Rosalind began urging us towards the entrance to the store, to where Ella was stashed away and Reynolds awaited. Was he alone? Or did he have the same guy with him who’d been there in the Lucases’ house the night they’d first tried to snatch Ella?
I knew to get out of this I needed speed and strength and right now I didn’t have either. So, what did I have?
Motivation. Experience. Technique.
Motivation. If I didn’t get out of this soon, I was going to die. Matt was going to die. I tried not to think about the method. And while Vaughan might have decided not to accept Rosalind’s offer of a trade, that didn’t mean he and Sean and Neagley were suddenly bosom pals.
As for Ella, the time when she might have been sold to the highest bidder was way past-if, indeed, it had ever been realistic in the first place. The chances of her surviving the ransom exchange had been poor. Even if Harrington and whoever else was in charge of Simone’s money had agreed to pay Harrington might have claimed to be concerned for Ella’s welfare, but big organizations like his bank tended to have very strict rules about refusing to give in to kidnappers. I imagined them coldbloodedly discussing the matter over a nice merlot in a smart restaurant somewhere in Soho and I knew then I would die fighting before I let that happen to her. To any of us.
Matt reached the outer doorway to the store and opened it, looking back over his shoulder as if anxious to please. I shuffled forwards another step. Rosalind moved in behind me.
Experience. This wasn’t the first time people had tried to kill me, up close and personal. I had the scars to prove it. And not just the one on my neck that Ella had been so curious about that day in her pink bedroom in London.
Rosalind nodded to Matt and he swung the inner door open. That one hinged outwards, into the lobby area. To open it he had to step back. I stopped abruptly and sensed Rosalind close up unintentionally at my back. Her focus was beyond me, on Matt, anxious that he didn’t make any sudden moves once we got inside.
Technique. Rosalind was less than a meter behind me, holding the Beretta in her right hand. She kept herself in shape, but she was a sixty-year-old woman who’d put all her faith in the gun she was carrying and who had never been through the military machine in all its nasty glory.
She was also angry, and so close to home turf she’d already begun to relax. I gambled everything on the fact that while she might know how to shoot, she didn’t know how to fight.
I dropped my crutch, letting it fall away sideways, shifted my weight onto my good leg and pivoted to face her. The shock that I would try something so stupid, when she had a gun and I didn’t froze her for a vital half a second. Then she started to bring the Beretta up, knuckles whitening as her grip tightened.
I reached over the suppressor and grabbed hold of the top of the slide with my left hand and pushed back as hard as I could manage. Not very, all things considered, but I was counting on Rosalind’s instinct and, sure enough, she immediately pushed against me.
Between the two of us shoving at it, the Beretta’s slide moved back fractionally in relation to the frame, opening up the breech and breaking the positive lock. I could feel the bunching as Rosalind’s finger clenched round the trigger, but as long as the breech is open, however minutely, most semiautomatic pistols will not fire. When nothing happened, she didn’t understand enough about the mechanics to realize why. Her mouth sagged open.
Still with my hand on top of the slide, I forced the gun out sideways, twisting the end of the muzzle to my left, away from me. Her grip on the gun lessened very slightly. I was working against the natural flexion of her joints and her finger was still inside the trigger guard, trapped there.
Too late, she began to counter me, starting to turn to her right to ease the pressure I was putting on her hand in general, and her trigger finger in particular. I couldn’t afford to let her get farther than that. Couldn’t afford a straight fair fight. Not with Ella’s life at stake.
Motivation.
With a final jerk, I twisted the gun round so the steel trigger guard bit hard against Rosalind’s tethered finger. I held her there, teetering, just until I saw the realization sink in, then completed the move.
Her right index finger fractured cleanly halfway between her knuckle and the first joint. By the time the real pain hit and she began to scream, I had the pistol grip firm in my own fist and the end of the extended barrel pointing square at the center of her body mass.
Rosalind fell back, keening, cradling her injured right hand across her chest with her left. Disbelief that she’d been beaten, and fear of that defeat, amplified her distress.
I took a halting step after her and brought the Beretta up, swapping to a double-handed grip now. My right arm was already trembling with the weight of the gun and the effort of aiming it. The only way I could be sure of my shot was to jam the end of the suppressor against Rosalind’s mouth, forcing her lips open, hearing the click of the steel against her teeth.
For the longest moment we stood like that, suspended almost. I felt every quivering muscle in my arm begin to tighten and felt no hesitation or regret. There was only a fierce roaring glory somewhere in the back of my mind.
“Charlie, for God’s sake!” Matt yelped. “You can’t!”
“I can,” I said through my teeth. “She tried to kill me. She even succeeded, however briefly. She’s responsible for Simone’s death. Oh, I could kill her like swatting a fly, Matt, trust me.”
Right at that second I was consumed by the enormous and almost irresistible desire to squeeze that trigger and watch her lifeless body fall. To hell with the legal system. To hell with the security cameras that I knew covered the inside of the store. I wanted justice. I wanted revenge. And I wanted it now. …
And then cold, hard realities seeped in. Cold enough and hard enough to have me dropping the Beretta away from Rosalind’s startled face and stumbling back away from her until I had the support of the nearest wall. I found I was in the far corner of the small lobby area, but I didn’t remember getting there.
“Don’t worry, Matt,” I managed. “I said I could kill her, but I’m not going to.” I shook my head. “She’s an evil bitch and I hope they electrocute or poison her, or whatever the hell it is they do to people over here who’ve committed murder, but that doesn’t mean I have to do their dirty work for them.”
Rosalind sagged against the outer glass, cradling her injured hand. Her face was wet with tears but she didn’t seem to be aware that she was crying again, from pain and shock this time, rather than frustration. I looked round, exhausted, and found my crutch was lying too far away for me to reach. Matt had to retrieve it for me. He helped Rosalind to her feet and the three of us finally made it into the store proper.
“Where’s Ella, Rosalind?” I demanded, more quietly now. For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to answer. Then she seemed to come out of her daze.
“In the back,” she said. “In the stockroom. I don’t know exactly. Reynolds didn’t say”
“Matt,” I said, “find me something we can tie her with, would you?”
“But she’s got a broken finger,” he pointed out.
“So? She was going to kill the pair of us.”
“Oh … yeah. OK.”
‘And find me a swivel chair,” I said. “Preferably one with castors on the bottom.”
He disappeared behind the counter and was soon back with a roll of brown packing tape and a typist’s chair with a high back and two sturdy-looking arms that came out from the underneath of the frame. One wheel squeaked slightly as he pushed it towards me.