No Tomorrow

by Tom Wood

“I . . .” She shook her head. “I thought it was a drill. I’m sorry, I know I should have gone downstairs.”

  His searching eyes took in her hair and nonoffice attire, and the file pages scattered across the floor. “Perhaps you should come downstairs with me, miss.”

  She stood, gesturing to the door and saying, “Sure, okay. Let’s go,” so Alan looked away for a second, giving her time to pocket the afteraction report without his knowledge.

  He ushered Gisele ahead of him into the corridor. She turned in the direction of the exit and saw a man walking through the open-plan area.

  She knew he was one of them as soon as their eyes met. He had tanned skin. He was stocky and wore khaki trousers and a leather jacket. An image flashed in her mind. This was the man who had shot at them in the hotel corridor.

  Alan emerged from the office and saw the approaching man. “Who’s this?”

  “Never seen him before,” Gisele said, making no attempt to disguise the fear she felt.

  Alan picked up on it and stepped toward the man in the leather jacket.

  “Be careful,” Gisele said.

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  For a moment she was comforted by Alan’s presence. He was so big he seemed indestructible. But then she remembered Dmitri and the others: bigger and tougher than Alan, and now all dead.

  “Run along, and try not to set off the alarm again, eh?” He winked at her.

  She did. As she turned the corner she heard Alan’s commanding voice: “Who are you?”

  “I’m the computer guy,” the man replied in a South African accent.

  • • •

  Gisele pushed open the heavy swing door into the lady’s room. She heard a muted thump from somewhere behind her as she stepped inside.

  The man who wasn’t a real computer guy was in the corridor outside. Gisele didn’t have to look to know that he was following her. She hoped he hadn’t hurt poor Alan too much. She pictured him waiting a moment to ensure Gisele was preoccupied when he entered in maybe twenty or thirty seconds. She breathed fast and hard, trying to think what to do. She was trapped. What would her companion do?

  He wouldn’t waste time, so neither did Gisele. She entered the farthest stall, closed and locked the door, shut the toilet lid and stood on it, then climbed up onto the cistern and over the partition wall.

  She landed awkwardly on the other side, grimacing as she banged her knee against the toilet bowl. She hurried out, leaving the door wide open, and rushed into the first cubicle, put the toilet seat down, took off her shoes and then stood on top of it. She nudged the door far enough so it hid her from view but not so far that it might appear closed or locked.

  The heavy swing door opened and a man’s shoes clicked on the tiled floor.

  Gisele’s teeth clenched and her nostrils rapidly flared and contracted as she fought to control her fear and stay balanced on the toilet seat. She rested her shoes on the lid and slowly took the can of pepper spray from her handbag. The footsteps paused and she heard the door clunk shut.

  For a terrible moment she thought the man would simply shoot her through the thin stall wall, but the shoes clicked again. A different sound this time, softer—the man taking a side step to view the cubicle doors. She willed him to see that the far door was the only one closed and locked and not see her deception.

  Gisele listened to the sound of slow footsteps growing louder. As they came closer she could make out his shadow. She had to stop herself from crying out with relief when the shadow moved past the first cubicle without slowing. She waited. Her hands were so damp with sweat that the can of pepper spray began slipping from her grasp. The harder she squeezed it, the faster it slid.

  If she dropped it and it hit the hard floor tiles . . .

  She lowered her hands and caught the bottom of the can between her thighs; for the first time ever she was glad she carried plenty of weight there. While her thighs kept the can steady, she wiped the sweat from her palms.

  The sound of shoes clicking on tiles ceased. Gisele pictured the man standing before the last cubicle door, maybe raising his pistol, ready to shoot.

  This was it. I trust you, he’d said.

  A loud crash indicated the man had kicked open the cubicle door.

  Gisele was dropping off the toilet seat while the sound of the door banging still echoed around the room. She dashed out of her stall as the man was backing out, realizing he had been tricked.

  She pushed the can up toward his turning face and pressed the button.

  He roared as the vapor found his eyes.

  His hands rose to protect them, and Gisele ran for her life.

  Chapter 73

  Sinclair followed a moment later, eyes burning and full of water, but he could still see well enough to shoot and hit. She was a canny fox, this one. He liked that. He liked that his eyes stung from the pepper spray. But there was no target to hit. She could not have run the full length of the law firm in the few seconds it took for him to give chase, so must instead be hiding. Multiple doors lined the corridor. He tried the handles as he moved, opening the unlocked doors and checking the rooms beyond without success until he reached the open-plan area.

  He hoped to find her under a desk, huddled in a trembling ball. If she was hiding so, he could save the bullet and strangle her. She had a small neck and he had large hands. Perhaps one hand would be enough. He imagined her panicked gasps as he crushed her trachea between his fingers.

  He decided against keeping his weapon drawn. Doing so would only be an admission of his inability to control the situation. He was in control. This was his moment.

  Sinclair remembered a cold night in Helmand, terrorizing a car of Afghans at a checkpoint, pretending he didn’t understand them as they begged and pleaded for him not to shoot. He hadn’t, but a man in the back of the vehicle had beat his wife around the head, until she spat out teeth, in an attempt to stop her screaming. When Sinclair told the story, he never made it to the end without cracking up.

