give up her location that easy to Lock. “Never mind what my problem is.”
“Let me speak with Carmen.”
/> Chance threw the Nissan into reverse and began to back into a nearby driveway so she could turn around and get out of there. “Sure. And make it count because it’s going to be the last time you ever do.”
Lock didn’t hesitate so much as a second. “No, it won’t. Because if it is, neither you nor anyone else will ever see your son alive again.”
Chance didn’t believe him. But what was with all the cops on the block where her son lived? No, she told herself, there was no way Lock would do something like that. Her boy was innocent in all this. Lock knew that, and he wouldn’t harm someone who was innocent.
* * *
Lock cradled Padre’s cell phone between his shoulder and ear. A woman with a shopping cart pushed past him as she went to her car. Lock moved out of her way, leaning against the side of the truck as he counted Chance’s seconds of silence. The more seconds, the more likely it was that he had placed doubt in her mind.
After four had elapsed, she came back with “Horseshit.”
“You really think I’d have anything to lose if you kill the woman I love? You know I wouldn’t. If that wasn’t the case, you wouldn’t have taken her in the first place. Think about it for a second.”
“He’s a child. You wouldn’t kill a child.”
“You think that?”
“Yeah, that’s what I think.”
“Then you don’t really know me,” Lock told her, lifting the phone away and slowly exhaling. She wasn’t buying it. And if she didn’t buy it, Carmen was as good as dead. Which was why he’d used his time inside the house wisely.
“You’re bluffing.”
“Am I?” said Lock, pulling up the photos icon on the cell phone, tapping on a video and sending it to Chance’s cell.
“Take a look at what I just sent you. I already took him out of his house. Why else do you think the cops are there? You know as well as I do that I’m already looking at time inside, where I won’t last long. Like I said, I’ve got nothing to lose if you kill Carmen. But you want to make a trade, that’s a different matter. We both get what we want and no one has to suffer.”
* * *
Chance opened the text that had just arrived. She hit the triangle to play the video, and watched.
It showed, judging by the posters and decor, a young boy’s bedroom. The shades were pulled down. Someone lay under the bedcovers. It looked like a child, but she couldn’t be sure. The video had been shot in such a way that it didn’t show anything but a child-sized lump under the sheets.
The video quickly moved to a family photograph on top of a chest of drawers. Chance’s heart quickened as she looked at the picture of her son with the two smug, self-satisfied assholes who had taken him from her.
“Could be anyone in that bed,” she told Lock.
“Correct. It could. But is it a risk worth taking? That’s what you have to settle on. And if you doubt me, ask yourself why most of the Manhattan Beach Police Department just rolled up on the house.”
92
Jim Hallis stepped out of the house and over the broken glass littering the patio outside the back door. Alicia was still in the car with Jackson, along with what looked like half of the Manhattan Beach Police Department. The other half appeared to be with him. They looked at him now for a verdict.
Jim mustered an apologetic shrug. “Nothing’s been taken. Not as far as I can see anyway.”
He could only assume the cops already knew this: they had insisted on going inside first when he’d called in the break-in a few minutes before, immediately after they had arrived home.
A couple of the older cops walked over and stood by the trampoline. They conferred for a moment before heading back to Jim.
“Okay, Mr. Hallis, if you want to bring your wife and son back inside we can arrange for a locksmith. Or you may wish to go stay with relatives for a while.”
That would be Alicia’s choice, which was why Jim wasn’t going to mention it. He shook his head. “No, we just got back from staying with family. We’ll stick it out here.”
The two cops exchanged a look. “Okay. Well, when we leave we’re going to have a unit parked at the end of the block for the rest of the day and through tonight. We’ll speak with you again in the morning.”
Jim put a hand out and shook the officers’. That was the upside to living in a place like this, with the size of the property taxes around here. When things went bad you could count on people to help you out. “I really appreciate it, Officer.”
* * *
Two blocks away, over on Pine, Lock was parked next to another scraper site blocked off by fencing. He watched as the Manhattan Beach Police Department cruisers peeled away from the scene, only one remaining on active watch.
