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 melee 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 normaclass="underline" 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 excitement, 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 incomprehension 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 gunshot 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 receptionist. ‘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.’