Hunter Hunted by Jack Gatland (best romantic books to read .TXT) 📕

The least she could have done was make a funny answerphone message.

Out of the car, DC Davey now started reluctantly running again, her frizzy ginger hair blowing out in the wind as she pushed her glasses back up her nose. She’d been here several times over the last couple of days, so unlike Declan on his first time there, Davey knew the quickest and exact route to Ward 4F, entering through the Stepney Way entrance, running past the Air Ambulance kiosk and through the double doors on the far side. Here she ran up some stairs and took another right to the elevator, already out of breath, running up to it, yelling ‘hold the doors!’ as they closed and sliding into the cramped enclosure between three burley men in bomber jackets.

The button to the fourth floor was already pressed, and she went to say nothing, but there was something off about the surrounding men, and so she pressed the button for the floor above, smiling at the man closest to her. He was close shaven, giving him a bit of a ‘spray tan Jason Statham’ look. The man to her right was dark-haired and Asian, while the man behind her, from the brief glance she’d given as she entered had looked to be the oldest of them all with peppered grey hair cropped into something similar to a buzz cut, but at the same time not. Which was lucky, because buzz cuts were really tragic.

The button for the ACCU dinged, and the doors opened. Smiling, Davey stepped back into the elevator, allowing the men to leave, watching them as they entered the shared waiting area and walked off to the right. She held the <> button for a moment, keeping the doors open for a count of five and then, peeking around the door and seeing they were now out of sight, she slipped out of the elevator and moved quickly across to the main door, letting them walk across the bridge corridor and through the other end’s doors before making her own move to the end. There had been a police officer there the last time she’d been there; through the double windows in the door she could see that he was still on duty, rising to his feet to confront the three men, who seemed by their postures to be quite relaxed at this, pulling out warrant cards and showing them. The police officer relaxed, and now seemed to chat happily to them, indicating to the left, and the corridor that led to Ward 4F.

But there was still something wrong here, and once they moved on Davey entered the junction, waving her warrant card, the three men already around the corner and out of sight.

‘Call backup now, armed if possible,’ she whispered to the officer, turning right and entering Ward 4E. It was almost a mirror image of the other ACCU ward, running parallel with it to the doors at the other end. Running faster now, the adrenaline fuelling her legs, she shot past the confused consultants and nurses in the central area and slammed through the double doors, now in a white walled corridor that led to the stairs and the rear entrance of Ward 4F. Arriving at its double doors, she stared through the window into the central area.

She was too late.

As she looked through the pane of glass, she saw the three men walk into Monroe’s side room, one of them stopping and standing outside as a guard.

She went to open the door, steeling herself for a fight she likely couldn’t win but then, a moment later, the other two men walked back out, looking around the ward, now looking confused. Davey ducked back, so that they didn’t see her and almost punched the sky in delight.

Monroe and Doctor Marcos weren’t in there.

She probably would have done this, if the hand hadn’t snuck around from behind and clamped over her mouth.

‘Shush,’ Doctor Marcos said as she pulled Davey through another set of grey double doors, entering a side room, barring the door behind her. “What are you doing here?’

‘There’s three men here to kill Monroe,’ DC Davey said, seeing him sitting in a wheelchair, an IV bag on a pole above his head. ‘Should he be out of bed yet? I guess you got my messages?’

‘No,’ Doctor Marcos said, already grabbing Monroe’s wheelchair and moving off towards the back of the room. ‘To both questions.’ They were in a sterile-looking storeroom, which looked very much like a kitchen in a school or college. Davey assumed it was where the meals for the forty odd ACCU patients were made.

‘How many?’ Monroe asked, his voice dry and raspy. ‘Out there?’

‘Three,’ Davey replied. ‘But they looked military. Or something.’

‘Something?’

‘I think they had warrant cards,’ Davey explained, opening a door so that Doctor Marcos could wheel Monroe through, closing it and barring it behind her. ‘The officer on duty seemed to be okay with them.’

‘Everyone these days has a bloody warrant card,’ Monroe muttered. ‘How did you know about this?’

‘DS Kapoor,’ Davey said. ‘There was an explosion at a pub. Some guy drove off, the car was connected to Rattlestone and there was a written order that DI Walsh saw that said to kill you.’ She paused. ‘How did you know, if you didn’t get any of the messages?’

‘Billy and that DI Frost came to visit,’ Monroe explained. ‘All smiles, said they were going to catch my attacker. I told them I couldn’t remember anything. Thing is, I remembered everything, including the fact that it was Frost, or whatever his bloody name is that attacked me.’

There was a hammering on a door back from where they had started.

‘They’ve worked out where we are,’ Doctor Marcos shifted the wheelchair as they started running down another corridor, this time heading through what looked like a radiology waiting room.

‘Great, more running,’ DC Davey breathed before starting after them.

Every day, Nasir Gill took his lunch at 1pm, and made his way