Free Hunted by Emlyn Rees Page B

flames. Further on, vehicles were still trying to slip free of thegridlock. Juddering like bumper cars at a fairground. Everywhere Danny looked, he could see people running, crawling, hiding.
    More sirens in the distance. Car horns. A swarm of flickering blue lights was gathering in the east, nudging through the traffic, cracking through it like icebreakers on a frozen sea – police and ambulances, trying to get through.
    A siren whooped much closer.
    Danny edged forward and looked down three storeys below.
    A black limousine was parked up tight against the kerb outside the hotel’s main entrance. Its nearside tyres were ribboned, shot out. Black smoke billowed from its ravaged bonnet. Dozens of fist-sized holes had been punched through its roof. It looked like a tin can a kid had used for target practice with an airgun.
    The driver’s door was open. Aman’s body lay draped over it like a forgotten coat. A blood trail led away from the car’s open street-side rear door to where a woman in a bright purple coat was crumpled in the middle of the street. Something was wrong with the shape of her body. Something was wrong with her legs.
    The pattern of bodies … the black limousine was at its centre. Whoever had done this, the limousine had been their focal point. The limousine was what this was all about.
    A police squad car had broken free of the gridlock. It was crawling along the pavement, hugging the nearside line of buildings to the east of the hotel. It angled into the kerb and stopped, blue light flashing.
    The woman whose legs weren’t right … she started moving then. Slowly, uselessly, flopping on the ground like a baby bird fallen from a nest, trying to work out how to fly.
    She was the one who’d been screaming, Danny realized. She was the one who now couldn’t stop.
    The doors of the police car sprang open. Two uniformed police ran for her. They zigzagged, half-crouching. One of them lost his cap, but kept on going. He cradled his head in his hands like he’d just been slapped and was expecting the same again.
    When they lifted the woman up, Danny saw that where her legs should have been there was only a bloody pulp. Her screaminggrew louder as the police stumbled away from the Ritz, and bundled her through the glass doors of the building opposite. Out of sight.
    More shouts. Directly below. Several women spilt out on to the street. In black and white. Waitresses or maids, Danny guessed. Hotel staff. They ran screaming with their hands in the air.
    One group of people remained motionless in the chaos. Conspicuous because of it, Danny saw. There were three of them, crouched down low in a shop doorway opposite him. Glass glinted up at him. Something one of them was holding.
    A TV camera, Danny realized. He was staring at a TV crew. And they were staring right back at him.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
11.49, GREEN PARK, LONDON W1
    Danny backed inside and jerked the curtains shut.
    He stared at the rifle in his hands. The one he’d just been holding out there in broad daylight. In full view of the world.
    This was no dream. No hallucination.
    So what the hell is going on? Why can’t I remember why I’m here?
    A flash of light. To the right. Another door. Ajar. Through it Danny glimpsed a sliver of brightly lit white-tiled wall. Another memory hit him. Someone had come out of there, someone who’d meant him harm.
    Five soft strides across the deep cream carpet and Danny was there. He kicked the door hard, busted it open, his rifle already up.
    A man in a black balaclava and Ray-Ban Aviator shades stared back at him.
    Danny fired. A killing burst. The report was deafening. The man disintegrated into a hundred shards.
    It’s your own reflection …
    Danny tore the balaclava from his head and stared at his face in the one jagged splinter of mirror left hanging on the wall. His eyes looked wired, insanely alert.
    He was dressed in a red and white-striped tracksuit. The same as the corpse. He looked down at his feet.