The Deep Abiding Read online

  The Deep Abiding

  A Ty Johnson Novel

  Sean Black

  SBD

  Contents

  About the Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  About the Author

  Read the new Ryan Lock novel

  Also by Sean Black

  About the Book

  From International Thriller Writers award winner Sean Black, comes The Deep Abiding, the first novel to feature Ty from his bestselling Ryan Lock series.

  When retired US Marine Tyrone Johnson is hired to protect a young reporter investigating the brutal, decades-old murder of a young African American woman in the Florida Everglades, he soon finds himself plunged into a living nightmare that will test the very limits of his endurance.

  Praise for Sean Black

  "This series is ace. It stars bodyguard Ryan Lock, here hired to protect a glamorous movie star with a headless corpse in her car. 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. " – Sarah Broadhurst, The Bookseller, reviewing Gridlock

  "An impressive debut thriller from Sean Black that introduces a new full-on action hero. Clearly influenced by Lee Child and Joseph Finder, Black drives his hero into the tightest spots with a force and energy that jump off the page. He still has a little to learn when it comes to depth of character and pacing, but that won't take long. Lock is clearly going to be around for a long time. With a spine-tingling finale that reminded me of Die Hard, this is a writer, and a hero, to watch." – Geoffrey Wansell. The Daily Mail, reviewing Lockdown

  "Sean Black writes with the pace of Lee Child, and the heart of Harlan Coben. Lockdown is a sure-fire winner" – Joseph Finder, New York Times Bestselling Author of Buried Secrets

  "In Lockdown, Sean Black's hero, Ryan Lock, causes New York to be sealed against a terrorist threat. The synergy between name and title matters because it highlights the artifice underlying an excellent first novel. Like Lee Child's Jack Reacher, Lock is an ex-military policeman. Unlike Reacher, he has a job (as an elite bodyguard), a home, friends and a sense of humour. Lock's likeability contrasts with Reacher's pomposity and Black's style is supremely slick.” – Jeremy Jehu, The Daily Telegraph, reviewing Lockdown

  Sean’s books that were nominated for, or have won, the International Thriller Writers Award (previous winners include Stephen King, Jon Gilstrap Megan Abbott & Joseph Finder) presented annually in New York City.

  Post (nominated in 2015)

  The Edge of Alone (nominated in 2017)

  Second Chance (winner in 2018)

  Copyright © 2019 Sean Black

  Sean Black has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction, and except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  For the coaches, fighters and players of Team KF Martial Arts in Dublin.

  1

  Darling, Florida

  1974

  * * *

  They left her in the tree. Swinging in the Florida breeze. A warning to others.

  All through the night, a steady southern wind from the tip of the Gulf pushed through the leaves, making a sound like a rattlesnake. From time to time the hanging branch creaked a little with the strain of the extra weight that pulled it straight to the ground below.

  On the streets, no cars drove by. No people walked. Everyone was inside, drapes or blinds drawn, children sent to bed early with promises of rewards if they went to sleep and stayed asleep.

  It was as if a storm was on the way, and they were waiting for its arrival. Only the storm had already been and gone, leaving a woman in a tree as evidence.

  Nothing like that had ever happened here. People had worked hard to make sure it couldn’t. All they wanted was to be left alone. Unchanged. At least, that was what they’d say if they were pushed on the subject.

  Now this. A late summer chill that had run the whole length of the town’s spine.

  The next morning, about an hour before sunup, a truck came by. RJ was driving, two of his cousins from Broward along to help.

  They had to use a ladder to get up to the branch. Two held the bottom of the ladder while RJ cut through the rope.

  She fell to the ground with a thump, the rope still tight around her neck. One of his cousins pulled out his hunting knife, ready to cut it off. RJ told him to leave it.

  They laid her on the bed of the truck, slung an old hunting blanket over the body, then climbed into the cab. It was a tight squeeze but no one wanted to ride in back with a dead girl.

  On the drive out of town, RJ gripped the wheel so hard that the next morning his hands ached. He was ashamed. Ashamed of the people who had done this. And ashamed of himself because he knew that he would take what had happened to his grave without telling a living soul.

