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GRIDLOCK: The Third Ryan Lock Novel by Sean Black is Featured in Today’s Thriller of The Week Free Excerpt

On Friday we announced that GRIDLOCK: The Third Ryan Lock Novel by Sean Black is our Thriller of the Week and the sponsor of thousands of great bargains in the thriller, mystery, and suspense categories: over 200 free titles, over 600 quality 99-centers, and thousands more that you can read for free through the Kindle Lending Library if you have Amazon Prime!

Now we’re back to offer our weekly free Thriller excerpt:

4.1 stars – 20 Reviews
(Price Reduced! Regularly $4.99)
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled

Here’s the set-up:

From the British publisher of Lee Child and Tess Gerritsen comes the third spell-binding thriller from rising star of crime fiction, Sean Black

THE CITY OF ANGELS HAS A STALKER
Adult movie actress Raven Lane is one of the most lusted after women in America, with millions of fans to prove it. But when a headless corpse turns up in the trunk of her car, she realizes that fame carries a terrible price.
Fearing for her life, and with the LAPD seemingly unable to protect her, Raven turns to elite bodyguard Ryan Lock for help.
Lock stops bad things happening to good people, but can he stop the tidal wave of violence now threatening Los Angeles as Raven’s stalker targets – and kills – those closest to her?
As events spiral out of control, Lock is drawn into a dangerous world where money rules, sex is a commodity to be bought and sold, and no one can be trusted, least of all his beautiful new client…

Reviews

‘Leaner and meaner with every book. Gridlock is as cool and sharp as a knife’ – Meg Gardiner, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Nightmare Thief

‘This series is ace. There are deservedly strong Lee Child comparisons as the author is a Brit (Scottish), his novels US-based, his character appealing, and his publisher the same. This is his third’ – Sarah Broadhurst, The Bookseller

‘Black’s star just keeps on rising’ – Evening Telegraph

‘Sean Black writes with the pace of Lee Child and the heart of Harlan Coben’ – Joseph Finder, New York Times Bestselling Author of Paranoia

‘This is a writer, and a hero, to watch’ – The Daily Mail

And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free excerpt:

Prologue

Near the end of every month, Bert Ely got up an hour earlier than usual, fumbled into his clothes in the dark so that he didn’t wake his wife, clambered into his beat-to-hell Chevy Impala and drove the eighteen miles from his house in Van Nuys into downtown Los Angeles. Getting on to the 101 freeway at six rather than his usual seven o’clock shaved about twenty-five minutes from his commute, although saving time wasn’t the real issue. The time he spent in the car on these particular days was something he looked forward to all month.

He loved the ritual of his routine as much as he enjoyed what lay at the end of it. As with any indulgence, half the fun – at least, as far as Bert was concerned – lay in the anticipation.

The 101 took him out of the San Fernando Valley, through Hollywood, the city’s degenerate heart, finally depositing him via the Broadway off-ramp into downtown Los Angeles where he worked as a real-estate appraiser for Citicorp. It was a mind-numbing job, based in a soul-crushing grey office building full of good little corporate automatons. Along with the fact that his wife no longer had sex with him, and his kids probably couldn’t have cared less whether he lived or died, Bert used the utterly mundane nature of his job to justify his end-of-the-month routine.

This morning, as he turned from North Broadway on to West 1st Street, a Los Angeles Police Department cruiser pulled out behind him. He found his heart rate quickening a little, although he had no real reason to feel guilty – certainly not yet, anyway. He supposed that technically what he would do today was against the law, but that was more to do with the thick streak of Puritanism that still ran through American society than anything else.

The rack of stop lights next to the Japanese American National Museum was at red. The LAPD cruiser pulled up alongside him. Bert glanced at the two cops riding up front. One was half twisted round in his seat, talking to a young Hispanic woman who was perched on the rear bench seat. Judging from her clothes, and her cratered complexion, over which she had smoothed a rough veneer of foundation, she was a street walker.

She saw Bert looking at her and stared back at him, like she knew what his secret was. Bert’s heart rate elevated again. The middle finger of her left hand popped up as she flipped him off, then the lights changed and the cop car continued down 1st Street as Bert made the right turn on to South Central Avenue, his heart still pounding.

