Dead or Alive: A heart-pounding assassination thriller with a shocking twist (Eliot Locke Thrillers Book 1)

by Dean Carson

  The second option is to pick the lock. This is not as easy as it sounds. Everyone thinks you get a bit of wire or a hair clip and jiggle it around a bit. Here’s the scoop on that. They are called locks because they are designed to stay locked. If they popped open from a little poke of wire, they would not have caught on. To pick a lock you need two things, not one. You do use a wire or thin metal blade to jog the tumblers up and down, but you also need a tensioner to turn the lock while you are doing that. Without the tensioner, the lock will rust apart decades before you can open it. Luckily, I had a good set of picking tools, including a range of tensioners. I kept them in my backpack. But my backpack had been destroyed in a bomb attack in Mostar.

  That left the third way.

  Certain types of door can be opened by forcing a credit card down the crack between the door and the jam, forcing the latch back into the lock and allowing the door to swing free. This isn’t a very practical method for a few reasons. The main reason is that credit cards are made of plastic, while locks are brass or iron. So you are more likely to destroy your credit card than gain entry. But with the right door, that was still a viable option. This was the right door. The second thing is that you must be on the side that the door opens on to. If the door opens into a room, you won’t open it from outside. But many hotels and guest houses, including this one, had doors that open on to the corridor so that they can make the rooms even smaller and squeeze more of them in.

  I took off my right shoe. My shoes are very good quality, leather uppers and a composite sole. They are steel toed, which is a bit of an anomaly for stylish shoes but great in a fight. Some of my business cards describe me as an engineer, and if anyone asks I do site inspections, which explains the reinforced footwear. One reason for the steel caps is that they explain away the beep as I walk through airport security. The security check shows up the steel, and I am passed through. No one has ever checked the shoes properly. Which is just as well.

  I began to work at the back of the heel of my shoe and it only took a moment to pull out the three-inch carbon steel blade. It was a wide blade, more than an inch across at the base and tapering to a sharp point. One edge was serrated, the other honed to a very sharp edge. It was not a weapon, though I suppose you could have used it as one in an emergency. It was a multi-purpose tool. Tonight I was going to use it to open a door.

  I worked the blade into the crack between the frame and the door just above the bolt and wedged it down as tightly as possible, the tip of the blade behind the bolt. When it was as near perfectly placed as I could get it, I took my shoe and used it as a hammer, bringing the heel down sharply on the base of the blade. It took two blows, but on the second I felt the bolt give enough and I jerked the door out. Thirty seconds from start to finish. Suck on that, Houdini. I looked into the small room. The poor jerk on the bed was staring at the open door with a look of absolute panic plastered across his pale features. He was screaming, but I couldn’t hear him because he was gagged. No sound came out despite his best efforts.

  After a few moments, he realised that I was on my own. He stopped screaming but the look of panic didn’t leave his face. Quickly I put a finger to my lips and glared at him, trying to make him understand. I nodded my head and he nodded back at me, so I put one hand on the gag, a finger still on my lips.

  “No noise. Blink if you understand.”

  It took a few seconds but then he blinked.

  “If you do make noise, I’ll cut off your dick and make you eat it.”

  He blinked furiously. Gingerly I eased the gag off his mouth, pulling it down towards his throat. He breathed out heavily and his body seemed to relax, slumping into the mattress. Then he tried to struggle up against the ropes that bound him. The look of panic was back on his face. He was frantically trying to jerk his head towards the end of the bed. I turned to look and understood. He was still on camera.

  When I snapped the laptop closed and pulled the USB cable out, disconnecting the webcam, he smiled with relief.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. “Now you can kill me. It doesn’t matter, so long as Maria doesn’t watch.”

  Ah — true love. He was willing to play around behind her back, but he wanted to spare her the misery of seeing his true nature. Who am I to judge? If I am wrong in my atheism, St Peter is only going to sneer at me when I arrive at the pearly gates. I turned back to him and tried to match his smile.

