For the memory of Jane Cook, there would be no retreat.
He watched as the elevator’s numbers crept upward, hitting thirty-four in a smooth stop. He pulled the pistol up to his shoulder, ready to punch out and aim immediately as the doors opened.
They did so with a pleasant ping, and Morgan prepared himself for a fusillade of gunshots.
None came. All was quiet but for the sobs of a chambermaid who leaned back against a high glass window. She was cradling someone in her arms. Morgan only needed one look at the limp body to see that the person was dead.
“Is he in here?” Morgan shouted, maintaining his position. “Is he in here?”
The woman shook her head and sobbed. Morgan stepped out, his eyes drawn to the body of a suited man who lay dead on the floor. Suddenly, Morgan’s ear was drawn to the sounds of relaxing, melodic music that continued to play in the reception area, despite the carnage that was playing out beneath the hidden speakers.
He swept his pistol left and right, but all was clear.
“Where is he? Where did he go?”
The chambermaid was incapable of speech, but she pointed in the direction of a second set of elevators.
“Does he have hostages?” Morgan asked, reaching into the woman’s pockets and coming up with her access card.
She nodded, sending tears dropping down onto the face of the young man in her arms. Morgan had no time to comfort her. He left, and ran in the direction of the elevators.
“Please don’t hurt me!” a man shouted. Morgan turned to see a businessman huddled shaking beneath a table. “Please!”
“Did you see who went in here?” Morgan asked sternly.
The man nodded.
“How many people with him?”
“Three, I think. Maybe four. Please don’t hurt me.”
“I’m not going to hurt you. There’s a woman over there.” Morgan pointed back toward the sobbing chambermaid at the window. “Grab her, and get downstairs. Go!”
After swallowing the lump of fear in his throat, the man scuttled away, and Morgan turned his attention to the elevator. It had only one destination: the highest floor.
He looked once more at the fleeing man, who had stopped at the sobbing woman, and was now moving her toward the elevator that would take them down to safety.
Morgan sucked in a deep breath to calm the nerves and adrenaline that pumped through his system. Then he cast a cool glance out at the magnificent vista of London.
Morgan had seen worse places to die. With that thought in his mind, he stepped into the elevator that would deliver him either to revenge or to his death.
Chapter 118
“Get over there!” Flex ordered his six captives, brandishing his pistol. Four of them he had herded like the sheep they were from the thirty-fourth floor. Another two, both cleaners, had been acquired as they’d arrived in the building’s viewing rooms, and the highest reaches of the Shard. The viewing rooms were confined, Flex realized, and unsuited to his purposes — he couldn’t keep point of aim over all entry points, and he certainly couldn’t cover all angles in the room by himself, the layout stretching around the elevator at its center.
He realized there was only one true option for him. He dragged a hostage by the hair, moving the short distance to the window so that he could see the towers and buildings below, some reaching as high as the Shard’s waist.
“Look at the flags!” Flex told the younger woman. “What are they doing?”
“The flags?” she mumbled, confused.
Flex slapped her hard to sharpen her senses.
“I’ll look for you!” a young man offered bravely.
Flex didn’t need people deciding they were heroes. That could be trouble down the line, and so the young man’s offer earned him a bullet in the chest.
“What are the flags doing?” he demanded again, against the screams.
“Blowing! They’re blowing!” the woman bawled.
That was what Flex had seen, but his eyesight wasn’t what it had been, and he didn’t want to wager his life without a second opinion. Knowing that the winds were high, he made a calculated gamble. Chances of the commanders signing off on their snipers taking a shot in high wind speed, with hostages? Low. Chances of them storming the floor from a direction that Flex wasn’t facing, and killing him before he could react? High.
“We’re going up on the roof,” Flex ordered.
He was just about to give a second command when the single elevator pinged, and its doors began to open. On instinct, Flex raised his pistol and fired.
Chapter 119
Jack Morgan didn’t see Flex open fire, but he heard him well enough, the pistol’s reports crashing around the small space of the elevator as the bullets went zipping toward Morgan.
Who survived every shot.
Knowing that Flex would likely cut him down as soon as the doors opened, Morgan had stacked the elevator with tables behind which he could take cover. The five-star hotel had bought the best timber, and now Flex’s 9mm bullets flattened and died against it, protecting Morgan from the storm of steel that Flex unleashed his way. When he heard the click of an empty magazine, Morgan sprang up and punched out the revolver, ready to fire.
He saw Flex, red-faced and angry, the man he longed to kill, but he saw too the young woman that Flex’s left hand had gripped by the hair, pulling her close to him and using her as a shield.
Eyes went wide. Both men knew that, without using both hands, Flex would not be able to execute a quick enough reload to kill Morgan before Morgan killed him. Both men also knew that until Flex let go of the girl, Morgan would not fire.
It was a stand-off.
Flex began to back away. Morgan tracked him with the pistol, but he knew he could not fire and risk hitting the weeping girl. The revolver’s short barrel was not made for accuracy, and so Morgan would have to kill Flex up close.
“He’s out of ammo,” Morgan told the girl. “Be calm.”
“Don’t try and run,” Flex whispered venomously into her ear. “I can drop this pistol and draw my knife long before you get free. I’ll cut your throat like it was butter.”
“Why don’t you use that knife on me instead of a defenseless woman?” Morgan tried, as Flex stepped back toward the maintenance doorway that would lead them to the final flight of stairs, and the building’s thousand-foot peak.
“You know what I regret? That I didn’t rape that bitch of yours. That I didn’t smash her before blowing her brains out.”
Morgan needed every piece of his concentration to force down the black rage that built inside of his chest and threatened to consume him.
“I should have let the other lads have turns too,” Flex goaded, backing through the doorway. “Don’t follow me.”
“Fuck you, Flex. I’m the one with the loaded gun here.”
“What was your favorite part of her?” Flex asked, as Morgan followed him into the bare utility of the maintenance stairwell. “The tits? Her face? I didn’t see much of them, but I did see her brains, Jack. There was a lot of them. Made a hell of a mess on the floor, they did.”
Morgan willed his mind to shut out the words, but the cloud of rage was rising, trying to push him into recklessness.
“Your hands are shaking,” Flex laughed, seeing the slightest of trembles in Morgan’s aim. “You should be thanking me. You’d have got tired of her and chinned her off soon enough anyway. At least this way no one else gets inside her. Well, unless the guys at the morgue are a little—”
“You shut your goddamn mouth,” Morgan hissed, the veneer of his cool cracking, and revealing lava beneath.