Sam didn’t care.
The man was a monster and removing his right hand would hinder his reign of terror.
People couldn’t kiss the ring if the hand didn’t exist.
As the world around him echoed through the thin windows and the rain clattered against the glass, Sam slid his gun into the back of his jeans and then pulled his long-sleeved top over it. He slid into his bomber jacket, pulled on a baseball cap, and headed to the door with Leon’s confession fresh in his mind.
He had a potential van location and a fake company’s bank account.
It was enough.
The memories of Jamie had added fuel to the fire inside of Sam to ensure another child wasn’t lost to the cruel world.
Armed with a handgun and enough information to start bringing down another criminal empire, Sam headed for the front door, knowing exactly who he needed to see for help.
Chapter Eighteen
Adrian Pearce sat at his desk, staring at the blank screen of his computer. From the glare he could make out his vague reflection, the dark skin trimmed with grey tinted hair cut close to the scalp. His beard, also frosted with age, ran neatly across his jaw. Despite reaching a half century, Pearce was in good shape and regularly passed gentlemen half his age on the local running track.
Within the Met, he was known as a tenacious detective, willing to bring down his fellow officer in the name of the law. It had earned him a fearful reputation but also had ostracised him. He didn’t care, as far as he was concerned, he would rather not make friends with bent coppers.
The small, cramped office mockingly enveloped him, a reminder for what happened last time he rattled the wrong cage. When several convicted criminals had turned up beaten half to death, it took Pearce a little over three hours to piece together the common denominator.
Sam Pope.
It was what made Pearce such a valuable asset to the Met, but such a terrifying prospect for any police officer on the take. Not only could he find discrepancies, but he noticed patterns, could decipher facial tics, and was biologically programmed to ask the most infuriatingly intrusive question at the optimum moment.
When Pearce sat opposite Sam Pope over six months ago, he couldn’t have imagined how drastically his life was about to change. Bit by bit, Sam Pope began to uncover irregularities in the supposed terrorist bombing that had shattered the London Marathon earlier that year. The loss of five civilians and a young police officer had hurt the city, with the Met promising to bring those responsible to justice.
Sam made the same promise and soon uncovered an inside job, led by superior officers with superior greed. With those in charge of the police in bed with those they were trying to stop, it put the lives of Adrian, Sam, and an innocent psychiatrist and her husband in jeopardy. Pearce had made brief contact with Amy Devereux after she’d moved away from London, wishing her well and telling her he was always free for a coffee should she ever return to the city.
He had never received a call.
Now, glancing into the blank screen, Pearce recounted how he had placed his faith in Sam Pope, stepping beyond the line he had stuck to like glue. Willingly leading Sam into the station and assisting his escape was bad enough but allowing him to walk free after he had unloaded an entire gun into one of London’s most notorious criminals would be the straw that broke the camel’s back. It had been a whirlwind few days back in spring, ending with Pearce holding Sam at gun point in a tower block in London, with a police inspector begging for his life.
Now, as Pearce glanced around his tiny, hidden office, he realised it was worth it. He may have earnt even more disdain from his colleagues, but he took heart that he, like Sam Pope, knew why they’d acted the way they had done.
Why they’d ventured down the unreturnable pathways.
It was the right thing to do.
Pearce sighed, giving his stretched, vague reflection one final glance before pushing himself from his desk and headed towards the door. He chuckled, realising that the only use he had for his computer was for a dodgy mirror. Throughout the years, Pearce had preferred to do things the old-fashioned way, ignoring the digital world as it slowly seeped into the Met. Then, out of nowhere, technology leapt forward and suddenly Pearce was being asked questions about cloud storage and online records.
He wasn’t much of a computer person. And he preferred it that way. As far as he was concerned, the world was so entrenched in the internet nowadays, that a one-day outage would bring half the city to a standstill. He had read recently that the bus stop time tables run off an internet source provided by a leading phone company.
The thought of that terrified him, especially if the phone company went the way of the train companies and decided to hold the city to ransom whenever they wanted a pay rise.
Meandering through the corridors, Pearce soon pushed the doors open to the Scotland Yard building, the rain instantly slapping him in the face with a cruel, freezing hand and he pulled his coat tight to his body. He passed the iconic spinning logo and headed across the street to the local Starbucks, the idea of piping hot caffeine had assumed dominance over his brain.
The past few days had been a blur. Sam Pope had been working diligently for the last six months, knocking off known criminal safe houses and sending a number of the police’s most wanted to hospital. From there, it was a relatively easy process to steer them towards a prison cell. But over the past few days, something had changed and attacking these gangs had led to killing, with three confirmed kills in the
