False Witness (John Steel series Book 3) (22 page)

The men had tried to take her for a reason and she was wondering who had sent them. Not the judge, she was oblivious to the fact that she was being followed. So it meant someone else was after her. But why?

Megan quickly turned into a quiet alley that ran between two abandoned previously tenanted buildings. She stopped and looked around before shimmying up a drainpipe that ran next to a rusty fire escape with broken steps. She stopped part of the way up and then leapt for the first platform of the metal fire escape.

The loud clatter of flesh hitting metal could not be helped but she hoped nobody had heard it. Especially the people who were after her. Megan made her way up the fire escape to the top of the building, then managed to open a bedroom window, before quickly disappearing inside. She closed the window behind her and locked it.

The whole place had been abandoned around five years ago, after a project manager bought the building and paid the tenants to move. Unfortunately his permission to tear down the building had not been granted, so it remained empty, complete with the furnishings that the previous occupants had left—either they couldn’t take their belongings with them, or they were happy to abandon them.

Inside, the building was dimly lit by the streaks of light that had made it through the dirty partly-covered windows. Speckles of dust hung in the air which were illuminated as they floated past the sun streaks, making them stand out like plankton in the ocean.

Megan moved through the apartment and headed down the corridor to another room, one she had a key for. She slipped the key into the lock and turned it until she heard the familiar click.

She had gotten the apartment a while back. It was safe, clean and fully furnished.

The windows had been blacked out so that no light could be seen from the outside and electricity was supplied courtesy of a cable attached to a lamp post near the building.

The only other person who knew about this place was her uncle—after all he was the one who had found it for her and had arranged for the electric power to be re-routed.

Megan had figured that it had once been a safe house for some associates of her uncle, but she never asked. For now, it was her home.

She took off her backpack and removed the small amount of groceries she had gotten on the way: milk, cereal and some bread and eggs.

The young woman looked at her watch. She would have a couple of hours before she had to be at work, so she made herself a bowl of cereal and settled down on the old couch after igniting a couple of candles for light.

*

Megan had fallen into a deep but troubled sleep. One she was suddenly woken from, as she heard the sound of someone creeping up the hallway.

She opened one eye and listened: it was the sound of someone moving slowly, a person anxious not to be heard.

It could have been another squatter looking for a place to crash but the footsteps told her otherwise. If it was a squatter, why would they move so stealthily?

Megan looked at the front door to make sure the chain was firmly fastened and that the dining chair was still rammed into place under the handle.

The sound of crunching—like someone walking on eggshells—echoed thorough the building. This noise filled her with fear: she had sprinkled broken Christmas-tree decorative balls onto the floor as a warning system to tell her how close an intruder would be, and the crunching meant that they were close—too close.

Megan shot up from her position on the couch, grabbed her jacket and the small backpack, and headed off to a back bedroom.

She quickly shut the door and placed a dining chair under the door handle so it acted as a wedge, before moving to a window. A knotted rope lay neatly on the floor, one end of which had been secured to the radiator. Megan opened the window and tossed out the escape rope.

The young woman turned as she heard voices yelling, followed by the sound of running footsteps. She had no intention of finding out who it was or what they wanted.

Megan climbed out of the window and grasped the rope. She looked down at the drop, which probably looked further than it was, but she knew it was a good thirty feet to the bottom of the alleyway. As quickly as she could Megan made her way down, gripping and then releasing the rope a few feet at a time. She looked through one hallway window as she passed it to make sure nobody had seen her unconventional exit. All she could see were badly wallpapered walls and some cardboard boxes filled with junk.

A loud crash above her made Megan stop and look up. A sudden look of fear came over her face as she knew that they were in her apartment. She began to move quicker in hope that she would reach the bottom before they found her escape route.

The cold of the evening began to bite at her fingers, making her grip on the rope that much more difficult, but she had to ignore the freezing sensation in her hands. Another crash emanated from above and with horror she realised that they were in her bedroom.

“She’s here!” a loud voice shouted, just as she felt the tug on the rope from above.

Megan looked up to see the grimacing smile of one of the knifemen who had tried to kidnap her. He leaned out of the window, the rope firmly in his hands, as he began to pull her up.

His movements were slow, as though he was enjoying watching the fear on her face. She looked down at the grey concrete below and weighed up her options: drop and probably die, or else be dragged up to face God knows what.

Megan closed her eyes and prepared to let go. She breathed slowly, taking in the sounds of the world which seemed to be suddenly crystal clear, yet somehow slowed down, out of sync with reality.

From up above there was a massive sound of breaking glass and a scream. Megan opened her eyes in time to see a man fall past her and land awkwardly on the dirty concrete below her.

Mystified by what had happened, she looked up to see the face of the man in sunglasses, at a window above her.

“If you drop he should break your fall,” Steel yelled down to her. Above him she heard the knifeman yell commands to the other people who were in her apartment, then he said, “There’s some hero below us. Get him before he gets the girl.”

Steel didn’t move. He just looked down at the scared girl clinging for her life to the rope and smiled, to reassure her that everything would be alright.

Megan looked down. The drop looked further than before. She began to climb down again, but the killer was now in a hurry and was pulling her up faster than she could climb down.

She stopped her descent and looked up to the window where Steel had been, but he had gone.

Her gaze fell upon the man as he pulling at the rope. His body halfway out of the window to gain leverage. As she came into line with the broken window Megan looked in, and her eyes widened as she saw a man dressed all in black running at full pace towards her.

The young woman’s mouth fell open in shock as he dived out of the window straight at her. Steel grabbed her body and twisted around, so that his back was to the glass. With both the girl and the rope firmly in his grasp, he made them hurtle towards and through the window of an apartment in the adjacent building.