  About halfway there one of his cousins made a comment about ’gator bait, trying to be funny, to lighten the heavy mood that lay between them. RJ gave him a look that suggested a second body would be laid out in back if he said another word. His cousin mumbled an apology. The other stared out of the window as they whipped past a stand of dwarf cypress trees.

  Sticky midsummer heat was already building. The radio had said today was set to be the warmest of the year so far.

  RJ gripped the wheel even tighter. He felt like screaming and hollering, not stopping until he blacked out.

  Maybe, RJ figured, the heat was to blame for all this. It made people crazy. Men got strange ideas. Women too. That had been what started this whole thing. A crazy idea. A whole bunch of them, really, one tumbling in
to the next until here he was, driving out into the swamp to dump a woman’s body for the alligators to get rid of.

  ’Gator bait.

  People had made jokes about ’gator bait ever since he could remember. Old Harold Sharmer had told him once how he’d read an article in the Washington Times about how the zookeepers in New York had used two little black children – pickaninnies was the word the reporter had used – like a fishing lure to get the ’gators to move to their summer enclosure.

  RJ had figured he was kidding. Then he went to the library in the middle of town to ask Miss Parsons, and she’d looked it up for him, and said it was true. She’d been laughing fit to cry when she’d read it to him.

  He couldn’t see what was so funny. He was only eight, not that much older than the kids in the newspaper.

  When she’d seen that he wasn’t laughing along, she’d gotten annoyed and told him to hurry home. She’d scolded him, told him he shouldn’t take things so seriously. The story in the paper was most likely a joke. Someone just having a little fun because the idea was so comical.

  Now here he was, all these years later, with a dead woman lying less than six feet away from him. A woman they were about to take out to Devil’s Pond and feed to the swamp. And there wasn’t nothing comical about it. Not to RJ’s way of thinking. Nothing at all.

  He thought about a song he’d heard once on the radio. It was sung by a black lady. It was kind of slow and sad about how in the South the trees grew strange fruit. He couldn’t exactly remember the lyrics. He’d only heard it the once when he was rolling the dial on the radio.

  Now, in the hazy twilight, he knew what she’d been singing about, and it made the very depths of his soul hurt.

  2

  A billboard announced they were entering the town of Darling (population: 1235). It was like something straight out of the 1950s, but freshly printed.

  It was full-sized—fourteen foot high and forty-eight wide. A white background with a peppy slogan—“You’ll have a Darling time”—splashed in yellow lettering with a red outline, and a picture of a fresh-faced young family that could have been lifted from the back of an old cereal box: mom, dad, and two kids, a boy and a girl.

  The mom was standing next to a kitchen island wearing an apron, her daughter next to her, blond hair up in braids. The equally blond father, sweater-model handsome, stood behind his wife, one hand on her shoulder, their cute, gap-toothed toddler son scooped up in his other arm.

  “Is that like super-creepy or is it me?”

  Ty Johnson glanced at the young woman sitting in the passenger seat of the Honda Civic they’d rented back at the airport in Miami. Cressida King was in her late twenties with mocha skin, long brown-black frizzy hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, sharp cheekbones, and blazing green eyes. She was an investigative journalist for Larceny, a popular online and cable news site that was popular with millennials.

  Ty had been hired as security by her boss in New York for reasons that hadn’t been made fully clear to him. The six-foot-four retired Marine eased off the gas pedal, and slowed the Honda to a crawl, as they came up on the billboard. “What’s creepy about it?” he said. To his eyes it seemed cheesy more than anything.

  “You don’t see it?” said Cressida, studying him.

  “Maybe if you’d tell me what I’m supposed to be looking for.”

  “Blond hair, blue eyes. All of them. Like something from Germany in the 1930s.”

  Not for the first time that morning, Ty bit back a smile. As far as he could tell, from his short time with her and what he knew of her employer’s editorial slant, Cressida, or Cress, as she’d insisted he call her, was . . . What did they call them? Oh, yeah, she was one of those social-justice warrior types, perpetually on the lookout for something to get offended by.

  Ty had gone through that phase as a young man. Then he’d decided there was plenty to get annoyed by in this world without going around actively seeking out things to upset you. He blamed the internet and bad parenting: the internet for giving idiots a platform, and parents for not explaining to their kids that sometimes life just wasn’t fair.

