Revenge (David Shelley #1) - James Patterson Page 0,50

swinging Lucy’s way.

In the old days they’d called it “crack and thump.” A round travels faster than sound so you’d hear the crack of the bullet followed by the thump of it leaving the barrel. Lucy heard it now, and the fact that she heard it meant that she hadn’t been hit. She jinked across and out of the cone of fire just as she heard the thunderclap of another weapon. A third guy. He sat in the driver’s seat of the Range Rover and she saw a Glock 18 judder as he pumped three quick rounds across the seats and out of the open passenger door. Glass behind shattered. Bullets ricocheted off concrete. Susie’s captor screamed in Russian for his trigger-happy pal to hold fire but his comrade had the light of murder in his eyes and he drew a fresh bead on Lucy.

Susie, wrestling with her kidnapper against the bonnet of the Range Rover, saw the driver level his Glock. Leaning into her captor, she kicked the car door closed at the same time as the guy inside opened fire again.

The vehicle shook from the impact as the driver shot up the inside of his own car. Lucy dropped to a crouch and raised the SIG two-handed to take aim at the man wrestling with Susie, but she fudged the shot—too much movement, too great a fear of hitting Susie, too fucking rusty—and the bullet ricocheted off the side of the Range Rover harmlessly. Over to the left the first guy reached the female kidnapper, gun in hand, bringing it to bear on Lucy, just as the second guy finished bundling Susie into the Range Rover and now he turned, too, pistol in his fist, also bringing Lucy into his sights.

Two guns against one. Lucy out of cover. The battle was lost but she was going down swinging and she picked her target: the guy by the Range Rover. Hoping her next shot would be more effective than her first.

All three guns fired at the same time and Lucy saw the bloody hole appear in her upper thigh before she felt a thing. She’d been hit in combat before and she knew what to expect—a few seconds of grace before the pain, and then shock, and possibly unconsciousness. At the Range Rover she saw the shooter clutch his shoulder and stagger back. She felt grimly pleased that she’d managed to hit one of the bad guys at least.

Nearby, the sound of sirens. The Range Rover door slammed shut, Susie inside. The guy Lucy had hit pulled himself to the vehicle, clambered in, and left a smear of blood on the paintwork. The woman reached the Range Rover, too. “Move!” she screamed at the final gunman, and dimly, Lucy realized that she, too, had been using a posh accent for her time in the Hampstead spa.

The woman threw a final baleful glare Lucy’s way then climbed inside the car, followed by the last gunman.

Spooked by the sirens, thank God. Not stopping to finish off Lucy.

She raised a trembling gun hand and squeezed off a couple of shots at the tires, more in desperation than anything else, because of course they were reinforced.

And then it was gone, leaving her kneeling on the concrete, watching her own blood slowly spread on the ground beneath her, already beginning to lose focus. She scrabbled for her mobile to call Shelley, who picked up after only one ring.

“Babe,” he said. “Have you got her?”

“No,” managed Lucy. “I haven’t got her. They’ve taken her. I’ve been hit, Shelley. I’m at the Hampstead Health & Beauty spa. I’m . . . I’m . . .”

“Babe!” he was yelling. “Lucy!”

She collapsed to the ground, and then passed out.

PART THREE

CHAPTER 42

“OH GOD,” HE said, bursting into the hospital room, past the armed guard and into Lucy’s arms.

She lay looking pale and weak, but not so weak that she couldn’t gather Shelley to her. Her lower half was partly covered by the bedsheet, but he could see where the top of her thigh had been bandaged. The Chechen’s bullet had passed straight through her leg, causing a huge loss of blood. The surgeons had told him that it had been touch and go, and that if the paramedics had arrived five minutes later she might have died.

The blood transfusion had been successful and she was recovering well, but she’d almost died. And that fact alone was enough to make Shelley want to clench his fists and cry out in fury. All those years spent in war