  Sinclair stepped toward the door to a stationery cupboard.

  He opened it. Nothing.

  A noise behind him. He turned to see Gisele running across the far side of the open-plan area.

  He followed. No need to run. It was too much fun to have a premature end.

  • • •

  Gisele ran, rounding desks and chairs, passing the water cooler and the color laser printer. She knew he was behind her, but dared not look to see him chasing. She made it down a corridor and around the corner into the reception area. No Caroline behind the desk, as Alan hadn’t given the all-clear for people to return after the alarm.

  For a second, she considered hiding behind the desk, hoping the man in the leather jacket wouldn’t think to look there, but decided against it. She had to get out. Fast.

  She pushed every elevator button.

  “Come on, come on.”

  She heard the man’s approaching footsteps. She hurriedly pushed the buttons again.

  The man appeared. He smiled at her. “You’ve caused us a lot of bother, missy. But this is the end of the road.” He reached under his jacket.

  The elevator doors opened next to Gisele.

  Her nameless companion stepped out and shot the approaching mercenary three times in the chest.

  • • •

  Victor led Gisele down to the ground floor and kept his palm on the small of her back as they crossed the vast lobby.

  “My God,” she breathed. “What the hell happened to you?”

  He didn’t answer. Even though he’d cleaned off much of the blood, his injuries were obvious.

  When they neared the exit, he said, “There are more of them outside. They didn’t see me come in, but they’ll see us when we leave.” He gestured toward a security guard near the revolving doors. “Stay next to him until I return.”

&n
bsp; “Hurry back,” Gisele said.

  Victor heaved open the door and left the office building, leaving the warm and still interior air behind and stepping into the freezing night wind that toyed with his hair and brought moisture to his swollen right eye. A page of discarded newspaper tumbled and swooshed along the pavement. On the far side of the road a young woman climbed into a taxi.

  He looked both ways, surveying the locale, ready to move and shoot and fight and die if necessary. He seemed relaxed because he was relaxed. If there was any place in which he truly belonged it was in the heart of violence. He had no fear of it because he knew it was who he was.

  They were waiting in case Gisele appeared. They couldn’t know what had happened inside. They would make their move only when she did. For now they would leave him be, although they would not let him out of their sight. But that was exactly what he wanted.

  He descended the stone steps. The wind hid the sound of his footfalls. The Range Rover was parked against the curb some thirty meters away. The lights, exterior and interior, had been extinguished, but Victor could see the shapes of three men. No features were visible, but they didn’t need to be. The men who sat there were mortal enemies who would be dead before the night’s end or would be Victor’s killers. Victor had had many enemies. Many were still alive. But almost without exception they were a threat to him as he was to them because of his work. Hazards of the profession. Now was different. Victor would kill these men or be killed by them because of someone else.

  In the Audi, Victor took the handgun from his waistband and set it between his thighs, grip up for quick access. He let the engine idle. He wanted the men in the Range Rover and anyone else watching to see the exhaust gases clouding in the cold air. He had the interior light on. He wanted his hands to be seen gripping the wheel. They would assume he was waiting. They would assume he was waiting for Gisele. They would shift physically and mentally from standby into readiness—from warm-up to poised in the starting blocks. He could feel their elevated heart rates and the buzz of adrenaline and other hormones flooding their bloodstream. He could feel theirs because he had no such sensations. His pulse thumped slow and steady.

  He continued the act by glancing at the building’s entrance, knowing they would see it, knowing it would only intensify their readiness. He felt their body temperatures rising, sweat beading, pupils dilating, vision focusing, hearing becoming selective. Almost.

  One last misdirection: he took out his phone and held it briefly to his ear.

  He mouthed, Okay.

  Now or never.

  He dropped the phone into his lap, released the hand brake, put the car in gear, stamped the accelerator, and yanked the steering wheel.

  The tires squealed for traction, releasing a puff of burned rubber, then found their grip and the car launched out from the curb.

  In the rearview he saw the driver of the Range Rover spring into action after a split-second delay, surprised by the sudden change in proceedings but reacting to it with impressive speed.

  As Victor shot across the intersecting road, cutting through the flow of traffic, and hearing thumped horns and braking tires, he pictured frantic messages and hasty improvisations. They were chasing him because they thought they had been fooled. They had, but not as they thought. They would work it out soon, but he needed only to buy Gisele and himself a moment.

  He braked hard and turned left, back end sliding out but turning into the skid to control it, then accelerated again as he drove along the north side of the office building, knowing they would think him heading to a rear exit, hoping to pick up Gisele before they could catch up.

  Victor grabbed the phone as he worked the wheel in one hand, thumbed for her number, and when the line connected, shouted, “Be ready.”

  He didn’t wait for a response. He dropped the phone and focused on the road ahead and the Range Rover he’d allowed to catch up behind.

  Oncoming headlights brightened—two blurs of pale light enlarging and disappearing as they swerved through the traffic.

