The new Ryan Lock thriller goes on sale August, 2nd. It will be available in hardback and e-book in the UK and paperback and e-book in the US. A Spanish language version will be available later in the year.
Prologue
Santa Barbara,
California
It was eight o’clock on
Friday evening and the bars and clubs that ran the length of State
Street were already filling up. Three frat boys wove an unsteady
path out of the James Joyce Irish bar, before collapsing in a
good-natured heap on the sidewalk where one of them grabbed his
two buddies in a fraternal headlock. Outside the Velvet Jones
nightclub, a bouncer carded two young co-eds, making a big show of
examining their no doubt fake IDs before unclipping the red
rope and letting them inside. He watched as they wiggled past
him and into the club.
Up and down the town’s
main party drag, the same scenes of mostly good-natured youthful
debauchery played themselves out, as they had done every year for
about as long as anyone in the wealthy California beach community
could remember.
Charlie Mendez stood on
the corner of State and West Haley and surveyed the scene. He
plucked a fresh cigarette from the pack of Marlboro Reds tucked
into the rolled-up sleeve of his T-shirt, dug out a Cartier
lighter from the front pocket of his jeans and lit up. He
pulled the smoke deep into his lungs as he continued to scan the
street. A crowd of girls passed, one, a long- legged brunette,
turning to smile at him. Charlie gave her his best
California-surf-bum smile in return and ran a hand through his
thick mop of blond curls. She giggled and looked as if she was
about to say something to him, but her friend grabbed her elbow and
pulled her back along the street.
Charlie took out the
small digital camera he always carried with him for just such
opportunities and called after her, ‘Hey, beautiful! Smile!’
The cheesy line and the
picture-taking would have earned most men of Charlie’s age a raised
middle finger or a look of disgust, but Charlie wasn’t most men. In
his late teens and twenties, he had been good enough to work for a
time as a model in New York, and despite his lifestyle, his looks
were still merely faded rather than entirely departed. His hair
and teeth were perfect, and his face, beaten by sun, sand and
surf, was rugged.
The girl blushed,
whispering something to her friend, then walked on with the rest
of her group.
He gazed at the image
on the screen. She must have been startled by the tiny flash
because her eyes were closed. It gave him a shiver of anticipation
for what might come later.
These were the nights he
lived for. There were many things he loved about the town where he
had grown up, but perhaps none was greater than the opportunities
it afforded a man like him. Every year the seniors left, and every
year the freshmen arrived. The town was in a state of constant
transfusion and replenish- ment. But Charlie remained
constant. Watching. Waiting. Choosing his moment. Always ready to
add to his collection.
He glanced at his
wristwatch, a very un-surferlike five- thousand-dollar Rolex
Oyster Submariner. The night was young. He would go home and get
things ready. Then, around eleven, he would return to see what
the rest of the evening held for him. Tomorrow the students would
begin to drift away, and over the following few days Santa Barbara
would shift from college town to tourist town. The people who lived
in LA or San Francisco but kept summer homes in the area would
arrive. Couples. Families. None of them any use to him. They would
crowd the beach he surfed every morning and generally make his life
miserable.
That meant he had to
make tonight count. He had to make it special. Tonight would
have to sustain him through the long, lonely months of
summer before fall semester when fresh meat arrived.
He turned and walked
back to his car, a low-slung red Aston Martin convertible. He jumped
into the driver’s seat, gunned the engine and took off, heading
northwards up the coast, eager to set the scene for what lay ahead.
Part
One
One
Sixteen Months Later
Los Angeles, California
Heart pounding, Melissa
Warner pushed her way through the crush of bodies towards the
front of the stage. Almost directly above her, a sweet-faced black
kid, dressed in baggy jeans and an LA Lakers top, was singing
about bitches and hoes while two similarly attired DJs worked the
decks behind him. Either side of the rapper, a dozen female dancers,
in bondage gear and lingerie, gyrated in apparent ecstasy as the
words poured forth.
Y’all know that hoes
and bitches, They only after one thing.
Two spotlights zigzagged
across the mass of bodies filling the arena. The bass pounded so
hard from the speakers that Melissa could feel the floor beneath her
moving in time with it. The rapper grabbed his crotch with one hand,
and waved a roll of dollar bills in the other. The crowd of
mostly white suburban teenagers screamed and hollered their
endorsement of the lyrics. Lyrics that reduced their sisters and
mothers and girlfriends to what exactly? To prostitutes. To people
who served only one function. To pieces of meat. Stay focused, she
told herself.