One unit wasn’t a number that gave him comfort. Chance and her buddies were more than capable of taking on a single cop in a car.
To save Carmen, Lock had raised the stakes, or at least raised Chance’s emotional temperature. He could hope that she didn’t do something reckless. But hoping for the best was rarely a workable strategy.
He had bluffed that he possessed what she wanted. But it was a bluff that could be blown out of the water at any moment. He needed, somehow, to pull an ace from the pack, and there was only one left in the deck.
93
Chance grabbed a handful of Carmen’s hair and pulled her head back. She brought up a knife blade so that it danced shakily in front of Carmen’s eyes. “This was your idea, wasn’t it?” she said.
Carmen tried to clear her mind. That was easier said than done. A glint of light reflected off the blade, and threatened to send her mind spinning in circles. She took a deep breath.
Her reaction would seal her fate one way or the other. She had to persuade Chance that Lock was serious, while at the same time not enraging her so much that she lost control. She knew in her heart that Lock wasn’t capable of killing a child, but she couldn’t say so to Chance.
“I would never have told Ryan to hurt your son. I swear.”
“Like your word’s worth anything. You told him about my son. You had to have. That was why you were asking me all those questions before. Then Lock starting asking Padre the same questions. But it all started with you.”
Carmen decided on a change of tack. “You kill me, and your son’s dead. And it’ll be on you.”
Chance blinked. The words seemed to have found their target. A threat seemed to be more credible to Chance than any amount of pleading. Given the woman’s background, that shouldn’t have surprised Carmen as much as it had.
“You think he’d do it?” Chance asked.
There was only one answer that would keep Carmen alive. “You’ve pushed him to the edge,” she told Chance, praying it wasn’t true.
94
Alicia Hallis stood by the living-room window, looking out onto the street. Jim came up behind her, and put a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off. “We should have stayed where we were. Coming back was a dumb idea.”
Jim took a deep breath. This was an argument that seemingly had no end. “This is our home. More importantly, it’s Jackson’s home. We can’t stay away forever.”
Alicia whirled round to face him. “Who said anything about forever? Just until that lunatic is caught and put back in her cage.”
A voice from the doorway. Jackson had emerged from his room and was standing there watching them. “What are you guys arguing about?”
“We’re not arguing, sweetie,” said Alicia.
“We were just talking,” Jim added.
Jackson folded his arms. “What’s going on? Why were all those police cars here?”
Jim crossed to his son and offered the same shoulder squeeze that Alicia had just rebuffed. Jackson was a little more accepting, scootching in closer to his dad as Jim wrapped him up in a hug. “Nothing for you to worry about,” said Jim.
“Then can I go see Morgan?”
Morgan was one of Jackson’s school friends. He lived four doors down. The two boys had been tight since kind
ergarten. They spent most days after school hanging out together. Jackson hadn’t seen Morgan, apart from at school or soccer practice, since the whole thing had started.
“No!” said Alicia, her voice high and sharp.
Jim felt Jackson push away from him. He took off for the hallway. A second later they could hear him running up the stairs and back to his room.
Jim shot Alicia a see-what-you-did look. She glared back at him.
“Why do I always have to be the bad guy with him?” she asked her husband as, outside in their backyard, a pair of legs swung over the fence and a figure, shaded by the cover of some shrubbery, jumped down, made a quick check that no one had seen them and headed straight for the still-to-be-repaired back door that was wide open.
95
Staying low, Ryan Lock raced toward the back door, and went into the kitchen. He moved with care, trying to stay light on his feet, and minimize any noise. Not being able to hear himself only added an extra level of difficulty to the task.
In the kitchen, he heard someone walking down the hallway toward him. Lock moved to the door that led into the hallway, and ducked to the blind side.
As Jim Hallis rolled on through the door, Lock shifted behind him, throwing an open palm over his mouth, and pressing two fingers into the side of his neck with pressure to create enough pain to show the man that he was serious. “I’m not here to hurt you, or your son. But I need to talk to you and your wife,” Lock said, as softly as he could while still being heard.
Gauging the noise he made wasn’t something he had thought about since his hearing had taken a beating. But it was now.