Gridlock: A Ryan Lock Novel (30 page)

Sweat poured off her forehead as she worked the blade, stinging her eyes and making it difficult to see. But she kept going. She had a task, a purpose, something tangible to focus on. It might even be what would make life worth living again. If she could survive the night.

As the rope separated into threads her heart pounded faster. She waited for the sound of the car squelching its way back up the drive. But then the rope broke, and she could straighten her spine and stand. The knife tumbled to the floor. All she had to do now was reach down and pick it up again.

Now there was a dilemma. To free her hands or her legs? Thinking of Galt’s strength and what Lock had often said about bodyguarding work being ‘organized running away’ she chose to cut the rope around her ankles first.

Five minutes later, with the knife tucked away, and her hands still bound she was out of the house and engulfed by the storm. The rain felt sweet against her face, and a sense of elation in having escaped, in having tricked Galt, came at her without warning.

She looked around, moving into the shadows and the cover of the trees as she did so. There was a bigger house a little way up the slope. Its presence startled her. Someone had been less than a hundred feet away the whole time. Did they know what had been going on? Were they complicit in it? Could they see her?

The thought spooked her so much that she turned back down the drive and headed for the road. She was soaked to the skin, her hair plastered in strands at the front of her face, her limbs still aching and tingling with the fear of recapture, but pushing all of that to the side she felt more alive than she could remember.

She was on the road now. Cindy Canyon. Larry Johns. Vince Vice. Lawrence Stanner and his wife. Carrie Delaney wasn’t about to become the final footnote in another demonic chapter of the history of the City of Angels. She had survived.

The driver barely had time to register the ghostly apparition in the middle of the road before he stood on his brakes and skidded, hitting her side-on, her body tossed like a rag doll up and over the hood of the car.

She travelled twenty-five feet, reaching a height of ten, before landing in the trees at the side of the road. She lay on her side, broken and unable to move. Her eyes flickered open and her mind flashed to Ryan and the thought of never seeing him again. It was a sharper pain than anything physical. Unbearable. Excruciating. Tears began to roll down her cheeks. No sobs. Only the tears.

Where was he? Where was the man who protected everyone that mattered and left no one behind? Where was he now that she needed him? When she needed to say goodbye.

68

The only sound inside the cab of the Ford F-150 for the first three seconds was that of breathing. No one moved. One moment they had been driving along, all of them tense: Raven because she was being handed to her stalker; Lock and Ty because Carrie’s life was in danger and a long few hours lay ahead of them. Then the woman had appeared on the road. At least, Lock thought it was a woman. He had only seen her for a split second before she had gone up and over the hood of the Ford.

He blinked, trying to wish away what had happened. Then he glanced at Ty, who was staring dead ahead, his hands white and gripping the steering-wheel.

They had to stop. Lock clambered out, reaching for a torch before he slammed the door behind him.

The rain was coming at him almost horizontally, driving into his eyes, making it difficult to see. He clicked on the torch and swept it over the terrain. On one side the road fell away down a tree-filled slope. On the other the ground rose up sharply. There was an open gate a hundred yards back. Further up, beyond the gate, he could just about make out a couple of lights shining through the windows of two houses.

The torch beam swept across the road behind them. Nothing. Lock began to walk back down the road. Ty was behind him, Raven forgotten for now.

‘I didn’t even see her, man,’ he could hear Ty saying.

Lock reached back his free hand, signaling for Ty to quieten. If she was alive, they might hear her.

Lock listened, but all he got was the static of ten thousand raindrops meeting the earth and the howl of the wind up through the canyon. He motioned for Ty to start checking the upward slope side while he used the beam from the torch to ferret into the wooded undergrowth beneath his feet.

Thirty yards back he got a flash of pale skin about ten feet down the bank. He turned back to Ty. ‘I’ve found her,’ he shouted.

He caught sight of Raven standing beside the truck, sucking on a cigarette, the red tip bobbing backwards and forwards from her mouth.

‘Go keep an eye on her,’ he said to Ty, who had arrived at his side. If she’d wanted to make a run for it, now was her chance.

Ty stared down into the culvert. ‘Hell, man.’

‘Ty?’ Lock prompted.

