At the concert, the gang members had begun to cause trouble. At first she had thought it was a random event. Gang problems or fights at rap concerts were hardly unique. Then she had realized that they were looking for her. She had fled to her car, been chased and got away. Or, at least, she’d thought she had.
She’d been on her way to the hotel where the after-party was taking place when she had stopped for gas. As she was getting back into her car, another car had pulled in front of her, blocking her in. The girl had got out and shot her through the driver’s side window, leaving her for dead. But Melissa was alive. Delirious with pain, she had fixated on reaching the hotel and finding Lock.
The rest they knew.
Ty’s voice echoed in the car from the speaker on Lock’s cell phone. ‘Cops are in with her now.’
‘You ask them not to say anything to her about the girl being released?’
‘I did,’ said Ty. ‘Don’t know if they’ll tell her or not. You find anything up there?’
‘Some. Nothing that makes our job any easier. Think Brady had a contact in Mexico but they’re not answering their phone.’
‘Know who it is?’
‘Nope. All I got so far is a number.’ Lock drummed his fingers on the steering-wheel. ‘Listen, can you talk to one of our data-mining guys and see what they can dredge up about the Mendez family’s business interests?’
‘Sure.’
‘Especially anything related to business activities across the border in Mexico, subsidiary companies, suppliers, stock interests, business partnerships, anything of that nature.’
‘You got it. So, are we going after this asshole or not?’
Lock sighed and glanced at a pale blue slab of ocean. ‘Let’s just see where this takes us, Ty. I’ll be with you soon anyway.’
‘Okay, brother.’
Lock killed the call and switched his focus back to the road. He tried the Mexican number he’d found on Brady’s phone records one more time. This time he got a message in Spanish and English to say that the person was out of coverage area. He’d try again later.
He made one more call as he drove.
Sarah Brady answered on the second ring. He thanked her for her help and apologized for disturbing her at work.
‘Did you find what you were looking for?’ she asked.
He wouldn’t tell her about the phone number until he knew whose it was. But something from the office had nagged away at him as he had snaked his way south. ‘This might sound stupid, but Joe had scribbled some stuff on his desk pad. Nothing that seemed to mean anything but maybe you’d know. Did you ever hear him use the words “The Devil’s Bounty”?’
There was a bitter laugh at the other end of the line. ‘Yeah, I know what that means. It’s just a shame Joe didn’t take it to heart.’
‘What does it mean, Mrs Brady?’
‘It’s dumb, really.’ She paused, seeming to search for a way to put it into words. ‘When Joe started out he worked for an old guy called Daniel Front. Front Bail Bonds. Danny had been in the job, like, for ever and it was one of his little phrases. I guess everyone thinks that bail bondsmen and skip tracers deal with bad asses all the time, but from what I know about it, it’s mostly people who’re just plain dumb or unlucky or a combination of the two. Anyway, from time to time they’d get someone who really was bad news. Joe would cut them some slack, but Danny had been around long enough that he’d send them to someone else because he knew they’d skip or they’d be too much trouble if he had to go after them. So, if he didn’t want to deal with someone because he was a real bad guy who had a habit of skipping out, that was the phrase he’d use. He’d say that he didn’t want to go after the Devil’s Bounty. He was right too. If he’d still been around, there’s no way he would have let Joe go after Mendez.’
The Devil’s Bounty. Lock chewed it over. It made sense. He often turned down clients because he knew that they were going to be way more trouble than they were worth. And when he gave them the benefit of the doubt, it almost always ended in tears — and in his last major job, protecting Raven Lane, there had been an ocean of them.
‘Is Danny still around?’ he asked.
‘He died ten years ago. Joe kept the name until he was established, then went with Brady Bail Bonds.’
‘So, it was just an old-timer’s phrase?’
‘Pretty much. Good advice, though.’
As Lock thanked Joe’s widow for her help and wound up the call, he glanced across at the tracking device. He had moved it from the trunk to the front passenger seat as a reminder that someone, somewhere, perhaps at the Mendez estate, perhaps in Santa Maria, was tracking his every move in front of a computer screen, watching the little dot that represented his car crawling across a map. He was glad of that. They thought they had the upper hand. Right now, that suited him just fine.
Nineteen
It was dark when Lock reached the UCLA Medical Center. This time he parked in the structure that was officially designated for visitors. He took the elevator up to the ICU and got out, hearing the shouts of a medical team, a doctor barking orders, nurses yelling back. He shrugged it off. It was Intensive Care: medical emergencies were hardly a rarity.
He walked down the long corridor. Unless she had been moved, Melissa’s room was the sixth door on the left. He had counted before, not just the room but the steps to it from the elevator — an old habit acquired over years of close-protection work. Any time he found himself in a location that was unfamiliar to him, he would work out exit and entry points so that he would know exactly how long it would take him to reach them if there was a fire or a power outage.
Up ahead, medical staff were rushing into and out of a room on the left. He counted the doors. He checked his count. Then he broke into a run.
He looked around for Ty but couldn’t see him. A nurse was rushing past. Lock grabbed her arm. ‘Melissa Warner? Has she been moved? Is that her room?’ he asked, clinging to the hope that he was mistaken.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, brushing him off with a scowl.
He kept moving. Suddenly Ty was there, although Lock hadn’t seen where he had come from. A woman screamed, the sound dissolving into a wail of denial. ‘No! No!’
Ty had his arms around her. One look at her told Lock that this was Jan, Melissa’s mother. She was trying to fight her way past Ty and into the room. He was struggling to stop her without hurting her. ‘Let the doctors do their job. Okay?’ he said.
Gradually she began to still until he took his arms away. She slid down the wall, wrenching at her hair with both hands, panic and fear overwhelming her.
‘What’s going on?’ Lock asked him.
‘I don’t know. One minute she was sitting up, looked fine, the next I’d come out so she could get some rest and all those machines went crazy. Her heart, I’m guessing. I saw them going for a defibrillator and they got a crash team in there.’
Melissa’s mother was getting to her feet. Lock and Ty helped her up. ‘I need to get some fresh air.’
‘You want me to come with you?’ Ty offered.
She shook her head, rosary beads falling over her knuckles. ‘That’s kind of you, but I’ll manage.’
Lock stood with Ty and watched her walk unsteadily towards the elevator. They glanced back at the room. The commotion seemed to be ebbing away. Voices were lowered but no one came out. Lock stared at his partner, both men thinking that wasn’t a good sign.
They waited. A nurse drifted out, eyes on the floor. A resident in green scrubs was next. He looked at Lock. ‘Are you the father?’
The question shook Lock. What was he to her? He wasn’t any kind of family. He wasn’t a friend. He had only met the girl when she had stumbled bleeding into the hotel two nights before. He was a stranger she had turned to for help. ‘Her mother just stepped outside. You want me to go get her?’