Gabriel Hunt - Hunt at World's End

“Well done,” Grissom said. He nodded toward Gabriel. “Our friend here was just asking about you.”

Julian came around. He had a gun in his hand and Gabriel saw that his throat still bore the angry red marks of the choke hold that had rendered him unconscious.

Gabriel smiled. “Nice scar.”

Julian turned the gun toward Gabriel’s face.

“Not yet, Julian,” Grissom said. “You’ll have your chance soon enough, my boy. But Mr. Hunt and I have some unfinished business of our own.” From his jacket pocket he pulled the ivory-handled dagger. He pressed the eye of the dragon carved along the handle and the two additional blades sprang out to flank the central one. Grissom rose from the chair, leaving the backpack on the cushion behind him.

“Step aside, Julian,” Grissom said.

Julian obediently stepped to one side—but in doing so, he came within Gabriel’s reach. Gabriel swept one hand up, grabbing Julian’s gun arm and yanking it so the weapon pointed toward the side table. The gunman standing there ducked aside, but he wasn’t the target. Gabriel squeezed Julian’s fingers against the trigger.

One of the acetylene cylinders exploded in a violent eruption of fire and thick black smoke. Everyone hit the floor except the gunman who’d been nearest to the table; a large piece of the canister’s outer shell sliced crosswise through his torso and pinned him to the wall. His clothing erupted into flames.

A shrill alarm sounded from the smoke detector on the ceiling. The sprinkler system turned on, drenching the room in a cold rain. Gabriel wrestled the gun out of Julian’s hands, sprang to his feet and broke for the chair across the room, where Grissom had left the backpack.

Undeterred by the sprinklers, the fire climbed up the wall, devouring the wallpaper and charring the wooden frame of the mirror above the side table. Thick black smoke filled the room. Gabriel felt light-headed, and realized the acetylene gas was mixing with the smoke. Through the haze, he saw Grissom kneeling and coughing violently into a handkerchief, the dagger on the floor by his knees.

Shapes moved in the thick smoke as Grissom’s men got back to their feet. Gunshots sounded. Gabriel heard a bullet zip past his head and smash a ceramic lamp by the couch. Another smashed the mirror into shards of glass. With Grissom’s men unable to see, they were shooting in all directions. He heard voices shouting but none of them sounded like Joyce’s. He’d lost track of her—but he didn’t dare call her name, not while the gunmen were looking for any indication of a direction to fire in.

He snatched the backpack off the chair and, hearing footsteps behind him, spun around. A man rushed toward him through the smoke, gun in hand. Gabriel swung the backpack, hitting the gunman in the head and knocking him to the floor. The man rolled away and came back up with his weapon blazing. Bullets tore through the air beside Gabriel, so close he could feel their heat on his skin. Gabriel lifted Julian’s gun, aimed into the center of the dark mass in the smoke and fired. The man fell and didn’t get back up.

Sopping wet from the sprinklers, eyes burning, throat raw, he slung the backpack over one shoulder and dropped to a crouch. A breeze from a shattered window swept through the thick smoke, clearing it a little, and he was suddenly able to make out two figures grappling on the other side of the room. One was tall and thick, the other shorter and with a ponytail flapping at the back of her head. Joyce! He saw her elbow her opponent in the side of the head. When the man fell forward, she brought her knee up into his face. He hit the floor hard and stayed there. As Joyce turned, another man came up behind her, snatching her off her feet.

Gabriel sprang toward them, but something grabbed him from behind. Hands wrapped around his throat and he heard Julian’s voice hissing in his ear. Gabriel tried to swing his gun around, but Julian batted it away. The gun slipped from Gabriel’s fingers and flew across the floor. Then Julian’s hands tightened around his throat again.

A massive explosion rocked the room. The other two cylinders, Gabriel thought—the heat of the fire must have set them off. The blast knocked Julian off his feet and Gabriel was able to pull himself free from the other man’s grip as they fell. Flames leapt across the wall and licked at the ceiling. More smoke poured into the room. He heard Grissom coughing again somewhere off to his side. Gabriel rolled away from Julian. His hand touched something hard. He grabbed it—Grissom’s triple-bladed dagger.

Gabriel stood, the smoke stinging his eyes. The gas in the air made him dizzy. He stumbled forward, hitting the sliding glass door that led out to the terrace. Closed. Gabriel reached for the handle to open it when he saw Julian lurching out of the smoke toward him, his hands extended before him. He’d found another gun somewhere and had it pointed at Gabriel’s face. Gabriel ducked, stepped toward him, and drove the dagger in his fist upward. He felt it sink into Julian’s gut. Julian collapsed on top of him, the gun falling from his hands. His face was just inches away and Gabriel saw the fury drain from his expression. In its place, shock. Fear. Pain. His mouth opened, and he drooped forward. Gabriel let Julian’s body slide to the floor.

Another figure came running toward him through the smoke. Gabriel groped along the floor for the gun Julian had dropped until he saw Joyce break through the wall of black haze.

“We have to get out of here,” Gabriel said as she reached him. A bullet whizzed past them, cracking the glass of the terrace door.

“Where’s Daniel?” Joyce asked.

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said, “but I think he’s shown he can take care of himself.”

“Daniel!” she yelled.

“After what he did?” Gabriel said. “You still—”

“ Daniel! ”

A short figure rose up slowly from the floor nearby and Gabriel realized Daniel Wingard had been cowering behind the couch.

“Joyce,” Daniel said, coughing, “thank god you’re all right.”

Gabriel shouted in Joyce’s ear, “Give me one good reason we shouldn’t leave him here with his friends.”

“I can’t do that,” Joyce replied. “I can’t just leave him. Whatever he’s done.”

“Then he’s your responsibility, not mine.” Without waiting for an answer, he plowed through the smoke toward the door of the suite. Flames roared along the wall near the door, bathing them in heat. Gabriel put one arm up, covering his nose and mouth. He touched the doorknob. The metal was hot from the flames, but not too hot to touch. He turned it and pulled the door open. Smoke billowed out over his head as he thrust his head into the penthouse hallway, gulping air. The fire alarm was sounding even louder out here, wave after wave of shrill electronic pulses. Gabriel looked left and right, trying to spot the fire stairs. The prospect of climbing down thirty floors didn’t thrill him, but it was better than staying here.

He spotted the stairwell door at the far end of the hall. As he set one foot out of the suite in that direction, though, the door burst open—and men began pouring out, running toward him with guns drawn.

Chapter 17

Gabriel slammed the door shut and quickly fastened the deadbolt lock. It wouldn’t hold them out for long, but hopefully long enough to find another way out of here. He led them back across the burning, smoke-filled hotel room toward the terrace. Behind them, fists pounded on the door, barely audible above the blasting alarm. Gabriel slid the glass door open and shepherded Joyce and Daniel onto the terrace.

Joyce looked around. “Now what?”

Gabriel walked to the edge, skirting the table and chairs, and looked down. A crowd had gathered on the street below, pointing up at the smoke billowing out of their room. From where he stood, a column of terraces extended thirty stories down. As he’d noted earlier, it would be possible to climb from one to the next—for him, at least; maybe even for Joyce—but getting back inside the hotel would be a challenge. There was no guarantee anyone would let them into their room, and the glass of the terrace door had barely spiderwebbed even from multiple gunshot strikes—it wouldn’t break easily, not with just a couple of light lounge chairs to swing at it. And if they couldn’t get in, they would be sitting ducks, easy pickings for any of Grissom’s men who followed them down.