Remember why you’re
here. To find him.
Not that he had been an
easy man to locate. Far from it. But she had stayed doggedly on
his trail, ignoring everyone around her who had told her it would
be best if she let it go. And now her persistence was about to pay
off. He was close by. The man who would bring her justice and, with
it, the chance finally to move on with her life.
She scanned the
barrier, and the line of muscular, T-shirted security guards.
There was no sign of the man she was looking for. She pushed her way
to the side of the stage, ducking under flying elbows and pushing her
arms out, like a swimmer, to create gaps in the wall of flesh that
surrounded her.
The press of bodies
against her made her feel sick and light- headed. She was gasping
for breath, but the air seemed to hold heat and moisture rather
than oxygen. Then, just as she was starting to worry that she
might pass out, she found a space and she was out of the crowd.
A lone security guard,
wearing a Triple-C tour shirt (it stood for Compton Clown Crew)
and a laminated picture ID hooked to a black silk lanyard, stood
next to the crush barrier. Beyond him, a wooden black ramp led
towards the backstage area. Melissa dug out her cell phone and
pulled up the only picture she had been able to find of the man.
She showed it to the security guard. He looked at it and shrugged.
‘Don’t know that
dude,’ he said.
‘But you must,’ she
pressed. ‘He’s in charge of security.’
‘Not here, he ain’t.’
‘No, I mean security
for the band.’
He gave another shrug.
‘I don’t know nothing about that.’
She stood on tiptoe and
tried to get a glimpse of the backstage area. The security guard
shifted his position, blocking her view. He had damp patches of
sweat blossoming under his arms. She caught a whiff of body odour
and her stomach churned.
‘You want to get
backstage, huh? I can arrange it. Get you in to see the artists too,’
he said, with a nod towards the stage. ‘Gonna cost you, though,’
he said, staring at her breasts.
She took a step back and
closed her eyes, trying desperately not to cry. If only he knew, she
thought. If only he knew what his leer- ing was doing to her. If only
he could experience a tenth of the pain she felt.
She opened her eyes, but
his attention was elsewhere now. He was on a walkie-talkie, barking
instructions and staring at the crowd.
She turned to see people
scattering in all directions. Music was still pouring from the
speakers but the rapper had stopped rapping and now he was at
the edge of the stage, one hand raised as if to calm the crowd. ‘Be
cool, people. Be cool out there.’
Following the security
guard’s gaze, Melissa could see panic taking hold as clusters of
concertgoers scrambled in all directions, a shoal of fish parting at
the approach of a predator.
She strained to get a
better view.
There must have been a
half-dozen of them: young, male and Hispanic, they wore blue hats
and bandannas – gang members. They pushed through the crowd,
throwing punches and kicking out at anyone within striking
distance. A kid, no more than seventeen, took a fist to the
face and went down. Three of the gang members swarmed him, kicking
him in the head and body, grabbing other people in the crowd to
steady themselves and give their blows more purchase.
At the edge of the group,
a lone gang member stood perfectly still and watched the beating
with cold detachment. He was smaller than the rest but he seemed
the most in control. He called to the three delivering the beating
and they stopped.
He raised his head and,
as he did, Melissa saw that it wasn’t a male after all. A young
girl had been leading the rampage. She looked around, perfectly
calm in the middle of the mêlée as, on stage, the group made
its retreat into the wings and security guards poured over the
barrier in a futile attempt to restore order.
The gang leader
glanced at the stage. Her gaze settled on Melissa and their
eyes met. She raised a hand and extended her index finger,
pointing Melissa out to the others.
In that moment, Melissa
knew this was no random event. They were here for a reason. As
she was here looking for him, so they were here looking for
her. She began to edge away until she felt the cold metal of the
crush barrier at her back.
Now the gang members were
shrugging off whatever resistance they were meeting, and starting to
move in her direction. Melissa felt a wave of terror wash over her
as the girl leading the gang lifted her T-shirt to reveal the dull
black handle of a gun.
The sight of it snapped
Melissa back to the present. She looked around for an escape route.
Twenty yards away, she saw it – a single-door fire exit.
She sprinted towards
it, not daring to look back. If she could get through the door, she
could reach the parking lot. If she could make it that far, she could
jump into her car, and get away.
Her quest abandoned,
Melissa Warner burst through the door and out into the warm Los
Angeles night. She had to stay alive long enough to find him. What
happened to her after that didn’t matter.