  “You do know that’s usually how it goes, right?” Ty said to her. “You know, when Mommy looks like that and so does Daddy, chances are the kids turn out like that too—’less, of course, Mommy’s been sneaking around when Daddy’s out working.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said, irritation creeping into her voice.

  “Maybe that’s what people around here look like,” he said, poker-faced.

  She gave him another disbelieving stare, with a nod to the swampy terrain that had begun to fold itself around the road. “What? Like they just stepped out of a J. Crew catalogue?”

  Ty shrugged, his expression cracking, a smile playing across his lips. “Maybe.”

  “You kidding me? We’re almost in the middle of the Everglades. This is Redneck Central.”

  “Now who’s stereotyping?” said Ty, following a smaller sign that signaled the turn onto the narrow road that would take them the last few miles into Darling.

  “Wait. You think the folks here are going to look like those people on that billboard?”

  “No, but that’s advertising. You think if you drove into Crenshaw and there was a billboard with the Obamas on it welcoming you to the area that you’re going to see Barack and Michelle when you stop at the lights?” asked Ty, referencing one of LA’s most ghetto neighborhoods. “This is a white town we’re rolling up on. Stands to reason they’re going to have a white family on that sign back there.”

  Cressida stared out of the passenger window. The landscape had changed almost as soon as they’d made the turn. Pop ash trees crowded in on the road surface, branches arching high overhead, almost blocking out the midday sun. To his left, about ten feet beyond where the blacktop ended, the ground fell away to a swamp of more pop ash sprouting from bright green algae-covered water.

  Ty had read that the Everglades had been like this for thousands of years. A dank, humid wetland. Looking out, he believed it. There was something primeval about the landscape, unbending. It was terrain that would bend someone to its will.

  “Tyrone!”

  Cressida’s sudden shout snapped his attention back to the road where a low green-black shape was lumbering across the blacktop. Ty stood on the brake pedal. The Honda shook, the brakes squealing as the car came to a stop a few feet short of an alligator that was plodding across the road, oblivious to their approach.

  It was big, maybe ten feet long and six hundred pounds. Ty guessed from the size it was an adult male. Hitting it at speed would have done bad things to the Honda. They’d seen signs warning about alligators crossing on the way down here, but he hadn’t expected to see one. Not on the road anyway, although he had seen a sign for a ‘’gator farm’ tourist attraction nearby, whatever one of those was.

  The alligator kept moving, its pace never varying.

  Cressida popped the door open. She had a Canon DSLR camera in her hand.

  “Where are you going?” said Ty.

  “Relax. It’s fine,” she said, walking in front of the car, the camera lens trained on the retreating alligator.

  Ty reached down for his SIG Sauer 226 and cleared it from his holster. He hit the button to lower his window. The air outside hit him, boiling hot and muggy.

  The young journalist was still hunkered down, capturing the alligator’s retreat. It cleared the road and, a few seconds later, slipped effortlessly into the swamp water. A final flick of its tail and it disappeared under the surface.

  Cressida stood up, turned back to Ty, and smiled. “Video. It’ll make a great cutaway.”

  “I thought you were writing this story up.”

  She gave him a look with which he was already familiar from the few short hours he’d known her. It was the same pitying look that precocious kids (these days, pretty much every kid) gave their parents when they had to explain the latest app or technology.

  “I am, but you
have to have some visuals if you want to get the page hits. Video preferably. Big blocks of words? People just tune out.”

  She climbed back into the car, and held up the camera’s display screen, running the short clip back so Ty could see it.

  Ty waved his hand out of the window toward the edge of the wetland where the ’gator had disappeared from view. “Thanks, but I just watched it live, in high-definition.”

  She pulled the camera back onto her lap. “This is going to be a long couple days, isn’t it? I never asked for anyone to come with me. I told Gregg I don’t need a babysitter.”

  Gregg was the young reporter’s managing editor back in New York. He’d reached out to a private security firm in Manhattan. They didn’t have anyone available for a close-protection escort gig, but had provided a list of alternative companies. Ty had spotted the job on a circular email, and made the call.