‘Okay. Okay,’ Ty said, and jogged back towards the truck.

Lock stared down the slope, his shoes struggling to find traction on the sodden ground. It was even steeper than it looked from the road. He almost went over a couple of times and had to reach out to grab tree branches to steady himself.

He could see the woman’s body now. It wasn’t moving but he wasn’t close enough and it was too dark, even with the torch, to tell if she was breathing.

He straightened up for a second, one hand against the trunk of an oak tree and the beam on the shape in front of him. What the hell could anyone be doing out on the road in this weather? he thought. Then the answer came to him in a single, sickening blow.

Please, God, no.

He summoned everything he had to shift the torch a few inches to his left. Lifting the truck would have taken less out of him than this slight shift of his wrist.

Her eyes were open but without focus. A trickle of blood ran down the side of her face, matched by two streams from each nostril.

Lock had seen enough dead bodies in his time to know that she was gone. He sank to his knees, the slope pitching him forward so that he was on all fours, his hands ploughing into the soft earth, his knees and ankles soaked with water.

A penitent with no possible hope of salvation, he crawled down towards her. Somewhere above him he could hear Ty shouting but he didn’t have the breath to answer.

Without being conscious of having covered the ground, he was suddenly next to Carrie, her head cradled in his lap. He took his sleeve and dabbed away the blood before craning forward to kiss her forehead, the coldness of her skin against his lips sending a fresh torrent of grief sweeping through him.

Seconds passed. Then a minute. Ty’s voice grew louder, then fell away to a whisper as Lock felt his friend’s hand close around his shoulder.

‘Oh, no, Ryan,’ Ty said. ‘Oh, no. Oh, Christ—’

Ty was next to him now, also on his knees, his arm around Lock’s shoulders. They stayed like that for a while before Lock reached behind Carrie gently to untie her hands.

Her wrists were red and raw from the rope, which brought him swimming back to the surface of the present. He rose unsteadily to his feet. Ty did the same. They looked at each other, then down at Carrie.

‘I can’t leave her,’ Lock said. ‘Not like this.’ He handed the SIG back to Ty, who took it. ‘He’ll still be waiting for Raven,’ he said. Ty nodded. Both men knew what had to be done.

Lock watched Ty climb back up the slope, the gun swallowed in his hand. A few moments later he could hear Raven’s questions as Ty ordered her back into the truck at gunpoint. Then there was the roar of an engine and Lock was left alone with Carrie as the storm blistered his skin and the wind sang among the trees.

69

The Ford F-150 eased through the break in the chain-link fence, its tires struggling for traction in the muddy ground, and came to a halt. Inside the cab, Ty and Raven sat together in silence. Ty looked between his watch and his side mirrors. There were minutes to go until the planned handover.

Raven had sobbed pretty much the whole way here. It had got so bad that he had put his arm around her. ‘It’s all my fault. All of it,’ she kept saying, until finally he’d had enough. Pulling her round to face him, he’d set her straight.

‘There’s going to be plenty of guilt to go round, so why don’t you leave some for the rest of us, okay?’ he’d said.

High beams flashed behind them and he felt her stiffen. He racked back the slide on his SIG and cocked the trigger before sliding his right index finger along the side into a ready position.

The car that had driven into the lookout point swung around so that its lights were blazing towards them, blinding them.

Ty opened the door and nodded for Raven to come with him. He’d already explained that he needed her to stay close the whole time. If he had got out on his own then there was nothing to prevent Galt killing him where he stood and taking her. As a precaution he’d thrown on a ballistic vest, which he wore under his jacket.

With Raven in front, they stepped out into the mud. The driving rain had let up a little, and the lights of the San Fernando Valley spread out in front of them as Ty waved for the driver of the car to get out.

The door opened and Reardon Galt got out. He was carrying a handgun. With the blinding lights behind him, Ty couldn’t make out what kind it was; nor did it matter.

‘I’ve brought our part of the bargain,’ Ty shouted over. ‘Now where’s yours?’

‘I’ll give you the address soon as I have her. You look real pretty by the way, darling. I’ve been a long time waiting for this.’

‘What’s the address?’ Ty asked. ‘My partner has to check it out first.’

