One by One: A brutal, gritty revenge thriller that you won't be able to put down.

by Robert Enright

  It swung open, shielding Stan from the view and Shane pointed the gun right into the solid chest of Lucas Cole.

  He pulled the trigger.

  Lucas instinctively swung his left forearm up and swiped the gun-wielding hand to the side. Shane squeezed the trigger, but such was the speed at which Lucas had reacted, his gun had already moved.

  The bullet ripped a hole through Finch's neck, blood spraying out like a fractured water pipe.

  As he fell to his knees, coughing and spluttering blood, Lucas struck Shane with a hard right uppercut to the stomach and in one fluid motion, swung his elbow up and connected with a crushing blow to the bridge of his nose. He could feel it shatter, blood spraying down the sleeve of his leather jacket.

  Shane stumbled backwards towards the metal stairs, Tyrell a few behind him, and Lucas thundered forward with a powerful teep kick, the sole of his shoe making a colossal impact with the centre of Shane's chest.

  The blood-covered Irish man flew down the steps, his huge frame colliding at full speed with Tyrell who tried to step to the side. The impact sent Tyrell into the railings, his legs hitting them hard and he flew back over them.

  He hurtled quickly to the wet, cold pavement that welcomed him to the afterlife.

  Stan, seeing his best friend fall to his death, pushed the door to the side, screaming at Lucas as he lunged at him with his knife. The blade cut through the rain drops and caught Lucas across the cheek, slicing a cut that trickled blood. Lucas quickly responded by grabbing Stan's arms, the fighting training that he had and Stan lacked became instantly apparent. He twisted the wrist so the knife fell, clanging through the grates of the platform and tumbling down the metal steps below.

  He connected with a brutal knee to Stan's ribs, and as he hunched over in pain, Lucas lifted his knee again and ferociously drove it into Stan's face. Stan stumbled back woozily, his eyes watering at the pain his face was screaming. He sloppily threw a lame kick in Lucas's direction which was caught with ease.

  Holding the leg straight, Lucas brought his elbow down on the knee cap with all of his weight. He felt the knee cap snap with ease, the blood instantly spraying up the inside of Stan's jeans as it ripped through the skin.

  The howl of anguish shot through the night sky like a wolf at a full moon.

  He pushed Stan backwards, and he slumped hard against the metal railings, the pain becoming too much as he went silent. Lucas felt the metal structure shaking, police officers who’d been greeted by the falling body of Tyrell had begun to race up the fire escape.

  Lucas took a few deep breaths, knowing he had only one shot at his escape.

  A concrete-like fist caught him in the cheek.

  He stumbled back as Shane, his face a bloody, distorted mess stepped forward, rocking Lucas's ribs with another furious punch. Lucas tried to respond with one of his own, but Shane blocked it, catching Lucas again with another body shaking swing.

  Lucas shook off the weariness and Shane, standing straight with his fists up, looked every bit the boxer. He unleashed a barrage of fists at Lucas, who blocked them all by raising his forearms above his head, keeping his face protected by his elbows. Shane roared with anger, ducking down and launching his shoulder into Lucas's hard stomach. They fell back a few steps, the small of Lucas's back colliding hard with the wet, metal barrier.

  Shane's hands found their way to Lucas's throat, and he pushed as hard as he could on them, arching Lucas's back further over the railing, the world below beckoning him down with cruel fingers. The police officers further down noticed them hanging over the edge of the structure, Lucas could make out the crackle of a radio.

  As breathing became a struggle, Lucas looked up into the deranged eyes of Shane, the man’s face dripping blood from the wreckage of his nostrils. Lucas gritted his teeth and managed to stamp out with his foot, catching Shane in the shin. His attacker momentarily relaxed his grip to rebalance allowing Lucas to push up, his forehead colliding with the remains of Shane's already obliterated nose. As Shane stumbled back, Lucas pushed himself up, shook away the pain and then ran at Shane. He leapt upwards and grabbed the back of Shane's skull. He then tucked his knees up, so they rested just under Shane's chin and then dropped hard to the metal ground, dragging Shane face first with him. His spine slammed against the hard steel, rain drops leaping upwards like they were celebrating.

  Lucas heard the crack of bone above him and he watched as Shane limply slid off his knees and onto the metal grate they shared.

  Shane’s eyes were open and his body showed no signs of movement.

  Finch coughed a final, blood curdling grasp at life and then laid to rest alongside Shane. Stan was alive, but shock had sent him into a world beyond. Somewhere on the pavement, thirteen storeys below, Tyrell had painted the pavement red. Lucas hauled himself to a vertical base, straightening his blood-stained and rain-drenched jacket.

  His cheek stung, a small trickle of blood rubbing off on the back of his hand. His ribs ached, still absorbing the impact of furious Irish knuckles. He gently rubbed his throat, trying to reopen the airway that Shane had tried his best to close. He rolled the lifeless Shane down the stairs, his large body colliding with each step, the metal platforms shaking under his weight.

