The Devil's bounty

Fifty-seven

Ty pulled into an alleyway behind a row of shacks, killed the headlights and switched off the engine. The girl was curled up against the passenger door. She had his jacket wrapped around her and her eyes were closed. He pushed the button to crack the window for some fresh air. The stench of rotting food and bad sanitation, the smell of poverty, wafted in on a cold breeze. He closed it again.

After leaving Lock to go after Mendez, he had got off the highway as quickly as he could and pulled into a residential neighbourhood. Driving at night, with so many police cars tearing around and no way of knowing who they were really working for, he’d decided that their best chance lay in waiting for sunrise before he contacted the American consulate or made a dash for the border. Anywhere in the world, a strange car in a poor neighbourhood was less likely to go reported than one parked in a rich area. A phone call to Rafaela had only confirmed his worst fears. Half the police department had been pulled from their beds with instructions to find him, Lock and Julia.

Conversation with the girl had been minimal. Ty had told her that he was here to return her to her parents but that it was too dangerous to do it directly. She seemed to understand. He didn’t ask much about her ordeal. It wasn’t his place and, in a way, he didn’t want to know the details. Knowledge might cloud his judgement, just as it seemed to have tipped his partner over the edge when he had darted off after Mendez.

It seemed cruel to wake her, but he leaned over and tapped her on the shoulder. She started and opened her eyes.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘We’re going to park here until sunrise.’ He gave a nod towards the back seat. ‘I thought you might be more comfortable there. You can stretch out.’

She eyed it with suspicion. He didn’t blame her. It would be a long time before she trusted another man.

‘Don’t worry, I’m going to be right here and staying awake. Don’t want anyone sneaking up on us,’ he said.

The thought of him standing watch over her while she slept seemed to reassure her. ‘Okay, thanks,’ she said, clambering into the back. ‘I’m so tired.’

‘You’ve been through a lot. Don’t worry, I’ll wake you when we need to get moving.’

She lay down, knees tucked into her chest. Melissa had slept in a similar position at the hospital in Los Angeles. Ty wondered how many of Mendez’s other victims slept like that now, or still had nightmares about their ordeal.

‘Tyrone?’ the girl asked, as outside a rat scuttled across the alleyway, stopping briefly to size up one of the SUV’s tyres.

‘Yeah?’

‘Thank you.’

In the dark, Ty shrugged. He was wondering if this went some way towards atoning for past mistakes, past misdeeds.

‘Can I ask you something?’ she said.

‘Sure, go ahead.’

‘The man you were with.’

‘Ryan? What about him?’

‘Did he go after Charlie?’

Ty didn’t say anything at first. He was still unsettled and angry at Lock’s change of heart. He had been right in the first place. They should have forgotten Mendez. It was too risky to try to take him and rescue the girl at the same time. But something had changed in Lock when he had seen Mendez across the highway. A dark flame had burned inside him since Carrie’s death. He kept it hidden but Ty knew it was there. It had blazed up momentarily when they had been watching the house. It was like a pilot light, burning low but with the capacity to explode into an inferno at any moment — as it had when he had seen Mendez.

‘Yes, he did,’ Ty said finally.

‘Why?’

Ty sighed. ‘How long have you got?’

‘You said we can’t move anywhere until sunrise.’

‘You know you’re not the first person Charlie Mendez has hurt, right? I mean, you know who he is.’

She nodded. ‘I didn’t at first. But after, yes… I felt so stupid. I’d read about him and heard about what he’d done on the news. I just didn’t connect him with the man I met in the bar until it was too late.’

Again, she spared him the details, and he was thankful. He settled into his seat and told her about Melissa, and how he and Lock had come to bring Mendez back to the United States to face justice. At the end of the telling, she raised her head and stared at him. ‘That still doesn’t explain why he agreed.’

He didn’t have it in him to tell her about Carrie’s death and Lock’s guilt over it — his own guilt about what had happened. Instead, he said, ‘You should get some sleep.’

She closed her eyes, and within a minute she was asleep, leaving Ty alone in the driver’s seat with his gun, enveloped in the darkness of a place where people too poor to afford dreams made their lives.