Gridlock: A Ryan Lock Novel (29 page)

Lock raised his cell to his ear. ‘Forget the alleyway, Tyrone. What’s the next street?’

‘Bentley,’ said an out-of-breath Ty.

‘Okay, make for that.’

‘Roger.’

Lock alternated between a fast-paced walk and a jog, hands dug into the pockets of his jacket as the rain tumbled all around him. He took another right at the corner of Sardis and Bentley, scanning for cabs that would provide Raven’s most likely passage out. She could have stepped into the traffic and flagged down a passing motorist, but again this would almost certainly have alerted the cops. By her actions Raven was revealing herself: every decision she made peeled away another layer until, Lock figured, only her guilt would be left visible.

He saw her halfway down the block, pressed into a doorway, eyes scanning the street. He kept close to the storefronts.

Loosening into a walk, he reached behind his back and pulled out Ty’s SIG, keeping it low and down by his side. He called to her as the traffic slid past them on the rain-drenched street, angling the gun in his hand so she was sure to see it. ‘He didn’t say whether he wanted you alive or dead, and right now I’m not fussed either way.’

He had forty minutes to get Raven into the car and to the drop-off point up in Topanga Canyon. Over that by even a minute and Carrie was definitely dead.

‘I got her,’ he told Ty. ‘Go get the Ford and bring it round.’

Raven’s shoulders slumped and she stayed put while he closed in on her, Lock wondering what he had become, and whether the moral chasm between him and the man who held Carrie was still as wide as it had once been.

65

Clayton Mills had the music cranked up loud, the bass line from Kool and the Gang’s original version of ‘Ladies Night’ moving the floorboards underneath his feet. Hell, yeah, the feeling was right, he thought, as he slung a T-shirt on and headed for the window at the back of his apartment, levered it open and crawled out.

He landed with a hip-shuddering thump, his left boot almost slipping out from under him on the damp grass. He looked around. The rain had driven everyone, even the small knot of local kids that had come to his door earlier trick-or-treating, from the streets.

The van was still parked across the road, but no one would be able to see him here where the building catty-cornered to the next apartment block. There was a wall to negotiate so he put on his gloves and hauled himself over. Then it was a straight walk to the car he was using, a piece-of-shit 1989 Camry, which was one of the easiest cars there was to steal. When he’d first seen it parked here it had seemed like a sign from God. Mills had learned so many things from the penal system over the years – jacking cars wasn’t the half of it.

More than anything he’d learned about people. How to read them. What drove them. And how to use those two pieces of knowledge to get them to do what he wanted them to. That was what the other cons had never understood about him. His command of a situation wasn’t physical. There were plenty of guys in the pen who were physically stronger or more violent than he was. No, his strength was psychological.

Back in Pelican Bay, he had taken a lot of shit for sharing with Reardon Galt because of what Galt was inside for. By rights, he should have sliced and diced him that first night in the cell. But he had never quite understood how a guy who’d taken some asshole bank manager’s family hostage, and maybe beaten the snot out of the guy in front of his family, could feel morally superior to another guy just because he hadn’t slipped his hands into the bank manager’s wife’s panties while he was doing it.

Kids… well, kids would have been different. He wouldn’t have stood for sharing with a cellie who’d hurt little kids. But a little misunderstanding between a man and a woman? Well, shit happened. It happened between guys in the pen, and no one was lining up to dish out a beating to the guys inside the joint who forced their affections on another man.

So, Mills had let Galt live, even kept an eye out for him, and they’d started to get along. And Galt, it turned out, had had his uses. He was out before him for a start. He could use him to clear the decks.

What had taken Mills aback, though, was how seriously Galt had taken to his task. Once he was outside the gates, Mills had had no direct control over him. He’d gotten inside Galt’s mind, and maybe he’d done it too well because all he’d asked the man to do was take care of business – to make sure that Raven was nice and single for him getting out. But Galt had taken his instructions way too literally and Cindy had been the surprise.

