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

when he reached a particular door. It was late in the evening, and he knew that nobody else would be in; the target was still there though, as his car was outside, parked in a bay opposite the entrance. Checking to ensure that nobody was watching, the man with the rimless glasses entered the City of London police’s Temple Inn Crime Unit, otherwise known as the offices of the Last Chance Saloon.

Detective Chief Inspector Alexander Monroe was tired, but he didn’t want to sleep, scratching at his short, white beard as he stared at his laptop screen, trying to will the words on it to stop swirling around the display as he tried to type. Earlier that day they had drugged him while in Birmingham; a nasty little bugger named Gamma Hydroxy butyric Acid, better known as Liquid Ecstasy on the club scene, given to him by an equally nasty little bugger, the corrupt police officer Detective Inspector White, shortly before White himself had been killed like a dog in the street by Birmingham gangsters. Monroe had woken up in a basement in Beachampton, rescued by his own Detective Inspector, Declan Walsh and, after wrapping up the case with the help of a large amount of bravado, bluff and a simunition grenade, Monroe was checked over by the Divisional Surgeon, Doctor Rosanna Marcos, who had fussed over him like a bloody mother hen before allowing his team to take him back to the office. He’d sent everyone else home, saying he just wanted to finish up before leaving, but the fact of the matter was that Monroe didn’t want to go home. He didn’t feel safe anywhere outside of his own office right now.

And when he closed his eyes, he had a fear, an irrational one, that he would wake up like last time.

Handcuffed and gagged in a basement.

And so Monroe had started this letter, trying to take his mind off the gnawing terror in the pit of his stomach. He’d already tried napping on the office sofa to see if that helped; it didn’t.

However, the sound of someone walking up the stairs into the primary office stopped him.

Rising from his desk, he walked into the open plan office, watching the door. Nobody was due back, and the steps were heavy. A man’s shoes.

The man with the rimless glasses emerged through the entrance into the room, stopping when he saw Monroe watching him. Middle-aged with short, dark brown hair, the man with the rimless glasses looked more like an accountant than an assassin.

‘I know you,’ Monroe intoned. ‘We arrested you in Devington Hall.’

The man with the rimless glasses nodded, sauntering towards Monroe. He also knew that Monroe had been spiked earlier that day; he was relying on this to slow the old man’s reactions, to make him an easier target to take down. Monroe however hadn’t finished, still trying to clear his fuddled brain.

‘You’re the one that attacked Declan outside his apartment,’ he continued. The man with the rimless glasses nodded once more, still continuing towards Monroe. He flicked his right wrist, and a vicious looking extendable baton flicked out.

‘If this means anything to you, it’s nothing personal,’ he said as he raised it.

Alexander Monroe nodded, already realising that he wasn’t fast enough to stop this attack, especially with the remnants of the GHB still in his system.

‘So this is how it ends, eh laddie?’ he asked calmly. The man with the rimless glasses thought for a moment, considering Monroe’s last words.

‘Yeah, pretty much,’ he said.

And then he struck.

1

New Beginnings

Declan hadn’t meant to stay the night.

The whole evening had started off innocently. Fresh from Beachampton, having solved the case and completed the arrests of the people involved, Declan had sent Kendis a text, saying that he wanted to see her. This was, of course, only after she’d texted him, saying that she believed that her future wasn’t with her husband, Peter.

This wasn’t an affair.

Was it?

Declan laid in Kendis’ marital bed, staring up at the ceiling. They’d intended to share a celebratory drink, nothing more. Declan had promised to keep Kendis in the loop, to give her the exclusive story, and that’s how the evening had begun. Kendis had suggested a Chelsea pub, and they’d met there around eight. But, as the evening progressed, they’d drunk more, reminiscing about their past and toasting people like Patrick Walsh, Declan’s late father, who had been working with Kendis on his memoirs before he died. That had led to more toasts. And then a conversation where Kendis had informed Declan conspiratorially that Peter wasn’t at home that night, that he was in a conference in Hull for the next day or so.

Things weren’t supposed to progress this fast.

But progress they did, and by midnight Declan and Kendis were back at her house, pulling off their clothes, as they pawed at each other like the teenagers they had been the last time they had been this intimate.

It was only afterwards that Kendis had mentioned that she hadn’t yet discussed her problems with Pete, and that this evening was something that even she hadn’t expected to happen.

This was an affair.

Declan was angry at himself. Earlier that same week he’d expressed jealousy at Lizzie, his estranged ex-wife, going on a date with another man. She hadn’t even gone on it yet, and he was jealous. How would he have reacted if this had been the other way around, and that she had slept with someone?

He glanced over to Kendis, still asleep in the bed next to him, her bare, dark-skinned shoulder visible under a mass of curly black hair. She was facing away and breathing heavily in her sleep, seemingly a lot more comfortable about this than he was right now.

He couldn’t help it; he smiled. Kendis had always been the one that had gotten away, and that there was a chance, no matter how small that he could regain something believed lost made him excited, and gave him butterflies. But he