Lockdown (6 page)

He picked up a copy of the
Post
and flicked through it as he walked back through the lobby. On a double-page spread inside there was a picture of him pulling Janice out of the Hummer’s way. He didn’t like it: a good close protection operative stayed out of the limelight. A double-page spread in a tabloid wasn’t exactly staying out of the limelight.

In the elevator, Lock was squeezed to the back by a couple of hospital orderlies wheeling an elderly man on a gurney. One of them eyed him warily. Suddenly he regretted not dragging a razor across his face when he’d had the chance.

Lock handed the orderly the
Post
folded open at his picture. ‘Relax, I’m one of the good guys.’

The elderly man on the gurney reached out his hand for the paper. ‘Here, let me see that.’ His eyes shuttled between Lock and the picture. ‘That’s him all right.’

With everyone’s curiosity satisfied, Lock got out on the fourth floor, thankful that he hadn’t been asked to sign any autographs or
pose for a picture. Janice’s room was easy enough to spot. It was the one with a cop standing outside, sipping from a Styrofoam cup.

Once Lock had run through the rigmarole with the newspaper again, and the uniform had spoken to someone at her precinct, who’d then had to speak to someone at Federal Plaza, he was allowed through the door.

The blinds were closed but Janice was awake, her face turned away from the door. The room was full of flowers and cards. A few bereavement cards were scattered among those wishing her a speedy recovery. Hallmark’s market research clearly hadn’t yet unearthed the ‘Glad You Survived and Good Luck with the Terminal Illness’ niche of the greetings card market.

Lock laid the flowers at the bottom of the bed and pulled up a chair. They sat in silence for a moment.

‘How are you feeling?’ Lock asked at last.

‘Terrible. How about you?’ The question was delivered with the hint of a smile.

‘I feel . . .’ Lock trailed off, uneasily. ‘I’m good.’

She reached her hand across to his. ‘Thank you.’

The simple humanity of the gesture threw him a little. Because he worked for Nicholas Van Straten, Janice and her father had been the enemy for months.

‘I’m glad you made it,’ he said softly.

She glanced down. ‘For now.’

‘You don’t know that. There could be a breakthrough, some new drug or treatment for your condition.’

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. Even if there was, there was more chance of a Jehovah’s Witness agreeing to a blood transfusion than of Janice taking something that would, in all likelihood, have been tested on animals first.

To her credit, she let it slide. Instead she studied Lock’s face long enough to make him shift uncomfortably in his seat, before asking, ‘Have you ever been to a slaughterhouse?’

For a second, he thought of telling her about the six months he’d spent in Sierra Leone, where Charles Taylor and the Revolutionary United Front had embarked on a systematic campaign of amputating the limbs of the civilian population, including babies. At least killing animals to eat them served some purpose, he thought now. Much of what Lock had witnessed over the years was borne out of a darker human impulse.

He sighed, rubbed the back of his head, finding stitches. ‘I’ve seen a lot of death.’

‘Death’s inevitable, though, isn’t it?’ Janice said, her voice rising. ‘I’m talking about murder. The animals know they’re about to be killed. When they’re in the trucks, they know. You can see it in their eyes, hear it in the noise they make.’

Lock leaned forward and touched her arm. ‘Janice, I need to ask you a few questions. You don’t have to answer them but I need to ask them all the same.’

‘Gandhi said that you can judge the morality of a nation by how it treats its animals,’ Janice continued, undeterred.

She was rambling now, her mind on a loop, or so it seemed to Lock. She grasped the bars of the bed frame and pulled herself up into a sitting position. He tried to help her but she waved him away.

‘Janice, this is important. I don’t think whoever killed your father did it by accident. What I mean is, the more I’ve thought about it, the more I can’t help feeling that this wasn’t someone trying to assassinate Nicholas Van Straten and getting it wrong. This was someone trying to kill your father and getting it right.’

‘You think I don’t know that?’ Janice asked, suddenly focused. ‘We’d already had threats from your side.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Phone calls, letters, saying that if we didn’t stop the protesting we’d be killed.’

‘You tell anyone about this?’

‘And who were we going to tell? The FBI? They were probably the ones doing it.’

‘Come on.’

