Ark Angel

you that information,” he protested. “Come back tomorrow and someone will be happy to help you then.”

    “We want to know now,” the man insisted. He reached into his jacket and Alex felt the floor sway beneath him as the man produced a gun. It was equipped with a silencer. And it was pointing at the receptionist’s head.
    “What are you…?” Conor had gone rigid; his voice had risen to a high-pitched squeak. “I can’t tell you!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”
    “We want the room number of Paul Drevin. If you don’t give it to me in the next three seconds, I will pull the trigger and the only part of this hospital you’ll ever need again will be the morgue.”
    “Wait!”
    “One…”
    “I don’t know where he is!”
    “Two…”
    Alex felt his chest hurting. He realized he was holding his breath.
    “All right! All right! Let me find it for you.”
    The receptionist began to tap hurriedly at the keyboard hidden below the top of his desk. Alex heard the clatter of the keys.
    “He’s on the second floor! Room eight.”
    “Thank you,” the man said, and shot him.
    Alex heard the angry cough of the bullet as it was spat out by the silencer. He saw a black spray in front of the receptionist’s forehead. Conor was thrown backwards, his hands raised briefly.
    Nobody moved.
    “Room eight. Second floor,” one of the men muttered.

    “I told you he was in room eight,” the first man said.
    “Then why did you ask?”
    “I just wanted to be sure.”
    One of them sniggered.
    “Let’s go and get him,” another said.
    Alex was frozen to the spot. He could feel his wound throbbing angrily. This couldn’t be happening, could it? But it was happening. He had seen it for himself.
    The four men moved.
    Alex turned and ran.

EMERGENCY TREATMENT

    Alex took the stairs two at a time, a hundred different thoughts tumbling through his mind. Who were the four men and why were they here? What did they want with Paul? The name Drevin meant something to him, but this wasn’t the time to work out what it was. What could he do to stop them?
    He came to a fire alarm in a red box on the wall and stopped beside it. For a few, precious seconds his fist hovered over the glass. But he knew that setting off the alarm would do no good. For the moment, surprise was all he had on his side. The fire alarm would only tell the men that they had been seen, and then they would go about their work all the faster, killing or kidnapping the boy long before the police or fire brigade arrived.
    Alex didn’t want to confront the four men on his own. He was desperately tempted to call for help. But he knew it would come too late.
    He continued up the stairs, one small piece of knowledge spurring him on. The men had shown themselves to be single-minded and ruthless. But they had already made one mistake.
    When they had set off, they had been moving in the direction of the lift, and Alex knew something they didn’t. The lifts at St Dominic’s were the original bed lifts, almost twenty years old. They were designed to carry patients up from the operating theatres on the first floor and had to stop without even the slightest shudder. For this reason they were very, very slow. It would take Alex less than twenty seconds to reach the second floor; it would take the men almost two minutes. That gave him one minute and forty seconds to do something. But what?
    He burst through the doors and into the nurses’ area in front of his room. There was still nobody around, which was strange. Perhaps the four men had created some sort of diversion. That would make sense. They could have got rid of the nurse with a single phone call and right now she could be anywhere in the hospital. Alex stood panting in the half-light, trying to get his brain to work. He could imagine the lift making its way inch by inch towards him.
    He was painfully aware of the unevenness of the competition. The men were professional killers. Alex would have known that even if he hadn’t seen them murder the night receptionist. It was obvious from their body language, the way they smiled, the conversation he’d overheard. Killing was second nature to them. Alex couldn’t possibly fight them. He was unarmed. Worse, he was in pyjamas and slippers with a chest wound held together by stitches and bandages. He had never been more helpless. Once he was seen, he would be finished. He didn’t stand a chance.

    And yet he had to do something.