  An orchestra of horns sounded. Brakes shrieked and tires squealed. Anticipating a collision, he fought the instinct to tense, instead allowing his body to stay relaxed and loose to lessen the chances of injury and death in event of a crash. He worked the wheel and the brake pedal, avoiding a head-on as he cut into the opposite lane to disrupt the narrative of the attacker, to make him have to think about his own survival and not just that of his target.

  It worked because the oncoming Range Rover slowed—only for a second, but that hesitation told Victor his attackers, however reckless, cared more about living than winning.

  Victor kept his foot on the accelerator, closing the distance to the Range Rover fast—forty meters, thirty, twenty, ten.

  At five his enemy blinked in their game of death and heaved the wheel as Victor had known with certainty he would. They passed within inches, tearing off each other’s side mirror, making both cars rock with the change of air pressure.

  Victor stamped the brake and pulled up on the hand brake as he sped toward a coming intersection. Smoke was released with a scream from the tires and the car’s back end swung around. Victor didn’t try to fight it and let the vehicle go into a spin until it had performed a one-eighty, then accelerated hard and controlled the wheel until he was racing back to the law firm.

  • • •

  Sinclair groaned as he climbed to his feet. His Dragon Skin vest had caught the three rounds meant for his heart, but he’d still blacked out. He didn’t know what had happened with Norimov’s hired killer and Rogan, but the specifics mattered little.

  The assassin was trouble and he was good. The presence of the killer necessitated the drawing of Sinclair’s pistol. He could not afford to run into him unarmed and defenseless. He knew Gisele’s protector would not offer him the kind of sportsmanship he would offer in return. Sinclair would not hunt a tiger from the elevated safety of an elephant’s back. He would meet him on the ground, in undergrowth, man to beast. Shame on the hunter who hung his trophy without earning it.

  He moved, content to hurry now that he was pursuing an equivalent and not a child. Properly employed haste, like the unflinching application of violence, was necessary here.

  Another man might find rage in the continued interference of the assassin, and indeed Sinclair knew well his own capacity for emotion. Getting shot, even armored, was no fun, but the dull ache of the blunt-force trauma to his chest energized him instead.

  He savored the pain and the thrill of base savagery; it fermented in his soul.

  Sinclair rushed through the offices. Wade’s voice barked through his earpiece:

  “We’ve lost him. We’ve lost him.”

  Sinclair said, “What about the girl?”

  “He left alone. He—”

  “You idiots,” Sinclair spat. “It was a trick. He’s doubled back.”

  • • •

  Victor braked hard outside and dashed up the steps as fast as his injured ankle let him. Gisele saw him before he reached the doors and came out, still scared but glad to see him.

  “Where are they?”

  “Close. We don’t have much time.”

  She headed to the car, knowing it was the one he’d driven because of the open driver’s door and running engine.

  “No,” Victor said, stopping her. “They’ll be looking for it.”

  He went to hail a taxi but saw a minicab against the opposite curb. He grabbed Gisele’s wrist and they hurried across the road. He pulled open the rear door and bundled Gisele inside. He climbed in after her.

  “Oi,” the driver said. “Bookings only, fella. You’ll have to sling your hook.”

  “Drive us a mile south and I’ll pay you for a day.”

  The driver thought about it for a moment. “No bullshit?”

  Victor put his hand on the door handle. “If we don�
��t get going this instant then the deal’s off.”

  “All right, all right,” he said as he released the hand brake. “Just don’t tell the guv’nor.”

  The car pulled away from the curb. Victor scanned the area. In the rearview mirror he saw a black Range Rover turn onto the street.

  Chapter 74

  Gisele sat behind the driver. Victor sat close to her so he could use the rearview mirror with an unobstructed view. He grimaced against the pain of many wounds while he watched the reflection of the Range Rover. It accelerated until it reached the law firm, then came to an abrupt halt outside, near the abandoned Audi. They thought he was inside.

  He noticed the driver looking at him in the rearview—looking at his battered face and the blood on his clothes.

  “What’s going on?” Gisele asked, breathing hard. “How did they know?”

  “The plan didn’t work. It’s my fault. I underestimated her. I’m sorry, I should never have left you alone.”

  “It was my choice as much as yours.”

  He kept his gaze on the mirror, seeing doors open on the Range Rover and two men rush out and up the steps to the building. He must have looked for a second too long because Gisele saw him and her head began turning.

  “Don’t,” he told. “Keep looking forward.”

  She did, her face tense and her lips locked. He saw her palms rest on her thighs.

  “It’s okay,” he said to her, even though it was not.

  She nodded. She didn’t believe him. She trusted her own instincts more than his words, even if no one had ever wanted her dead until a week ago. Victor couldn’t remember such a time.

  The driver noticed the tension. “Is everything okay back there?”

  Victor said, “We’re fine.”

  He saw in the mirror as the driver’s gaze flicked to Gisele and lingered a moment.

  “Are you all right, love?”

  Victor reached out a hand to rest on hers, to tell her what to do, but she’d already said, “I get travel sickness.”

  The driver said, “Don’t worry, darlin.’ I’ll take it nice and smooth.”