The Devil's Bounty (30 page)

Lock kissed mouldy motel-room carpet as first Miriam and then Charlie Mendez were lifted to their feet and taken outside by the Marshals Arrest Response Team. Zapatero was next, his escort two clean-cut FBI agents, who looked fresh out of the box at Quantico. Lock, Ty and Rafaela were relieved of their weapons, uncuffed and helped to their feet as the motel’s Hispanic front-desk clerk strode into the room and extended a hand to Lock.

‘Armando Hernandez, US State Department.’

Lock shook his hand. ‘You boys get everything you need?’

‘We had a lot of it worked out already, but nothing beats hearing it from the horse’s mouth. You all okay?’ Hernandez asked.

A couple of Federal agents squeezed past him, picking up the holdalls with the ransom money, tagging them and taking pictures with a small digital camera before hauling them into the other room. Ty watched the bags with the expression of a kid who’d just been told that Santa Claus doesn’t exist.

‘We’re good. Don’t worry about Tyrone,’ Lock said, placing a hand on his partner’s shoulder. ‘He’s just a little emotional right now.’

‘That’s for damn straight,’ said Ty.

As soon as the area outside the motel was secured, they emerged into the midday sunlight, Lock, Ty and Rafaela. Rafaela walked
out into the middle of the parking lot and, cupping her hand over her eyes, looked out over the open countryside beyond the road that fronted the motel. Lock stood next to her.

‘He came to kill me,’ she said.

Lock followed her gaze out over the desert. The landscape here didn’t look all that different from what he’d seen on the other side of the border. The people hadn’t been that different either. Most of them, anyway. The silent majority who wanted to raise their families in peace.

‘Who came?’ he asked her, as behind them Ty, still pissed at having to sacrifice the money, tapped his foot against the rear wheel of an Arizona State Police cruiser.

‘The bodyguard,’ Rafaela said. ‘Hector.’

‘Didn’t do much of a job,’ said Lock.

‘I showed him the same pictures of the girls that I showed you.’

‘What did he say?’

Rafaela lapsed into silence. Her eyes narrowed. ‘I think he understood the pain. He felt it too.’

‘Maybe that’s all any of us can do,’ said Lock, as across the parking lot Charlie Mendez was bundled into the back of a police cruiser for the long drive north to his new home at Pelican Bay Supermax.

Epilogue

Two Months Later

Lock’s fiancée, Carrie Delaney, had been buried close to her parents’ house in Connecticut. After her death, while they were making arrangements for the funeral, they had asked Lock for his thoughts on her final resting-place. Because his work involved so much travel, he had thought it best that she stayed close to them. What meagre roots he had lay with her, and she was gone. She had been his home.

This was his first visit to her grave in a little more than four months. He suspected that, however good anyone’s intentions, lengthening intervals between such visits were the reality.

He had brought a small bunch of white lilies with him. Falling on to one knee, and feeling the poignancy of that motion, he laid them gently against her gravestone, next to some other flowers placed there by her mother a few days before.

He had visited her parents earlier that morning. They were, as they had been since her death, warm and welcoming. He wasn’t
sure that he would have felt the same way. It had been his mistake that had led to her death in California, but they graciously saw it as just that – a mistake, a cruel intervention of Fate.

While he had sat in their living room drinking coffee, he had told them about events in Mexico. The story had splashed big on both sides of the border, although the Justice Department, for reasons of their own, had managed to downplay his involvement. He and Ty had helped them out by spending the past few months very firmly off-the-radar.

Since the trap that they had helped set for Miriam Mendez and Police Chief Zapatero in the motel room outside Phoenix, events had moved fast. Charlie Mendez was now inside the Secure Housing Unit at Pelican Bay. For his own safety, he would remain there indefinitely, alone in a single cell, allowed out for a solitary hour of exercise once a day. It was, as far as Lock saw it, a fate worse than death. More importantly, he was where he could do no harm to any other young woman. Despite the white-hot rush of anger he had felt when he’d pursued him, Lock had realized that Melissa’s wish to see him returned to serve the sentence handed down by the court had been right and proper. It would have been easy for Lock to put a bullet in Mendez’s brain. It would also have been wrong.

