Sean Black - Deadlock

‘Gentlemen, thanks again.’

And then he was gone, his regular security detail falling in behind as he walked back into the hospital to resume his private vigil over his daughter.

A small phalanx of FBI agents was making its way across the parking lot towards Lock and Ty. This is going to be one hell of a debrief, thought Lock as they closed in.

The agent in front put out his hand. ‘FBI Agent Breedlove. We’d like to talk to you.’

‘And I’d like to talk to you,’ Lock said. ‘But I haven’t slept in a hundred years, so it’s going to have to wait.’

‘This can’t wait,’ said Breedlove, lifting his sunglasses, as if somehow this gesture conveyed the gravity of the situation.

Lock looked at him. ‘You can either arrest me or you can wait. If you arrest me, I won’t be cooperating. If you let me get some sleep, you can have everything my scrambled brain contains.’

Breedlove hesitated. His cell phone sounded — a James Bond ring tone.

‘Hey, 007, you want to get that?’ Lock said.

Breedlove killed the call, then turned to his colleagues. ‘We’ll speak to him in the morning,’ he said, trying to make it sound like it was his idea.

In truth, Lock was bone-tired, but he needed time to himself to order what had happened in his own mind. Even with Reaper dead, Chance in custody and the President safe, something was still bothering him. He understood Chance’s desire to see her father free. He got that Reaper would have used giving testimony as a way of allowing himself an opportunity to escape. He even got how Reaper saw liberty as a way of fulfilling his sick fantasy of sparking a race war. But there was something else, a piece of the jigsaw that hadn’t yet slotted into place.

Carrie stayed behind to call in reports from the scene while Lock and Ty walked back to the hotel. News of what had happened, and the fact that the President was fine, had spread through the city. People were out on the sidewalks, drawn together by a need to share their relief at a crisis averted.

But, Lock noticed, beyond the shock imprinted on people’s faces, a sense of togetherness seemed to pervade the air. Outside a grocery store, a wizened acid casualty in his seventies embraced an equally elderly Asian man. A group of female college students sat together in a small park a few blocks shy of the hotel, lighting candles next to a picture of the President’s injured daughter. A little further towards the piers that faced the bay, a good-looking young couple, the guy black, the woman white, hugged each other as they watched a couple of fighter aircraft sweep low over the Golden Gate Bridge.

Rather than the death, mayhem and hatred Reaper had so confidently predicted, events had served to bring the country together. When Martin Luther King was gunned down, it had plunged the country into spasms of violence. Maybe this time they had truly moved on.

Lock and Ty wandered into the lobby of the Argonaut and took the elevator to their respective rooms. They clasped hands for a moment, then headed off in opposite directions.

Lock opened the door into his suite and stepped into the bathroom. He stared at his reflection in the mirror. There were dark patches under his eyes and a nasty bruise on one side of his face where Chance had kicked him.

He washed his hands and face and dried off with a towel. Then he walked into the bedroom area and lay back on the bed fully clothed. There would be time to sleep later. He had a strong feeling the game wasn’t over yet.

Coburn’s name flashed up on Carrie’s cell phone. She clicked the answer button. Behind her, activity at the hospital had slowed to a crawl as the media mopped up the last shreds of information about the failed assassination attempt on the President.

‘You’ve got some nerve,’ she said. Lock had told her about Coburn leaving him hanging back at the cathedral.

‘Where is he? I need to speak to him.’

‘Emergency’s over, so he’s getting some rest,’ she told him.

‘You’re staying at the Argonaut, right?’

Carrie couldn’t remember either her or Lock telling anyone where they were staying. ‘What is it with you people?’ she snapped. ‘I told you, he’s resting. You can talk to him tomorrow.’

‘It won’t wait until then. What room’s he in?’

Carrie hesitated. ‘Room 426,’ she said at last.

‘Thanks,’ he said, and hung up.

Coburn put his cell phone back into his pocket and glanced at the crowd of people packed into Capurro’s Restaurant and Bar, which sat on the opposite side of Jefferson Street from the Argonaut. With some difficulty he muscled his way over to the man nursing his beer at the bar. He ordered himself a beer and leaned in towards the man.

‘Room 426,’ Coburn told him.

‘I got it,’ said Cowboy, raising his beer bottle in salute to Coburn and tilting the dregs into his throat.

Coburn slapped Cowboy a high five and watched as he elbowed his way towards the front door of the bar. The bartender slid Coburn his beer, and he took a big gulp. In a few minutes, Lock would be dead, and he could relax.

Cowboy tipped his hat to a well-dressed Asian couple pushing a stroller as he exited the elevator on the fourth floor and they got in. He waited for the doors to close on them, glancing across to his right at the room number guide. Then he turned right and followed the corridor for around twenty yards, counting off the numbers as he walked, before hanging another right.

A long corridor stretched ahead of him. His boots sank deep into the blue- and gold-patterned carpet. Aside from a maid’s cleaning cart parked at the far end of the hallway, the place was deserted. Still, the cart meant that he would have to force Lock back inside before he killed him. Once he had him inside, Cowboy would crank up the volume on the TV and take care of business. Coburn had warned him to be careful, that Lock was dangerous, but Cowboy had dealt with guys like Lock before.

Coburn finished his beer, left the bar and waited across the street from the hotel, sticking close to a group of tourists checking out T-shirts in the next-door gift shop. Once Cowboy had killed Lock and taken care of Ty, he would head upstairs and take care of Cowboy. That only left Chance, and with her in custody, he would have ample opportunity to deal with that problem.

Coburn picked up a hat from the rack in front of him. Emblazoned across its front were the words ‘Alcatraz — Mental Ward — Outpatient’. He turned it over in his hands, then put it back on the rack, and waited.

Standing in the corridor outside Lock’s room, Cowboy finally caught a break. The velvet bag holding that day’s newspaper was wedged in between the door and the frame of room 426. Lock must have opened the door, left the bag still swinging on the handle, and gone back into the room. As the door had closed, the bag had jammed in there, preventing the door from clicking shut.

Cowboy pushed the door open and snuck in, making sure to close it behind him, as quietly as he could. Directly ahead of him was a bedroom. There was also a living area with a couch and a coffee table. Off to one side was a dark wooden door. It was open a few inches and Cowboy could hear the blast of a shower running. Perfect.

He crept towards the bathroom, then stopped. He’d need more than the sound of running water to cover the noise of a gunshot. He walked slowly into the bedroom and picked up the remote control for the TV. He clicked it on, and kept the remote in his left hand. As soon as he had Lock in front of him, he’d max the volume.

He crossed back to the bathroom door and pushed it open, his gun raised in his hand. The shower curtain was pulled over the bath. He stepped back to the doorway and snuck his left hand back round the door frame, aiming it towards the TV, clicking on the volume up button. He was all set.