Deadlock

55

A sea of blue uniforms greeted Lock and Ty outside San Francisco International Airport. The last time Lock had seen such a show of strength by law enforcement was in the weeks following 9/11. Cars, limos and taxis lingering for more than a few moments at the kerbside were being swiftly dealt with.

Amid the crush of stressed-out passengers, Lock spotted Carrie piloting the mini-van towards them. He and Ty forced their way through the crowd. They clambered inside and Carrie edged out into the traffic. She leaned over and touched Lock’s hand.

‘You want me to drive?’ he offered.

‘Relax, Ryan,’ Carrie said, picking her way past a cab with its trunk open, the driver loading luggage as a burly cop screamed at him to pick up the pace, ‘I got it. How did you get on?’

‘Nothing we can use to find Reaper. But you know how you wanted me not to keep things from you?’

‘Yeah,’ said Carrie.

‘Well, the Nazi Low Riders have a contract out on me and Ty.’

Carrie hit the brakes and honked her horn as a pick-up truck cut her off. Lock put his hands on the windscreen and braced. Carrie behind the wheel was only marginally less stressful than babysitting Reaper.

‘Then maybe we should go back to New York,’ she said. ‘The network can get someone else to cover the funeral.’

Lock closed his eyes, trying to let go of some of the tension of the last forty-eight hours. ‘It’s gone too far for that now. Reaper’s my responsibility.’

Soon they were out of the worst of the airport tangle of traffic and on the Bayshore Freeway, which would take them into San Francisco. There was a low fog rising from the water but, up above, the sky was clear. Lock sat back, allowing himself to relax a little.

‘So, you want to know what I dug up on Reaper’s daughter?’ Carrie asked as they rolled along. ‘Chance is a street name. Her real name is Freya Vaden.’

Lock opened his eyes. ‘Not Hays?’

‘Mom didn’t want anything to do with Frank Hays after he went to jail. She moved herself and little Freya to the Inland Empire.’

‘Where’s that exactly?’

‘Los Angeles, right where we just were,’ Ty said.

‘So how’d she hook back up with Dad?’ Lock asked.

Carrie shook her head. ‘No idea. But clearly she got curious. It wouldn’t take much digging to find out he was in jail.’

‘So Chance grew up in California?’

‘Until she was about twelve, when Mom died of a drugs overdose. No grandparents around, so she went into foster care. Ended up with a family called the Grisaldis.’

‘You’re shitting me, right?’ Ty said.

‘What?’ asked Lock.

‘You never heard about the Grisaldi case? They fostered dozens of kids. Molested them too. Papa Grisaldi was convicted about four years ago and sent to Corcoran.’

Lock knew that Corcoran was one of California’s heavy-duty prisons. Not as hardcore as Pelican Bay, but still pretty tough. ‘How long did he last there?’ he asked Carrie.

‘Less than a week,’ she said. ‘He was murdered by a two-man Aryan Brotherhood hit squad.’

Ty leaned forward from the back seat. ‘And here’s the kicker, Ryan. Papa Grisaldi was a black man.’

‘And her long-lost father’s a race warrior. Perfect,’ said Lock, pinching at the bridge of his nose. ‘So we got her psychology. But how do we find her?’

‘I’m not so sure that we will. All the regular checks seem to indicate that she dropped off the grid some time last year.’ Her eyes still on the road, Carrie dug in her bag and tossed over a wad of printouts. ‘This is everything I have.’

Lock quickly riffled through the papers. He stopped at one particular page and held it up to Carrie. It was a crumpled colour printout of a young woman in her mid-twenties. ‘This her?’

‘Only picture I could find. Of course it was taken a few years back so she might have changed her appearance since.’

Ty leaned forward and studied the picture of Chance. ‘You can see how Prager got drawn in.’

Carrie laughed. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, Ty. Somehow I don’t think you’d be her type.’

‘No shit,’ Ty said.

‘You pass this on to the FBI?’ Lock asked her.

‘Via Coburn,’ Carrie said.

‘He’s speaking to you?’ Lock asked. ‘He seems kind of pissed at me.’

Carrie’s cell phone trilled. ‘Speak of the devil,’ she said, plucking it from her bag on the dash. She flipped it open and listened for a moment. ‘OK, where?’ she asked. There was another pause. ‘What else?’ she said, before killing the call and turning to Lock. ‘They’ve had a sighting of Reaper. Traveling north on PCH about fifty south of us. California Highway Patrol stopped a vehicle he was traveling in. At least they think that’s who it was.’

‘North?’ Ty said.

Carrie nodded.

‘So why don’t they have him in custody?’ Lock demanded.

‘He came out shooting, Coburn says. Destroyed the patrol car, and shot the two officers inside.’

Lock slammed the palm of his hand against the dash in frustration. ‘He kill them?’

Carrie nodded. ‘One of them. The other’s pretty badly injured.’

Lock sighed. This sounded more like the Reaper he knew. Whatever he was planning, he clearly had no intention of going back to prison, even if it meant killing anyone who got in his way.

And there was something that worried Lock even more. Any fugitive looking to flee justice should have been heading south. But Reaper was heading north, straight towards them.