Ethan Justice: Origins (Ethan Justice #1) (18 page)

John’s jaw fell open further.

“Well say something you ignorant son of a bitch. Tell this cheap slut exactly what you think of her now.”

Savannah reached over to her right and grabbed one of the huge pillows. As she pulled it to her, John flinched, apparently expecting her to attack him with the feather-filled weapon. The anger was petering out and the hurt was taking over. The hurt churned up her insides until she felt like she would explode. She badly wanted to scream but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

Goddamn him! Others had frightened her, bullied her, cheated her and even died on her. But John Smith had done worse, far worse. He had made her feel completely worthless. Savannah took her pillow, locked herself in the bathroom and cried.

*

As the bathroom door slammed behind Savannah, John finally regained control over his slack jaw, closing it as he continued to rub his smarting cheek. It hadn’t been an easy decision to purposely end the excitement and he had to face it, it was the excitement that had worried him the most. He was certain that the sex would have been over very quickly and that would have been the end of it. She wouldn’t have been angry and never would have hit him. She would have looked at him with those bloody gorgeous eyes full of sadness for him, because he was a sexual failure, and for her, because he had promised so much, not in words but by his actions. The hero who couldn’t satisfy the damsel he saved from distress.

He could have said that he hadn’t been with a woman in over a year and that all their near encounters had raised the sexual tension so high he didn’t know how to cope with it. Or he could have said that the last woman he had been with was only the second of his life. Both were true, after all. Didn’t modern women want the truth? No. Women wanted what they had always wanted from their heroes. They wanted confidence and satisfaction and with John she would have received neither.

John lay back on the bed and considered his next move. He had destroyed everything that could have been and might have been with Savannah. For somebody who couldn’t have cared less two days ago, John couldn’t have imagined feeling more miserable and dejected. To top it all, her outburst, which some might have thought crass or crude, only made him care about her more. He fully understood why she had reacted with such venom. Those piercing eyes of hers which couldn’t lie were unable to disguise the pain he had caused. He made up his mind to split the remaining money with Savannah and to part company at the next opportunity.

*

With a fistful of cash in one hand and the other about to knock on the bathroom door, John was interrupted by a knock at the main door.

“Room service!”

What had Savannah done? Spent all their cash on unnecessary food to teach him a lesson? Thousands could easily be paid out on the luxuries available in the hotel. Perhaps she had ordered some medication for a headache? He tapped lightly on the door between them.

“Savannah, did you order room service?”

“Go away,” she said, sniffing and then blowing her nose.

“Look, I’m sorry for what I said. I had my reasons and I understand that we aren’t meant to be, but there really is someone at the door and I’m not answering unless you tell me that you ordered something.”

A few more sniffs. “No, I didn’t order anything.”

John tried to keep his voice calm for fear that it might carry out into the corridor. “Come on out, I think we’re in trouble. We need to get the hell out of here.” He tapped again. “Savannah, I’m not kidding.”

John heard a crash and whirled around to see the door straining against the brass security chain. He banged harder on the door.

“Savannah, they’re breaking the door down! Come on.”

The lock clicked and Savannah opened the door an inch.

“Are you kidding?”

Another crash echoed out as their hotel door slammed against the inside wall with great force. It was too late. Whoever had been at the door was now inside their suite. John pushed his way into the bathroom sending Savannah backwards.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Savannah said, using her hand against the far wall to stop herself.

John locked the door again and cast his eyes around the gleaming room for signs of anything else to bolster the door.

“Pass me the toothbrushes,” he said.

The bathroom door vibrated. Someone was thumping at the other side. “Open up, Savannah Jones,” the voice said venomously. “This is the police. We know you’re in there.”

John wedged the toothbrushes so they stuck in the gaps below and above the door. It didn’t look like they would make much difference. Savannah tapped John on the shoulder with something hard. John turned his head to see a white phone by his ear.

“Call reception,” he said, “and tell them we’re under attack.”

“Is Varushkin in there with you?” asked the voice outside the bathroom.