In what some might have seen as a righteous act of karma, Miriam Mendez wasn’t going to make it to trial, never mind a jail cell. Her cancer had returned, for real this time, and she was, according to his contacts in Santa Barbara, deteriorating fast. Death’s hand on her shoulder must have woken something in her conscience because she had handed the US government all of the details of the family’s deal with the cartel. In return for her son’s protection, the cartel had used the family’s varied business
interests as a way of laundering their drug money – at a nice profit for both sides. Police Chief Zapatero, knowing that his arrest by the US authorities was as good as a death sentence, had, in return for immunity from prosecution, confirmed her story.

On the other side of the border Manuel Managua, the politician, had been arrested. Federico Tibialis could not be found. There was a ten-million-dollar price on his head but he had more money than either God or Santa Muerte, and would likely stay on the run for longer than Charlie Mendez had managed. Despite Ty’s best efforts to convince him to reprise their new career, Lock had decided that their temporary detour into bounty hunting was best left at that.

Like her boss, Rafaela had also been offered protection by the US government – albeit under terms dictated by the fact that she was wholly innocent of any wrongdoing. At first she had turned down their offer of Federal protection, until a long, exhausting talk with Lock had persuaded her that she was more useful to everyone alive. She was staying at a secret location somewhere in the United States and helping both governments piece together what had happened to the young women she thought of as her girls. Depressingly for everyone, the vile activities of the three men, Managua, Tibialis and Zapatero, still accounted for only a fraction of the deaths. There were other predators out there in the borderlands. The killings were an epidemic.

Julia was slowly coming to terms with her ordeal, and receiving private counselling, paid for by Lock when her parents had been told by their private insurance company that their policy didn’t cover the treatment she needed. Julia might never be the same person, but she would come to terms with what had happened and, he prayed, be able to move on with her life. He had long since
realized that was as good as it got. You made your peace with events. You didn’t forget, but if you took one day at a time then slowly you found that life went on.

Lock stood in front of Carrie’s grave for a while longer until his eyes were wet and his bones chilled. After an hour, he turned around and walked back towards the cemetery gates. Ty was waiting for him with Angel, the Labrador he had adopted with Carrie and who had been staying with friends of Ty while he and Lock worked.

The dog danced excitedly at Lock’s feet, and he reached down to scratch behind its ears. Finally Ty said, ‘Dumb question, I know, but you okay, brother?’

With no artifice between the two men, Lock shook his head. ‘Still hurts, Ty. Hurts like hell.’

His friend placed a massive hand on Lock’s shoulder. ‘Wouldn’t mean nothing if it didn’t.’

Acknowledgements

Thanks to:

Marta and Caitlin. I love you both.

My agents Scott Miller of Trident Media in New York, Luke Speed at Marjacq in London, and Jon Cassir at CAA in Los Angeles for their advice and guidance.

Maddee James and Jen Forbus for running my website.

As always I’m very appreciative of the support of friends and family on both sides of the Atlantic. A special shout-out to steely-eyed dealers of death Kestrel Carroll, Chris Garfield, Ed G., Mark Greaney, Gregg Hurwitz, Scott Mackenzie, Lynda and Richard Murphy, Becky Treppas, and Selina Walker for sponsoring my participation in the ‘A Run Down Hero Highway’ event in New York City. I finished bleeding – but I finished.

A very special namecheck for Sara, sister of my friend, Andy Carmichael. Both of them are brave individuals, who are in my thoughts more than they know.

Finally, to the most important people in the entire process, my readers. I hope you enjoy this latest instalment in Ryan and Ty’s adventures.

About the Author

To research the Ryan Lock series of thrillers,
Sean Black
has trained as a bodyguard with former members of the Royal Military Police’s specialist close protection unit, spent time inside America’s most dangerous maximum security prison, Pelican Bay Supermax in California, and ventured into the tunnels under Las Vegas. A graduate of Columbia University in New York, he lives with his wife and daughter in Los Angeles.

For more information on Sean Black and his books, see his website at
www.seanblackbooks.com
or follow him on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/seanblackthrillers

Also by Sean Black

LOCKDOWN

DEADLOCK

GRIDLOCK

For more information on Sean Black and his books, see his website at
www.seanblackbooks.com

THE DEVIL’S BOUNTY

First published in Great Britain
in 2012 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright © Sean Black 2012

Sean Black has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.