He shook the image of the Hispanic woman from his head as he pulled into the parking lot, a sleepy-eyed attendant handing him his ticket as soon as he exited the car with his briefcase.

The sidewalk was still dewy with the water from early-morning street cleaning as he took a left heading down towards Starbucks on the corner of South Central Avenue and 2nd, passing the Cuba Central Cafe, and Yogurtland. Outside Starbucks a few chairs and tables were already stacked on the patio, ready to be deployed. Bert walked quickly past the three banks of newspaper vending machines next to the kerb, crossed the little patio and pushed the door open. He went straight to the counter and placed his order without glancing up at the board.

‘Skinny latte, no foam,’ he said, to the barista. ‘Oh, and gimme a blueberry muffin.’ The muffin was an everyday treat for Bert.

As he waited, he studiously avoided looking outside towards the final bank of newspaper vending machines, their metal posts planted in the sidewalk. A black one, a brown one and two red ones, the last of which held the key to his treat. Inside that machine were copies of this week’s LA Xclusive newspaper, although the term ‘newspaper’ was a bit of a misnomer. There was no news inside, only page after page of adverts for escorts, predominantly female but with a scattering of men and transgender prostitutes, all selling limitless variations of the same thing: sex.

It was the endless variation on a theme that captivated Bert. Not just in terms of all the different physical types, ages and races, but in the array of services they offered, some so outlandish that even the thought of them made Bert queasy. Sometimes the ads had pictures too, although he had learned from a couple of disappointing liaisons that they couldn’t always be relied upon to be accurate.

Still, contained within the pages was a wonderland of possibilities, like a huge candy store for grown-ups. Inside those little boxes was an array of women, all of whom would have sex with Bert in return for money. From corn-fed Midwestern runaways, who no doubt told themselves that what they were doing was no different from what they’d done at home in the back seat of a car on a Saturday night, through the twenty-something MAWs (Model/Actress/Whatevers), with their gravity-defying silicone boobs and jaded air of disappointment that they weren’t even going to make the Z-list, all the way to the hardened professionals, women who had long ago reconciled their hopes and dreams with the reality of making a living by lying on their backs. Over the years, Bert had sampled them all.

Recently, though, he’d begun to find a sameness to the experience, and to feel a dark, lonely emptiness once the encounter was over. Where once he’d felt satiated, now his monthly liaisons left Bert hungry for something other than sex. For intimacy, maybe?

Last month, in the awkward post-coital moments and with ten minutes still officially on the clock, he had lain in bed with a young redhead in a condo in Playa Del Rey. He’d asked her if they could spoon, cuddle in together, his arms around her. She’d looked at him like he was nuts and asked him to leave, reaching into a bedside table and producing a hand gun to emphasize that she wasn’t kidding.

Strangely, he had never felt much guilt about paying women to have sex with him, rationalizing that a real affair, one with emotions and feelings, would be far more upsetting to his wife. That was part of the reason he never visited the same woman twice. Well, that and the fact that he liked the variety. Living in LA you could sample all that the world had to offer in the way of women without leaving the city boundaries. As long as you didn’t want a hug at the end.

‘Sir? Is this to go?’

The barista’s question snapped Bert back to the tiny coffee shop, which was starting to fill with office workers.

‘Yeah, thanks,’ Bert mumbled, handing over ten dollars and waiting for change. He put the two single dollar bills into the tip jar and kept the coins, which he’d need to pay for his copy of the newspaper. Then he picked up his coffee and the brown paper bag holding his muffin and wandered back outside into the early-morning California sunshine.

He stood for a second, sorting through his change and trying to get back a little of the good feeling he’d left the house with that day; the good feeling that came from his little secret.

At lunchtime he’d sneak to the men’s room, peruse the women on offer that week, then make a phone call. With his department offering flexible working hours, he’d reclaim the time he’d banked by getting into the office early, and drive over to the woman’s apartment. He was thinking that maybe he’d try someone a little older today, someone who might not find it strange that a man of his age would trade sexual gymnastics for a hug. Or, maybe, he thought, smiling to himself, he’d find a hot little spinner and screw her until her eyes popped out of her head.