Ah, so it was Christos’s men. They must have followed them back from the escort agency. But why wouldn’t they have dealt with them outside the hotel? Surely this was insanity. The real police could arrive at any second.

“Reception says they
are
the police,” Savannah informed him.

John pulled Savannah to him and whispered in her ear. “They don’t know that I’m in here so keep them talking while I think.”

She nodded, seeming steadier than she had been in Aphrodite’s Angels.

“I’ve done nothing wrong so why should I come out?” she said, shrugging her shoulders at John. He nodded. “What am I charged with?”

While Savannah stalled for time, John tried to get an outside line on the bathroom phone. No luck. The hotel had presumably disabled the service at the request of the fake police officer. A thought occurred to John, and he whispered in Savannah’s ear again. She nodded.

“Who’s the other officer with you?” she asked.

“I beg your pardon?” returned the voice.

“You said ‘
We
know you’re in there.’ So who’s the other part of the
we
?”

“It’s just a figure of speech.” A pause, then, “We always say we. If you don’t open up, I’m afraid I’ll have to break the door down.”

“Don’t you mean
we
?”

Then Savannah jumped up like she had seen the ghost of a despised relative. She grabbed John’s wrist and tugged him towards her, almost tripping him up in the process. She tapped his new watch and John, picking up on her manic gestures, immediately pressed the button to alert Johnson and Wilson.

John’s stumble had been heard through the door. “Is there someone in there with you, Miss Jones? If Dmitri Varushkin is in there also, then we have some questions for him too. I’m not sure you realise what serious trouble you are both in.”

What if Johnson and Wilson were out of range? Even if they were in range, what if they were half an hour away?

“Time’s up, Miss Jones,” said the voice.

The door shook as a foot began to methodically kick it midway up its height. The two toothbrushes wedged at either end fell away in seconds. John picked up a toothbrush, wedged it back in the bottom gap and pulled it up until it snapped. He looked at the result in his hand - useless. He chucked the half length of toothbrush into the bath and gathered the second unbroken one from the floor. This time he wedged the end into one of the sink’s hot taps, leaving his fingers close to the end so that the pressure remained close to the inserted end when he levered the toothbrush upwards. It snapped perfectly leaving a sharp plastic tapered end. It was no knife but it was a weapon of sorts. Another kick landed and the lock rattled meekly, indicating its intention to give up on the next blow.

“Don’t kill them,” ordered the voice.

So there
were
two of them. Was one of these men the rain-coated man from the station? If so how did he know about Varushkin? John signalled to Savannah to stand to the right of the door and open it on his signal, and he took position on the left. A loud crack accompanied the sound of smashing glass and a bullet blew a four inch hole in the bathroom door, sending splinters of wood into the air between them. A tile behind them disintegrated as the bullet passed through it, adding ceramic powder and tiny pieces of tile to the airborne mass.

Christ, now they were shooting too! John looked at the wall where the bullet had hit. There was a huge hole and no sign of a bullet. What were they using, an elephant gun? He and Savannah were dead for sure. John looked at Savannah, feeling an urgent need to apologise to her but she was busy. What was she doing? She was opening the door!

“No!” he yelled.

But it was too late. She pulled the door wide open at the instant Christos’s foot appeared, followed by his leg and his body. The look on Christos’s face would have been comical if their situation had not been so dire. Without the resistance of the door to absorb the energy from his kick, Christos was travelling uncontrollably forward and downwards with his mouth open in a mixture of anger and surprise. Christos’s trunk reached an angle of forty-five degrees to the floor at the exact moment that his left knee hit the ground. John, timing his swing to perfection, plunged the broken end of the toothbrush deep into the side of the man’s neck.

John was transfixed by the sight of the writhing, black-clad figure on the floor as he coughed out blood and pulled frantically at the well-embedded toothbrush. Savannah began to scream when a further crack rang out to the sound of smashing glass and a second bullet blew another tile on the back wall to smithereens.