  “No one is going to kill you. Not tonight anyway,” I said. “I am going to release you and you are going to get as far away from here as you can before she finds out.” As an afterthought I added: “And if you report this to the police, I will personally cut your chest open and pull out your heart.”

  He nodded his understanding. From his heavily accented tone and the fact that he took his time composing sentences, I knew his English was not perfect, but fear can do wonders for comprehension. He had no difficulty getting my drift.

  “No police,” he confirmed. “Out of Dubrovnik. Out of Croatia. She never see me again. Hokey dokey, no problem. I just go.”

  Sure, if it wasn’t for the handcuffs. He saw my glance and understood.

  “The thing by the bed,” he said.

  It took a moment for me to work out that the thing by the bed was the bedside locker. Why don’t they teach Europeans a bit more English in school? I am sure he could ask the same question — why hadn’t I studied Croatian? But we were making progress. There was a small drawer on the locker and I pulled it open. Unbelievably she had left the keys there. That was careless, and lucky. I could have picked the locks on the cuffs, but it would take time. I could have forced them open, but it would take even more time and would hurt the guy I was rescuing. So I took the breaks I was given and used the key. I popped both cuffs and he sat up on the bed, rubbing his wrists. He would be sore for a few days, but unless he had struggled and damaged some of the small bones he would get over it quickly.

  While he tried to restore the circulation to his hands, I went to the end of the bed and undid the ropes binding his ankles.

  He grinned at me. “She never see me again. Hokey dokey, I go.”

  But he wasn’t going. He was just sitting there, rubbing his hands and trying to restore his circulation. I couldn’t give a fig for his circulation. I knew La Donna was downstairs. The black widow spider who was going to devour her mate.

  “Pull on some clothes, man,” I hissed.

  He looked at me and suddenly seemed to realise that there was some urgency in the current situation. “My clothes…”

  “Where did she leave them?”

  Wouldn’t you know it? She had left the key lying around but we couldn’t find his clothes. I suspected she had taken them downstairs and put them in one of the bins behind the tavern. In the morning the bin would be emptied, and the evidence would be gone. I could have gone down and looked, but time was ticking ominously away. Instead, I opened a drawer and took out lacy black panties and threw them to him. He looked at them in disbelief.

  “How do I explain to Maria that I wear another woman’s knickers?”

  Good question. I had a better one.

  “How do you explain to Maria that you are dead?”

  This was an unanswerable argument, and he pulled on the panties. We were both thankful that La Donna didn’t go for G-strings. The panties were a stretch on him and I wasn’t sure about the black lace trim. But it was better than nothing. I tossed him one of her sweaters and as far as I was concerned he was dressed. It was up to him to explain his lack of a trousers once he was clear of the building.

  “Now go,” I hissed.

  He nodded, grabbed my hand and pumped gratefully, then pushed past me out the door. I had to grab him by the shoulders.

  “The window,” I said. “She could come up the stairs.”

  We were on the second floor and he didn’t like the drop. But eventually he exited that way. It helped that I manhandled him out. I held his wrists and lowered him as far as I could, but when I let go he s
till had almost two metres to go. He dropped like a stone, hit the ground with his bare feet, yelled an obscenity that I didn’t need to speak Croatian to understand, then limped out of my life.

  Now I had to get back downstairs before La Donna became suspicious.

  ELEVEN

  I needn’t have worried. She was still flirting with the guys at the bar and barely seemed to register my return. It was like watching moths at a light bulb. I knew that if any of them got too close they would be badly burnt. But she had the chemistry; they found her irresistible. How easy it must have been for her to have got her man upstairs and naked on the bed.

  The bottle wasn’t empty yet. There comes a time in the night when you should know you have overindulged and should leave a bottle without feeling the urge to empty it. But I have some Irish blood in me, and the few ounces of champagne were looking reproachfully at me. I swear it is true. I couldn’t leave them on their own. Much wants more, and even though I had drunk a bit more than I normally would, I still tipped the bottle by the neck and guzzled the last drops. Perhaps it was for courage.

  “Hey,” La Donna said, “you’ve emptied my bottle.”

