Afraid of the Dark - James Grippando [141]
“He needs an ambulance,” said Shada.
“Why do you pretend to care?”
“You can’t let him die. I warned you about the tracking chip. I brought you the money myself. I did everything you wanted.”
Shada heard a whimper from across the room. The girl—the one Habib called McKenna—was in the corner, her knees drawn up to her chest. She seemed to know better than Vince or Shada that the Dark had never intended to simply take the money and run.
The Dark stepped closer to Shada. “Tell him, Shada. Tell Paulo the truth.”
Vince lifted his head at the sound of his name. Shada took it as a good sign that he was not only conscious but listening.
“This man needs a doctor,” said Shada.
The Dark tightened his stare, his exclusive focus on Shada. “You’ve known it was me for a long time. Haven’t you?”
Shada didn’t answer. She suddenly wished Vince weren’t able to listen.
“You definitely knew yesterday,” he said, “when we were having sex. When you looked in the mirror and saw what I had written on your back with red lipstick. The letters were backward in the mirror, but I saw it register on your face. Tell Paulo what it said, Shada.”
She kept pressing on Vince’s wound, but her hands were shaking. The Dark aimed his pistol straight at her head. He was just five feet away from her.
“Tell him!”
Shada swallowed hard, then said it slowly, each letter filled with hatred: “F-M-L-T-W-I-A.”
Vince let out a noisy breath, one that was wet with blood. The sound gave Shada chills, and her feelings of shame and disgust for the things she’d done with the Dark forced an image into her head—that of Vince kneeling on the floor beside McKenna three years ago as the life drained from the stab wounds in her body. A thousand times over, she would have taken McKenna’s place. Now she wished it were her own life on the line, not Vince’s.
“Please don’t die, Vince.”
“Tell him why,” said the Dark. “Tell him why McKenna said Jamal did it.”
“I don’t know why!”
“You do know! Tell him what you told me.”
She knew exactly what he meant, but she tried to keep the focus on saving Vince. The Dark would have none of it. He stepped closer and pressed the gun right against her head.
“Tell him!”
Chapter Eighty-one
The outburst from beyond the closed door—“Tell him!”—stopped Jack in his tracks.
Rushing inside the old hotel had been an instinctive reaction to the scream, and he’d raced up three flights of stairs hoping that the Dark had already fled with the money and left his hostages behind. Clearly, that was not the case, and as Jack stood frozen in the dark hallway, not sure what to do, he wished he was packing that gun Reza had offered him. He didn’t even have a cell phone, but hopefully the police were on the way. Surely Chuck had called them. Or the cabdriver. He inched closer to the door, stepping carefully on floorboards stripped of carpeting, and listened.
“Shada, do it now!”
He stopped and put his ear to the wall, trying to hear other voices inside the room. What he really wanted to hear were police sirens wailing on Brick Lane. If they didn’t come soon, Jack would be forced to make a move—either bust down the door or run for help. A wrong decision could be disastrous, and he was deep in an anxious state of disbelief over the fact that he was in London tracking down a psychopath when his week from hell—everything from Jamal’s murder and the loss of his friend Neil to the lack of sleep and Jamal’s uncle in the hospital—suddenly caught up with him, propelling him to do something.
“Do not harm the hostages,” he shouted. “I have a gun!”
The crack of gunfire was the response—a bullet exploding through the wall just inches from Jack’s nose. Jack dove to the floor.
Brilliant bluff, Swyteck.
The door swung open, but no one came out. The dim lighting from inside the room spilled a faint glow into the hallway, and Jack crouched low in the shadows. The rain continued to beat down on the roof of the hotel, and his only