“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.
“Or what, Jack? You goin’ to get this girl killed too, just like you did Jane?”
Flex was at the top of the staircase.
“Open the door,” he told the girl, who squirmed awkwardly to obey. Flex kept her body between himself and Morgan. The girl’s own frame wasn’t enough to cover the entirety of his muscular bulk, but it was enough for Morgan.
“Let’s just do this, you and me,” Morgan tried again.
Flex spat at him instead.
Then he backed out onto the top of Britain’s tallest building.
Chapter 120
ONE THOUSAND FEET above the country’s sprawling capital, the wind slapped Morgan hard in the face as he followed Flex onto the highest level of the Shard, nothing between them and the elements but guard rails. Morgan kept the revolver trained at Flex’s head, but he knew there was no way he could pull the trigger. The shot had been a difficult one before—now, with the wind, it was a near certainty the girl would die first.
“Let her go and I’ll put my gun down,” Morgan said, his voice raised against the wind.
Flex backed himself into an area of the roof where the glass panels that gave the building its name would cover his back from heli-borne snipers.
“You’re out of options, Flex. London is covered in cameras. Your crimes are on tape. You can go to prison, or you can die.”
Flex snorted, and Morgan knew he was holding out for a third option—to keep the girl as a hostage, and bargain his way out.
Morgan hadn’t considered that there could be a fourth.
Suddenly, with no warning, Flex shoved the girl forward at Morgan, the massive muscles of his chest and arm propelling her like a rag doll. The girl’s arms flailed and her hair was blown in the wind as she stumbled and tripped the few meters toward the American. Morgan knew instantly what Flex’s ploy was: to buy himself two seconds to reload his empty pistol, and finish Morgan, so he made to sidestep and fire while Flex was reaching for his spare magazine. But the girl came at him like a lost child to her parents, her eyes wild with terror, unable to see that by grabbing at Morgan, she was sealing both of their fates.
“Off!” Morgan screamed at her, pushing the clutching girl away and expecting 9mm rounds to begin punching into the bodies of both of them. “Off!” he yelled again, grabbing a scruff of her jacket and sending her spinning toward the door. But her flailing arms knocked the pistol from his hand, and sent it skidding across the metal floor.
Now unarmed, he knew that he would die.
He looked to Flex. The murderer pushed the fresh magazine onto his pistol and was raising it up to face Morgan’s body. As it came, the thumb of Flex’s left hand moved to push down on the release catch, which would allow the top-slide to come crashing forward and chamber the round that would kill Jack Morgan.
Morgan knew there was no escape now, so he steeled himself to look Flex in the eye, desperate to avoid showing a single ounce of fear that the man could enjoy.
Flex’s thumb hit the weapon’s release catch.
Prepared for death, Morgan watched as the top-slide came forward.
And jammed halfway.
Chapter 121