Free Torsten Dahl book 1 - Stand Your Ground by David Leadbeater Page B

toward them, some closed and some wide open, many offering up confusion and surprise and perhaps even the hope of a little assistance.
    Dahl wouldn’t let them get involved. Civilians had already died today, cops too, and he wouldn’t knowingly risk the life of another.
    Unless Isabella and Julia came under direct threat .
    It was only a matter of time before the boys – if they were assisting Grant – would have vehicles converging on their location. Dahl now saw the streets not as a maze, but as a trap, potentially populated by objects faster than he was. He quickly dog-legged again, heading farther east and knowing his luck would run out sooner rather than later. The children were growing tired, their legs slowing, their energy levels past spent and in need of recharging. As they raced up yet another narrow, residential street, a sight appeared that made even the confident, capable, soldier within him gasp with fear.
    At his side, Johanna screamed.
    Up ahead, half a dozen youths came fast, cutting them off with bottles, billy-clubs and baseball bats.
    Dahl saw one chance and zipped to the side. Head down, he sprinted like a man with the Devil breathing hotly on his heels, heaving the children into his arms and turning on the speed. Animalistic yells chased him.
    Stay with me, Johanna.
    A low white wall revealing a garden overhung by a mostly-collapsed rear porch whipped past, followed by a surprisingly well-trimmed square patch of grass. Dahl felt every muscle brimming with adrenalin, every nerve ending on fire.
    They wouldn’t take his children.
    He reached the end of the alley and looked back.
    Johanna was nowhere to be seen.
     

FOURTEEN
     
    Dahl took only a split-second to realize he was wrong.
    Johanna was visible . . . among a crowd of youths, captive, entirely surrounded, frozen in terror as they closed around her. The scream of terror must have come when she stopped moving. Overwhelmed with anxiety for the safety of his children, he had failed to realize.
    He stood now at the end of the alley, the way open ahead at another junction but now far less appealing, the gun he’d taken from the nightclub cop raised in one hand so the mob could see it as a deterrent, Isabella and Julia held back by the other. Choices darted around him like hungry birds, but every single one involved leaving his children. As he stood there, brain working overtime, a familiar face hove into view.
    Nick Grant passed among the youths along with three of his black-clad mercenaries.
    “Torsten,” he called out in that infuriatingly sophisticated accent that didn’t fit the factual man. “What to do? Torture her? Remove some bits and pieces? Lend her to the boys for an hour? Ah, choices.”
    “First one to touch her gets shot in the head,” Dahl said. “Step back.”
    Grant laughed. “Wait, boys. Let’s see what Mr. Dahl here suggests we do.”
    “What I don’t understand,” Dahl said, “is that I thought you were a bloody businessman, after profits, avoiding losses. That sort of thing. Not a bloodthirsty psychopath hell bent on revenge.”
    “Well, you would be right.” Grant rearranged his jacket and tie so that they sat perfectly straight. “I am a businessman. My employer is the bloodthirsty psychopath.”
    “And he is . . . ?”
    Grant gave a slight shrug and held his gaze.
    Dahl could prolong this by recounting the events that followed the second time Grant and he had crossed paths, in hopes of infuriating Grant into making a mistake, but it was unlikely to leave Johanna unharmed. Dahl wouldn’t let his wife go easily, but he couldn’t retrieve her from this encounter.
    “Let her go.” Always worth a try.
    “Oh, okay then.” Grant turned theatrically to his gang of cohorts and bellowed: “Let the lady go.”
    A small portion of the boys gaped, but the rest stepped away. The mercenaries didn’t budge. With the crowd parting, Johanna appeared in full view as if seen at the end of a tunnel, eyes red-rimmed, face