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“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.
