Vengeance (Twenty-Five Percent Book 3) by Nerys Wheatley Page A

had been so close. He’d had Boot in his hands.
    Shaking his head, he went back inside. This wasn’t over. It didn’t matter what happened to him now, as long as he got Harvey Boot.
    The door to the pantry was open and Simmons and the other guard were gone. Chester must have found them and gone straight to Boot’s room. Alex carried on through the dining room to the door leading to the foyer and looked through the window. Two guards stood by the staircase, rifles in hand. One had a torch and was moving it back and forth. The candle was still on the table by the sofa, but it wasn’t giving out much light. Without the torch they’d be almost blind.
    Alex waited until the beam was aimed away from the door then burst through, sprinting across the space to the reception desk and throwing himself behind it. Shots rang out, but they were nowhere near him. He crawled on his stomach to the edge of the desk and peered around it. With the beam of the torch pointed above the desk, Alex took careful aim and fired. The guard holding the torch yelped. The light vanished.
    “What the hell...?” one of them said.
    “He shot the damn torch!”
    “He’s behind the desk! Shoot the desk!”
    Alex launched himself away from the wooden reception desk as it was shredded by rifle fire, rounding a corner leading further into the building two seconds later.
    He briefly considered reconsidering his determination to not kill anyone but Boot. He’d be up those stairs in moments if he simply shot the two guards. He discounted the idea immediately. He wasn’t that far gone. Not yet. 
    “He’s down here!” one of the men yelled. “Bring torches!”
    Boot must have still been upstairs. Of course he wouldn’t leave just because one man was after him. Boot was too conceited for that.
    His mistake.
    Leaning around the corner, Alex fired three shots in quick succession. On the third the candle blew off the table, plunging the room into total darkness.
    “That’s it, I’m done,” the guard on the left said, backing towards the stairs. “I’m not staying down here in the dark. Let them send Jessup or the others down.”
    Alex stepped out from his cover, careful to not make a sound. The guard backing away had his rifle clutched in one hand while he felt behind him with the other. His back foot hit the bottom step and he stumbled, landing on his backside and uttering an expletive.
    “Harris?” the remaining guard hissed.
    Alex took advantage of the noise to move. Sprinting for the first guard, he slammed his palms into his chest, sending the big man flying backwards into the wall.
    “Ron?” Harris said. “Ron!”
    Ron had landed at the base of the wall and was lying on his back, waving his rifle back and forth frantically. “Someone bloody get down here!” he screamed. “He’s here!”
    Alex dashed back to the dining room as Ron opened fire, spraying the lobby with bullets. He ran for the kitchen, hearing glass shatter behind him.
    He couldn’t help but smile. “And that, ladies and gentleman, is how you create a diversion.”
    Through the kitchen and back outside, Alex was about to start up the fire escape stairs when he heard a sound. He stopped and looked around, searching the bushes and trees and waste containers dotted around the service area at the back of the hotel. He could have sworn he’d heard a sound, indeterminate, but human. But he could see nothing. After spending fifteen precious seconds searching for the source, he returned his attention to the fire escape, dismissing it as the wind or an animal. There was no time for distractions now.
    Taking the steps two at a time, he reached the top in seconds, grasped the handle on the fire escape door, and pulled. The door didn’t open, but an ear piercing oscillation of sound exploded around him. So the alarms did have battery backup. He grasped the handle tighter and tugged at the door with all his strength. It held out for two seconds before flying open, throwing him off