There was a knock at the door. Then, a man’s voice. One of the bouncers. ‘Hey, Jerri, we need you downstairs.’
‘Answer him,’ Lock whispered.
‘Give me five.’
They listened as the man clumped back down the stairs. Then they heard him push open the door to the ladies’ room and bark something to one of the dancers.
Jerri dragged on her cigarette as Lock rifled through the files on her desk.
‘Listen, if I treated Natalya so bad, why did she come looking for her old job back?’
Lock looked up from the filing cabinet. ‘What?’
‘Didn’t know that, did you?’ Jerri said, a smirk passing across her face.
‘When was this?’
‘Let me think. A month, six weeks ago.’
‘Did she give a reason?’
Jerri blew a smoke ring and shrugged. ‘She didn’t say. But it’ll have been a man. Always is.’
‘She mention anyone in particular?’
‘Some guy called Brody, I think.’
‘Could it have been Cody?’
‘Yeah, might have been.’
‘Cody Parker?’
‘She just called him Cody.’
Shit. Lock had been wrong. The guy wasn’t innocent, merely cool under pressure.
‘Did she say anything about animal rights?’
‘Animal what?’
Lock took that as a no.
‘You ever meet him?’
‘He might have picked her up once or twice.’
‘Was he older? Younger?’
‘Than her? Older. Listen, our five minutes is up. They’ll be coming back up here and there’ll be trouble.’
Right on cue there was another knock at the door. This one more insistent.
‘Jerri?’
Before she had a chance to respond the door opened and one of the bouncers got a face full of gun.
‘Relax,’ said Lock, ‘I was just leaving.’
The bouncer blanched. ‘OK, man. I ain’t gonna try and stop you.’
Lock pushed past him and headed down the stairs, taking them two at a time. In the bar, Tiffany was perched on Ty’s lap.
‘I gotta go,’ Ty told her.
She threw her arms around Ty’s neck. ‘Will you call me?’
‘Sure.’
Ty fell into step with Lock. Behind them they could hear the bouncer screaming into his cell phone as he careered down the stairs. ‘Yeah, he’s got a gun. I need someone here now!’
In the office, Jerri lit a fresh cigarette and cradled the phone against her shoulder. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, blowing a perfect smoke ring and watching it slowly dissolve in front of her face. ‘But if I were you, I’d start closing this thing down fast.’
Thirty-five
‘So we had him and we let him go,’ said Ty, pacing to the window of Lock’s living room and faking a punch at his own reflection. ‘If they’ve harmed that kid. .’
Lock sat on the couch, his head in his hands, the tips of his right fingers worrying at his scar. ‘It might not be Cody, y’know.’
‘Ah, come on, Ryan. He knew Natalya, then magically she pops up as Josh Hulme’s nanny.’
‘Au pair,’ Lock corrected him.
‘Whatever.’
‘I guess we should call Frisk. Hand this back over to the Feds. People might not have wanted to cough up Parker when he was the Che Guevara of furry animals everywhere, but this might change his image.’
Lock pulled out his cell from the pouch on his belt. It buzzed in his hand. The prefix was for the Federal Plaza. ‘Speak of the devil.’ He flipped to answer.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’ The voice was unmistakeably that of Frisk.
‘Just the man I wanted to speak to.’
‘The hell with you, Lock.’
‘We know who has Josh Hulme.’
‘That’s great. You know who has his father too?’
‘What?’
Ty read Lock’s face. ‘Wassup?’
Lock waved him away. ‘Richard Hulme is with your guys, isn’t he?’
‘He was until about an hour ago.’
‘What happened?’
‘He left his apartment and now we can’t find him.’
Thirty-six
Stafford Van Straten took some papers from an eight-hundred-dollar leather attaché case and laid them out on the back seat of the Hummer. ‘I spent most of the day negotiating with our insurance company,’ he said.
Richard looked down at the documents, a glazed expression on his face.
‘I managed to convince them that because there’s only been a short window between your terminating your employment and your decision to rejoin the company, they won’t void the policy which covers you in relation to kidnap for ransom. In other words, you’ll still be covered.’
Stafford smiled to himself. He would have made a great door-to-door salesman.
‘It wasn’t an easy negotiation under the circumstances. They’re placing a limit on any ransom of two million dollars. Usually they’d go to five. But I think we were lucky to get them to extend their cover at all, don’t you?’
Again, Richard said nothing.
‘In the event that any ransom that’s paid exceeds two million dollars, Meditech have agreed to cover the excess beyond two to the usual ceiling of five. We can write it off against tax, in any case.’
Finally, Richard looked up at him. ‘This is my son’s life you’re putting a figure on.’
Stafford loosened his tie, undid the top button of his shirt. ‘I’m sorry, Richard. I don’t mean it to sound so clinical. I’m not really the best guy when it comes to dealing with emotions. I tend to suppress things, you know. It’s easier for me to try to fix things than worry about why they went wrong in the first place. I understand that you’d give anything to get him back.’ He eased a contract across the seat with the fingertips of his right hand.
Richard looked down at the thick sheaf of laser-printed heavy bond paper. ‘What’s this?’
‘Well, in order for this to work you have to be in our employ for at least the next twelve months. Any less and the insurance company would void the policy again. Along with the cover for other employees. Which in turn would make it near impossible for us to be insured with anyone else. And that would present major difficulties, especially for our overseas operations. Major difficulties for you too, as you’d be liable for any ransom. And I’m guessing if you had a spare few million lying around we wouldn’t be here now. You do see what I’m saying here, Richard, don’t you?’
Richard hesitated, then reached out for the contract. He began to flip through it, looking for where his signature was required.
‘It’s all fairly standard stuff,’ Stafford said quickly, handing him a Mont Blanc. ‘All the usual caveats, in particular with regard to the commercial sensitivity of your work.’
Richard stopped flipping. ‘I won’t go back to using animals.’
‘And neither will we. Our word is our bond on that issue.’
Richard flicked to the last page and signed his name. Stafford handed him the copy. He signed that as well.
‘You’re talking about a ransom,’ Richard said, ‘but there hasn’t been any demand yet.’
‘That’s not entirely true.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We had to resolve some other issues first. Before we told you.’
For a moment Stafford thought Richard was going to stab him through the throat with the pen.
‘The kidnappers have contacted you?’
‘They were obviously confused about your status with the company. Didn’t you think it was strange when you didn’t receive any demand?’