The sounds of her screams were dulled by the sudden noise of a shattering windowpane.

And the knifeman could only watch as the pair disappeared through the window of a room in the adjacent building.

The man bared his teeth in anger, but suddenly his expression changed to one of horror, as he realised the rope had tightened in his grasp and before he realised it he was being pulled out of the window.

First of all, the man’s head impacted against the wall as he was wrenched out of the building. His skull met brick and it cracked like an egg, leaving a scar of deep red across the brown weathered wall.

As he fell towards the alleyway’s floor, his body ricocheted off both buildings as if it was a pinball, and at each separate impact he left a little something of himself, before joining his colleague on the ground in a bloody mess of skin and broken bones.

Megan slowly looked down at the body of the man in black, remembering that as he grabbed her he had deliberately spun around, so that he would take the brunt of the impact of the glass and the fall.

She stood up quickly and backed off him, wondering if he had given his life to save her. If he had, why? She didn’t even know him.

Megan leant down slowly and prodded Steel’s still body to see if he was dead.

“Are you... are you dead?” she repeated the question to herself, as if to tell herself off for asking such a dumbass question!

“Well if I am you would probably be shitting yourself about now,” Steel said, sitting up carefully, glass shards falling off his thick leather jacket. She slapped him playfully for scaring her.

“Who are you?” Megan asked, knowing he wasn’t one of the men who were out to get her. Steel said nothing at first, he just smiled before turning his attention to the loud cries from the other building.

“You’re the one who saved me from the men the other day, aren’t you?” she asked, her eyes squinting as she looked at him, as if to try and pick up a reaction.

“I suggest we leave this party before they find us,” her rescuer said. Megan nodded and helped Steel to his feet.

The Englishman knew that they didn’t have much time. What he had to do was get her downstairs or as close to the ground as possible, so she could escape.

As they headed down they began to hear voices from below: the men were here. Steel put a finger to his lips to tell her to keep silent. Megan nodded.

They moved down the stairwell, sticking close to the wall as they went. At the second floor the voices became louder, followed by the sound of heavy stomping of boots, as the men began to move quicker. Steel opened a door to an apartment and pushed her inside.

“Lock the door,” he told her. “If you can get out do so, go to this address, you’ll be safe there, just show them this card.” Steel shoved his business card into her hand. She turned it over to see a handwritten address, then she looked up at the face of the man who had saved her so many times. Megan saw raw power there, plus the cold stony face of someone totally focused on the job at hand.

“Will I see you again?” she asked, almost terrified at the thought of losing her guardian angel. She began to speak again, but a bullet hitting a lamp on the wall signalled trouble: their enemies had found them.

Steel extended his right arm and used his pistol to put two rounds into the gunman before pushing the girl into the room and slamming the door. Steel stood back and kicked the door handle off, so that it would delay their entry.

Inside the room, Megan grabbed what she could to barricade the door, while outside gunfire rang out, making her flinch with every explosion. She stopped suddenly as she heard screams of pain followed by more gunfire. She looked at the door and a lonely tear ran down her cheek as she wondered what would become of her ‘Angel in Black’.

She looked down at the card he’d given her and read the address and smiled. A safe place to go. Was that possible? Megan headed for the windows and looked down below, to where the bodies of the two men lay in a crumpled bloody heap. The drop from here was around twelve feet but, like her angel had said, “The bodies should break your fall.”

Megan leapt out of the window and disappeared into the dusk.

The morning brought a
slight frost that lay a silver blanket on the garden outside her window. Judge Mathews sat in the study in her grand home, using the time to catch up on things before the rest of her family rose from their slumber.

Sitting at her desk she sipped her first coffee of the day while the news blared from the large wall-mounted flat-screen TV. The office was large and modern, with plenty of windows for natural light.

As she went through her emails something on the news report grabbed her attention. It was about a shoot-out in an old disused tenement building.

Eye witnesses explained how they saw armed men rush into the building and begin to open fire on someone, the reporter told how: “Person or persons unknown immobilised the men by shooting out their kneecaps.”

Judge Mathews almost had a heart attack as her cell phone began to ring. She just stared at it for a moment as if gathering the strength to talk to her caller. She picked it up and pressed the answer button.

“Yes,” she said into the phone. “Yes, I was just watching it, I don’t know what happened. It wasn’t me who sent them... Yes, I am aware what is at stake. Look, I never signed up for—”

Something in the voice on the other end of the phone made her tremble in fear, as her gaze fell onto the photograph of her family. A lonely tear trickled down her dark cheek.

She put the phone down and a look of utter shock filled her face, and she looked up at a large painting that hung above the fireplace and she smiled. Picking up her phone she made an entry into its memory. Slowly, she stood up and headed for the kitchen as the noise of her family talking filled the hallway.

Something was coming. She knew the day would come and that she had to be ready.

*

McCall hadn’t taken the subway to work for years. In fact the last time was when her car was in the workshop getting a tune-up.

She had a nasty feeling that hercar-less state could be permanent. Her insurance company had said that they would not pay for the written-off Mustang, as her cover didn’t include damage from burning buildings, and the fact that she had been the one who had driven her car into a burning dumpster hardly qualified her for a successful claim either.

As she stepped out of the elevator she found Steel, Tony and Tooms with the young female technician going through some street camera footage.

The tech was tall and slim with a red long-sleeved top and a brown skirt that followed her curves. Her short fiery red hair and blue eyes completed the smart, sexy image. McCall wondered who had requested her, since their usual tech—a geeky guy called Adam—wasn’t taking the controls.