Private Games (Private 3)

As she passed him, looking to corner his son, Knight lashed out with his bound feet.

They connected hard with Marta’s Achilles tendons. She cried out as her legs buckled and she fell sideways to the floor. The gun clattered away.

Knight twisted around, clutching that chunk of glass, and tried to slash her with it. But her reaction time was stunningly fast and practical. She threw up her forearm, taking the cut there before kneeing Knight hard in the chest.

The wind knocked out of him, Knight let go of the glass shard.

Insane with fury, Marta jumped to her feet and snatched up the gun. She marched over to one of the Coke bottles, opened it, and stuffed the muzzle inside and down into the liquid before saying, ‘I don’t care what Cronus wants. I have had enough of you, and your bastard children.’

Marta deftly wrapped duct tape around her bleeding arm, and then around the gun barrel and the mouth of the bottle before swinging around the crudely silenced weapon. Her eyes had gone dark and dead, and Knight had a glimpse of what all those Bosnian boys must have seen when the Brazlic sisters had come calling. With grim intent, Marta marched towards Luke who still sat beside his sister. She said to Knight, ‘The boy goes first. I want you to see how it’s done.’

‘Lancer is going to kill you!’ Knight shouted at her. ‘Just like he killed your sisters!’

That stopped her progress. She turned to him and said, ‘My sisters are very much alive. They have already escaped from London.’

‘No,’ Knight said. ‘Lancer killed them both. He broke Andjela’s neck, and then cut off her hands and sent them to me. Nada’s throat was cut from ear to ear.’

‘That’s a lie!’ Marta snarled as she came at him, raising the gun.

‘They were found in the same abandoned factory near the gasworks where you kept Selena Farrell.’

That information made Marta pause briefly. ‘How come it hasn’t been on the news?’

‘They probably haven’t alerted the media,’ Knight said, fumbling for an answer. ‘They do that, you know – hide things.’

‘You’re lying,’ she said. Then she shrugged. ‘And even if it is true, so much the better for me. I am sick of them. I think of killing them myself from time to time.’

Marta clicked off the rifle’s safety catch.

Chapter 105

SUDDENLY SIRENS WAILED nearby, coming closer, and Knight’s spirits surged with renewed hope.

‘They’re coming for you now,’ he said, grinning insanely at Marta and the bottom of the Coke bottle. ‘You’re going to the gallows, no matter what you d

o to me and my children.’

‘No.’ She laughed caustically. ‘If they go anywhere, they go next door, not here. In the meantime, I kill you and then use the tunnel to escape.’

She tried to press the Coke bottle against Knight’s head. But he batted at it with his hand and jerked around as the sirens came closer and louder. He thought: Buy time. At least the twins will be saved.

But then Marta stepped on the side of Knight’s neck with her boot, choking him as she lowered the silenced gun.

He looked up at her cross-eyed and grabbed at her ankles, trying to upset her balance. But she just ground her boot deeper and harder into his neck until his strength was gone.

Marta peered down at him. ‘Goodbye, Mr Knight. Too bad I don’t have a pickaxe.’

Chapter 106

KNIGHT THOUGHT OF Kate in the instant before Marta’s eyes snapped wide open. She screamed in agony, yanked the Coke bottle away from his head and her boot off his neck, and fired the rifle. With a weird wet thud, the silenced gun blew a hole in the wall just above Knight’s head. Coke and plastic fragments showered down on him as Marta screamed in agony once more. Frenzied, she spun away from Knight, groping wildly behind her.

Luke had bitten into Marta’s hamstring, and was holding on like a little bulldog while his nanny furiously pounded against him, screaming again and again. Knight kicked her hard in the shin and she dropped the gun before ramming her elbow hard into Luke’s side.

The boy slammed against the wall and lay still.

Knight crawled after the gun while Marta glared at Luke and felt down her leg for the gaping wound he’d left. She didn’t notice his father until he was inches from the rifle.

She cursed and lunged towards Knight as his finger found the trigger and he tried to swing the gun to point it at her. She swept her other arm round and struck the side of the barrel, deflecting his aim even as the now unsilenced rifle went off again, this time with a deafening boom that disorientated Knight for a second. He looked around, dizzy, praying that he’d managed to shoot Marta somehow.