  Lucas looked over the railing, catching a police officer's gaze from a few floors below. The officer yelled up, a warning presumably, but it struggled to be heard through the overbearing onslaught of noise the night held. Lucas looked across at the building opposite, the fire escape that was similar in design but wasn't strewn with the motionless bodies of criminals. He took a deep breath and slowly backed away from the railing, through the fire exit door and back down the corridor.

  Starling cursed himself as he climbed up to the seventh floor, furious that he hadn’t spent more of his free time maintaining his fitness. He was in good shape, worked out regularly, but his stamina level was worse than he’d expected.

  He felt an irritating stitch burrow into his side as he clambered more stairs; three sets of seven stairs separated each floor, each one becoming harder to scale than the last. Below him, he heard the clatter of twenty-four police boots strategically making their way up the first few flights, the Armed Responses equipment shuffling as they moved.

  Starling rounded the bannister on floor eight, feeling the sleeves of his police shirt sticking as sweat poured from him. He carried on, scaling the last few flights two steps at a time. Lucas was here, on this floor and he was going to arrest him before anything else could happen.

  Before he was shot and killed by the Police, more than likely becoming a martyr to people who have lost someone they love.

  Before Lucas managed to kill another member of a family that could very well burn London to the ground while the Met sat back and watched.

  Starling was going to stop all of that from happening. If only he’d realised this back at the hospital, when he’d looked Lucas in his eyes and saw only pain and vengeance.

  Starling's boots landed on the thirteenth floor and he quickly pushed himself through the door into the corridor. He looked to the right, the windows of the door providing a peep hole into the office where Ashley hung sickeningly from the window.

  He looked to his left and there he was.

  Lucas Cole.

  He stood halfway down the corridor, rain drops falling from his blood-stained jacket onto the carpet. Beyond him, the fire exit door was open, a rectangle of wind and rain sweeping through into the building.

  “Lucas Cole. You are under arrest for the murder of…”

  Lucas ran towards the door.

  Starling gave chase.

  Lucas strode through the door, into the whipping wind and rain and then leapt. He landed his right foot onto the railing and then launched himself off. No sooner had he left the railing that Starling collided into it, stopping his momentum from carrying him over.

  He watched in amazement as Lucas hurtled through the night sky and Starling instantly raised his radio.

  “He
jumped. He fucking jumped across. I repeat, Lucas Cole has jumped across to the opposite building.”

  Starling let go of his radio, the Met vest falling back against his chest. He looked through the drizzling fuzz of the night at the motionless bodies that littering the stairwell, and at the blood running down through the gaps in the metal platform. A few police officers were painstakingly making their way up the stairs, stepping over the substantial barricade of a man who lay on the bottom step.

  Starling slammed his hands against the metal railing and yelled.

  “FUCK!”

  The world whipped by Lucas as he sailed through the air, watching as the metal staircases began to zip up and out of his line of sight.

  He heard nothing but the whistling of air. His stomach felt like it had turned inside out and then leapt up towards his windpipe.

  He collided hard with the metal railing, the pipe crashing into the side of his ribs. Lucas felt his ribs break instantly, and his arms straightened as he hung from the sixth floor platform. With all his might, he pulled himself up, groaning at the agony as he hauled his weight over the railing and dropped onto his back on the platform. He lay there for a moment, allowing the magnitude of what he had just done to sink in and then gradually pulled himself up. He looked up at the Hamden Trading Building, seeing the young officer slam his fists into the railing and project a profanity into the night sky.

  He took quick, shallow breaths; the impact of collision had driven the air out of his lungs. His right side ached completely, his broken ribs rattling inside his body. He slid his leather jacket off uncomfortably and wrapped it around his hand. Lucas punched the window in the wall in front of him, the glass shattering easily and falling to the floor inside. He eased himself through the window, chuckling at the difference between this entrance and the one he’d made when he’d visited the building earlier.

  Both his feet crunched down on broken shards and he removed the jacket from his fist and rolled it into a tight ball.

  He stuffed it under his shirt, like a fat costume, and then made his way down past two doors to the janitor’s cupboard which he’d had ensured was unlocked earlier that evening.

  The moment Starling's voice screamed from the radio, Bailey had barked his instructions to his officers. They embarked on the neighbouring building immediately, a number of the students who lived there greeting them in the corridors as they investigated the commotion in the streets.

  Under instructions from Bailey, Officer Hatton pulled the fire alarm, instigating a building evacuation. The Armed Response team filtered out of the Hamden Trading building, following each other with choreographed precision as they took their places, divided evenly between both sides of the steps leading up to the glass entrance of the building.

  Students filed out of their dorm rooms, some of them barely dressed and many of them loudly complaining about the disturbance. When they saw the armed officers, those complaints died down.

  Also in the building on each floor were members of the campus cleaning crew, employed to clean the dorm hallways and kitchens in the evenings as the students themselves couldn't be depended on for upkeep.

  Dressed in their navy overalls and holding cleaning materials, many of them didn't speak English and they just filtered out with the students.

  Hatton continued up the stairs with a few more officers, cautious that the murderous Cole was somewhere in the building. They opened the stairwell door to the sixth floor and slowly fanned out. A few more students emerged from their rooms, zipping up coats as they passed.

  They searched the entire floor, Hatton inspecting the shattered glass from the broken window that Starling had reported Lucas had broken into.

