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.
“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
FLEX LOOKED DOWN at the weapon in his hand, seeing the top-slide stuck halfway forward, the weapon rendered useless.
“No!” he shouted. The reason for the malfunction was instantly clear: Morgan’s gunshot on the bridge. It had hit the ammunition pouch and caused enough of a bend in the magazine to pinch the top, which now stopped the spring from feeding up the bullet as the carrier came forward to collect and chamber the round. Even if he were to clear the obstruction, the same malfunction would occur over and over again. Without another magazine—which Flex did not have—the semi-automatic pistol was useless.
Looking across at the man he longed to kill, Flex realized that Jack Morgan had come to the same conclusion.
His eyes went to the floor, and Morgan’s dropped revolver.
Chapter 122
JACK MORGAN HAD been ready to receive death. Now, seeing that Flex’s weapon had been rendered useless, relief flooded into him like sunlight. Still, he knew his reprieve would be short unless he could put Flex down, so he lunged toward the revolver that the girl—now a memory rushing away into the stairwell—had knocked flying from his hands.
At least, that’s what Morgan convinced Flex he was doing.
The big man took the bait, and went diving for the weapon like a linebacker onto a quarterback. Morgan had pulled himself up short and stayed on his feet, and now he delivered a crushing kick into the side of Flex’s thick skull.
Flex roared in agony, but still he reached for the pistol. Morgan stamped quickly on his fingers, feeling something crack and give way. He was about to deliver another kick when Flex forgot about the pistol, and instead rolled toward Morgan’s leg like a hungry gator, enough of his fingers unbroken to grab a boot in a vise-like grip, and his free hand moving to a knife on his belt.
Morgan threw himself forward. Flex lost his grip as Morgan bounced off his broad back, his hands going for the knife that was now free in Flex’s left hand. Like a drunken rodeo rider, Morgan hooked his legs around Flex’s own, attempting to keep the man’s bucking body pressed down to the floor as he wrestled the blade from Flex’s meaty hand.
“I’ll kill you!” Flex screamed. “I’ll kill you!”
Morgan had no doubt of it, so he resorted to the most basic of human instincts when life is in danger. A tactic taught to him by Flex’s own comrade.
He bit, his teeth pressing down into the flesh of Flex’s knife hand. The pinned man roared, and Morgan felt the knife twitch. A moment later, Morgan’s vision began to blur from blood running into his eyes. Lots of blood.
He sank his teeth in deeper.
Flex howled and bucked, finally shaking Morgan loose. The American rolled clear with blood in his mouth and eyes.
And a knife in his hand.
Flex charged forward, taking Morgan in a bull-rush.
Morgan drove the knife forward at him, but the police stab vest absorbed the blow and the blade buckled from Morgan’s hand. He was slammed backward by Flex’s mad charge, and the lower guard rail hit across his kidneys, all air being driven from him.
Flex threw a headbutt into Morgan’s face, opening a deep cut above his eye and adding to the blood already covering his face. Morgan tried to look at the man, but all he could see was a red haze through the blood in his eyes. As he saw the bulk of Flex’s upper body pull back for another headbutt, Morgan realized this was the final chance for him to bring justice to Jane’s killer.
As Flex made to drive his head into Morgan’s face, Morgan gripped hold of his enemy, pushed up from his legs, and used the momentum of the muscleman’s headbutt to bend himself backward over the guard rail, and to the thousand-foot drop below.
Chapter 123
AS JACK MORGAN’S body hit the narrow ledge ten feet below the Shard’s upper deck, he was almost grateful that blood clouded his sight and saved him from seeing clearly the terrible truth that he was three hundred meters above London, with nothing between himself and the earth but the meter-wide shelf that he and Flex had crashed onto. Only a snagging of Flex’s equipment belt had stopped them from bouncing from the ledge and into oblivion, and now Morgan was quickest to get to his feet as the big man sought to free himself of the entanglement.
Morgan scrambled free of Flex’s hold, and now he used the bottom of his shirt to clear the blood from his eyes. As the red liquid was wiped away, Morgan’s heart raced into his mouth—London was laid out below him like a three-dimensional Monopoly board. As a gust of wind shook the tower’s top, Morgan wasn’t sure if he’d ever been more scared in his life.