‘My mom and dad were saving animals twenty years before a bunch of anorexic bimbos took their clothes off for a photo shoot because it was fashionable. I grew up with our phone being tapped and our mail opened. There wasn’t one Christmas went by that I didn’t know what my grandma had gotten me because those assholes opened everything. What’s changed? Apart from the fact that nowadays there’s a hell of a lot more money at stake. For all I know,
you
could have been the one making those phone calls.’

‘OK, you got me. Must have been the suppressed guilt that got me to risk my ass pulling you out of there,’ Lock fired back, angry now.

Grandma’s presents
, gimme a break. Talk about brainwashing. Ma and Pa Stokes had done such a nice job that their only daughter was prepared to die a martyr for the cause, rather than compromise her principles and live, while they’d been only too happy to stand by and watch. And for what? To prove their moral superiority over the rest of us.

‘Thanks for the flowers, but maybe you should go now,’ Janice said, turning away from him.

Lock stood. He took a couple of breaths. ‘OK, I’ll go. But I’ve got one last thing I need to ask you.’

‘Fine, but make it quick, I’m getting tired.’

‘Your father said something to Van Straten when they were outside. Something about him getting his message.’

Janice looked blank. ‘I already told you,
we
didn’t make threats.’

‘I’m not suggesting it was a threat. But if there’d been some kind of back channel discussions going on—’

‘With Meditech? No way.’

‘So what was the message?’

Janice’s voice shook with emotion. ‘I don’t know. And now I never will. My parents are dead, remember?’

Lock got to his feet, his irritation replaced by remorse. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have . . .’

But her eyes had already closed, and by the time he reached the door she had fallen fast asleep. The uniformed officer checked on her before allowing Lock to leave. She looked up at Lock as she performed a cursory pat-down, although what he would have wanted to remove from Janice’s hospital room was a mystery.

‘Must feel pretty good,’ she said.

‘What must?’

The rookie smiled up at him. ‘Saving someone’s life like that.’

Lock shrugged his shoulders. He hadn’t saved Janice’s life, merely postponed her death. He turned his back on the cop and walked back to the elevator.

Brennans Tavern was about as authentically Irish as a bowl of Lucky Charms, but it was dark, which suited Lock fine. Even with the painkillers he’d picked up from the hospital pharmacy taking the edge off his headache, bright light was still making him wince.

Getting out of hospital had proved almost more time consuming than leaving the military, with about as many hours of form filling involved. Dr Robbins had warned him that in his present condition he was a danger not only to himself but also others. He’d declined to tell her that his commanding officer had said the same thing.

Eyes adjusting slowly to the gloom, he took a sip of beer. The label on the painkillers no doubt contained a warning about not taking them with alcohol but his vision was still a little blurred, and who could read that kind of small print in this light anyway?

The door swung open, and in strode Carrie. Seeing her, Lock felt suddenly buoyant. And even more light-headed. Without stopping to look around she made a beeline for him, throwing down her jacket and bag on the table, all business, like they’d never broken up.

‘Tough day?’ Lock asked her.

‘About average.’

‘How’d you pick me out so quick?’

‘Corner table with your back to the wall, a view of the door, and easy access to the back exit. It doesn’t take a genius.’

‘See, you did get something out of dating me after all.’ He stood and pulled out a chair for her.

She pantomimed a curtsy and sat down. ‘You always did have good manners.’

They looked at each other across the table, Lock suddenly wishing that the lighting was better.

‘Glad you made it out in one piece.’

‘Yeah. It was scary for a while there.’

‘It was,’ Lock agreed. The only people who claimed not to be scared in a violent situation were liars and psychopaths. Fear was hard-wired.

‘So how’s my hero?’

‘I’m your hero?’

‘Ryan, let’s not—’

He put up his hand in apology. ‘You’re right. So, let’s see, how am I?’ He took a sip, reflected. ‘I’m sore. If I’d seen it coming . . .’

‘It wouldn’t have been sore?’

Lock wasn’t sure he had the energy to explain. Long ago he’d formed the theory that if you knew you were going to be hurt, if you expected it, the brain could send a signal of anticipation to the body which meant that when pain came it arrived with less of a jolt. Since then, every time he’d gone into a situation the first thing he told himself was,
this is going to hurt. Bad
. And somehow when he did that and the pain came he was able to manoeuvre beyond it and come out on top.

