Free The Devil's Bounty by Sean Black Page A

got a crash team in there.’
    Melissa’s mother was getting to her feet. Lock and Ty helped her up. ‘I need to get some fresh air.’
    ‘You want me to come with you?’ Ty offered.
    She shook her head, rosary beads falling over her knuckles. ‘That’s kind of you, but I’ll manage.’
    Lock stood with Ty and watched her walk unsteadily towards the elevator. They glanced back at the room. The commotion seemed to be ebbing away. Voices were lowered but no one came out. Lock stared at his partner, both men thinking that wasn’t a good sign.
    They waited. A nurse drifted out, eyes on the floor. A resident in green scrubs was next. He looked at Lock. ‘Are you the father?’
    The question shook Lock. What was he to her? He wasn’t any kind of family. He wasn’t a friend. He had only met the girl when she had stumbled bleeding into the hotel two nights before. He was a stranger she had turned to for help. ‘Her mother just stepped outside. You want me to go get her?’
    ‘If you would,’ the doctor said.
    ‘I’ll take care of it,’ Ty said, striding past them, shoulders down, long legs stalking towards the elevator.
    ‘She’s gone?’
    The doctor bit at his lower lip. ‘I’m very sorry. Sometimes …’ He trailed off. ‘Sometimes when there’s been a trauma like she suffered, the body just overloads.’
    Lock’s gaze drifted towards the room where a dead twenty-year-old girl was lying on a bed, her heart literally broken beyond repair. ‘I brought her in after the shooting,’ he said to the doctor. ‘Would you mind if I saw her?’
    The doctor didn’t say anything so Lock moved past him and into the room.
    She was laid out on the bed. A nurse pulled the gown over her bare breasts as Lock walked in but he could see the raw, livid scar that arced across her abdomen, the stitches still visible from where she had been pieced together after the bullet had been removed. Lock crouched next to the bed, recent history rushing at him. He wasn’t at fault for this death, not in any way, but it still weighed on him. Melissa Warner had left him a legacy as sour as any family debt.
    He reached up and his hands fell over her forehead. His fingertips drifted down, and he closed her eyes.

Twenty
    One Week Later
    West Hollywood
    THREE BLACK CADILLAC Escalade SUVs came to a halt outside the restaurant in West Hollywood. Lock emerged from the front passenger seat of the middle vehicle and stepped back to open the rear door. The doors of the other two Escalades also opened kerb side. Lock ushered Triple-C’s lead rapper, Dwayne Dikes, and his date through a small knot of paparazzi towards the entrance. Ty did likewise with his principal. It was a perfectly choreographed routine, which, in this instance, was effectively there to make the principals look good. The biggest threat Dwayne was under this evening was from some undercooked scallops.
    Inside the restaurant, the maître d’ escorted the two rappers and their dates to a table in the middle of the room. Lock and Ty took a small table by the window, ordered mineral water and settled in to wait. This was close-protection work as Lock knew it:watching someone else have a good time while you waited for them to finish.
    He paid for the mineral water up front, a habit he had acquired over the years. You got a drink or food and asked for the check at the same time. It meant you could leave in a hurry if you had to.
    Out on the sidewalk, three lone paparazzi went back to smoking and talking and sipping their lattes. On the patio, Lock recognized a certain Hollywood actress and her buffed movie-star date, neither of them heterosexual but both with a movie on upcoming general release.
    The lead Escalade pulled out into traffic. The other two followed it. Per Lock’s instructions, they would circle the block and wait around the corner, ready to pick up their charges as soon as they were finished with dinner.
    Across the street there was another vehicle, a red Honda Accord