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

‘Will there be someone at the bottom?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’

He pushed her across the floor. ‘Get up against the wall!’ He dropped to the floor, pressing himself into the boards, and levelled his gun at the brick that drifted slowly upwards. It was a full minute of painfully slow downward progress before a black rectangle opened up from the floor and rose before them. Blair tensed. The light from the lift fell out to illuminate a long empty corridor. There was no one there. Blair scrambled to his feet and jumped down before the lift had come to rest.

As Grace followed the sound of a gunshot echoed dully from beyond the door at the end of the corridor. ‘Oh, God!’ She felt as if the bullet had pierced her own flesh.

With acid burning in his throat, Blair sprinted the length of the corridor. As he kicked open the door, another shot rang out.

A ring of men drew back from the centre of light, startled faces turning towards the door. A man in a brown uniform and black knee-length boots stood under the light, a gun smoking in his hand. Lisa was on her knees, battered and bloody, her face almost unrecognizable. The man had fired two blank shots, the prelude to a live third round, the climax of the performance. His left hand grasped her by the hair, his right pressed the barrel of his gun against her temple. He too had turned a startled face, his concentration broken. Blair raised his pistol and, two-handed, fired three shots in quick succession. The first two bullets struck in the chest, the third in the face. The man in the brown uniform spun away out of the light, like a pirouetting ballet dancer, dead before the smack of his head hitting the concrete reached them. His gun clattered off into darkness and Lisa fell in a lifeless heap.

Grace appeared at Blair’s shoulder, a moan of anguish on her lips. She pushed through the ring of stunned faces, dropped to her knees and drew the naked Lisa into her arms with tender hands. Blair advanced in grim silence, pistol still levelled, his eyes flicking back and forth among the men who had been denied their pleasure.

‘If she’s dead I’ll kill every last one of them!’

Grace whispered, ‘She’s alive!’ And she brushed blood away from the girl’s face with the back of her hand.

‘Then let’s get her out of here.’ Blair moved, cautiously, into the light. With his free hand he helped Grace pull Lisa to her feet. Lisa groaned, her eyes rolling, as she drifted back to consciousness. Blair saw the great red weals across her chest and back, inflicted by the discarded riding crop that lay at her feet. He wanted to put a bullet between every pair of watching eyes.

‘She needs a doctor quickly.’ The urgency in Grace’s voice blunted his anger and he turned his attention back to the battered girl.

Between them they half-carried, half-dragged her out of the circle of light. As she passed him, Grace’s eyes met the General’s dark gaze. Her mouth curled in hate as she drew a gob of spittle on to her tongue and spat it into his face. He did not flinch. Blair lifted Lisa into his arms and hurried out of the door and up the corridor towards the lift. Grace lingered for just a moment, before breaking the General’s gaze and darting after him.

When the door slammed shut on the basement, the General wiped the spittle from his face and took two steps into darkness to stoop and retrieve the fallen revolver. His face darkened by the fury of humiliation, he pushed the others aside and strode to the door. Light rushed towards him from the lift at the far end of the corridor. Blair, the girl supported on his arm, stood under the light, fumbling with the button to set the lift in motion. The silhouette of the retreating Grace had almost reached him, a white shadow in the dark corridor. The pulley motor surged into life, jerking the cables tense and shaking the frame of the lift. Blair glanced up as the General raised his arm to shoot. Grace was no more than two paces away. The shout of warning died on his lips as the gun flashed in the dark and Grace fell forward, lightly, like a wounded bird. Blair fired blind at the figure at the end of the corridor, but the jerk of the lift sent the bullet whining harmlessly off into space. As the lift rose he crouched to his knees and held out his arm in a futile gesture of help. Grace lifted her head, her face dimming in the fading light.

‘Tell her . . .’ Her voice, though feeble, still rose above the drone of the motor. ‘Tell her I’m sorry.’ And she vanished in the darkness below as the lift rose into the shaft.

She heard the steps of many feet before a hand pulled her over and she found herself staring up into hungry eyes intent now on fulfilment. The General’s fat lips spread across white teeth. Blair heard the shots before the lift reached the ground floor, each one like a fist in his solar plexus. He closed his eyes. ‘Jesus God,’ he whispered.

Grace’s chauffeur stood by the car as Blair emerged from the shadows. Her eyes widened at the sight of the battered and bloodied girl in his arms. ‘Where is La Mère Grace?’

‘Dead.’ The finality of that one small word struck him as if for the first time. He laid Lisa carefully in the car, and turned back to the Thai girl who stood small and fixed, eyes brimming. His hands grasped her shoulders and he felt her frailty. ‘You must get us away from here. Fast.’ She nodded mutely. He said, ‘What about the curfew?’

She shook her head. ‘It is not a problem.’

As the car