  “I can get another,” I offered.

  That would have been ideal. Another bottle, another hour before she discovered who was not waiting for her upstairs. Maybe I could drink her into a stupor and she would never find out. Yeah, and maybe the Ayatollah and the Saudi king would share a bacon butty.

  For a moment she was tempted. “Maybe later,” she said after further thought. “First, we will have some fun.”

  I doubted it but didn’t see how I could put off the moment without triggering the fire alarm. Shit, why hadn’t I thought of that? It would have been so much easier than what I had actually done. Too late now.

  “The night is young. I can get another bottle and we can sit here and allow the anticipation to build up. Call it foreplay. Then we can go upstairs and really have fun. We meet so seldom. Why rush it? A woman as beautiful as you is like an expensive gift. You don’t rip the paper off like a child at Christmas. You peel it off carefully, layer by layer, unfolding the wonders at your leisure. Sit down and let me pour you a glass.”

  “You smooth-talking Casanova. Don’t you know that is the sort of talk that makes a woman feel all tingly in all the right places? Now I want to go straight upstairs.”

  The story of my life: when I want to talk a girl into bed I am laughed at, and when I want to sweet talk one out of bed, she practically rapes me. But if it had to be faced, sooner was as good as later. I did my best impression of a lascivious smile and stepped from the table towards her.

  “After you, my lady.”

  She smiled sweetly and walked towards the stairs. I followed her. Common sense told me I should walk the other way, and at a rate that would make an Olympic athlete jealous. But I still needed her help, so I was going to ride out the storm. A strategy was forming in my head. When in doubt, lie.

  We reached the corridor and she stopped at her door. It was closed and locked. I am never careless about the details. I had managed to leave no traces of my B&E. She took out her key and I watched as she inserted it in the lock, turning it. There was a click and she pulled the door out. She turned and smiled at me.

  “Let’s give him a show he will remember for the rest of his short life.”

  She turned back and entered the room. Time seemed to slow down as I waited for her reaction. There was a moment of silence that seemed to stretch forever. She twisted round and her face was white. She seemed to have aged a decade.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She stepped aside and I walked into the room.

  I did a double-take that Oliver Hardy would have been proud of, then faced her. “Where is he? What have you done?”

  “He was here when I checked an hour ago. He was tied up securely.”

  She pointed to the handcuffs still attached to the bedposts. They were closed, as if he had managed to wriggle his hands free. I had closed them after releasing him. Like I say, I don’t forget the details. You live and die on details.

  “Did you snap them on tight?” I asked, to reinforce the message.

  “Tight enough to hurt. This wasn’t my first rodeo.”

  I began to search the room. She looked at me like she might have looked at some dead thing her cat had left on the kitchen floor.

  “Do you really think he is hiding in the closet? This is not a cheap farce.”

  “He can’t have gone far. We can find him. It’s only been about forty-five minutes since you were up with him. Assume he waited ten minutes to make sure you were really gone. That’s thirty-five minutes. Then it would have taken several minutes to work both his hands free. You know that. It’s not easy, even if you know what you are doing. And once he had worked his hands free, he had to undo the feet, find his clothes and then sneak out without being seen. He can’t have more than ten minutes on us. We’ll get him back.”

  She looked at me, and I could see the hope in her face. It was struggling with the despair. I stepped towards her, reaching out. Then she stepped past me and opened the bedside locker. It’s the details that kill you in the end.

  TWELVE

  She moved so fast it was a blur. One moment she was looking into the empty drawer, the next she was facing me, a look of cold fury on her face. She drew her hand back and slapped me across the face, hard. She was wearing a ring and I could feel the flesh tear, the bead of blood beginning to roll down my cheek as the sharp sting of the blow made my head spin.

  Of course, I had seen it coming. I am a pro, and you don’t catch me that easily. But as I said, I have a code. And part of the code — a bonkers part, if you ask me — is that if a woman wants to slap me, I take it. If she had tried for a second one, I would have blocked it and spanked her. But she got the first one on the house.

