Private Princess

Chapter 99

Jack Morgan spent the wait in an industrial area of Battersea, placing him close to central London’s many bridges, the Ford Focus pulled to the curb alongside steel fencing and litter.

“Flex wants me to put a bullet in your head and dump you.” Morgan eyed the trash on the roadside.

Herbert tried to speak through the tape. His eyes had calmed, and they pleaded with Morgan to let him talk.

“Don’t speak,” Morgan told him. “Just listen.”

The man ceased his movement and stifled words.

“You realize there’s a chance Flex just puts a bullet in us both the moment we arrive?”

Herbert nodded.

“I have an idea, but you have to play your part.”

The man raised his eyebrows.

“You’ll find out when we get there. Just do as I say. Flex is who I want, understand?”

The man nodded. He understood. Just as Morgan had felt no great personal animosity toward Joyce for helping to conspire to kill him, neither did he feel it toward Herbert. Jack Morgan lived in a world where people tried to kill him on a regular basis — it was an occupational hazard. It was when they involved the people he cared about that he began to see things personally. Herbert had not been there when Flex had pulled the trigger and killed Jane Cook. If he had, he’d be dead already. The man couldn’t know it, but being shot by Lewis had likely saved his life.

Morgan sighed, and looked along the empty street that was bathed beneath orange street lights. He thought about Peter Knight. How his friend was a captive of a man who had shown himself to be a murderer. How the father might soon make orphans of his children. How a professional investigative agent had allowed himself to be caught so easily by the people he was there to track.

With guilt, Morgan realized that he was angry with Knight. He tried to push the feeling away, but the sense that Knight had come between Morgan and justice for Cook would not shift. Hadn’t Morgan told him to send other agents to watch Flex’s office? Hadn’t he trained Knight, taught him, and trusted him? Now, when he needed him most, and when he was finally getting ahead through the capture of Herbert, Knight had flipped the field back in Flex’s favor. He was putting them all in Flex’s hands, and giving the man a chance to play his endgame. Morgan had only a wild card left to play, and if that failed, he was at best back to the beginning in his search for Flex. At worst, he was on his back with a bullet in his head.

The next hour passed in waves for Morgan. One minute there was anger at Knight, the next guilt that he could ever think that way. Then came sadness, then came grief, then came rage that Flex was at large. That rage led to the obstacle that now stood in the way of justice — Knight — and so began the cycle once more.

To break it, Morgan attempted to distract himself through meticulous checking of his two pistols. He broke them down one at a time — one always with a bullet in the chamber, and close at hand, should he need to use it — and inspected and cleaned every part of them to ensure there would be no malfunction when he needed them most. Morgan’s ammunition count stood at eight 9mm rounds for the semi-automatic pistol, and six .357 rounds for the revolver. Not enough for a protracted gunfight, but maybe enough to put Flex and Rider down if he drew first.

And was he willing to do that?

Rubbing the heel of his hand into tired, blood-red eyes, Morgan could not be sure. He hated Flex, and wanted the man removed from society, and the world, but Jack Morgan had always pictured himself as a defender — a man who took life in order to save others. Could he really draw his pistol first, and shoot Flex and Rider down in cold blood? For the sake of justice for Jane, he wanted that answer to be yes.

But deep down, beneath the anger and the pain, he admitted to himself that he just did not know.

Morgan finished assembling and reloading the pistol in his hands, cocked back the hammer, and pointed it at Herbert’s startled face.

Pull the trigger, he told himself. Pull the trigger. Find another way to get Flex. Find another way to rescue Knight. Knight put himself in this position. Why should Jane’s killers go unpunished, for his mistake? Pull the trigger! Morgan’s anger screamed at him. Pull the trigger, kill this son of a bitch, and then kill the others. Do it! Kill him! Now!

Morgan lowered the pistol, and turned to the front. Behind him, having seen the murderous intent in the American’s eyes, and believing his life to have run its course, Herbert began to whimper.

Before Morgan could tell him to shut up, his phone vibrated.