The Devil's Bounty Read Online Free PDF Page A

This was where their CEOs and boards of directors were held, and from where they ran multi-million- and, in the case of the Mexican Mafia, multi-billion-dollar criminal enterprises.
    On the exercise yards, the Hispanic inmates divided into norteños (northern Hispanics), sureños (southern Hispanics) and the so-called Border Brothers (who hailed from south of the US–Mexico border), but the overarching organization that ruled the factions was the Mexican Mafia. Capable of devastating violence, both within and outside the prison’s walls, what set it apart from the other gangs was its businesslike approach. It was run with the same efficiency and lack of sentiment as any Fortune 500 company.
    If a Mexican Mafia member was coming after Melissa, she had been marked for assassination.
    ‘This Mendez guy,’ Ty said, fanning the printouts, ‘you think he’s connected?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Lock said. ‘And I plan on finding out. But if I’m going down there to get the asshole, I want to know what I’m walking into. Can you stay with her?’
    Ty put out a giant fist and they bumped. ‘You got it. Already spoke to Triple-C’s management. They know what time it is. Got them another company coming in. Where you headed, anyway?’
    ‘Santa Barbara. See if I can’t lift a few rocks and figure out what’s really going on here.’ He glanced at Melissa, still pale and fragile.
    ‘Then we heading down to Mexico to go get him?’
    ‘If he’s still there.’
    ‘You think he might have skipped?’
    Lock shrugged. ‘I don’t know. And going down there without knowing …’ He trailed off. ‘You saw what happened to the last couple of people who went down there looking for him.’
    Ty grunted. ‘Wasn’t nothing pretty.’

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 notnecessarily 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