Two
In his line of work,
Ryan Lock was constantly vigilant for two things. The first was
the absence of the normal: a security guard missing from his post,
a blank corner of an office, which had previously housed a
security camera, a silent junkyard normally patrolled by a
bad-tempered Dobermann. The second was the presence of the
abnormal, something strange and out of place: an unfamiliar car
appearing outside a school at pick-up time or a newly installed
manhole cover on a parade route.
That evening, as he
scanned the crowded hotel lobby, which was filled with revellers
attending the after-show party for his latest clients, a
double-platinum rap group called Triple-C, Lock spotted
something that fell, most definitely, into the second
category. Unnoticed by the rest of the partygoers, a young woman
stepped gingerly from the barrel of the gleaming gold revolving door
into the hotel lobby, and stopped, eyes darting around,
searching someone out.
In and of itself, her
arrival was hardly worthy of note. The defining feature of
Triple-C’s after-parties was the number of young women in
attendance. They tended, he had noted, to out- number the men by
at least six to one. But no one looked even vaguely like the
young woman walking through the press of bodies towards him.
For a start, their hair
was perfectly coiffed instead of damp and matted on their foreheads.
Their eyes sparkled with life, or excite- ment, or too much alcohol,
while this young woman’s were like a doll’s: black and
lifeless. And none of the other young women crowding the
lobby had blood pouring from her abdomen, running down her
legs and splashing, like thick scarlet raindrops, on to the hotel’s
white marble floor.
As she staggered across
the lobby, people fell silent. Cocktail glasses and champagne
flutes hung in suspended animation inches from lips. Eyes
widened in disbelief and horror. People stepped back,
unconsciously clearing a path, as the blood continued to pour
from her belly, leaving a trail on the marble.
As the silence washed
behind her, the only person to react was Lock. Taking off his jacket,
he half turned towards his best friend and business partner, the
six-foot-two African American marine Ty Johnson. ‘Get the guys
upstairs into the suite.’
There had been a
disturbance at that night’s concert, a series of brawls among the
crowd, possibly gang-related, and he was taking no chances. Ty did
as he was told, quickly marshalling the rap group and their
management towards a bank of elevators. Their movement punctured
the silence, and a babble of incompre- hension filled the void
as Lock went quickly to the young woman, reaching her in four long
strides.
Her shoulders were
hunched and she was shivering. She flinched visibly as Lock
reached out to her. He could see the pain pinching her face as he sat
her on a nearby couch as gently as he could, hushing her whimpers
with words of reassurance.
Blood was oozing through
a hole in her shirt and he could see where the fabric had charred.
A gunshot wound – clear as day. Just the one by the look of it.
He balled up his jacket and pushed it hard against the wound. She
screamed as he pressed, talking to her while he tried to staunch the
bleeding.
A male receptionist
had made his way over to them, lips puckered in apparent
displeasure at the sight of so much blood on his formerly pristine
marble floor – and now the designer couch. He nodded from the girl
to the door, indicating, Lock assumed, that she belonged outside.
He met the man’s eyes with a level gaze.
That was all it took.
Lock’s stare was frightening. He had blue eyes that burned with
rage at lives lost or taken.
The receptionist flushed
bright red.
‘Call nine one one,’
Lock told him. ‘Tell them we have a gun- shot victim and she’s
bleeding out.’
As the receptionist ran,
Lock looked around the lobby at the last of the stragglers. There
was a knot of glamorous party girls in their twenties who had
backed against a wall. He shouted across the lobby, ‘Ladies,
check your bags and see if you can find me a tampon or a sanitary
towel.’
They stared at him,
horrified.
‘Check your purses,
goddamnit,’ he repeated, raising his voice. A willowy blonde in a
black cocktail dress pulled out a pack of tampons. ‘Will these do?’
‘Perfect. Bring them
here,’ he said, waving her over with his free hand.
She tottered towards him
on high heels, holding a still-wrapped tampon at arm’s length
between thumb and forefinger.
‘Take the wrapper off,’
Lock barked, ‘and see if you can find me some hand sanitizer.’
An Asian girl with the
group piped up, ‘I have some.’
‘Good. Let me have it.’
Lock turned back to the
victim. ‘Okay. I’m going to take the jacket away, and then I’m
going to have to take off your shirt so I can pack the wound. I’ll
be as gentle as I can but it’ll hurt.’
She looked up at him, her
eyes tracing the contours of his face, like a finger running over
a road map. Her pupils widened a fraction and life seemed to
return to them.
