Minotaur

11

Chapel moved fast, untying his hands and pulling the gag away from his mouth. He pulled his artificial arm back over his shoulder and felt the clamps squeeze into place, then spent a few seconds testing the fingers, the wrist, the elbow. It was made well, designed to take a serious impact, but he’d never used it as a club before and he worried he might have damaged the complex machinery inside. It seemed to work okay, so he bent to his next task.

He searched Michael’s pockets, looking for a weapon or, even more important, a cell phone. A good frisking turned up nothing, however. Michael wasn’t even carrying a wallet. Well, why would he be? Until recently, he’d just been a waiter at Favorov’s table. No reason for him to be carrying a switchblade or a satellite phone. Chapel would have to find the gear he needed someplace else. In the meantime, though, he needed to secure the man he’d knocked out. He used the ripped-up pieces of his shirt to tie up Michael and gag him, because he knew the servant/guard would wake up any minute. He cracked open the door of the billiards room and looked out into the hall. He didn’t see an army of servants coming to kill him, which meant he’d been quiet enough nobody knew he was free. That was good, very good.

But he wasn’t out of the woods yet. He only had a few hours before Favorov’s yacht would arrive. He had to make sure the Russian didn’t get on board. But before he could go hunting down the ex-GRU man, he had to take care of Stephen.

He didn’t like it. It meant lying in wait when he should be springing to action. But if Stephen came back and found Michael tied up in a chair, he would know instantly what had happened and he would alert the rest of the house staff. Every single person in the house would instantly be looking for Chapel, and probably intending him gross bodily harm.

So he propped Michael up in a chair and went to stand by the door, just to the side of where it would open. His nerves pinged and his muscles twitched with the need to move, the need to act. His vision was still a little blurry from his concussion, and his wrist ached where it had been tied. He forced himself to keep absolutely, perfectly, still.

After what felt like hours of waiting but could only have been minutes, he heard footsteps in the hall. They came right up to the door—and stopped. Chapel gritted his teeth. He’d expected Stephen to just come striding in, totally unprepared for what he would find in the billiards room. It looked like that wasn’t going to happen.

Chapel held his breath. He waited. When Stephen knocked on the door and called Michael’s name, Chapel nearly jumped out of his skin. He considered imitating Michael’s voice, but that was far too likely to backfire, so he kept quiet. Nothing for it—but it meant that Stephen was out there now, with a gun, and he knew something was wrong. He’d be expecting an ambush.

After a moment the door’s knob began to turn.

Chapel would never get a better chance. As soon as the door cracked open he shoved his foot into the gap and kicked it wide open, swinging around so he stood face-to-face with a very surprised-looking Stephen.

“Did you get a gun?” Chapel asked, trying to throw the servant off balance.

“Wh—yeah, I—how did you—?”

As soon as he knew Stephen was armed Chapel brought up one foot and kicked down hard on Stephen’s knee. By speaking to him, Chapel had made the servant look at his face, not at his hands or feet. The blow wasn’t hard enough to break Stephen’s leg, but it made him stagger forward, right into Chapel’s body, letting Chapel throw his arms around the servant in a bear hug that would keep his arms out of play.

It should have been enough to leave Stephen at Chapel’s mercy. It should have given him plenty of time to get the servant into a sleeper hold, just as he’d done with Michael. There was one problem with hand-to-hand fighting, though. No matter how well trained you were, no matter how carefully you’d thought through every move and hold and grapple, the other guy could always counter your attack if he had a chance to think about it. Or if he just got lucky.

Chapel’s kick had left Stephen falling forward. Normally an opponent would try to recover his footing, which would be a mistake. Instead, Stephen kept falling, in a trajectory that would have left him flat on his face if Chapel hadn’t been in the way to catch him. It meant his entire weight came down on Chapel all at once, nearly two hundred pounds. His forehead hit Chapel square in the chin.

The impact was enormously loud inside Chapel’s head. He felt skull hit skull and his already bruised head rang like a bell. The hit wouldn’t seriously injure either of them, but it threw Chapel off just enough that his bear hug weakened and Stephen slipped out of his arms, sagging to the ground. Chapel took an involuntary step back, his hand moving to rub his chin.

He recovered swiftly—he’d been trained not to let pain or injury slow him down—but for a split second, Chapel lost all contact with his opponent. Stephen was quick enough to make the best use he could of that brief window. The servant scampered across the floor, away from Chapel, grabbing at the corridor wall outside the billiards room and dragging himself back up to his feet. And then he ran away.

Crap, Chapel thought, as he watched Stephen’s back receding down the hallway. Without any more hesitation, he dashed into pursuit.