Galt glared at Ty. ‘Stop screwing around. I said I’d give you it once you hand Raven over.’

‘Tell him,’ Raven said.

Galt reached up with his left hand to wipe away the rivulets of moisture that were running down his face. ‘Tell me what?’

Ty raised his gun, pointing it at the centre of Galt’s chest. ‘Put down your gun, Reardon.’

Galt seemed to rear up, his shoulders rotating back, his chest puffed out as he tried to re-establish that he was in charge here. ‘You do this and she’s dead.’

Ty looked at him steadily. ‘She’s dead already, Reardon.’

Galt spat on the ground. ‘Bullshit, man.’

‘She escaped,’ Ty went on. ‘Got hit by a truck. It’s all over for you. Put down your gun right now.’

Ty’s index finger moved to the trigger as the red dot from the laser sight mounted on top of the 226 carved a pattern around Reardon Galt’s heart.

Galt smiled. ‘Okay, you got me. I’m going to put it down. Real easy.’

There was something in Galt’s face that Ty didn’t like. Galt wasn’t looking at him or Raven, but behind them. Was it nerves – or something else?

Galt hunkered down, and started to place the gun on the muddy ground as Ty heard the squelch of a boot planting firm behind him. He swiveled round – only to catch a fist in his face. Slipping the punch, he pushed Raven away from him, giving himself room to maneuver as Clayton Mills moved in on him, launching a kick that caught him in the stomach.

His abdomen already tensed, Ty shrugged it off and, raising his hand, brought it down in a hammer grip so that the butt of the gun caught Mills flush in the face. It was a messy blow, one that crunched cheekbone but slid down and off Mills’s face, as the 226 slipped from Ty’s hand and on to the ground.

Mills’s mistake was to make a dart for it. As he bent down, Ty kicked him in the face as hard as he could. There was a cracking sound, Mills’s neck whiplashed back and he ended on the ground, gasping for air.

Ty turned to find Galt less than ten feet from him, with his gun raised towards Ty’s head. A difficult shot to miss. After what had happened to Carrie, Ty wasn’t sure that he cared.

The next sound was a gunshot but it was Galt who sprawled backwards, as a red rose of blood blossomed across his chest. Raven stood holding Ty’s gun, her face etched with shock.

From behind them came a voice.

‘I can’t feel my legs, man. You have to help me.’

It was Mills. Still holding the gun, Raven took a step towards him, the taste of Galt’s death still evidently fresh in her mouth.

Ty reached over and clasped her wrist, easily enveloping it in his hand. ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘There’s been too much killing. It’s time to call a halt – don’t you think?’

70

Two weeks later
Century City, Los Angeles

On the fifteenth floor, the receptionist looked up from behind the mahogany desk where she and another young woman were fielding an endless succession of phone calls. Lock and Ty were perched opposite on a couple of gaudy green-velvet club chairs that would have seemed more at home in a Vegas casino than the waiting area of a white-shoe law firm. Ty fiddled with his cell phone while Lock checked his watch. Both of them wanted to get this done as quickly as possible.

‘Mr Lock, Mr Johnson, you can go in now.’

Lock picked up the thick brown manila envelope from the low-rise coffee-table in front of him and rose with Ty.

Ty’s hand fell on to Lock’s shoulder.

‘You sure you’re ready to do this?’ he asked Lock.

Lock nodded.

They walked down a short stretch of grey-carpeted corridor and into a conference room that looked out over the Avenue of the Stars. It was a crisp late-autumn day, the temperature outside a California-perfect 72 degrees.

The storm of two weeks ago had brought with it an end to the devil winds, and the spasms that had racked the city had quickly ebbed away to a memory. Lock wished he could have said the same. In the two weeks that had passed he had woken after fractured sleep, showered, forced himself to eat and moved through life like a ghost. Trapped by the investigation, he was in limbo, and every second of every day he ached for the woman he had been due to marry. It was a wound that refused to stop bleeding.

Ty had been affected too, and Lock had taken his only comfort in the fact that he could reassure his friend that there had been nothing he could have done differently. It was an event that happened to remind you that life could be cruel, unfair and random. Lock played it over in his mind, a series of what-ifs that led him deep into a maze of anger and self-reproach, and left him nowhere.