The shotgun rig had been a sucker punch. But then the world these days was all sucker punches.

‘Ryan? Are you OK?’

‘Sorry.’ He ran his hand across his scalp. ‘I was miles away.’

‘Evidently. Nice hairdo, by the way.’

He smiled. One of the many things he loved about Carrie was her ability to pull him out of what she chose to call his ‘tortured soul’ moments. ‘You like it?’ he asked.

‘ “Like” might be too strong a word. It’s certainly . . . different. Let me get you a drink.’

‘Drinks are on me.’

He flagged down the bartender and ordered Carrie a Stoli rocks with a twist of lime.

‘Nice to see you remembered.’

The way she met his gaze as she said it held more than a hint of promise for later. In his current state, Lock couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. On the one hand he couldn’t think of anything he’d like better than spending the night with Carrie, but on the other he doubted Carrie would be that impressed if he blacked out on top of her.

That, and it was complicated. They’d first gotten involved vowing that their relationship was only a bit of fun, then quickly realized after he’d stayed over at her place every night for two weeks that maybe it was shaping up to be more. Finally, they reached a mutual conclusion: right person, wrong time. No big argument. No recriminations. Just a slow realization that it wasn’t going to work out. Lock ached, then threw himself even deeper into his job.

The bartender brought Lock another beer and Carrie her Stoli rocks with a twist. Carrie’s finger circled the rim of her glass. She was thinking about something, Lock could tell.

‘Got some pretty good footage of you saving that girl in the wheelchair.’

‘No.’

‘I haven’t asked you a question yet.’

‘I know what it is, and my answer’s still no.’

Carrie sat back, smiling. ‘Will you give me an interview?’

‘You know what I think about media bullshit. Present company excepted. And you know what I think about guys doing the job who big-time it.’

‘But you saved her life.’

‘It’s what I’m trained to do. It wasn’t bravery, it was reflex. Listen, my job is to be the—’

‘Grey man. I know.’

Carrie had made the mistake of curling up on the couch with Lock one evening to watch the Academy Awards. She’d been treated to a stream of invective about the shortcomings of the various ‘bodyguards’ accompanying the cream of Hollywood up the red carpet. It was also the first time Carrie had heard the expression, presumably picked up from his former British colleagues, ‘thick-necked twats’.

‘Then you knew what I’d say.’

‘Can’t fault a girl for trying, can you?’ She drained her Stoli. ‘Why don’t we go somewhere else?’

Lock closed his eyes, tasting the moment.

‘You OK?’

‘Better than OK. You got some place in mind?’

‘Maybe.’

Over Carrie’s right shoulder, Lock watched a man in his early forties come into the bar. He wore a long raincoat buttoned all the way up but the hair matted to his head indicated that he hadn’t had the additional foresight to carry an umbrella. He scanned the bar quickly, clearly seeking someone out, but his manner was off, too much uncertainty around the edges.

The man stopped at the bar, leaning over to speak briefly to the barman, who nodded in Lock’s direction. As the man headed towards them, Lock edged his chair back a few inches, giving himself the room to be quickly up and on his feet should the need arise.

‘What’s wrong?’ Carrie asked, looking behind her.

The man got within a few feet of them and stopped.

Lock’s focus remained on the man’s hands, waiting for them to move inside his coat. But they didn’t, and when he finally spoke it was with a slightly affected WASPy accent, the words clipped and decisive. ‘Mr Lock?’

Another reporter, no doubt. Lock glared up at the man from his beer. ‘Sorry, but NBC already have me tied up.’

‘You should be so lucky,’ Carrie muttered.

Lock opened his mouth to tell the guy that they were leaving, then stopped as he saw his face up close. He had scaly black bags under his eyes and looked like he was about to burst into tears.

The man’s gaze flitted briefly to Carrie, then back to Lock. ‘Mr Lock,’ he said, his voice breaking, ‘I’m not a reporter. My name’s Richard Hulme. I’m Josh Hulme’s father.’

‘How did you find me?’ Lock asked Richard Hulme.