Siege

Fifty-eight

21.00

CAT AND WOLF left the restaurant in silence, and travelled in the lift back down to the satellite kitchen adjacent to the ballroom. Cat noticed that Wolf was shaking, although whether it was due to excitement, anger or shock, she couldn’t tell.

The lift door opened and they walked back out into the kitchen. Wolf immediately went over and checked the laptop. ‘They still haven’t turned it back on, the bastards. I’ll phone the negotiator and let him know another will die.’

‘If they’re so desperate to speak to Prior, let them.’

‘We don’t want to give away his location.’

‘Then let me record a message from him and we’ll play it down the phone to the negotiator. That way they will realize he’s still alive but they won’t know where he is.’

Wolf looked surprised. It was clear to Cat that he hadn’t thought of this, which concerned her. Before tonight, she’d respected him, but she was far less sure now, and wondered whether his reputation as a strong soldier and leader had been inflated. He was too much in thrall to the mercenary, Fox, for her liking – a man she wouldn’t trust an inch herself.

‘That’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘Do it now and I’ll tell the negotiator that we’ll let them hear from him soon, as long as they put the internet back on.’

With a nod of acknowledgement, Cat left the room. She was looking forward to seeing Michael Prior again. She’d extract a message from him, of course, but she’d also make him suffer a little as well, to ease the rage that was coursing through her heart at the thought that her brother’s killer was still alive and somewhere in the hotel.

Fox spotted her walking towards the ballroom door and beckoned her over. Although officially Cat was below him in rank for this operation, in practice they were equals. It was she whom Wolf had chosen to accompany him to the restaurant earlier, not Fox, something that she was sure rankled with the other man.

‘Did you kill someone up there?’ he whispered as she stopped in front of him.

She nodded, making no attempt to disguise her disdain for this mercenary.

‘And are we back online?’

‘Not yet. We’ll let you know when we are.’

They were silent for a few seconds as they appraised each other coldly, like two dogs sizing each other up, hunting for weaknesses. Cat sensed he wanted to say something else, but she didn’t give him the opportunity and instead turned her back on him.

When she was out in the silence of the corridor, her grip tightened on the gun. She kept it down by her side and out of sight, in case she ran into one of the guests, or, if she was really lucky, the man who’d killed her brother. Her frustration at not knowing how to find him in this maze of rooms was increasing the more time went on, and her rage meant she would take it out on whoever crossed her path. As far as she was concerned, all the people in this hotel were the enemy, and deserved whatever fate God chose to dish out to them. In two hours’ time, the Stanhope would go up in flames, and Cat would go up with it, dying a martyr’s death, taking as many of the enemy with her as possible.

It was a prospect that excited her.

Pausing outside the room where they were holding Prior, she imagined the terror he must be experiencing, bound up and alone inside. Slowly, she opened the door, bringing the gun up from her side so its suppressor would be the first thing he saw.

And then she saw him, and stopped.

Michael Prior sat dead in his chair. But it wasn’t so much that which grabbed Cat’s attention.

It was the fact that his left eye had been gouged out.