Free Sacred Sword (Ben Hope 7) by Scott Mariani Page A

I just lock that?
    Maybe someone had come in to clean the room, he thought. It sure needed it. Wesley peered in through the gap in the door and saw a movement inside. It was a man, and he didn’t look like a cleaner. He was a big man wearing a coat of heavy tan leather.
    Wesley froze.
    The man in the leather coat had his back to the door. Wesley heard him say something indistinct to another man in the room with him. Then he turned a few inches to his left, and Wesley could see the unemotional expression on his face, and the boxy black automatic pistol in his hand with a long cylindrical silencer.
    Wesley drew back from the door, stifling a gasp. With what felt like a heart attack coming on he retreated back along the covered walkway towards the reception lobby. The men only had to glance through the open door of his room and they’d spot him.
    By some miracle, they didn’t. Wesley vowed to start believing in God. He burst through the glass doors into the reception lobby.
    Kat was still sitting at the desk, slumped over her magazine. ‘Call the police,’ he rasped at her. ‘There are—’ The words died in his mouth. He recoiled in horror.
    Kat remained immobile. The only movement from her was the steady drip-drip from the bright pool of blood that had now spread across the desk, soaking the magazine in front of her and splashing to the floor.
    The coffee cup slipped out of Wesley’s hand and exploded across his shoes. ‘Oh, my God.’ He had to get out of here. Grasping the handle of the case in a death grip, he dug his car key out of his pocket, scurried back to the doors and peered through the grimy glass into the yard. The snow-covered Chrysler sat halfway between the reception and the door of his room. He could see no other vehicle apart from Kat’s Honda. The killers must have left theirs somewhere around the back.
    Would he make it to his car and get it started up before the men spotted him? They’d hear the sound of the engine, but maybe he’d manage to drive away before they could stop him.
    They had guns. Their bullets could punch through steel and glass as he drove off.
    But he had to get away. He pressed his free hand to the door.
Here goes
.
    He was just about to push it open when the man in the tan leather coat suddenly emerged from Room 12 and started striding quickly and purposefully across the snowy car park towards the reception lobby. He had the gun at his side.
    Wesley backed away from the doors. He didn’t think the man could see him through the dirty glass, but he’d be here any moment.
    Wesley ran back towards the reception desk, just managing to avoid the pool of blood. The other side of the desk was a door marked PRIVATE. Kat’s arm was draped across the folding hatch. Wanting to throw up at the touch of her dead flesh, he nudged her arm aside and then pressed through the hatch and burst through the door, closing it behind him with jittery haste before the man in the brown coat stepped into the lobby.
    He found himself in a poky office. Its cobwebbed sash window overlooked a backyard littered with snow-covered garbage bags and pieces of broken furniture. Beyond a ramshackle fence he could see the highway snaking away into the distance. He threw open the window, clambered up on a chair and shoved the case through the gap before scrambling through after it. He landed painfully on the snowy concrete the other side, snatched the case up and kept moving as fast as he could. His heart was in his mouth as he staggered through the backyard to the fence, fully expecting the muffled clap of a silenced pistol behind him and a bullet burning a hole in his flesh.
    But no bullet came. Wesley managed to drag himself and the case over the fence and belted across the snow towards the highway. Twice he slipped and fell as he scrambled over the piles of dirty slush at the side of the road, glancing in terror over his shoulder. His breath was coming in wheezing gasps now as he stumbled on. For the first time