It was only then, standing on the sidewalk, lost in his own thoughts, that he noticed the stack of newspapers sitting at the far end of the vending machines, the pages of the top copy fluttering in the breeze as the beginnings of a hot Santa Ana wind funneled its way from the natural canyons of the LA basin to the concrete canyons of downtown.

‘Huh,’ he said to himself, bending down slightly. Someone, a kind of perverted Good Samaritan, must have opened the machine and dumped all the copies out on the ground. With his knees still bent and his head down, Bert grabbed one from the middle of the small pile. Then, as he raised his head, he saw something that sent a jolt of adrenalin surging through him, stealing his breath and leaving a tingle of pins and needles in his fingertips.

Normally, if all the newspapers had been taken, he would have looked through the smeared glass display window to see ‘SOLD OUT’ printed on a screen at the back of the compartment that held the papers. But that wasn’t what he was looking at right now.

Instead he was seeing blood – a lot of blood. And in the middle of the sheet of blood, a pair of eyes were staring back at him.

A head. Someone had taken out the newspapers and replaced them with a human head.

Still gasping for air, Bert straightened up and looked around. A clutch of middle-aged white women dressed in pant suits walked past. One glanced at the paper still clasped in Bert’s hand, and gave him a look of disgust. None seemed to look at the vending machine and what was in it.

Maybe it was a prank. Yeah, thought Bert, that had to be it. A mannequin’s head and a tube of fake blood. Must be some goddamn feminists trying to make a point about the exploitation of women or some shit.

He looked back to the head. Sweet Jesus. If it was a prank, they’d made it look really convincing.

The initial shock had passed to the point at which he was starting to think about what to do next. He should just get the hell out, he knew that. Then another thought struck him, keeping him there.

If there were cameras on this intersection and the prank was found later, the police might think he had something to do with it and want to speak to him. They might even come to his home.

However, if he alerted the police right now, he could tell them he was walking past and just happened to notice it. He’d be a vigilant citizen rather than someone with something to hide.

He took a step towards the machine, and had a better look at the head. Although it was obscured by the blood spattering the panel he could make out enough of the features – soft, full lips, blue eyes, a small button nose and dyed blonde hair running down the cheeks in limp, tangled strands – to see that it was a woman’s.

Get it over with, he said to himself, jamming two quarters into the vending machine as quickly as he could and yanking at the handle to open it.

The stench hit him like a truck. Even holding his breath the sickly sweet cloying odor clawed its way to the back of his throat, making his stomach spasm and sending the little that was left of last night’s dinner spilling over his shoes and splashing on to the sidewalk. Behind him a woman screamed so loudly that he thought his ear drums might burst.

Still gasping, he looked down at the copy of LA Xclusive he was holding in his left hand. On the cover there was a young blonde woman, perfectly made up and airbrushed: collagen-full lips, a button nose, deep blue eyes with silky platinum curls. It was the same person.

Slowly, reluctantly, Bert Ely looked again at the front cover of the paper and the headline above the girl’s face: ‘MEET CINDY CANYON’.

 

1

Her body slick with baby oil and sweat, Raven Lane whiplashed her neck, sending a thick mane of jet-black hair flying into the air, arched her back and smiled at the three hundred men crowded around the tiny platform, as Motley Crue’s heavy-metal anthem ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ pounded out from two huge speakers mounted at either side of the stage.

Dollar bills cascaded across the metal barrier, which, along with two steroid-pumped bouncers, separated Raven from her public. Ignoring the money, she wrapped herself around the stripper’s pole, suggestively pistoning her left hand up and down the cold metal, her mouth open, her head thrown back again, her eyes closed in an expression of erotic abandon.

After years on the road, she had her routine down cold. Every gesture, every pout, every spin around the pole and every hair-flick was choreographed to the second, specifically engineered so that every single man in the club went away feeling that somehow Raven Lane had danced solely for his gratification.

She opened her eyes again, ready to move into the next part of the routine. At the edge of her vision she caught sight of a scrawny weasel of a man with a ratty beard, wearing a John Deere baseball cap, squeezing under the barrier and heading straight for her. Somehow he’d found his way past the two lunkhead bouncers and was now careening towards her at top speed.