Up close, he could tell
that she was younger than she had first appeared. Nineteen. Maybe
twenty at a push. Her skin was pale and sallow. She had small,
delicate features, and bright green eyes. Her hair was a deep
chestnut brown, almost auburn.
Finally she nodded. He
looked at the blonde who had given him the tampon. ‘What’s
your name?’ he asked.
‘Ashley,’ said the
blonde.
‘Okay, Ashley, I’m
going to need you to hold her jacket where it is for a moment.’
‘But I . . . the
blood . . . What if she, like, has something?’ Ashley
protested.
Lock fixed her with the
same gaze he’d used on the reception- ist. ‘If we don’t do
this, she is going to die right here in front of us. So, please,
just do as I asked.’
She complied. He cupped
his hands and the Asian girl pumped four squirts of sanitizer into
them.
He rubbed it in. ‘Okay,
Ashley, you can move the jacket away now and give me that tampon.’
She did as she was told
and Lock began to peel away the cotton shirt from the edge of the
wound. It was maybe a half-inch in diameter, bad but not the worst
he’d seen. It looked as if the bullet had stayed inside – better
than there being an exit wound and two places to lose blood. He
pulled out the blue cord of the tampon and pressed the other end
into the wound. Almost immediately it began to expand as it absorbed
the blood, puffing out and filling the hole in the girl’s stomach.
Blood seeped from the edges of the wound but just moments before it
had been pouring out.
He glanced at the desk.
The receptionist had the phone at his ear. ‘They’re on their
way,’ he called.
‘How long?’ Lock
asked.
The receptionist went
back to the phone.
Lock worked the numbers.
Where had the girl been when she was shot and how long ago? Life or
death would be separated by seconds rather than minutes.
‘Mr Lock?’ she said,
tears welling in her eyes.
She knew his name. He
tried to place her. Had he met her before? He didn’t think
so, but something about her was familiar. Had she been at the
concert earlier, maybe at the stage door? Over the last month he had
seen some pretty elaborate stunts to grab Triple-C’s attention,
not to mention that evening’s near-riot.
‘You were looking for
me?’ he asked her.
Her chin fell on to
her chest. ‘They tried to stop me,’ she stuttered.
‘Who? Who tried to stop
you?’
‘He sent them. He
wants me to stop looking for him. But I won’t.’
The hairs rose on the
back of Lock’s neck. He scanned the crowd, which was slowly
drifting away, their backward glances a mix of disgust and
curiosity. No one stood out. No one appeared to be a threat.
‘Who?’ he asked her
gently. ‘Who does?’
Her lips started to form
a name but no sound came.
‘Is this person after
you?’
She shook her head, the
deadness settling back in her eyes. ‘You have to catch him.’
Lock’s patience was
fraying. ‘Whoever you are, whatever this is about, I’m not a cop.
I don’t catch people, I keep them safe.’
‘That’s why it has to
be you,’ she said.
‘Why what has to be
me?’ he asked.
‘The one who brings him
back.’
She was talking in
riddles. Every answer she gave led to more questions. ‘Bring who
back?’
‘Joe tried. But they
killed him.’
‘Joe? Is that the name
of the man you want me to find?’
‘It’s not fair. He
should be in prison for what he did.’
‘Who?’
She stared at Lock and a
sudden intensity flared in her eyes, like the last burst of a
candle flame before the wind snuffs it out.
‘You’re my last
chance. If you don’t catch him and bring him back, they’re
going to kill me.’
Lock kept the pressure on
her wound as best he could. The fire was dying down. She was
blinking. If he didn’t keep her conscious, he would lose her
before they made it to a hospital. He had to keep her awake, and the
best way of doing that was to keep her talking. ‘Listen, let’s
start over, okay? Can you tell me your name?’
Her eyes focused. That
was good. ‘Melissa,’ she said.
A tiny victory. ‘Okay,
Melissa,’ he said. ‘I’m going to come with you to the hospital,
and on the way, I want you to tell me every- thing. But start at the
beginning. Can you do that for me, Melissa? Can you tell me your
story all the way through? If you do that, and I feel I can help
you, then I promise I will. Do we have a deal?’
‘Deal.’
Lock turned back to the
receptionist. ‘ETA?’ The man looked at him blankly.
‘How long until they
get here?’
‘They said ten
minutes.’
Lock did the math. If the
EMS ambulance had deployed from the hospital, that would mean
at least another ten minutes. In twenty she’d be dead.
He scooped the girl
into his arms and ran for the door, struggling to stay on his
feet as his shoes slipped on the bloodied floor.
