Hunted by Emlyn Rees Page A

look.’
    The rattle of the Kid’s keyboard stopped.
    ‘OK, bingo,’ he said. ‘I got the hotel’s schematics in front of me now.’ A hiss of his cigarette. ‘Roof to roof’s a no-go. The building’s a stand-alone. And you go trying any of those fire escapes and you’ll get spotted for sure.’
    Spotted or shot, the Kid meant. Police marksmen would already have had plenty of time to get in position. There’d soon be helicopters deployed too. With infrared detectors.
    No point in trying to hide anywhere here in the hotel either, he’d already decided. The second the police had the building secure, they’d bring in portable heat-signature detectors and dog teams that between them would soon sniff out anything bigger than a rat.
    Danny felt the walls closing in on him, as the prospect of prisonswelled up in his mind. He thought about Lexie. About what something like that would do to her. Get caught and he knew she’d never speak to him again.
    Again he cursed himself for not having listened to his doubts about the meeting. Again he cursed Crane for his shitty intel. Again he wondered who his US government contact had been.
    ‘OK, Plan B,’ said the Kid. ‘If front, back and top are out, then maybe we should try down …’
    ‘Down where?’
    ‘Basement. I got some kind of delivery bay showing at the back of the building. Alongside the restaurant terrace. Steps leading up into Arlington Street. Might be a way to slip out there. Across into an office block. Even better, looks like there’s a sewer maintenance point down there …’
    Danny thought of darkness. Of cold and fear. Of a place beneath the ground he’d once been to long ago. He forced the thought away.
    ‘How do you know it leads anywhere?’ he asked.
    ‘I don’t. And I’m still looking for other options. But right now I reckon this is the best shot we’ve got.’
    Danny weighed up the possibilities. The thought of trying to sneak out of some delivery bay and up into an adjoining street that was most likely already covered by snipers had to be a last resort. Even say he did then make it into some nearby building, if the police spotted him doing it, all he’d really have achieved was to swap one rat trap for another.
    But the sewer … That might not yet have occurred to the police. Worth a try, then, even if the thought of it was like a punch to the gut.
    Another of the Old Man’s rules surfaced in his mind: The longer you take to make a decision, the less time you have to act.
    Danny pictured his father’s face the last time he’d heard him say it. The Old Man had been half eaten by cancer, about to board a round-the-world ship. As they’d hugged each other goodbye, they’d both known they’d not see each other again.
    ‘OK, let’s do it,’ Danny said, rising, ready to move, knowing that even a sliver of a chance was better than none.
    ‘Twenty-five feet to the right outside of the Gents, and there should be what’s marked down here as a function room. Go straight through that and on into the stairwell at the end of the next corridor.’
    Danny moved fast, stop-starting outside each of the open doorways he passed. He heard a radio playing through one. Jimmy Hendrix, a part of his brain recognized. ‘All Along the Watchtower’. It was one of his favourite tunes, but it was nothing but background interference to him now.
    The function room was right where the Kid had said it would be – which boded well for the accuracy of his schematics and the existence of the sewage maintenance point downstairs.
    A dozen laptops and iPads glowed on a burnished mahogany boardroom table. A Regency couple stared out from a huge oil painting on the wall. Avast candelabra hung from an ornate ceiling, illuminating a meeting without people. Half-drunk glasses of water. Jackets on the backs of chairs. A coffee cup in pieces on the floor.
    One of the room’s three wide bay windows overlooking Piccadilly was open, indicating that whoever had been in