Raven tensed as she adjusted her feet, one hand wrapping around the pole for support. Judging the speed of his approach, she took one final twirl and brought up a razor-sharp heel straight into his solar plexus. The man stumbled backwards clutching his chest as the crowd signaled its approval with a primal roar. One of the bouncers jumped on top of him and he was pulled back over the barrier by his hair before being propelled through the crowd by another member of the club’s security staff. Despite his obvious physical discomfort, he had an inane grin on his face, as if a kick in the chest from Raven was some kind of come-on.

Raven swept the incident from her mind, working through her routine, her hands running across her bare breasts, her backside thrust out towards the crowd, seemingly lost in a state of rapture. All the while the downpour of dollars cascaded towards her until she almost lost sight of the faces of the men who’d already paid twenty bucks at the door just to see her naked body.

Eight minutes later, and almost as many thousands of dollars richer, she was escorted back to her dressing room, a dingy cupboard at the back of the single-story roadside saloon. She toweled herself off, reapplied her makeup, put on a short, red silk robe from Frederick’s of Hollywood and headed back out to have her picture taken with fans and to sign T-shirts.

The T-shirts cost fifteen dollars; her signature was another ten. Having their picture taken with her cost the men an additional fifteen. Alongside her cut of the door money and the bar, plus all those dollar bills tossed on to the stage, an appearance like this netted her around fifteen thousand dollars. Not bad for a few hours’ work by a twenty-eight-year-old who hadn’t even graduated from high school, she thought, as another loser stepped forward to have his picture taken with her.

After almost a decade of shedding her clothes on-stage and in movies, Raven still couldn’t quite understand why men would turn up to see her. With her long black hair and near flawless body, she knew what the obvious attraction was, but she still didn’t quite get it. She always thought it must be like visiting the most amazing restaurant in the world but contenting yourself with standing outside, your nose pressed against the window, as other people ate the food.

Maybe, she guessed, what attracted these men was exactly that: her unattainability. That she was a fantasy made flesh. Someone they could think about when they got home and had to bang the overweight domestic drudges of wives that they themselves had created. Yeah, fantasy was what she sold, she thought, rolling the tension from her shoulders and flicking back her hair; that had to be it.

 

Two hours later, her right hand aching from several hundred scrawled signatures, her ass numb from perching on so many overexcited laps while they got their picture of her, she was finally back at her dressing room. As she opened the door, she saw a huge bouquet of red roses sitting on the table. How original, thought Raven, plucking the envelope from the centre and tossing it down next to the flowers.

The way it bulged at the corners suggested it contained more than just a note. It was probably a roll of money and a phone number. Guys, usually rich local businessmen, often assumed that a thousand dollars in cash would somehow secure a night of passion for them to regale their buddies with at the local country club when they next played golf.

She dabbed at a bead of sweat running down between her breasts with a towel. These days, her body ached a lot more than it used to when she’d started out. The hair flicks gave you bulging or degenerative discs. Working the pole played hell with your shoulders. You started to damage cartilage from contorting your body into so many unnatural positions, and your sacrum, the large triangular bone at the base of your spine, which most people had never even heard of, started to swell up so bad that you had to sleep on your side. And those were just the physical maladies.

She could have written a book about the psychological damage the job would do if you weren’t careful: the suitcase boyfriends who saw you first as a trophy and then as a meal ticket; the constant temptation to drown your feelings in booze or drugs; the hundred and one small indignities you had to suffer on a daily basis, especially from other women.

She reached over and opened the envelope. Inside there was a wad of paper, folded over multiple times. Here we go again, she thought, recognizing the carefully measured printed lettering and the faint whiff of cheap perfume.

She took out the note with a long, manicured fingernail and held it up to the light, scanning the words.

 

Please remember, Raven, I did this for you. It’s what you wanted. Even if maybe you didn’t realize it yet.

You’re always in my heart, baby.

 

Did what? Raven asked herself. Right now all she wanted was for this freak to stop sending her notes.

She dropped the paper on to the table next to the flowers, and looked up, half expecting to see in the mirror someone standing behind her. But the room was still empty.

She was no stranger to freaks, stalkers and weirdos. In this business you tended to collect them like most other women collected shoes. She already had a restraining order out against one ex-boyfriend, and she’d been in contact with the police in Los Angeles about this creep who’d been calling and writing to her for the past few months.

