In their eyes he was a monster.
He looked away, furious at where the road to redemption had led him.
If he was a monster, then he wanted the person responsible for making him so.
A cleaner who spoke little English, wheeled out a bed, under the guidance of a doctor who was whispering comforting words to a terminally sick teenager, who was slipping in and out of consciousness. As the final doctor approached the door, he turned back to Mac, nodding towards Lucy.
‘And her?’
Mac aimed the gun at the young doctor’s face.
‘She stays.’
The doctor offered Lucy a sympathetic eyebrow raise, but his loyalty was to his patients and he turned and hurried towards the lift. The doors closed and it began its ascension. Mac would give them a minute or so to vacate the building.
Once it passed, he pulled Lucy from her chair and marched her thirty feet down the corridor and shoved her to her knees. Facing the door, Mac pressed the gun against the top of her skull, and she shook with fear. Tears ran down her cheeks, before crashing to the clean tiles below.
Mac began to count.
‘Thirty…twenty-nine…twenty-eight…’
* * *
Sam held open the emergency door beside the revolving entrance and ushered the nurses and patients out as quickly as he could. They burst out into the rainy night, some of them shaking with fear, others infuriated that a situation like this had manifested.
The Armed Response Unit stood to the side, allowing police officers and other nurses to rush to the aid of the group, with the more seriously stricken patients quickly whisked away in ambulances, the sirens wailing as they headed to the nearest hospitals.
As the final doctor raced through the door, the ARU began to fall into position, but Sam looked to Stout and held up a hand, shaking his head.
‘Stand down.’ Stout ordered, much to the unit’s disappointment and Sam shut the door. He didn’t have long, and he burst into the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. Lucy was still up there, no doubt terrified for her life and the child waiting for her at home.
Sam may not have been able to save their son, but he wouldn’t allow Lucy’s daughter to grow up without a mother.
Whatever it took, Sam was willing to sacrifice.
As he bounded up to the door, marked with a large 3 sign, Sam felt his heart pound.
Not a day had gone by that he hadn’t beaten himself up about Mac’s death. Sam had failed to keep him safe, and despite his best efforts, he never found his fallen friend.
There were no words he could offer Mac. Sam knew that.
He was out of ideas.
He was unarmed.
There was no plan.
All Sam had was himself, which is exactly what Mac had demanded. Whatever happened, Sam had to get Lucy out of the building.
Sam marched through the corridor, following the signs to the ward. As he rounded the final corner, he was welcomed by an already open door and he stepped through, ready to deal with the wrath of days gone by.
He saw Lucy first, on her knees, her eyes red, her cheeks wet with tears. Wrapped around her was a barbaric vest, lined with enough explosives to wipe them off the face of the earth.
Pressed against her blonde hair was a gun.
Sam stopped dead with shock at the horribly scarred face of the man holding it. The man’s stare bore a hole through Sam, which felt like it knocked him off balance.
Sam could barely muster the words.
‘Mac?’
‘What’s the matter, Sam? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sam took a few tentative steps forward, his hands held up in surrender. He scanned the corridor, but there were no details worth remembering. A friend he thought dead stood less than twenty feet away, with his ex-wife teetering on the edge of extinction.
No minor details could help him now.
The trade seemed simple enough.
‘Mac. I thought you were dead.’
Mac lifted the gun and pointed it squarely at Sam.
‘That’s close enough.’
Sam stopped on the spot and his heart broke. Mac’s youthful face bore the horrific scars of a man who went beyond his own pain threshold. Sam felt the tears begin to form in his eyes and he looked to Lucy, who looked on helplessly.
‘Lucy, are you okay?’
‘What do you think?’ Mac spat; his familiar Manchurian accent brought back echoes of the night Sam almost died in Rome. ‘This is your fault, Sam.’
‘Mac, just let her go. She has nothing to do with this.’
‘No, she doesn’t.’ Mac agreed, the gun still pointed at Sam’s chest. ‘But imagine being put through more pain than humanly possible and knowing that you had promised you would protect her. That you would keep her safe.’
Sam took another step closer, the gap down to less than ten feet and Mac shifted the gun and pointed it at Lucy once more, causing her to weep loudly.
‘I said stay where you are.’
‘Okay, okay.’ Sam held his hands up again. Above Mac, the halogen light was flickering, hanging from its wires, an errant bullet hole next to it.
‘You left me, Sam. You left me for them.’
‘I tried to save you,’ Sam said.
‘You abandoned me. Do you know what they did to me? They kept me in a fucking cage for years. They beat me, they cut me, pissed on me. They raped me. I was their pet, feeding on scraps while you were given medal after medal and got to live the life YOU wanted.’
Mac’s voice was getting louder with each horrific memory, spit dribbling from his mouth as his crazed anger took over. He pointed the gun at Sam again.
‘You promised me, Sam. Promised me you would bring me back.’
‘Mac, they told me you had died. Wallace even signed your death certificate.’
Mac pointed the gun a few inches above Lucy’s
