Second Shot

“True,” she said, and I heard the smile in her voice. “But now he doesn’t have to make it look accidental, he can have some fun with you first.”

She ordered us out of the Range Rover, Matt first and me after. The cold numbed me again as soon as I opened the car door. It was like I’d never been warm. I slid clumsily to the ground and fumbled with my crutch.

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.