Knowing that the cops would want evidence, Raven took a couple of pictures of the flowers with her cell phone and put the note into her purse. Then she got dressed as quickly as she could.

Once she’d picked up her money from the club owner, she’d asked him about the flowers but he was short on details. They’d arrived at the club while she was out doing her meet-and-greet. The person who’d dropped them off had seemed like a regular deliveryman. No, he hadn’t seen the guy before. He gave a description that narrowed down to maybe a quarter of the male population: white, five feet eleven, brown hair, brown eyes. In other words, Mr Average. Yes, he’d take a look at the CCTV they had at the entrance but he doubted it would show anything.

With the best part of fifteen thousand dollars in her bag, and accompanied by two bouncers, she walked to her car, a midnight blue BMW 5-series sedan. The parking lot was emptying as they threaded their way through the pickup trucks and family vehicles (some complete with child seats) towards Raven’s.

She dumped her bag in the front passenger seat, got in and clicked the button that locked all the doors. She sat alone in the car, weighed down by the silence, as the two bouncers turned back towards the club. Raven closed her eyes, trying to centre herself. She had a long drive ahead of her and knew better than to start out in an agitated state. She took a couple of long, slow breaths, visualizing her fear and anxiety as a series of small clouds drifting from her mouth with every exhalation.

There was a loud thud.

Her head snapped round and she saw a pair of eyes staring at her through the black slits of a ski-mask. He grabbed at the handle of the driver’s door, trying to get it open. That was when she noticed the long sheathed hunting knife dangling casually from his belt buckle. His eyes held hers for a moment, the intensity of his gaze paralyzing her. Thick pink lips rimmed by the wool of the mask mouthed something she couldn’t hear above the roar of the engine as her foot stabbed at the accelerator.

Then he blinked. The flutter of his eyelids was enough to break the spell. She threw the car into gear, and reversed at speed out of the space, only braking when the beeping of the parking distance control flat-lined to a near-constant tone. She put the BMW into drive and it shot forward, the headlights framing the man’s broad outline.

Yanking down hard on the steering-wheel, she narrowly avoided hitting him with the hood. Keeping her foot on the gas pedal, she pulled out of the club’s parking lot and on to the street.

She checked the rear-view mirror: the street behind her was empty. No one was following her. Her hands were still shaking – in fact, her whole body seemed to be vibrating with fear, her heart pounding in her chest. She grabbed for her cell phone, which was next to her on the passenger seat, thought about calling the cops, then decided against it. She wanted to go home, not stand around in a parking lot talking to the police.

She dropped her phone, switched on the radio and turned up the volume, hoping the music would blast away the fear that was settling like a thin film over her skin. She slammed her palms hard against the steering-wheel, rage edging out her anxiety, and pulled over into the driveway of a gas station about a thousand yards from the club’s exit, picking a spot near the out-of-service car wash that was pitch black. Then she waited, taking deep breaths, trying to gather herself.

A few seconds later she watched a pickup truck pull out of the parking lot and make the same turn she had. Raven took a deep breath as she caught a glimpse of the driver. It couldn’t be him. It just wasn’t possible.

The pickup wove across the centre median and, for a moment, she thought she might be about to glimpse some divine justice. But the driver righted the car and continued on his way, like nothing had happened.

She pressed the button to lower her window, lit a fresh cigarette and started the car. Trembling, she pulled out from the darkness of the gas station and back on to the road.

 

2

Carved pumpkin jack o’ lanterns with jagged teeth and diamond-slit eyes stared blankly at Raven from the front stoops of her neighbors’ houses as she turned into the quiet residential street nestled in the foothills south of Ventura Boulevard. Still shaken by what had happened outside the club, she’d used the long drive back to calm herself. Now she was clear about what she had to do.

As she pulled into the driveway, she pressed the garage-door opener, which was clipped to the BMW’s sun shield. The door swung up. She took a minute before she drove in, idling on the street, checking to make sure the garage was empty.

