Sam’s odds had just doubled.
The first two cars pulled to a stop to the side of the gate, a number of officers leaping from the car and taking positions against the barrier. Two vans pulled up, the back doors shoved open and two teams, armed with assault rifles and bulletproof suits leapt out, all of them following strict orders and forming a tight line, ready to go at the drop of a hand.
Sam wondered if somewhere among them Singh was barking out orders, her tiny frame juxtaposed by her ferocious leadership and will to succeed. On some level, he admired her, knowing what it was like to live an ideal. To run your life by a moral code that you fully believe was for the good of the people.
It was something they had in common. It was the line of the law that lay between them.
After a few moments, Sam heard the first gunshot, the Takers had realised they had unwanted guests and had opened fire on the boys in blue.
The police took up their positions and the incoming shoot-out was just moments away.
Another war zone that Sam was willingly walking into.
Sam’s window of opportunity was dwindling, and before he could identify Singh in the crowd, he slipped through the gate and into the port, out of sight of the police, but under a watchful pair of eyes from the ninth floor of the clock tower.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Aaron Hill was shaking as Singh sat him down in the interview room earlier that evening. The man looked like a wreck, the last day or so weighing heavily on him. Singh had only been to see him the day before, yet he seemed to have aged drastically. Something must have happened, a horrible ordeal that had led him from being defiant about his business with Sam Pope, to knocking on her front door begging for help.
She had gotten him a glass of water, and with watery eyes he told her everything. How Sam had been blazing a path through the London underworld to find his daughter and how now, with time running out, was running head on into a no-win situation to find her. While he would never condone the carnage Sam had created, he was thankful that Sam did what the police didn’t.
He gave a damn.
When Singh tried to counter that statement, she was reminded of her own reaction when he first reported it. She had dismissed him as a drunk waste of time, caring more about her own career than the life of a teenager. It cut her deep, but she took it on the chin. She had made plenty of mistakes, but she was eager to put them right. While Sam did what the police didn’t, she assured Hill that if he cooperated with her, she could deliver what Sam couldn’t.
His daughter.
Battling with his own sense of betrayal, Hill had done what any good father would have and put his daughter first. Despite his intentions, Sam Pope was still a dangerous criminal who had the means to cause serious damage to a lot of people. He would no doubt fight to the death for Jasmine, but Hill agreed that the full back up of the Metropolitan Police would lower the odds.
If it meant it would increase the chance of saving his daughter from a life of drugs, prostitution, and death then Sam was a sacrifice he would make.
Even Sam himself would understand, especially after what he had been through.
When Hill had made that remark, Singh had been confused and made a note to investigate later.
Was there something about Sam she didn’t know? It was unlikely, considering her task of bringing him in was slowly becoming an obsession and being face to face with him but incapacitated had driven her to the edge.
She was determined to put it right and when Hill had told her where Sam was heading; she burst out of the room like she’d just found the last golden ticket.
She raced through the station, her little legs bounding the steps two at a time until she burst into Assistant Commissioner Ashton’s office, earning a furious glare and a dressing down.
She didn’t care.
It was her time.
When she explained everything, her superior had demanded to speak to Hill herself, stomping down the corridors with Singh in tow. A few minutes later, she gave the order for two tactical teams to head for the Port of Tilbury and that she would accompany them.
Singh was ordered to stay put.
As the sirens and lights burst into life and the Sam Pope Task Force raced towards his final showdown, Singh sat dejectedly in the interview room. Hill thanked her for her help and asked where he should wait. It was then that a new purpose bloomed in her.
This was her task force.
She looked up at Hill and smiled.
‘You want your daughter back, right?’ He nodded. ‘Then get your coat.’
Forty minutes later, Singh and Hill were slowly crawling down a side road next to the Port of Tilbury, having broken several traffic laws in the process. She didn’t care anymore, the chance to apprehend Sam and set everything right was driving her forward. An insatiable need to win.
Amara Singh didn’t fail.
With her licensed firearm secured in her hand, she told Hill to wait in the car, slowly creeping out and along the side of the fence, casting an eye down the street to the tactical unit assembling in front of the gate. With her vision skewed, she decided to climb up a nearby industrial bin, trying to see over the nearest metal crate.
She saw a luxury car and a group of men around it. One of them looked familiar, his expensive clothes doing little to cloak the sheer menace within. Just as she realised it was Andrei Kovalenko, one of the most dangerous men in London, two of his armed goons opened
