The Devil's bounty

Eight

Lock pulled up his Audi beside the hotel’s valet-parking stand and got out, still clad in his blood-stained clothes from the previous evening. A well-dressed Beverly Hills couple waiting for their car stared at him, open-mouthed, as he handed the keys to one of the hotel valets with twenty dollars. ‘Sorry, the interior’s kind of a mess.’ The kid peered inside and gulped. ‘Good job I went for leather seats, right?’

He pivoted away and headed for the lobby. The receptionist from the evening before gave him a shit-eating grin and a chirpy ‘Good morning’ as he headed to the bank of elevators that would take him up to his room.

Back in his room, he took a shower, changed into fresh clothes and dumped the others in the trash. He packed the rest of his gear into a bag, placed his laptop in its case and, forty-five minutes later, walked into the corridor leaving the door to close behind him. As he was in Los Angeles, where permits for private security consultants were next to impossible to come by (which was not necessarily a bad thing, given the number of cowboys in the business), he wasn’t carrying a gun. That would have to change if he and Ty went to Mexico. Maybe sooner.

The drive from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara along the Pacific Coast Highway was one of rare beauty. There weren’t many stretches of highway that people travelled from all over the globe to experience but this was one of them. For Lock, though, as he passed the turn to Topanga Canyon and ventured beyond into Malibu, it was a road of demons and ghosts.

Malibu was where Carrie had been abducted by Reardon Galt, the house she and Lock had been living in burned down to cover the kidnapper’s tracks. As he passed the site he slowed a little. The old structure had already been torn down and a new gleaming, post-modern home erected in its place. He jabbed at the gas pedal to make the lights at Big Rock before they turned red, and was stuck staring at his past.

He stopped at the mall at Cross Creek to get gas and some water. Then he was out of Malibu, driving through Trancas, a weight lifting from his shoulders with every mile. It wasn’t a long drive to Santa Barbara but it afforded him time to think. On the face of it, the Mendez case was logical. Rich kid gets charged with rape. When he realizes he’s not going to beat the rap, he uses a gullible judge and his money to get the hell out of Dodge. Once he’s south of the border he pays some heavyweight Mexican muscle to ensure that he stays there.

The only thing Mendez hadn’t reckoned with was Melissa Warner. The tapes in court had shown that she had been one of many victims but she alone had encouraged those with a financial interest to pursue him. That had pushed him into going after her — albeit by proxy. But it was also drawing the heat on to him. And that was stupid. At some point the Department of Justice would get tired of him thumbing his nose at them and put some pressure on the Mexican government to catch him. It also raised another question. Who was looking after him down there? And, more crucially, why? Sure, he had money, but the execution of the bounty hunter had all the hallmarks of one of Mexico’s notorious drug cartels, and they weren’t short of cash. The downside to them protecting Mendez was extra media and government attention, which would far outweigh the financial boost he provided.

Something didn’t add up.