Those stark eyes fell on Annabelle and then moved to Jack, where he knelt in front of Sam, his right fist pressing his t-shirt to a point on Sam’s bloodied chest, his left hand flat-palmed against Sam’s other wound. Jack looked over his shoulder at the man, meeting his gaze.
“Shit to see you under these circumstances, JT.” The man said as he quickly strode to Jack, simultaneously pulling off his own black t-shirt and confirming Annabelle’s suspicions that he was, indeed, completely covered with tattoos. Beneath the tattoos, muscles rippled as he moved. His voice was not as strongly accented as Jack’s, and certainly not as much as Adam’s had been. In fact, it sounded more like Rupert Everett’s voice.
He handed his t-shirt to Jack, who balled it up and placed it under his left hand, and against Sam’s second wound.
The “trike”, a large motorcycle with three wheels instead of two, pulled down the alley. It had a normal motorcycle seat in the front, but the back two wheels bore between them a bucket-like bench seat padded in dark red velvet. A giant man with long black hair tied into a braid was riding saddle. The man pulled the trike alongside Annabelle, clicked it into neutral, and then leapt off. He was at least a half a foot taller than Jack, and must have weighed a good hundred pounds more.
Jack stood. “Avery, get his feet.”
Avery, the black tattooed man, grabbed Sam’s booted legs while Jack grabbed his friend from under the arms. Together, they carried Sam to the trike and laid him in the bench seat, which Annabelle noticed dipped in at its center, as if it were made specifically to carry unconscious passengers.
And maybe it was. They were the Hell’s Angels, after all.
“Take mine, I’ll ride bitch.” Avery told Jack, nodding at him and the tall man, Baron, as Baron got back on the trike and switched gears to power walk it back out of the alley. Only legs as strong as the giant’s could have done so as quickly as he managed it.
Annabelle stood still, sort of stunned by everything into immobility. She silently watched Baron make it to the end of the alley, until Jack took her right wrist in his hand and began to lead her toward the street as well. At first, she stumbled a little, her body not at all responding the way it would had she not been drugged up. But, he held her tight and she got her feet under her.
His long, booted legs ate up the ground fast and she had to quick-step it to keep up. She understood his rush. Sam’s life blood was draining with each passing second.
When they reached the side-walk, Avery motioned to a red and black Triumph idling a few feet away. It was a beautiful bike, paint and chrome shining in the lamp light. Avery had taken good care of it.
Someone in the crowd of motorcycles and riders threw Jack a black leather jacket. Jack quickly pulled it on over his bare skin and then pulled Annabelle toward the Triumph. He mounted up, kicking back the stand and righting the bike before nodding to her to get on behind him. She snaked her left arm around his shoulders and leaned against him as she swung her right leg over and scooted tightly against his body. Then she held on tight as he twisted the throttle and started way, picking up speed and switching gears into second and then third as he navigated the small streets.
Behind him, the rest of the gang roared to life and fell into formation.
Annabelle glanced back at them and was rewarded with the distinctive mass of motorcycle headlights, the outlines of their riders, and the sound of thunder that wrapped all around her like dark, powerful magic.
Jack gazed out the window at the full moon and the illumination of a city that continued to work and breathe, all through the night, so far below him. The window looked out of one of the uppermost levels of Canary Wharf Tower, the tallest building in all of England. It was one of the many flats he owned in different complexes around the world, and it happened to be his favorite.
It had been three days since Sam was shot. In that time, there had been no further attempt on any of their lives and Jack had been able to get into contact with the medical researcher he’d spoken to Craig about.
Brandt and Meredith were now in Essex, holed up in a safe house off of the radar while Brandt attempted to reproduce the Erythromelalgia cure he’d happened to create six years earlier. It was turning out to be much more difficult than he’d thought.
Apparently, the first cure had been happened upon by accident. And purposely replicating a mistake was a hell of a lot harder than repeating something done on purpose. Brandt had indicated that it would be a lot faster going if he had the vial they’d retrieved from the underground cavern, but Jack had vetoed it.
The only two people in the world to know its current location were Jack and Annabelle, and for good reason. Jack wanted to keep Craig and the vial in two separate places, so that if something happened to one of them, the other would still be safe.
So, Craig continued to work without it, and the world waited.
In the meantime, word through Business channels had come down that one Geoffrey Emelius Kirkshaw, aka The Colonel, had been found decapitated in his own study – and beheaded by his own Guillotine replica, which he’d kept amongst other historical war memorabilia, including a genuine Civil War confederate flag and a real brass eagle flag finial from the Napoleonic Wars. Apparently, the eagle was now missing.
If Jack had wondered, earlier, what Adam had meant when he’d said he would do him a favor, he wondered no longer. The Colonel was dead, and Jack knew all too well who was to thank for that.
He also had to admit that Adam had been truthful on more than one point.
Adam had, in fact, done Sam a favor.
By shooting him in front of his men, he’d allowed it to be known throughout the same Business channels that Samuel Price was now dead. Killed by Adam Night, who never leaves his enemies alive.
Except, in this case, he had done exactly that. In the space of mere fractions of a second, Adam had aimed carefully and discharged two bullets that would put Samuel Price out of commission – without killing him.
Sam was now underground, if not a full six feet under it. Having delayed in completing his job of killing Annabelle, Sam had already signed the first couple of letters on his own death warrant. In the end, he would have had to go through with the job, or risk becoming a target, himself. Godrick Osborne would never have accepted Annabelle’s word on where the vial was, alone. They would have wanted her head, along with the heads of Craig Brandt and anyone the two of them had had recent contact with.
Which included every single person Sam cared about, including Jack, himself.
There was no other way Sam would have been able to end this but to pretend to die. Adam had provided the perfect solution.
Jack wasn’t sure what to think of that. But, when it came down to it, he didn’t really have all that much time to spend pondering it these days, anyway. Because the Colonel may be dead and Sam may be out of the picture, but Godrick Osborne was still very much alive.
There were two kinds of truly dangerous men in the world. Those who had nothing to lose – and those who had everything to lose. Osborne fell into the latter category, with a multi-million dollar empire built on grants and side-bar political funding, that he was hell bent to hang on to.
What man wouldn’t be?
And that meant trouble for Jack. Especially since Osborne, himself, had recently vanished from the radar. Disappeared.
Reese, the captured assassin who had destroyed Jack’s home in Forest Hills and very nearly killed Jack’s ex-wife and daughter, had been called in for questioning immediately after Osborne’s disappearance. Reese had been directly hired by the Colonel, not Osborne, so chances that he would know anything useful were slim. Still, the higher-ups weren’t taking any chances.
When Reese honestly couldn’t think of anything that would help, he’d been allowed to return to his family. He went home, to his own wife and two daughters, who lived in Detroit Michigan, under the watchful protection of hired guards.
Reese had tried to save Clara from the explosion at the mansion in Forest Hills because he, himself, was a father. And, according to Annabelle,
As for Godrick Osborne, everyone in the Business that Osborne had hired was dealt with in some way or another. Of course, Adam Night didn’t count in that summary, since Night was