  I put a hand up to my face and rubbed gingerly. God, it hurt. A slap is never devastating. It won’t knock you out the way a punch to the point of the jaw or the side of the temple will. But it hurts a hell of a lot more than a punch. More than once I have slapped a guy in a bar fight and got the knockout punch in while he dealt with the pain and disorientation.

  “What was that for?” I asked, still trying to keep up the pretence.

  “Why?”

  “Did you think I would just sit there and let you kill him?”

  “That’s what we do. We are killers.”

  “I’m not a killer. I am a bounty hunter. I bring them back alive if they want them alive. Dead if they want them dead. But that’s business and there’s a reason for it. You were going to kill that bastard just for your own sick pleasure. There’s a line, and you crossed it.”

  She looked daggers at me, but I held her gaze and didn’t back down. After a minute, she turned away. “I have to get out of here now,” she said.

  “He’s not going to talk,” I assured her. “He ran from here like a frightened rabbit, and I don’t think he’ll stop running until he has three countries between you and him. He’s terrified and he knows that if there is an investigation his wife will find out what he was up to. So you’re safe.”

  She had to believe that because I still hoped she would help me out.

  She paced for a few minutes then turned to me with a resigned smile.

  “It would have been a great night. I’ve been working so hard, and I really needed the release. And you have screwed it all up for me. But there is always Plan B.”

  She walked right up to me and stroked my face gently. It wasn’t stinging anymore, but now I could feel a tingle as her fingers danced lightly across my skin. I could feel a flutter in my stomach as her vivid blue eyes bore into mine. I could also feel the beginning of a flutter somewhere lower.

  And then she kneed me in the balls, hard.

  The following morning, I woke up with a blinding headache. It felt as if Michael Flatley was running rehearsals for Lord of the Dance inside my skull and some of the dancers were out of step. Badly ou
t of step. The sunlight filtering into the room grated on my eyeballs like sandpaper. I closed my eyes quickly and began to run a quick scan across my body. Nothing seemed broken and I wasn’t running a fever. Aside from the headache and general soreness — and a tenderness in my nether regions that could not be ignored — I seemed to be fine. But I couldn’t move. My arms and legs would not respond to orders from my foggy brain. Was I paralysed?

  It took a moment, but I figured it out. I was tied to the bed, spread-eagled. So I stopped struggling and tried to relax. I began with a breathing exercise, trying to get my blissful mindfulness to kick in. But it wasn’t working today. My head was pounding. How much had I had to drink the night before? I hadn’t had a hangover like this since my student days.

  As I tried to clear my head thoughts kept intruding, driving the calmness away. Fleeting images and dreamlike sequences flashed before me and I went with them. Slowly I began to remember the night before. It had begun with a kick in the balls. I remembered doubling over and hitting the bed as La Donna swept my foot from under me with a perfectly timed jujitsu move. Before I could begin to react she was on me, cuffing my wrist to the bed. After that I was at her mercy.

  Somehow I knew she wasn’t going to kill me. I had spoiled her plans, but we had a history and our history would not end like that. So had I begun to go along with her? My recollection was shaky through all the fog in my head. But I know she cuffed my other hand to the other bedpost, then removed my trousers. She must have done, because I certainly wasn’t wearing them now. Then she must have secured my legs.

  I would love to say I had an earth-shattering night, but I simply don’t know. I do recall an argument about the state of my equipment. She wasn’t satisfied. I tried to blame her. After all, she was the one who had kicked me.

  I have a recollection of her later popping a blue pill into my mouth, which I didn’t want to swallow. She had poured water into my mouth, then slammed my chin up to close it. She pinched my nose and it was a case of swallow or choke, so I swallowed. There was a second pill. The blue one was Viagra, of course. She had probably used that on her earlier victim too, so that she could play with him when all his instincts were screaming that this was no turn on. So what was the second tablet? Then I remembered that in the drawer with the cuff keys was a box of painkillers, Tramadol. The only reason I remembered was that Tramadol is not a common European medicine. Then it came to me — it is often used to dull feelings and prolong performance. She had really wanted something to play with.