Satisfied that it was, she nudged the BMW inside, purposely leaving the door open behind her, then got out and walked to the front of the house. The street was quiet. A couple of cars were parked at the kerb but they belonged to neighbors

She walked back into the cool of the garage, opened the passenger door and took out her purse and the holdall that contained her stage outfits. As she closed the door, she glanced back at the BMW, a habit she’d developed when she’d had a bad night and needed to remind herself that her career had its compensations. It had been a gift from a man who had confused what Raven saw as a business relationship with something else. She had waited until he had given her the pink slip that transferred ownership of the car to her before letting him down gently. She couldn’t be bought, she’d said to him, with a smile; not in the way he wanted to buy her, anyway. She could only be leased, and even then you never got the full package.

Over the years, she’d learned that you had to keep something back, some small piece of yourself. If you didn’t, you got your heart broken, and Raven had experienced enough heartbreak to last a lifetime. She had shut herself off and focused instead on making a life for herself and Kevin, and no one was going to take that away from her now.

Rolling her shoulders to ease the crick in her neck, she walked through the door that led from the garage into the hallway at the rear of the house, then into the kitchen. She put her purse on the counter, took a bottle of water from the refrigerator and drank half of it.

She pulled her work outfits from the holdall and jammed them into the washing machine, then went back outside to collect the mail, leaving the door open so she could get back in quickly if anything happened. Nothing did, and the mail held no nasty surprises either. There were no handwritten envelopes, no death threats, nothing weird, just the usual junk mail and bills.

She walked back into the house and suddenly remembered something. She’d lost her sunglasses earlier in the week – she’d looked all over the house but hadn’t found them. Now she went back into the garage to check the car. Leaving the mail on the hood, she peered into the glove box, then under the seats. Nothing.

She stopped, trying to think where she might have put them down. It came to her. She had been unloading groceries from the trunk the day before and, unable to see in the gloom of the garage, she had taken them off. Maybe she’d forgotten to pick them up again.

She clicked the button to open the trunk, and walked to the rear of the car. The interior trunk light was faulty so she crossed to the light switches on the far side of the garage. The fluorescent tubes flickered into life, throwing fragments of harsh, savage light into the trunk. A horrific still image flashed in front of her. Then the lights steadied and she could see it clearly.

She stared into the maw of the trunk at a semi-clothed body, the stump of the neck covered with clean plastic sheeting, the ends wrapped tightly with string. Then she started to scream.

 

3

The minutes dragged as Raven waited in the kitchen for the cops to show up. She smoked a cigarette, then lit a second from the fading embers. She thought about going next door or across the street to one of the neighbors but decided against it. Since moving in she had kept her distance from them, scared that they would work out who she was and what she did for a living. Anyway, no one had come when she had screamed. Not one person. The thought brought her close to tears.

She could have waited outside on the patch of front lawn, she guessed, but she was sure that no one was inside the house. There were no signs of anyone having broken in – no forced locks or smashed windows. Nothing out of the ordinary – apart from the decapitated body in the trunk of her car.

She reached over and turned on the tap, extinguishing the burning red tip of the second cigarette with the jet of water, then rinsing the flecks of wet black ash down the drain, jamming the stub into the waste-disposal unit and turning it on. Then she walked to the front door to wait for the cops.

Another minute passed. A long minute. She rubbed under her eyes, staining her fingers with mascara.

A flashlight swept across the glass pane in the front door, and she started. Then the bell rang. Raven took a couple of deep breaths and opened the door. A lone female patrol officer stood on the threshold. A cruiser was parked at the kerb, its lights dappling the neighbors’ lawns and splashing red over the gaudy Halloween decorations that sat in people’s front windows.

‘Ma’am, you called to report finding a body?’ the patrol officer asked, as her partner came into view from the side of the house.

Raven pulled the door wide so they could come in, noticing as she did so that her hands were still shaking. Suddenly everything tunneled in on her. The red and blue lawn seemed to suck itself up from the ground and race towards her, the silhouetted paper cutouts of spiders, witches and goblins to start dancing at windows. She felt the strength disappear from her legs, and heard, from far away, a woman’s voice: ‘Ma’am? Are you okay? Ma’am?’

 

Raven was sitting in the back of an ambulance, an oxygen mask covering her mouth and nose. A paramedic crouched next to her. ‘Take it easy. You had a shock,’ he said.