Savannah sensibly leapt into the bath and made herself into a tight ball. John could not reach the bath without crossing the doorway and so lay flat on the ground on his side of the door, inches away from the bubbling-mouthed pimp who still tugged away at the green plastic handle in his neck. He heard movement in their suite followed by another gunshot and another, exploding glass and ... a wall in their suite taking two bullets?

Another flurry of running feet, another gunshot, another explosion of glass and a thud of a striking bullet even further away from the bathroom followed. Whoever was shooting was not aiming at them but at the man who had impersonated a police officer and sent Christos after them.

It had to be Johnson and Wilson!

John stood up and brushed - or rather dusted - himself off, as his smart attire was covered in a very fine powder. Christos finally clawed the offending object from his neck, sending a thick jet of blood five feet across the bathroom where it splattered against the white tiled wall. John heard Savannah’s bare feet squeak against the bath’s surface as she pushed herself upright.

“Don’t look, Savannah,” he said, placing himself between her and the moaning Christos. The jets of blood, which gushed in time with each heartbeat, quickly lost their zeal and diminished to a dribble. With great urgency, Savannah jumped out of the bath and knelt beside Christos’s head. She slid her hand underneath his flabby cheek, which was resting in a bright red pool of his blood, and turned his head so that she could look into his eyes. John could see that the light in him was fading rapidly.

“You piece of shit!” she exclaimed. “We made a deal.”

John had seen more emotions in Savannah’s dark eyes than he had seen in the rest of the world’s eyes put together but this look frightened him the most of all. Even after the dying man’s eyes dulled over and the Grim Reaper collected his soul, Savannah continued to meet his empty gaze. Her lips were pursed tight, eyes narrowed, breath like a snorting dragon, her beauty gone, seemingly sucked temporarily into a place so dark it might well have tainted her soul.

John placed his hand on her shoulder. “Savannah.” He shook her gently but she didn’t respond. “Savannah,” he repeated, shaking her a little harder.

She turned to him, dropping the dead man’s head back into the pool of blood. Her eyes were directly on him but didn’t see him. She stood and walked out of the bathroom with a face as drained of blood as the body on the floor. He followed her past the bullet-damaged door into the suite. The two other bullets had torn similarly sized holes in the seating area, one five feet from the bathroom and the other close to the main door which was now wide open.

Jagged pieces of glass lay on the floor by the windows opposite the bathroom and beyond, and plaster dust filled the air. A few pieces of furniture were out of place where their other attacker had used them for cover as he made his getaway.

Savannah sat down on the bed and instantly stood up again as if the bed was electrified. She relocated to a chair in the seating area. John assumed her change of mind was due to the memory of their jettisoned love making, although her eyes were still distant and giving nothing away. The image of her face at the moment he had sabotaged their intimacy was far clearer and more painful to him than the memory of the danger they had survived only moments ago.

A knock at the door caused John to duck down instinctively. The memory of the exploding walls and gushing blood might not be so ingrained on his memory as the anguish on Savannah’s face but the incident had affected him. He straightened his legs the second he saw the two dark-coated agents watching him from the doorway.

Both men resembled undertakers. Wilson, the shorter man by nearly a foot, carried what appeared to be a case for a large musical instrument at his side. John suspected that the hard black case contained the large-bored weapon they had used to scare off the intruder.

Johnson inspected the nearby bullet hole with his fingers before turning his attention to Savannah who stared beyond a wall, mouth loosely open, arms limp by her sides.

“I think we need to reappraise our relationship,” Johnson said.

18: Sunday 25th September, 12:30

Outside is overcast with dark and threatening clouds. My room is gloomier and appears smaller than ever. I don’t bother turning on the light. The room suits the dark. It hides the stains on the sheets and carpet, the dust on scratched surfaces and flaking yellow paint on the walls. I sip my takeaway coffee from ‘The Pit’ and grimace as I swallow. It tastes like Olga has pissed in it. I put down the polystyrene cup on the bedside table and sit on the bed, light a Marlboro Red, and take a deep drag to take the taste of the coffee away. It doesn’t help.