Hunter Hunted by Jack Gatland (best value ebook reader .TXT) 📗

it. A moment later a visibly distressed Laurie Hooper entered sight, passing Gladwell as he moved aside, closing the door behind her.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘Harrison knows we were together,’ Laurie whispered. ‘He said that you’re a party man. Which means you have no loyalty to me.’

‘Harrison is an overweight fool who’s one more Big Mac away from a coronary,’ Gladwell replied, forcing a smile. ‘And if we cross our fingers and hope really hard, it’ll happen soon.’

Laurie couldn’t help it. She laughed.

‘When will you tell me what really happened?’ she asked. ‘What Donna really said to you on her last day?’

‘When I’m a hundred percent convinced I’m right,’ Gladwell pulled Laurie into his arms, embracing her. ‘And then we’ll both gain revenge for her.’

Laurie looked up, her eyes wide and innocent. Gladwell almost wished that he had the same innocence, long washed away by the Thames under Westminster Bridge.

‘I want you now,’ he whispered, kissing her hard on the lips, feeling her melt into him as she complied.

She always complied.

Alexander Monroe had been having the strangest dream. He couldn’t remember it now, as he lay in a hospital bed with tubes attached to every part of his body, but he remembered snippets. A moment of incredible pain to his skull. A man he thought he’d never see returning into his office, but dressed like Declan. A teenager with a gun to his gangster father’s head. A paint grenade going off.

Much of this he knew were scenes from the day, his muddled, drug-addled brain trying to put them into some kind of organisation, but one moment, one scene from the dream was still clear, and certainly hadn’t happened. He was standing on a beach, facing Kendis Taylor. She was wearing a large, slightly oversized parka, zipped up tightly, and they were arguing. He couldn’t remember what on; that part of the dream had disappeared. All he remembered was Kendis saying that she was sorry, that this wasn’t her fault, the coat opening and a bomb vest being seen underneath—

And then he woke up in what was apparently an Adult Critical Care Unit, with Rosanna Marcos sitting on a chair beside him reading a magazine. Obviously, once she realised he was awake, the magazine was thrown to the side and a flurry of medical staff were around, prodding, poking, asking questions, shining torches into his eyes… Monroe believed it was then that he passed out again, but when he awoke the second time the room was quieter, with Doctor Marcos now taking his pulse while ignoring all the machines that told her the answer.

‘Does it match?’ he whispered with a smile. Doctor Marcos saw he’d woken and leaned closer to him.

‘Stay quiet,’ she said. ‘If they hear you’re awake again, they’ll start prodding and poking all over again.’

Monroe chuckled at this but stopped when a wave of pain slashed through his skull, like they had placed a metal band around it, set to constrict quickly.

‘How bad?’ he whispered, reaching up and feeling the bandaging around his head.

‘You’re battered, but you put up a good defence. Your head, however… You lost a lot of blood, Alex. And for a while we didn’t think you were coming back.’ She grabbed his hand, squeezing it.

‘I’m sorry…’ Monroe said, looking up at her. ‘…But do I know you?’

Doctor Marcos stepped back in horror, but her expression turned to anger as Monroe laughed again, a wheezing, sporadic one that started and stopped as the pain in his head slashed at him in intervals.

‘Oh, you little shit,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve been worried sick, and that’s what you do?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Monroe croaked. ‘It was too good an opportunity to miss.’

Doctor Marcos sat down beside Monroe again.

‘You know that with one pinch of these tubes going into you, I can ruin your day real fast, yes?’ she muttered. ‘Do you remember what happened?’

‘Someone kept ramming my head into a glass door, I think,’ Monroe replied. ‘Can I get a sip of water?’

Doctor Marcos passed a sippy cup over, holding it for Monroe as he took a small mouthful. ‘Do you remember who did this to you?’

‘That’s what we were going to ask,’ Billy said as he entered the room, a broad grin on his face. ‘Good to see you awake, Guv.’

Monroe smiled and was about to reply when the second man entered the room.

The man with the rimless glasses.

‘Good to see you awake, DCI Monroe,’ he said. ‘I’m DI Frost. I’ve been seconded to your unit.’

Monroe looked to Billy, wondering if this was some kind of hallucination.

‘It’s true, Guv,’ Billy replied. ‘The DCI who’s running the case is DCI Sutcliffe. You met him during that armed stand-off in Hurley. Frost here was working undercover for Pearce Associates during that case.’

‘Sutcliffe is working my case?’ Monroe was still confused.

‘No, sir,’ Frost stepped forward. ‘You’re one of two cases, this and the murder investigation on Kendis Taylor.’

‘Kendis is dead?’ Monroe looked to Doctor Marcos, who nodded. ‘How long have I been out?’

‘Only a couple of days,’ Billy replied. ‘But we need to find the man who did this to you. If you remember anything, it’d help, Guv.’

Monroe remembered everything. He remembered the man with the rimless glasses, who was now apparently called DI Frost, attacking him with a baton he kept up his sleeve. And, judging from a quickly taken glance at him now, moving to bar the door, Frost was about to attack again the moment Monroe spoke.

And that meant that Doctor Marcos and Billy would suffer this time.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t remember anything after being drugged in a car. Doctor Marcos has been explaining what happened in Beachampton.’

‘You remember nothing?’ Frost moved closer, suspicious. Monroe shrugged.

‘Sorry, not a thing,’ he lied.

Watching him, Doctor Marcos nodded.

‘Short term amnesia is common in head trauma,’ she explained. ‘A few days of bed rest and I’m sure it’ll come back to him.’

‘Well, we’ll leave you alone now,’ Billy was still smiling. ‘It’s really great to see you awake.’ Monroe