Born in a Burial Gown
Page 33
The shank in the man’s hand looked crude but deadly. Cross had used a variety of weapons in his life but he’d never considered how a toothbrush could be fashioned into something so sinister-looking.
He tried to reach the red panic button but the man was on him before he was halfway.
The man said nothing. He held the sharpened toothbrush so Cross could see it clearly.
‘What do you want?’ he rasped through his ruined vocal chords. His voice was barely above a whisper.
The man still didn’t say anything.
Cross saw rather than felt the first blow. He thought he might have just been punched until he felt a warmness that could only be blood. The pain of the wound wasn’t able to compete with his burning face. Half a dozen quick stabs followed. All in the same place. Not deep but deep enough.
He tried to say something, anything but the words wouldn’t form. He stared at the man with his one working eye. The man looked down without expression. He showed Cross the toothbrush shank up close. Cross shrank back as it was held up to his eye. It was razor sharp and bloodied. Beyond fear, he watched as the man pushed the shank towards his throat. He pressed it against him, just hard enough to break the skin.
‘I’m going to kill you now, Mr Cross,’ the man said.
He gently but firmly pushed the sharpened toothbrush into Cross’s neck. He could feel it going through skin and flesh before finally meeting resistance in the thin muscular wall of the great jugular vein. The man grunted with effort as he plunged the shank in. Cross felt warm liquid around the wound. His shirt was drenched in seconds. He felt weak and lightheaded.
He lost control of his bowels and his bladder.
The jugular takes blood back to the heart rather than being powered from it, so there was no arterial spray, rather the steady flow of death. The man removed the shank and watched him.
Cross had cut enough throats during his career as a contract killer to know his wound was fatal. Of all the places he thought he might die, on the filthy floor of an English prison cell drenched in his own piss hadn’t even come close.
As his heart struggled to find enough blood to keep him alive, he went into the first stages of cardiac arrest. Before Dalton Cross slipped into the unconsciousness that would precede his death, the man leaned over and whispered something into his ear.
‘Nathaniel Diamond says hello.’
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue