All or Nothing by Stuart Keane Page B

Time is money, but I can spare you ten minutes. I don’t want you being any less than a hundred per cent for the next phase. A lot depends on you getting there.
    After venting his thoughts, the second man popped an E into his mouth and washed it down with bourbon. He placed his glass down next to his open sachet of E tablets which had spilled onto the desk.
    He tapped his keyboard and watched his screen light up to show four different room interiors. The entrance hallway where his subject lay on the floor, next to a pool of her own vomit, was one of them. So was an IT room, a locker room and a vast interior occupied by a huge round table. Tapping a second key brought up every room in the building, a total of thirty seven separate interiors.
    He sat back and waited.
    Soon.

THIRTEEN
     
     
     
    Francisco worked fast.
    The new shirt he’d put on felt tight, unpleasantly constricting his adrenaline-pumped body. The sweat from his pores soaked the material immediately. He had changed his trousers so that he now wore full length cargo-bottoms with deep pockets. Unbuttoning these, he placed the gun’s magazine clips in them, three in one pocket, and two in the other. He stuck the Beretta in his waistband and tied his hair back with a rubber band. He slid the strap for his samurai sword over his shoulder and across his chest, so that the blade sat neatly along his back. Muscles rippled against his shirt, he could feel the blood rushing around his body, like fire coursing through his veins.
    Leaving the bedroom, he headed for the stairs. Maintaining his footsteps so he didn’t make any noise, he reached the bottom in little more than twenty seconds. The gun and sword were heavier than he thought.
    CRASH!
    His television shattered against the wall ahead of him. Glass, plastic and wires showered him, most harmlessly, while some fragments cut the exposed skin of his forearms. Francisco fell back on the stairs, partially to use the handrail for cover, but mainly as an instinctive reaction to the shock and fear. Putting his arms over his head, he glanced through the gaps in the handrail, looking for his attacker. He felt blood seeping from his forehead.
    A dark figure stood in the archway leading to his dining room. Francisco frowned. From his position he couldn’t see if the intruder was armed or not, but he assumed he was safe for now, otherwise he wouldn’t have the chance to look at his foe. He would already be dead.
    “What do you want?” he called out.
    The figure stayed silent and didn’t move. Francisco swore he could see the person flexing his huge arm muscles. He tried a different tack:
    “Take whatever you want, just don’t hurt me, okay?”
    Still silence, and again the figure remained motionless. Francisco stood up and walked out onto the living room floor, hands in the air. Play it innocent, he thought to himself, don’t let on that you have a gun, and definitely don’t let on that you’re up for a fight.
    “It’s all yours, okay? Just...”
    “Drop your weapons,” ordered his intruder.
    The cool gravelly voice alarmed Francisco, it sounded as if his foe had gargled with barbed wire. It alarmed him more that the man knew that he was armed at all. Especially when his weapons were concealed behind him.
    “I don’t know what you mean, I’m...”
    “Drop your weapons or I’ll gut your wife and fuck your kid.”
    “Wha—”
    “Drop your weapons, or I’ll gut your wife, probably open her up along her Caesarean wound, using a pair of rusty garden shears. Maybe I’ll use a scalpel dipped in salt, to see how she screams, eh? And your kid sure is pretty!
    “You wouldn’t.”
    “Just try me. Go on, I dare you.”
    Francisco remained silent, scared. His heart pounded in his chest. He felt like vomiting and crying all at once. Reaching down to his waistband he pulled out his Beretta and dropped it on the floor in front of him. The carpet ate up its weight as it landed with a dull thud.
    “Now the