Back in the pen he’d known all about Galt writing to Raven. He’d thought it was funny and something he could use. He’d promised Galt that he would get to spend some time with Raven too. He had lied.

What was that saying? Two’s company and three’s a crowd? Well, Mills had no desire to share Raven with anyone, least of all Reardon Galt. But before he got to that, there was some business to take care of. Tricky business with that mofo and his bodyguard buddy. He’d need Galt for that. Later, maybe not so much.

First things first, though, Mills thought, the engine of the Camry turning over. He had to get to Topanga Canyon.

66

To dry their clothes Lock had the truck’s heater running full tilt as, next to him, in the driver’s seat, Ty edged steadily along the winding canyon road. A flimsy sheet metal barrier was all that separated them from a near vertical drop to the canyon’s floor. Rain continued to pour and a muzzle flash of lightning broke somewhere out over the Pacific. The water carved gullies from bone-dry soil and rock as it tumbled down from the mountains and splashed on to the narrow road.

Lock hauled up a canvas bag and started to dig inside. A few seconds later he came up with what looked like a matt black nail gun or one of those devices you bought at the hardware store to locate wires or studs in your walls.

Raven studied it for a moment. ‘What the hell’s that?’

‘It’s what might just keep you alive tonight. It’s an RFD tracking device. Or, rather, it’s the device I’m going to use to implant an electronic chip under your skin so we can find you. Don’t worry, you’ll barely register it going in.’

‘And what about it coming out? I started out not wanting to be stalked and I finish up with something inside me that’s registering my every move.’

Lock started to load it with the chip. ‘It’s a straightforward procedure to have it taken out.’

Raven closed her eyes. ‘Go ahead. Believe me, I’ve had weirder things than that inside me.’

The chip itself was around 0.5 millimeters wide and the same height with a depth of around half of that. In other words it was smaller than a grain of rice, and the device popped it under the skin. It might leave a slight red mark or abrasion, so Lock had decided to put it near the nape of Raven’s neck where her long black hair would conceal it.

The only drawback with the technology was that he was going to have to stay within a certain range of the chip or he’d lose signal. He knew Carrie’s kidnapper would be looking out for someone following him. If Lock got too close to him, he might freak out and kill Carrie. If he stayed too far back, he’d lose the kidnapper entirely. Getting Carrie and Raven out alive came down to a grain of rice balanced on the edge of a knife.

‘Pull your hair up at the back,’ he instructed Raven.

She gathered it in one hand and shifted her hips in the seat so that he had a clear view of the back of her neck. He held the device up, pressing it to the skin.

‘Count of three, okay?’ he said to her.

‘Okay,’ she said.

‘One,’ he said, squeezing the handle on the device to launch the chip into her.

She jumped. ‘You said count of three.’

‘I lied. The more you tighten up the more painful it is,’ he explained, as her hand went up to the tiny reddening rise in her skin.

‘Don’t rub at it,’ he said, looking at Ty who was hunched over the wheel, picking out the road through the silvery tumble of rain past the headlights.

‘Is it okay if I ask a question?’ Raven said.

Lock shrugged.

‘What if you don’t find me in time?’ she asked, as, ahead of them, the silver rain cascaded through the light and disappeared into the jet-black void.

67

Carrie lay on the couch and listened to the rain battering at the windows. Gusts of wind came every few moments, whistling down the chimney into the tiny fireplace. Inside, everything was perfectly still, Carrie included.

The front door had slammed ten minutes ago, followed by the noise of a car engine turning over. The crackle of gravel, muted by the rain, had ebbed away to silence. Her kidnapper was gone.

He’d left Carrie on the couch, eyes dead, but heart still beating. She hadn’t even heard him lock the door on his way out. He seemed to have deemed her an item on his list that he didn’t have to worry about.

