Read Ryan Lock 04.5: Lock & Load for Free Online

Summer's face as it had appeared in movie theatres around the world. But this time the image was grainy and badly lit. In the background Lock recognized the master bedroom of Summer's Malibu beach house; the foot of the bed, a dressing table, a mirror that threw back the reflection of Jason holding up a cell phone in one hand and an unwrapped condom in the other.
       "You wanna play?" he said.
       On screen, Summer smiled at him, pushing herself up the bed and revealing her bare breasts.
       "You can kill that," said Lock.
       Ty tapped the screen and the image disappeared. 
       Since One Night in Paris , the homemade sex tape which had catapulted Paris Hilton into the public eye, celebrity sex tapes had become a sad feature of a tawdry cultural landscape where absolutely nothing was sacred. At first they had been leaked to the media, or online, as a way of boosting a celebrity's public profile. But over the past few years, with the growth of camera phones, YouTube, and social networking sites, they had increasingly been used by men seeking to humiliate and even blackmail former partners.
       "He emailed it to her?" Lock asked Ty.
      Ty nodded. "She had her cell phone switched off during the interview. She switched it back on after she left the room and there it was. Time stamp says he sent it around lunchtime. This was what he was talking about when he started talking shit back there."
       Lock chewed at his lip for a second. "Any message?"
       "Just some bull about remembering the good times. He was pretty careful about how he worded it," said Ty.
       "Yeah, the guy has a real way with words," Lock said, knowing that if Jason had hinted at anything else they could have him arrested for blackmail.
       "What we gonna do?" Ty said.
       "I'm going to call Carrie," said Lock. "Get her take on this."
       "Best not mention that to Summer's people," Ty said, with a nod towards the bedroom door. 
       Although Carrie was a reporter, she and Lock had a deal that they could both discuss their working lives without it going any further unless they were both cool with it. She had never let him down and he couldn't see a situation where she would.
       Lock headed back to the Range Rover to make the call, doubly aware of how sensitive it was. Carrie answered on the third buzz.
       "Hey, cowboy. You all done?" Carrie said.
       She sounded relaxed and happy. In the background he could hear Angel barking, the surf rolling in on the beach below and the squawk of a seagull who had taken to hanging out on the deck.
      "Not quite."
       He gave Carrie a brief summary. 
       "Has it leaked yet?" she asked him once he had finished.
       "Not yet, but it looks like it's just a matter of time. The guy's pretty unstable."
       "What are her management and PR people saying?"
       "Difficult to get any sense out of them," Lock told her. "They're freaked too. I mean she doesn't want something as private as this broadcast all over the internet. It's not like she's some reality TV star. The kid has a major league acting career in front of her. Might be good publicity if you're looking for fifteen minutes but she's in the game for the long haul."
       Carrie sighed. "You know once it's out there that's it. TMZ or someone picks it up first, then the tabloids, and then the mainstream media run with it. Meanwhile it's gone viral and there's no way of putting the genie back in the bottle."
       "So what you're telling me is I can't save her from this?" Lock said.
       "Not unless you can get hold of the footage and persuade him to destroy it."
       "I'm not exactly his favorite person."
       They were at a dead end. It only took the click of a button to cause someone untold misery these days and Jason's finger was right over that button. If Lock didn't find a way to stop this fiasco in its tracks he would have failed his principal. There was physical damage. There was emotional damage. Then there was reputational