But he was alive.
He was alive and in the sky, and that was a place where Morgan knew comfort, as well as fear. The same could not be said of Flex, who now gripped for finger holds with terror in his eyes.
“Long way down,” Morgan taunted, enjoying the man’s panic.
“Help me up!” Flex begged, all grudges forgotten as he found himself inches from death.
Morgan smiled darkly, then jumped upward, his hands grabbing a hold of the metal fixtures that the tower’s audacious work crew would use to clip in their belts as they descended to clean and maintain the glass leviathan. Morgan shut out any thought of the terrible possibility of what a mistimed jump or poor handgrip could mean. Instead, he focused all his strength and courage on leaping from handhold to handhold. Moving his feet closer to the tower’s summit and safety in strides, Morgan pushed Flex from his mind, concentrating solely on his movement, trying to predict the wind, and to jump between its vicious gusts.
It was on his final leap—barely two feet from the top—that his luck ran out, and a savage thrust of air hit Morgan as he was free of his handholds. The gust blew him to his left, and his right hand snatched at the fixture that had been meant for his left. He caught it, but the movement spun his body, and he found himself facing outward, his back to the building, and nothing ahead of him but sky.
Below him, on the ledge, Flex saw his moment for victory and grabbed at Morgan’s legs like a cat after a bird. Morgan was saved by Flex’s inability to let go of his own handhold, and so only one hand reached up to grasp Morgan. He tucked his legs up to avoid Flex’s grabs, but the movement left him even more vulnerable to the wind, his outstretched knees catching every gust. As Morgan moved his left hand to join his right and double his grip, he looked up and realized there was only one choice left to him—a movement that would either save his life, or take it. Without waiting a second more before the next gust could hit, he drew his knees up toward his chin and, like a gymnast, curled his body upward so that his feet went above his head, pushing through the movement until he felt his shins scrape against the metal of the floor above. Pushing with his hands, Morgan shoved his body up and back, and slid himself onto the upper deck. His chest heaving from exertion and the endorphins of near death, he looked down at Flex, helpless on the ledge below.
Then he turned his eyes to the revolver that lay beside him.
Chapter 124
MICHAEL “FLEX” GIBBON looked up at the revolver that was pointing down at his face.
“Put one in my head,” he asked Morgan, knowing the game was over. “I don’t want to fall, Jack! For God’s sake, put one in my head!”
Morgan said nothing. He wasn’t seeing Flex, and not because the blood was trickling into his eyes and blocking his vision—it was the picture of Jane Cook, seconds from death, tha
t he could see in front of him. Then it was the image of her violent execution carried out by the man who now waited helpless below Morgan, begging for mercy.
“Put one in my head!” Flex pleaded.
Morgan did not. Instead, he used the pistol to trace out the other parts of Flex’s body below him.
“No!” Flex begged, knowing that any wound that didn’t kill him would certainly brush him from his narrow perch. “Please!”
Morgan’s pistol hand shook with rage, adrenaline and grief. It shook as another gust of wind hit the building’s top. Flex dug his fingernails into the building’s side as if he thought he could claw his way to safety.
“For God’s sake, Jack!” he cried. “Shoot me before I get blown off here! Shoot me! Shoot me!”
Morgan felt the cold metal of the trigger beneath his finger. He had the bullets and he had the shot. Since Jane’s murder, he had dreamed of this moment, the fate of the killer in his hands, his face filling the sights of Morgan’s pistol.
Do it for Jane, Jack Morgan thought savagely to himself. Do it for Sharon Lewis. Do it for Peter Knight. Do it for all those other people that Flex has left dead, ruined or scarred in his wake.
Do it, Morgan told himself.
DO IT! his mind screamed.
And so he did.
Chapter 125
“CLIMB!” MORGAN ORDERED. “Now!”
“You won’t kill me?” Flex asked in disbelief.
“I won’t kill you,” Morgan spat. “Now climb!” he shouted again, his pistol unwavering as the big man’s shaking fingers searched for their first handholds.
Flex winced with pain as he put strain on the hand that Morgan had crunched beneath his boot. Grimacing, he began to haul himself upward. To stay on the shelf was to risk the wrath of the wind, but Flex was no more secure from it as he began his slow ascent, his big body buffeted by the gusts.