“Sir,” she said in a calm, controlled voice, “you say you know whose house this is?”
“It belongs to Mayoor Patel,” Knight cut in before Morgan could speak. “But the two women here are Sharon Lewis and Jane Cook. One is a police officer and the other is an investigator for Private.”
“They are my people,” Morgan seethed. “And I need to see them.”
The police sergeant thought over Knight’s words, then looked back to the house.
“Have you been inside?” Knight begged. “Please, we need to know.”
The sergeant held her tongue as she gestured for the young officer beside her to move away and give them privacy.
“The paramedics are stabilizing one woman who’s been badly beaten,” she told the men, looking straight into their eyes. “I’m afraid that one of the women… has passed away.”
“Can we see them?” Knight asked.
Morgan opened his mouth but found himself unable to speak.
“This is Jack Morgan, head of Private. My name’s Peter Knight, and I’m head of the London branch. If you call my sister-in-law at the Met, Elaine Pottersfield, she will confirm for you who we are.”
“I’m sorry, sirs, but your identity is not the issue. No one but the police and paramedics can cross this boundary. If you will wait here, I’ll go and find out which hospital they’re taking her to.”
“Thank you,” Knight said, defeated. Beside him, Jack Morgan was white with rage.
“This is Flex’s doing,” he hissed between clenched teeth. “He called the police himself, to keep me from Jane.”
The truth of that hit Knight like a blow. Then, in the same moment, he realized what other motivation a former SAS soldier could have for keeping them at the cordon.
“We’re sitting ducks out here, Jack,” Knight warned. “There are hundreds of windows on this street, and Flex could be in any one of them. Let’s get clear and into some cover,” he urged.
But Morgan stood firm. Knight considered how he could drag Morgan from the street and to safety. Thankfully, he was saved the ordeal by the reappearance of the sergeant.
“I gave your names to the lady in the ambulance,” the police officer told them. “She wants to see you.”
Chapter 60
MORGAN AND KNIGHT ducked under the police tape and followed the police sergeant quickly to the back of the ambulance. Knight threw a look Morgan’s way, worried at the intensity he saw coming from his friend and boss. There was no knowing what kind of state Sharon Lewis was in emotionally, or physically. Knight had never met the woman, but his guess was that the last thing she would need would be Morgan going in bullheaded and demanding answers.
He needn’t have worried.
“Lewis, I’m so glad you’re alive,” Morgan said gently. Knight could have sworn there were tears in the man’s eyes.
And why not? Lewis was strapped to a gurney, her arms splinted to immobilize around the fractures she had suffered at the hands of Flex.
“What the hell have they done to you?” Morgan whispered.
The answer to that question was obvious—Lewis had been savagely beaten from head to toe. Her skin was already turning a mottled purple, her neck held firmly in place by a plastic brace. Her right eye was fully closed; her left was focused loosely on the two men who stood silhouetted against the ambulance’s door.
“Morgan,” she whispered. “Morgan.”
“I’m here,” he told her, placing his hand on hers. “I’m so glad to see you, Lewis.”
“Like this?” She tried to smile.
“Not like this,” he said softly, and Lewis’s open eye shed a tear. They both knew what Morgan meant. He was glad to see her alive.
“I couldn’t stop them,” she said, the single tear followed by several others. “I’m sorry, Morgan. I couldn’t stop them.”
“Don’t think about it, Lewis. Don’t even think about it.”
But of course it was all she could think about. The image of Cook on her knees with the barrel pointed at her head. The soft psst sound of the silenced pistol firing. The sight of Cook’s body slumping to the floor.
“You need to rest, Lewis.”
“I don’t want to close my eyes,” she whimpered. “It’s all I see.”
From long experience of violent memories, Morgan knew of one way to escape the emotional pain.
“Watch her, Peter.”
Morgan slipped out the rear of the ambulance and returned a moment later with the paramedic. Without a word, the first responder took a syringe and fed morphine into the cannula in Lewis’s wrist.
“He’s given you something for it. You’ll sleep, Lewis, and you won’t feel the pain. You won’t see the pain.”
Lewis tried to blink tears away, but gravity held them on her eye. Morgan took a tissue from one of the ambulance’s shelves and delicately dabbed them.
“You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever seen. I’m going to come with you to the hospital.”
“No,” she said, fighting against the drug that now began to overtake her. “No hospital, Morgan.”
He had to hunch over to catch the rest of her words, which were lost to Knight. Finally, Lewis’s lips stopped moving, the slow rise and fall of her chest showing the signs of a woman in a deep, drug-fueled delirium.
“What did she say?” Knight asked Morgan.
When the American turned to face him, his eyes reminded Knight of an impending storm. There was calm now, but soon all would be destruction and violence.
“That we finish this.”
Chapter 61
JACK MORGAN AND Peter Knight stepped from the ambulance, the paramedic pulling the doors closed behind them. The vehicle’s lights and siren started up and police officers hurriedly cleared a lane for it to pull away. Given the severity and nature of the attack, a police car followed in the ambulance’s wake to ride shotgun. Morgan noticed the precaution, and gave his thanks to the police sergeant.
“She’s one of ours,” the woman said.
“She saved my life,” Morgan told her. “Please look after her.”
“We will,” the sergeant promised. “I’m sorry that we can’t let you inside. If it was up to me…”
“You’ve done enough,” he assured her. In truth, it killed him that he could not run to Cook’s side, even in death, but if he was to be denied that proximity to the woman he loved, then he would take himself where he was needed. He would take himself to where her killer was hiding, and there, he would deliver justice.
“We need to go,” he told Knight.
“Our car will be here any second,” said Knight, and sure enough, a black Range Rover appeared in that moment at the end of the street. “But that’s not ours,” Knight wondered, ready at any moment to shove Morgan into cover should the occupants prove hostile.
At the behest of a waving officer, the vehicle slowed to a stop ten meters short of the cordon. There the passenger door opened, and Knight felt his body relax as a familiar figure stepped into the street and beckoned toward them.
“Over here!” Colonel Marcus De Villiers waved, and after a final thank you to the police sergeant, Morgan and Knight slipped under the cordon to join him.
“Have you seen Lewis?” asked the Guards officer.
Morgan nodded. “We have. She’s badly beaten, but alive.”
“Thank God,” De Villiers sighed. As head of royal security, Lewis fell under his command, and there was no doubt in the Private agents’ minds that De Villiers truly cared for Lewis’s well-being.
“And Cook?” the man asked hopefully.
Morgan said nothing. Knight shook his head.
“Morgan, I’m so sorry.”
Morgan’s mind was miles from sympathies. A million miles from them. It was only concerned with retribution.
Perhaps De Villiers saw as much.
“Get into the car, Morgan,” he ordered as if to a soldier. “Not you,” he said to Knight as he tried to follow. “I need to speak with Morgan alone.”
Chapter 62