The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (learn to read books .TXT) 📕

Colt .45 out from the belt beneath his jacket and levelled it at Tuk’s head. ‘I’ll give you ten seconds to tell me where she is.’

The door opening took Blair by surprise, and brought Tuk a flicker of hope. Blair took a step back and glanced towards the door, without removing Tuk from his sights. A small, beautiful, Eurasian woman, all in white, stood framed in the doorway. If she was surprised at what she saw, she gave no sign of it. There was a vacant quality about her eyes. ‘Grace!’ Her name slipped involuntarily from Tuk’s lips.

‘Don’t fucking move, lady!’ Blair shouted at her.

Tuk took courage from the interruption. ‘Don’t be stupid, Blair! If you harm me you’ll never find her!’ He glanced triumphantly at Grace, and felt his bravado ebb before the cold, dead stare she returned.

‘You are looking for Lisa?’ Her voice carried the same detachment as her eyes.

Blair glanced warily from one to the other. ‘You know where she is?’

‘I’ll take you.’

‘No!’ Tuk screamed.

‘But we may already be too late. He is having her killed tonight.’

Blair tensed. A shudder ran through him and his eyes glazed as he turned them back on Tuk. ‘Goodbye, Tuk,’ he said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

I

A white light filled her head. Somewhere, beyond the clouded edge of consciousness, soft music dripped like rain. Voices drifted across the horizon like shadows, dark and lacking definition. Out of the mist a face emerged, ugly and grinning, eyes burning with hideous desire. She felt hands touching her, warm and damp, like soft breathy kisses, and she rose towards the distant vague outline of the ceiling before tilting forward and revolving slowly through the palest of blue skies. The same grinning face appeared time and time again, ballooning out of the blue. Then a door opened on to darkness, and for the first time she felt the vaguest sensation of her own body, limbs moving through cold air. Somewhere inside lay the seed of consciousness, a tiny eye straining to focus on a reality hidden by thick suffocating folds of obscurity.

The touch of cold stone, beneath bare feet, worked slowly through her, until she was consumed by it. The lights that drifted by overhead appeared like frozen pinnacles. Rough brick grazed her arm and felt warm, a heat that grew until it burned, searing through her icy interior.

Slowly, so slowly that she was hardly aware of it, the inner eye was enlarging its perception, focusing her mind first on a sense of her own nakedness. A hand gripped her arm, propelling her forward, though she still felt as though her feet were gliding over the concrete beneath them. She turned her head through a lengthy arc and saw the brown hand that held her white flesh, and the dark pinpoint needle marks below. Cold water dripped from the ceiling and touched her breast like an icy finger, and with a sudden unbearable perception she heard the splashes of a thousand drips echoing off wet stone, the clatter of leather, and metal studs, on concrete.

Another door opened, this time on light and space. A cavernous echoing vault supported on pillars. A distant pool of light grew closer, drawing her into its centre until, at its vortex, she was compelled to stop. The hand that held her arm relaxed its grip and fell away. She was aware simply of standing now, her nakedness bathed by the cold white light. She heard the scuffle of feet, the clearing of nervous throats. Somewhere, behind the growing perception of the inner eye, she heard her own voice screaming. But there was no sound. Her lips did not move.

Time seemed to drift along the edge of consciousness, like a sailboat on the horizon, remote and elusive. There was no way of judging its speed or size or distance, before a gradual clearing of the mist in her eyes dispelled the illusion, and the focus of her horizon drew closer – darkness beyond the ring of light, along whose edge she saw, for the first time, the watching faces. Hands raised glasses to dry lips. Dark eyes consumed her with an inner fear of their own unnatural lust. She stared back blankly at the brown, hungry faces, with only a distant awareness of what it was they wanted of her. A frown crinkled her brow – something familiar in one among the watchers, fat and ugly, a far-off recollection of his mouth, twisted by passion, looming over her, close hot breath against her, the sweet smell of opium. And yet there was something comforting in the familiarity. She tried to smile, but found that she could not.

Suddenly, and yet slowly, fingers grasped her hair and jerked her head around. Dead eyes gazed into hers. A uniformed arm rose with measured intent, a gloved fist at the end of it rising above her, before crashing down and striking her hard across the cheek. She felt no pain, but a wave of weakness ran through her. She felt her legs buckle at the knees, but the hand still grasped her hair, she could not fall. The eyes that stared into hers gleamed now with unspeakable malice. Another blow, this time striking her full in the mouth. Again there was no pain, but as the hand released her and she fell, she saw her own blood, crimson, splash across the white of her legs.

II

Row upon row of dark deserted warehouses drifted by. Blair stared anxiously from the window, searching for light, some sign of human existence. He turned towards the Eurasian woman seated beside him, and wondered at her calm. She was almost serene. It only increased his disquiet.

‘You’re sure you know where we’re going?’ He had surrendered himself to her completely, as had all the lovers she had known. But it was not passion that won his surrender. Like a drowning man, he had been forced to grasp the only hand which held out the hope of survival. Lisa’s survival.

Grace still held, in her