  The only thing they found of note was an open janitor’s cupboard which for some reason housed an empty sports bag.

  Sgt. Bailey stood and watched from the street as students filtered out through the doors, he wanted them away from the building before the armed officers swept the building clear. He had been in regular contact with Officer Hatton, who was impressing him with her calm nature and sense of responsibility. They hadn't located Lucas yet but he was in there.

  Bailey was looking forward to putting him in the back of the car and sending him off to a lifetime in a cell.

  “What's happening?”

  Bailey turned in surprise.

  “Fletcher? What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “I heard the radio transmission.”

  “Whatever,” Bailey dismissed it. “We got him.”

  “Lucas? Where?”

  Bailey pointed at the building, where students continued to pour out, along with some more navy-clad cleaners.

  “He jumped across. The man is a maniac and he’s trying his hardest to get away.”

  “He jumped?”

  Bailey nodded. He pointed to the Hamden Building, up towards a broken window where a woman's body was being hauled back up through the gap.

  “He hung that poor girl from the window and then according to Starling, he jumped from one fire escape to another. Can you believe that?”

  “Starling? He went in?”

  Bailey's face flashed with a grimace. His uniform was soaked through.

  “He did. I'm waiting for him to get back down here so I can stick my foot up his arse.”

  Fletcher looked around at the chaos, the overbearing feeling of guilt weighing on his mind. All of this for Lucas, and all because he gave him a name.

  Because the police hadn’t done anything for Helen.

  He watched the flood of students congregating on the nearby street, a rush of excitement spreading through them all as they watched armed police officers tactfully enter the building.

  He saw a large number of cleaning staff, some of them smoking and discussing the events with puzzled expressions.

  So many people were on the street. The majority of the officers were in either of the buildings.

  Fletcher realised he was holding his breath and only relinquished it when he was almost certain that Lucas was long gone.

  As the excited chatter of students filled Lowton Road while they filed out of their homes, one of the cleaners slowly ambled to the outside of the sizeable group of people. Dressed in navy overalls that did little to hide his large gut, he drew his baseball cap down over his face, blocking out the cold rain. He trod carefully around the group, making sure to stay on the outside.

  Amidst the excitement and confusion, the portly cleaner quietly slinked off down one of the side streets, out of the eye-line of any police officer.

  He walked slowly at first, but once he rounded the next corner, his pace quickened until he was a safe distance away from the flashing blue lights and the thrilling police stand-off.

  Lucas stopped and removed his baseball cap, welcoming the refreshing downpour on his hair.

  He unzipped the overalls, stepping out of them and tossing them into the green bin sitting on the side of the road. He pulled his leather jacket out from under his shirt, flapped it open and swung his arms lazily into it, his ribs groaning with pain.

  Lucas briskly walked across the road and turned onto the main strip of shops. He immersed himself with the pedestrians there, carefully looking around for any sign of law enforcement.

  He made his way to the nearest tube station and got on the first train to anywhere.

  Starling had stood on the fire escape for a few minutes, willing himself to relive the moment again but to be just a few seconds faster.

  He couldn’t fathom leaping like Lucas had just done, finding it almost disturbing that the man's grief could lead him to take such a drastic risk. Or that it could lead him to hang that poor woman for the world to witness her death.

  He went back into the building, already sure that Bailey would make an example of him for breaking rank. Starling didn't care; he didn't want to build a career based on doing the wrong thing. He would take his licks and he would pick himself up and be better for it.

  Maybe Bailey would even respec
t him for it.

  He dismissed that notion as a joke and followed the few police officers who’d entered through the stairwell door. They’d pushed open the double doors, revealing two paramedics standing by with a wheeled stretcher. Two other officers were carefully standing by the shattered window, their boots planted firmly on the glass-ridden carpet. They were gently hauling in the cable, hand over hand until one of them could reach his arms under the lifeless ones belonging to Ashley Drayton. They pulled her delicate body through the window just as Starling pushed through the doors himself, walking past empty rows of desks that would normally be humming with activity.

  They laid her down on the stretcher, the paramedics discussing with the various emergency servicemen what had happened.

  Starling looked at her and immediately felt his world collapse. His heart began to beat at a furious rate, slamming against his ribs as his mouth began to taste the vomit that was trying its level best to escape his mouth.

  He dropped his radio on the floor, his feet dragging, the energy needed to lift them sapped from him.

  His face went a ghostly white as he stared at her, tears worming from the corners of his eyes and slithering down his already wet cheeks.

  He tried to hear his father’s voice, wanting to hear that he had done well. But he couldn't locate it.

  He didn't deserve it.

  He stared at the young woman as the paramedics wheeled her past him.

  Everyone else saw Ashley Drayton on the stretcher.

  He was the only one who knew her as Annette.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  Ashley was led through the double doors to a resounding silence in the street. Her body, covered in a sheet, lay motionless on the stretcher as the two paramedics wheeled it between the police cars to their ambulance. Officers stood solemnly, watching the person they were there to save be carted off to the after-life.

  The swathes of students mumbled to each other, many visibly shocked at having witnessed a dead body.