Behind him, the street she lived on had magically transformed into a carnival of flashing lights and uniforms. Neighbors stood on the edges of their perfectly manicured front yards in their robes and slippers watching the show. The Hallowe’en decorations were still there but they seemed more festive than frightening. At the centre of the carnival, the main attraction was Raven’s house. People in paper suits walked in and out of the front door and yellow crime-scene tape was festooned around it like bunting.

For a second Raven wondered what they were all doing there and then the events of the last few hours came back to her in a series of flashes that made her feel lightheaded all over again. She closed her eyes, and sucked hard at the oxygen.

‘She good to talk to us?’

This time when she opened her eyes a man and a woman, both dressed in business attire, were standing next to the ambulance. The guy was African-American, mid-fifties, and had a face that wasn’t so much lived in as forcibly occupied: heavy, hooded eyelids gave way to a wide boxer’s nose, which was offset either side by sports-trophy ears. The woman was a little younger, late forties maybe, her blonde hair cut in a short bob. She had bright blue eyes.

‘This is Detective Brogan,’ said the man, ‘and I’m Detective Wilkins.’

‘We’re from Van Nuys Division of the Los Angeles Police Department,’ said Brogan, finishing off what seemed like a well-rehearsed introduction.

‘Where’s Officer Stanner?’ Raven asked.

The two detectives looked at each other, puzzled.

‘Stanner?’ Wilkins asked.

‘From the Threat Management Unit? Someone’s been stalking me. He’s the one I’ve been talking to.’

Another look passed between Wilkins and Brogan, then Brogan turned away. ‘Just going to speak to the watch commander. Be right back,’ she said, her hands dipping into her pockets as she walked off.

Wilkins watched his partner’s departure, then turned his car-crash face back to Raven. ‘You feel ready to take me through what just happened?’

‘Where do you want me to start? Finding it in my trunk or before that?’

Wilkins cocked his head very slightly to one side. ‘Something happened before you found the body?’

‘Kind of, although I don’t know if it’s connected,’ she said.

She took him back through events at the club. When she said she was stripping, he didn’t react at all. Normally guys, regardless of their profession or in what capacity they were talking to her, showed something. Apparent disgust. Discomfort. A barely concealed excitement. But all Wilkins had said was ‘Uh-huh’, like she’d told him she was a waitress in a diner, then moved her on to the next part of the story. She’d liked him for his lack of reaction, even though the whole time she was speaking he seemed to be studying her, like she was a specimen under a microscope.

When she’d told him about the man who’d banged on her window in the parking lot he’d asked a lot of questions. How tall was the guy? What weight? Any tattoos? Once he was satisfied that she’d given him everything she could remember he’d moved her back on, skipping the trip home and getting to the moment when she’d popped the trunk.

By then the female detective, Brogan, was back and they went into a huddle before pulling in a couple of uniformed cops. Then they wandered over to the house where they stood outside talking.

Raven took a deep breath. She reached up and massaged her temples with the tips of her index fingers. At least Kevin hadn’t had to witness any of this. For that one small mercy she was grateful.

 

Brogan and Wilkins traded a look. They’d been partners for five years, long enough to develop a shorthand that didn’t require words. They called themselves Minority Report after the science-fiction film. It was a running joke because, between their race, gender and, in Brogan’s case, sexual preference, they’d figured they ticked just about every diversity box the LAPD had.

Finally Brogan spoke, pushing a loose strand of hair behind her right ear. ‘You buying any of this?’ she asked Wilkins.

He looked skywards for a second. ‘Nope, but I don’t see why she would make the call herself if she’d killed the vic. Why not just dump the body somewhere? Drive down to Baja and stick it in a culvert.’

Brogan thought about it for a second. ‘How many of the assholes that we deal with do stuff that actually makes sense?’

Wilkins smiled. ‘Expressed as a percentage?’

Brogan nodded.

‘Between zero and none.’

‘Probably too early to be jumping to conclusions anyway. At least, before we speak to this guy from TMU,’ Brogan said.

‘Gotta work out who the vic is too,’ Wilkins added. ‘And what happened to her head.’

Brogan glanced across to the garage as a camera flash went off from one of the forensics photographers. ‘Think I can answer that one. Buddy of mine from Central told me they had a caper yesterday morning where they found a woman’s head stuffed into a newspaper vending machine down near the Federal building. They thought it was maybe some Islamist shit but it turns out the vic was a porn star. I’ll give him a call, let him know we found the rest of her.’

