Less than three minutes, all told. Not bad.
She walked out the front door, waggling her own mobile phone over her head as she walked past the guard. He ignored her, and she was gone into the night.
81
Ritz Paris
15 Place Vendôme
Saturday, early evening
Nicholas was deep into rereading Lanighan’s file when there was a knock at the door to the suite.
Mike was combing the files from the French authorities on the elder Couverel’s mugging and murder. She set her laptop aside and said, “There’s the coffee. I’ll get it. I’m telling you, Nicholas, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing useful in these files. The case went cold thirty years ago, and no one has done any work on it since.”
She crossed the room and opened the door. Nicholas heard a strangled cry and bolted from the couch to see Mike hurled backward into the living room and slammed against a chair. A dark-skinned man burst in after her, a suppressed Beretta 92S in his hand.
The man ran into the suite, his eyes on Mike, his Beretta aimed at her head. Nicholas came in hard from the side, buying him a moment of precious surprise. He kicked out at the man’s knee, but the man whirled about and leapt back, only taking a glancing blow to his thigh. He grunted in pain, but it barely slowed him. He brought his gun to Nicholas’s chest, Mike forgotten.
Nicholas whipped his leg up to kick the gun out of his hand, but the man pulled his arm back in time. Nicholas jumped into him, slammed his fist into the man’s neck. The man’s head flew back, and as Nicholas spun around he grabbed the man’s arm and sent his elbow into his gut, once, twice. He grabbed the man’s wrist and clamped his fingers hard into the soft flesh. The man screamed an
d the gun went off, an obscene sound, then fell and skidded across the floor. The man’s fist hit Nicholas’s forehead, and he staggered back, seeing lights.
Nicholas heard Mike shout, “Get away from him, Nicholas!” He knew she wanted to shoot the man. And the man did, too, because he grabbed on to Nicholas, trying to use him as a shield, dragging him toward the door of the suite. But he couldn’t hold him.
Mike watched the fight turn into a vicious brawl. She had her Glock out, but the men were moving too fast to get a clear shot—blocking and countering each other’s strikes as they destroyed the furniture in the suite, and themselves.
Nicholas took a hard blow to the shoulder. He pivoted and grabbed the man’s neck with one arm as he punched him in the kidneys, vicious blows that would fell a giant, but the man managed to squirm away—how, Mike didn’t know, he was that good. He stared at Nicholas for a split second, then took off at a dead run out of the suite. Mike fired once, twice, but missed him.
Nicholas yelled to Mike, “Call it in, I’m going after him,” and ran out the door.
The man was at the end of the hall, going through the emergency door to the stairwell. Nicholas sprinted after him, made it through the door in time to see a black-sneakered foot running up toward the roof. He squeezed off three shots, but the man didn’t stop.
Up three more flights, and the man threw open the door to the roof and slammed it shut behind him, slowing Nicholas for a moment.
When he eased open the roof door, Nicholas was met with a deep silence. It was dark, but there was enough ambient light from the streets below and the rising full moon to make out shadows and shapes.
There were plenty of places to hide up here. The housings for the air-conditioning units acted as dividers down the length of the roof; the man could be behind any of them.
Nicholas held himself perfectly still, listening. There, labored breathing coming from about twenty feet away. He edged forward, his steps light on the gravel. Ten feet, five, then the door to the roof opened, light flooding the dark, and the man jumped up like a quail flushed from the brush. He ran hard down the roof.
Mike joined him, whispered fiercely, “Let’s get the bastard.” They could see the man bobbing and weaving, and fired.
There was a muffled grunt and the man stumbled. Good, Nicholas thought, one of them had hit him.
Mike peeled off to the other side to flank him. Three more steps and Nicholas tackled the man. They rolled to the ground, twisting, punching, kicking, trying to gain an advantage. Nicholas saw blood and realized a bullet had nicked the man’s rib cage. Why didn’t it slow him down? Nicholas flipped him onto his back, jammed his elbow in the wound, and wedged his forearm under the man’s chin.
“Who sent you?”
The man gurgled, and Nicholas eased off only to get a vicious hit in the back knocking him sideways. The man was up on his feet, his fists lashing out. Nicholas rolled over and up and went at him. He struck him in the face with his fist and saw blood spurt out. He’d broken the man’s nose.
Mike kicked out the man’s right knee from behind, and he collapsed forward. Nicholas clamped down tight on the man’s windpipe.
“Who sent you?”
The man shoved backward with all his strength, knocking Nicholas into the air conditioner’s housing, slamming his head into the metal unit, but Nicholas hung on. Still the man came at him, trying to slam his fist into his throat, a crushing blow meant to kill him, but Nicholas got his hands up in time.
The man kicked out again with his leg, blood dripping down his chin onto his chest. Nicholas was in a berserk fury now, punching and jabbing and kicking. Mike screamed, “Don’t kill him, Nicholas, we need him!” but the only noise he heard was his blood thundering in his ears.