Fire Point Read Online Free Page A

shimmered to darkness on his left as the sun crashed hard into the Pacific Ocean.
     
    As he pulled into a parking spot outside his condo, Lock’s cell phone rang. It was one of the ex-cops he’d tasked with checking out Marcus. He listened to what the guy had to say, asked a few questions and killed the call. If he’d been curious before, now he was worried.
    He ditched his plan to head back to his condo, switched lanes, then headed through the McClure Tunnel and onto the 10 freeway, heading for the main campus of the University of Southern California near Westwood.
     

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    Next morning, Lock took a seat on the hotel terrace where he had agreed to meet Tarian. It was a table in the far corner. His seat backed onto a wall and gave him a view not only of his fellow guests but the deep stretch of beach. Unfeasibly tanned and healthy-looking folks biked or rollerbladed past on the concrete path. Further down, a group of young men who looked like they’d stepped off the cover of GQ magazine were getting ready to play beach volleyball.
    Lock glanced at the file he’d begun to assemble on Marcus Griffiths, then up at the perfect blue sky. Everywhere he looked all he could see were beautiful people busy being beautiful. He had a sense of why this young man might have felt he didn’t fit.
    Ty strode toward Lock’s table, pulled out a seat and sat down. Boot-cut jeans, a grey-marled T-shirt that revealed tree-trunk arms, and Oakley sunglasses that only a six-foot-five-inch African-American Marine could pull off without looking like he was trying too hard.
    The two men fist-bumped as a waiter appeared. ‘Ice water’s fine,’ said Ty, his elbows resting on the table. He glared at Lock from behind his Oakleys. ‘Trying to e-con-o-mize.’
    The waiter left them to it. ‘You need a loan, Tyrone?’ said Lock.
    ‘No need of a loan when we got a primo gig ahead of us. Right?’
    Lock slid the file over the table to his partner. Ty took off his sunglasses, opened the folder and began to flick through the pages.
    ‘This is an upscale place, so try to read without moving your lips,’ said Lock.
    Ty flipped him off by way of reply.
    ‘How’s Malik?’ Lock asked. Malik was the friend Ty had been visiting with in Long Beach.
    ‘About how you’d expect a man to be after what went down,’ said Ty, flipping to a fresh page.Malik’s family had been killed after Malik had uncovered a case of serial child sex abuse at the college where he worked as basketball coach in Minnesota. Ty and Lock had come to his aid, but too late to save Malik’s wife and kids.
    ‘He knows he can call me anytime,’ said Lock.
    Ty gave a curt nod. ‘I told him. He appreciates it.’ He paused as he flipped another page. ‘How you doing?’ He shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘Y’know, being here.’
    ‘I’m okay.’
    ‘Uh-huh,’ said Ty, as he got to the section of the hastily assembled file where things got interesting. The letterhead read: ‘County Court of Los Angeles’.
    Ty’s ice water was delivered with the flourish befitting an eight-hundred-dollars-a-night beachfront hotel. He took a sip, put it to one side and went back to reading the court document. After a time, he looked up. ‘Who’s the girl?’‘Don’t know for sure, apart from what it says there. Freshman at USC. Grew up in Orange County. Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. Had some of the same classes as our boy. Guess that’s where he ran into her.’
    Ty rubbed at his face. ‘If they were in the same classes and he has a restraining order that prohibits him being within two hundred yards of her, that might explain him dropping out. You think the mom knows?’
    Lock glanced past Ty to the white-painted french doors that led out onto the terrace. ‘I don’t know. Let’s ask her.’

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    More than a few male guests, including those seated with wives and girlfriends, checked Tarian out as she crossed the terrace toward them. Lock guessed that, behind his Oakleys, Ty