Wilkins gave his partner a grim smile. ‘This buddy down in Central tell you the vic’s hair colour?’

‘No. Why?’

‘Well, if the carpets match the drapes then we know for sure it’s the same broad.’

Brogan grimaced. ‘I doubt her carpet would help us much. Those gals are usually clean as a whistle down there.’ She paused for a second. ‘Were you on the force for the “Four On the Floor” case?’ she asked.

‘That was the caper with the porn-star guy, right?’

‘Yeah, John Holmes was the dude’s name. He was working as a porn actor, doing well, but word on the street was he got into some heavy drugs. Ended up with him and three of his buddies dead in an apartment. Then there was that whole machete-attack deal a year or two back. Those were porn people too.’

‘What’s that got to do with this?’ Wilkins asked.

‘Nothing directly, but it’s one messed up way of making a living. Drugs, disease, a lot of lowlifes. You survive in that world you ain’t no innocent,’ Brogan said.

Wilkins’s eyes narrowed as he glanced back towards Raven. ‘Which means that she knows a whole lot more than she’s telling us.’

‘I wouldn’t sweat it either way,’ said Brogan.

‘Why’s that?’ Wilkins asked.

Brogan gave another little shrug. ‘Body falls in Van Nuys, head falls in Central. That means the whole package is probably going to land on someone’s desk down at the Police Administration Building. That means this whole caper is NOP.’

‘NOP?’

Brogan smiled at her partner. ‘Not our problem.’

Continued….

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GRIDLOCK: The Third Ryan Lock Novel by Sean Black>>>>

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Here’s the set-up:

From the British publisher of Lee Child and Tess Gerritsen comes the third spell-binding thriller from rising star of crime fiction, Sean Black

THE CITY OF ANGELS HAS A STALKER

Adult movie actress Raven Lane is one of the most lusted after women in America, with millions of fans to prove it. But when a headless corpse turns up in the trunk of her car, she realizes that fame carries a terrible price.
Fearing for her life, and with the LAPD seemingly unable to protect her, Raven turns to elite bodyguard Ryan Lock for help.
Lock stops bad things happening to good people, but can he stop the tidal wave of violence now threatening Los Angeles as Raven’s stalker targets – and kills – those closest to her?
As events spiral out of control, Lock is drawn into a dangerous world where money rules, sex is a commodity to be bought and sold, and no one can be trusted, least of all his beautiful new client…

Reviews

‘Leaner and meaner with every book. Gridlock is as cool and sharp as a knife’ – Meg Gardiner, New York Times Bestselling Author of The Nightmare Thief

‘This series is ace. There are deservedly strong Lee Child comparisons as the author is a Brit (Scottish), his novels US-based, his character appealing, and his publisher the same. This is his third’ – Sarah Broadhurst, The Bookseller

‘Black’s star just keeps on rising’ – Evening Telegraph

‘Sean Black writes with the pace of Lee Child and the heart of Harlan Coben’ – Joseph Finder, New York Times Bestselling Author of Paranoia

‘This is a writer, and a hero, to watch’ – The Daily Mail

About The Author

Described by crime fiction legend Ken Bruen as ‘the future of thriller writing,’ Sean Black is known for writing lightning-fast, high-concept conspiracy thrillers, which often tackle controversial subjects (animal rights, pornography, the drug war on the American-Mexican border).A writer who isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty, to research his debut novel, Lockdown, he underwent a month-long close protection training course in the UK and Eastern Europe. The book went on to sell at auction to Transworld, the publisher of Dan Brown, Lee Child and Tess Gerritsen, for over half a million dollars and went on to debut on the official Nielsen/Bookscan bestseller list in its first week on sale. As part of his research for the second book in the series, Deadlock, he spent time inside Pelican Bay Supermax prison in California (see the television interview on his Amazon author page). The third book in the series featuring ex-military bodyguard, Ryan Lock, and his colleague, retired Marine Ty Johnson, Gridlock, will be released in paperback on July 5th.An Ivy League and Oxford University graduate, he has just finished work on the fourth book in the series, The Devil’s Bounty. The Devil’s Bounty will be available in hardback and as an e-book in August, 2012.
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