But Carrie had one thing going for her. After what had happened she wasn’t entirely convinced that she wanted to go on living. Before, such a thought would have seemed melodramatic. But not any more. It wasn’t that she felt suicidal. It was simply that she was floating in a place where not to live seemed equal to going on. If life was somehow premised on faith, which it always had been for Carrie, then in the past few hours she had shifted towards a position of agnosticism. Her indifference, she realized after a few minutes’ reflection, might give her the strength to get out of here.

If she wanted to live to see the sun rise, this was her chance. Before her kidnapper had left, she had heard him talking on his cell phone about an exchange, but she didn’t believe for a second that he would hold up his end of the bargain. Once he had Raven, he would kill her. Unless, of course, he chose not to come back to the house at all. But that didn’t seem likely, not the way he’d been talking. He’d told her that he wanted to be with her one last time before he left. With her and Raven. All three of them together. Carrie would rather die before she let that happen.

Pushing aside the tides of shock and nausea that were still washing over her, she began to work herself into a sitting position on the couch. With the way he had tied the ropes, even this much movement left her arms and legs burning with lactic acid. Finally, she ended up squatting on the edge. The mid-section of rope linking her arms and legs was the problem as it restricted her ability to stand, which presumably was the idea.

Unable to stay in the same position, there was only one thing for it. She allowed herself to fall face first on to the hard wood floor. She angled herself as she did so, protecting her nose and mouth but taking a hefty whack to the side of her head in the process. There was a loud booming crack, which could have been thunder but was as likely her temple meeting wood.

A shooting pain slammed all the way from the side of her head down her neck and then along her arm. She took a couple of deep breaths, then started on the next section of what she needed to do, visualizing it in her mind’s eye.

Using her elbow and knee she pushed herself across the floor, her view of the room skewed and distorted by the low angle. Then her foot found purchase and she discovered that, by pushing off on it, she could move maybe ten inches or even a whole foot forward. In between pushes she took two good breaths. Then on the third inhalation she would push off again.

Time was difficult to track. The thought of Galt walking back in seemed to accelerate it; the throbbing pain in her head slowed it down. No matter: all she had to do was count to three and remember to breathe.

The door leading into the kitchen lay open. She had already checked that before setting out on this epic voyage across the living room. Stone tile against her face marked her entrance. She stopped for a moment and rolled over a little more on to her back, seeking out a view of what was above her, and searching for a drawer that might hold cutlery – a knife.

The kitchen counter was in a single length against one wall. There were three drawers, each of equal depth and about six inches wide. She tried to move into a position where she might be able to raise herself back into a squat, which proved to be a hell of a lot harder than she’d thought it would be. On the couch she’d been able to use the drop to lower her legs. With all her limbs on the floor now and at an equal height, this wasn’t an option.

She stopped struggling, and took another moment to think it through as a wall clock ticked away nearby.

The wall. That was it. She needed something to lever herself up against. She started to back up a little, as her head banged against plasterboard. She kept shuffling back, and inched up against the wall, her thighs and calves doing the work. Then her shoulders were vertical. The sensation of having something at her back spurred her on and soon she was sitting up and pulling in her heels. With one final effort she wiggled her arms and pushed up with her calves at the same time. Then she was back in that half standing, half squatting position.

She didn’t stop now. The pain in her quads, in every part of her legs, was next to unbearable and she knew that if she stopped for any length of time it would overpower her and she would fall.

She shuffled as fast as she could towards the first drawer. Her hands were at the right level to open it, a realization that came to her with a surge of excitement as she stretched her fingers out and hooked them over the handle, easing the drawer open.

Apart for a sheet of faded yellow wallpaper, which had been placed inside as a liner, it was empty. Excitement chilled to self-pity and she almost lost her balance as she swayed back.

Three more shuffles. The second drawer. It was harder to open than the first, which didn’t seem like a good sign. But when it did open, she had her reward in the shape of a small paring knife with a blade no longer than three inches.

Digging the tips of her fingers into the drawer, she grabbed the handle of the knife and, after a full minute of contortions, she had the blade facing towards her as she sawed away at the rope that linked those that bound her hands and feet.