He was going to kill his best friend.
For power.
Just as he began to process what that meant, the entire room looked at each other in shock at the next noise they heard. With all of them expecting heavy fire to rain down upon them, and a myriad of bullets to riddle their penthouse, they all looked at each other blankly.
A mobile phone was ringing.
Riggs’s phone.
As the cold wind whipped through the empty window, Riggs reached around the table with his free hand and retrieved the phone from a small pile of cocaine that had been tossed across the floor.
The screen said ‘Wiseman.’
Scowling, he answered.
‘Mr Riggs. It’s Sam Pope.’ The voice spoke calmly. ‘I believe you have been expecting me.’
As the rain clattered the city of London, Aaron Hill stumbled through a group of kids, ignoring their jeers and idle threats before they continued on towards Shepherd’s Bush station. He knew this wasn’t the safest neighbourhood in London, yet here he was. He trembled as his drunken state slowly morphed into a hangover, his brain pressing against his skull as if it wanted to escape.
It had been several hours since he had been to the Met, drunkenly yelling at them to help him find his daughter.
They had written him off as just another paranoid drunk, trying his best to get thrown in the cells to shelter himself from the bitter night ahead.
What he was, was a man at the end of his rope. A loving single father, who had waited up all night for his fifteen-year-old daughter to return home.
A man who now had nothing to lose.
As the elements crashed against him, the bitterness of the evening shook him from his drunken haze and clarity sprung to the forefront of his mind. Ever since his wife had tragically passed away, he had been so protective of their daughter.
Jasmine.
She was a good kid, always well behaved and clearly set for big things after school. But as a single father, there were parts of her life he couldn’t guide her through, and he had made up for that by being overbearing. Which had pushed her to rebel.
Which had forced him to let her go to that party the night before.
Tears joined the rain water that was cascading down his face as he stumbled past the entrance to the BBC grounds, the large, glass covered buildings lit up brilliantly in the night sky.
In the distance, the roar of the QPR fans vibrated from Loftus Road stadium, the flashlights bathing part of the night sky in a magnificent glow, illuminating the torrential downpour from above as the Saturday evening kick off was well underway.
Jasmine had never returned home from the party.
None of her friends knew where she’d gone, with one or two of them mentioning a boy who had led her outside. The thought of his daughter being sexually active filled him with dread, but worse was unthinkable.
He had tracked her phone to the abandoned Kodak offices just on the outskirts of the borough, the building was rumoured to be a haven for crime.
For drugs.
For rape.
Shaking with a mixture of fear and rage, Aaron slipped his hand to the back of his jeans and retrieved the loaded Glock he had bought that afternoon. It hadn’t been hard, a few terrifying conversations and the parting with a thousand pounds. He had spent the entire day staring at it, drinking himself to a drunken stupor, where his desperation not to use it had carried him all the way to that police station. The petite, pretty woman who had demanded he left had set in motion a series of events that would likely get him killed.
He knew that.
But without his daughter, he would have nothing left to live for.
Approaching the front door to the building, he noticed a number of lights on within, undoubtedly groups of criminals getting down to their business. His biggest fear was finding her in one of the rooms, hooked on drugs and being passed around from demented sicko to demented sicko.
Or her body, violated and disposed of.
That rage struck him, just as a clap of thunder roared through the night sky, like a physical manifestation of his mindset. Taking a deep breath, he fumbled slightly and eventually managed to slide his finger over the trigger.
The gun felt heavy in his hand.
Just as he stepped in through the door, the onrushing wind whipped around him, slamming it shut and blocking out the noise of a rifle shot that Sam Pope had just sent through the top-floor window.
Chapter Six
‘You one crazy motherfucker, you know that?’ Riggs said, shaking his head. With his back pressed against the upturned table, he knew somewhere in the cold, wet night, Sam Pope had a gun fixed on his position. Riggs scanned the room, the mayhem the one bullet had caused. Rain fell through the shattered glass onto the shards below the window. Three of his soldiers had taken cover as well, all of them snarling and gripping their pistols.
Tiny had reduced his screams of agony into pathetic whimpers, the blood loss slowly ebbing away his consciousness. Wiseman, his hand heavily bandaged, looked panicked at the situation. The floor was scattered with loose bank notes, cards, and drugs.
Sam Pope could see it all.
From the building across the street, he laid flat on the hard, cold, wooden floor on the fifth floor. The building had long since been abandoned, a derelict office block that was once alive with activity. From the faded signage in the lobby, this particular floor had once homed an elite recruitment agency, specialising in IT software. Now, as the thin windows gave little resistance to the wind that was lashing at his body, Sam was using it as a sniping spot. With the distance between the two buildings no more than a hundred yards, he had elected not to bring his actual sniper rifle. The weapon had forged his fearsome reputation and
