Private Princess

Chapter 84

With the security guy’s back turned to him, Morgan had liberated the pistol from his hidden shoulder holster with ease. In one smooth motion he had pulled the weapon clear with his right hand, using his left to cock back the pistol’s top slide, chambering a round. Within two seconds of Morgan beginning his theft, the pistol was ready for use and aimed.

“Don’t kill him!” the robbed security man begged, bravely trying to put himself between Morgan and Lloyd, who was now weak-kneed with terror. “It’s not worth it!” he urged.

“Your weapon on the floor,” Morgan told the man’s partner. “Do it!” he shouted, seeing in his peripheral vision a steady flow of revelers abandoning the scene, rushing with hushed panic for the exit. “Finger and thumb on the grip,” he ordered.

Slowly, very slowly, the second bouncer reached inside his jacket. With his finger and thumb gripping the handle, he pulled out a six-shooter revolver and placed it on the floor. Behind him, the room had all but emptied. Morgan flicked his eyes quickly to assess who remained, seeing Natalie shaking uncontrollably close by his side.

“Pick it up like he did,” Morgan instructed her. “Now!”

Natalie scuttled forward and picked up the gun.

“Put it in my jacket pocket,” he instructed. “Keep holding it exactly as you are, or I’ll blow his head apart.”

“Oh God,” the woman sobbed, black mascara running down her cheeks like a polluted river.

Morgan backed away as he felt the reassuring weight of the second pistol entering his pocket. “All of you on the floor. Facedown. Do it!”

They complied. Lloyd was the slowest to do so, almost paralyzed with terror. “I’m sorry,” he begged. “Please don’t kill me.”

“On your face!”

“I have a daughter!”

“On your face!”

Dribbling with dread, Lloyd joined the others on a floor awash with panic-spilled drinks.

“Interlock your fingers behind your heads,” Morgan ordered the four remaining people in the club, his voice suddenly seeming so loud, and bouncing around the room — the music had stopped, he realized. The last song put on by the DJ had played out, and now the lights and lasers flashed eerily in the silence.

“Your security tapes. Where are they? Tell me exactly where!”

But there was no reply, because the bouncers had heard the same thing that Morgan now did — footsteps on the staircase.

Before Morgan could move, gunshots filled the air.

He threw himself into a shoulder roll and scrambled for the bar as bullets chewed the furniture and decor in the room. He heard someone scream in pain as the shots flew wild, none coming within a foot of his refuge.

“Stop shooting!” Morgan shouted, his gut telling him who the firer would be.

Two more rounds smashed into the wall above him. Morgan scuttled behind the bar and peered around its far side — as he expected, the tattooed girl from downstairs stood at the head of the staircase, a semi-automatic pistol held in her hand. Of the security guards, Natalie and Lloyd there was no sign, only the flapping door of an open fire exit, and a trail of blood made dark beneath the disco lights.

Morgan drew his pistol up to aim. The girl’s shots had been wild, showing her lack of experience at firing a weapon, and he was exposing no more than his head and the top of his shoulders. At twenty yards, the chances of her hitting him were almost non-existent, while his own accuracy was a dead cert.

But Morgan couldn’t kill her.

“Drop it, goddammit!” he shouted.

The girl fired instead. Across the bar, ten feet away, a bottle of Gran Patrón tequila paid the price.

“I don’t want to shoot you!” Morgan shouted as the liquid and glass bounced around him. “But I will, if I have to!”

“You fucked up our club!” she screamed back. “The police will be on their way!”

Morgan ducked back into cover, expecting the shot that puckered the bar’s wood. The police were a far bigger threat in his mind than the girl’s marksmanship. The exodus from the front door would have been enough to alert a nosy neighbor or an alert bobby. If by some miracle that had gone unnoticed, then the gunshots would do the rest — the club room had been soundproofed for house music, but the open fire escape had seen to that precaution against sound complaints.

That fire escape was now Morgan’s only chance, he knew. He couldn’t kill an innocent person, and contrary to the belief of politicians and activists, there was no such thing as not shooting to kill. Sure, Morgan could aim for the girl’s shoulder, but when that bullet entered the body it would hit bone. It could send slivers of bone and steel anywhere, including into the girl’s heart. A shot to the arm? She could bleed out from her brachial artery. Then there was the chance of her moving as Morgan fired. The only non-lethal shot was the one you didn’t fire, so that was the option Morgan took.

But how the hell would he make it to the fire escape?

It was half the distance between him and the girl, on the right-hand wall. He would be ten yards from her, and his full height, not head and shoulders behind cover. Seeing him coming, the girl was bound to let rip with everything she had left, and only one of those bullets would need to find him to put him down, and from there into handcuffs, or a coffin.

It couldn’t end here, Morgan swore to himself. His promise of retribution could not die in an illegal club, surrounded by broken bottles of liquor, and washed over by lasers.

Lasers.

“Will you let me surrender?” Morgan tried.

“Piss off, you wanker! You think I’m stupid? You’re staying there until the cops get here!”

Morgan had assumed as much, but he had used the girl’s tirade to maneuver himself to the other end of the bar, hoping to emerge where she would not expect him.

Her words done, the room was silent. Silent enough for Morgan to hear shouts in the street and sirens in the distance.

It was now or never.

He stepped from cover, and took aim.

Morgan fired four times, the pistol rounds sparking as they hit the metal chain and fixture that held the light mounting in the room’s corner. The structure toppled downward and in front of the staircase, its thick cord catching it at chest height before it could crash into the ground. Now with an obstacle between him and the girl, Morgan was already running.

She fired — shots snapped from beneath the obstruction — but her view had been robbed from her. Within seconds of opening fire, his shoulder was hitting the partially opened door, and he was on the staircase.

He took a moment to collect himself at the top, not wanting to plunge from one trap into another. With no obvious ambushes ahead of him, Morgan left the first metal platform, traversing the fire escape like a parkour runner, clearing a flight at a time. The shock of the impacts shot through his ankles and up into his body, his face grimacing with each descent.

But the pain saved his life. No sooner was he on the second platform than the girl appeared on the platform above. Morgan gritted his teeth, expecting the impact of bullets to smash into his exposed back. Instead he heard two clangs, like a hammer hitting metal, two bullets puncturing the sheet metal of the staircase beside him. Then there was only the sound of swearing as the girl realized that her ammunition was spent.

“Wanker!” she shouted, hurling the pistol at Morgan in frustration. Her throwing aim was better than her shooting, and the pistol narrowly missed his head. He moved. He ran as fast as he could through the darkness, dogs barking and security lights snapping on as he fled, and the sound of sirens growing ever closer and more imminent.

Morgan felt at the reassuring lumps of metal in his pockets. He had done what he needed to do, and he was not sorry that he had terrified others to obtain the weapons.

But someone else would be.