Sean Black - Deadlock

‘All ashore that’s going ashore,’ he said.

He opened the rear door and hauled Reaper out, shoulders first. In addition to his usual restraints, Reaper was sporting the previously threatened piece of cloth jammed into his mouth to stop him from talking.

Reaper hit the sidewalk like a sack of potatoes. Lock put out his hand and helped him to his feet. A couple of Medford cops went to help Lock but he waved them away with a gruff ‘Back the hell off.’

He shoved Reaper hard in the back, propelling him up the stone steps. At the top, Jalicia stood among the open-mouthed crowd with the rest of her prosecution team. Lock kept Reaper moving until the final step, when the front of his right foot happened to clip the back of Reaper’s left foot and he sprawled face first directly in front of Jalicia. As Reaper tried to look up, Lock placed his boot on the back of his head, forcing his face back down on to the stone.

‘Everyone else who was on the plane is dead,’ Lock said. He glanced down at Reaper. ‘All apart from me and this piece of shit.’ He dug into his pocket, pulled out a set of keys for Reaper’s cuffs and leg restraints, and handed them to Jalicia. ‘Here’s your witness.’

The shock was etched on Jalicia’s face. ‘Everyone’s dead?’

‘There was a welcoming committee waiting for us at the airfield.’

‘How the hell could they have known where he was coming in?’

The question had crossed Lock’s mind ever since he’d spotted the assault helicopter. There was only one answer: they had someone on the inside.

But who? One of the Marshals? A guard back at Pelican Bay? Someone in local law enforcement? It was a pretty wide field. Without knowing who the group who’d ambushed them were, narrowing it down was going to prove next to impossible.

‘I don’t know, but they were well prepared.’ Dust caught at the back of his throat. ‘Pardon me,’ he said, turning his head in Reaper’s direction and spitting some of the runway grit from his mouth. ‘One more thing you should know. I gave them ample opportunity to kill this piece of shit, and they didn’t take it. For whatever reason, they wanted to take him alive.’

Two cops rushed in to scoop Reaper up from the ground.

‘Now,’ Lock said, ‘if you’ll excuse me…’

Carrie was standing ten yards away, in a knot of other media people, with her cameraman. Lock looked at her as she brushed back a strand of blonde hair from her eyes, which were blue and earnest as she talked to another reporter. She turned and saw him. Her features softened as she made her way towards him.

As she reached him, she raised an eyebrow. ‘Straightforward mission, huh?’

Lock shrugged. ‘It was when it started.’

He reached out and placed his hands either side of her face, his thumbs stroking her cheeks.

She smiled. ‘It always is with you.’

He leaned in and kissed her softly on the lips. It felt fantastic.

They walked slowly back to the mini-van Carrie’s network had provided. Lock took her through the whole story, starting with the conference room in San Francisco. She’d already heard about Ty and had good news for Lock: ‘They’re moving him down to a hospital in San Francisco later today.’

Lock felt the slabs of tense muscle in his back and neck ease a little. ‘That’s good.’

They both fell silent for a few seconds. Lock was anxious about what was coming next. He’d taken on what had proved to be a near-suicide mission, and kept Carrie out of the loop. The guilt about it had weighed on him all the while he’d been inside the prison, only outweighed by the dour determination he’d felt to bring the killers of Ken Prager and his family to justice.

‘Ken Prager was my friend,’ Lock said. ‘I had to do what I could to help bring these guys to justice.’

‘Loyalty’s a fine quality,’ Carrie said, avoiding eye contact.

Lock’s heart sank.

‘I don’t know, Ryan. I mean, if I had a great story to chase, I wouldn’t want to have to ask your permission. That’s one of the things I like about you. You’re not threatened by my career. You respect my independence.’

That much was true. In his downtime between jobs, Lock was quite content to walk Angel in Central Park, hit the gym, then shop for groceries and cook dinner. Carrie often teased him that barring his adrenalin junkie tendencies, he’d make someone a great wife one of these days, and he laughed along with her. Maybe it was a generational thing but he’d never bought into any macho bullshit about a woman’s place being in the kitchen. He was happy to be with a woman who didn’t take any crap, and who’d built a life for herself.

‘I’m sensing a “but” here somewhere,’ he said.

‘I just don’t know if this is working out between us,’ Carrie said.

Lock sighed. He wasn’t about to plead for another chance. Not because he was too proud, but because, in his experience, once a woman had made a decision about a relationship there was rarely any going back. They were harder than men in that respect. Yet he wasn’t quite ready to give up on what they had.

‘Does it change anything if I say that I don’t think I’ve ever missed anyone before like I missed you these past five days?’ he asked.

Carrie looked away again. He could sense her softening.

‘How do I make it up to you?’

‘There is one thing,’ said Carrie, watching as Reaper was finally bundled from view by a phalanx of law enforcement.

‘Name it,’ said Lock.

‘Help me get an interview with Reaper.’

The guard opened the holding cage and Reaper stepped out. Jalicia nodded for him to free his shackles. Layers of body armor, some of it still slicked with the blood of dead US Marshals, jutted out from his bulky frame. He looked, thought Jalicia, like a cross between the Terminator and a Kevlar-encased Egyptian mummy.

‘Get him out of that stuff,’ she said, holding up a black plastic Nordstrom’s suit carrier. She unzipped it and held it up for his inspection. ‘A lot of people died to get you here, so you might want to make the effort to look presentable.’

Knowing that an inmate in prison blues was already a couple of credibility points behind a witness who was dressed in civilian clothes, Jalicia had brought Reaper the change of clothes: a single-breasted dark grey suit, a crisp white shirt still bearing the crease marks from its packaging, and a suitably conservative blue tie.

‘Thank you,’ Reaper said, showing no after-effects of the events surrounding his transfer.

‘I hope it fits you.’

Reaper checked the label on the collar. ‘Should be fine.’

Jalicia cleared her throat. ‘Lock thinks those people back at the airfield were trying to free you from custody. He says this whole thing with you agreeing to testify is a sham.’

Reaper ran his fingertips over the silk of the dark blue tie, then tilted his head down so that he was looking straight at Jalicia. ‘Lock thinks a lot of things,’ he said, sounding world-weary.

‘Is it true? Once I get you on that stand out there, are you going to punk me, Frank?’

Judging by how his mouth folded in on itself, the use of his first name seemed to pinch Reaper. Maybe it was a long time since he’d heard it. His pupils shrank to pinpricks of black. ‘I could tell you “no”. Or I could tell you “yes”. But we all know that convicts lie, right? So the only way you’re really going to know is when you start asking me questions in front of that jury.’

Jalicia stepped back, determined not to let him see that he was getting to her. ‘That’s not much of an answer,’ she said.

‘It wasn’t much of a question,’ he fired back.

‘I’ll see you on the stand. Remember to speak nice and clearly.’