Sister Death (Acid Vanilla Series Book 4), Matthew Hattersley [best book club books for discussion .TXT] 📗

were often positioned on the corner of a building away from the more centralised elevator. She led them down the long corridor, the room numbers rising as they passed, before they turned a corner and found a white door with a green sign in front of them. Salida de Emergencia.

“Bingo.”

She ushered Danny past her, walking backwards in his wake and aiming the 9mm back the way they’d come. Over her shoulder she heard a scuffle, Danny trying to get the door open. She glanced around to see it was a push-bar lock.

So push the damn bar, dummy.

The anxiety was getting to him. He might think himself a plucky Irish rogue, able to talk himself out of any situation, but he was still a civilian, not cut out for these situations. Keeping the gun pointed down the corridor she sidled nearer, ready to help him. Her hand was on the bar when she heard voices, and snapping her attention over the barrel of the gun she saw an elderly couple vacating their room a few doors away. The old man was doddery but tall, with a white comb-over that was struggling to make much impact on his visible cranium. In contrast his wife was small and round with a healthy glow to her cheeks and a deep throaty laugh that burst out of her. Acid concealed the pistol behind her just in time as the couple looked their way and smiled breezily and conspiringly, the way people do when they’re on holiday and free from the stresses and worries of everyday life.

Or so they thought.

Because behind them, at the far end of the corridor, Magpie had appeared.

Shit.

The energy in the corridor was suddenly electric as the two former colleagues faced each other. Acid gripped the handle of the Viking tight, holding it concealed behind her upper thigh at arm’s length. On seeing the old couple, Magpie immediately slipped her own pistol into the pocket of her jacket, which was good to see. It meant she was still adhering to some semblance of the code. Staying in the shadows. Keeping civilians out of it.

“She won’t do anything in front of witnesses,” she whispered to Danny. “Keep your head.”

Time slowed to a halt as Magpie strode towards them, stopping in front of the couple and wrinkling her nose in disgust as the old woman placed a huge canvas beach bag in her path and bent over.

Acid shoved the Viking in the back of her shorts and had her hand on the push-lock, ready to wave her old colleague a sassy goodbye, when the old man stepped backwards and stumbled into Magpie. The next thing she heard was the recognisable phut phut sound, of bullets travelling along the internal baffles of a suppressor, and blood splattered up the wall and ceiling.

Acid felt Danny freeze beside her as the old couple slumped to the floor. With the bats screeching decibels of rage and panic, she flung herself at the door bar and fell through into the stairwell. As she righted herself, she glanced back to see Magpie stepping over the fallen couple and raising her gun.

“This way,” she yelled, grabbing Danny’s arm and yanking him down the stone steps as a bullet zipped past his ear. “We need to get out of here. Fast.”

Twenty-One

Danny didn’t need telling twice. He ran down the emergency stairwell faster than he’d ever gone in his entire life, taking the steps two, three at a time and using the paint-chipped railing to haul himself around the corner towards the next level.

He heard the mad nun jump down the first two levels before stopping to fire a few shots their way, bullets pinging violently off the metal railing mere inches from his hand. Too close. She was getting far too close.

“Keep going,” Acid snarled, returning fire. “Two more levels and we’re at the lobby. She won’t try anything there.”

“You sure of that?” he spluttered. “Cos I’m not sure ya poor old couple up there would agree with that logic. No witnesses though, you were right about that.”

He copied Acid in leaping down the next flight of stairs, keeping a tight hold of the bags as they took the last landing. One flight to go. The door to the lobby was in sight. Another bullet pinged off the concrete wall behind him as he jumped the final four steps and Acid pulled him, stumbling, through the door.

Now, the young Danny Flynn had always been partial to a certain type of movie genre – action-comedy, you might call – the sort of movie that was cheesy and serious in equal measures, with snappy dialogue and rising tension towards the finale. Usually made in the eighties (think Ghostbusters, Beverly Hills Cop), there was always a scene in these sorts of movies where the hapless hero, on the run or in a panic, would fall chaotically and noisily into a quiet room (a posh restaurant, for instance, or a church service), and the atmosphere would be so at odds with their current predicament you couldn’t help but laugh… So when he fell through the door at the bottom of the emergency stairwell and looked up at a serene palatial lobby and a sea of confused faces all staring his way, he couldn’t help but think he was living out one of those movie scenes. Although in real life, as it turns out, it wasn’t half as funny.

“Shite, sorry,” he mouthed, to the expectant guests and hotel staff as he scrambled to his feet. “I tripped.”

“Get up,” a now-familiar voice snarled in his ear. “She’s almost here.”

Message received and understood, he hurried after Acid as she headed for the exit, gripping tightly to the bags slung across each shoulder. He did, however, risk a furtive glance behind him to see their pursuer framed in the stairwell doorway, her gun hand stuffed back into the pocket of her jacket and an expression of utter rage twisting her Mediterranean features.

Acid was right, there were too many people