Cold Heart Page 24

  Out on the first-floor landing Estelle took her time to gaze down the main staircase until her tired and bloodshot eyes hovered over the two dead bodies lying halfway down. As far as she could see, none of the men she’d disposed of had been Luke. None of them. Which meant the smug, cocky, murdering arsehole was still lurking around outside, somewhere.

  She had no idea how much time she had until the police showed up and took her broken, beaten arse into custody—or shot her dead, on sight, if she was lucky. She knew she wasn’t in any fit state to escape anywhere on foot. And the thought of what her employers would do to her over her little AWOL side adventure wasn’t even worth thinking about now. In fact, she’d deliberately put those thoughts straight to the darkest and deepest regions of her mind right along with all the other horrid and morbid shit she’d carried out in her life.

  She knew though, more than her whole life’s worth, that she wanted to kill that sick son of a bitch Luke with her own bare hands and before the authorities got to either of them, if she could. And just like her feelings towards Clark’s eventual fate, the justice of the Scottish legal system wasn’t going to cut it for punishment in her mind for what those fuckers had done to her little sister. She would make Luke pay. She’d kill him herself and make it as slow and as painful as she possibly could, if the powers that be allowed her the time to make it so.

  Estelle began dismounting the stairs. Painfully slow. One at a time. She held her last remaining gun out in front of her. She couldn’t even remember if there were any bullets left in the damn thing, although she felt relatively sure there might be at least one. Well, she hoped to Christ there was at least one.

  From the open doorway of the study room at the end of the first-floor landing, the final thug slowly but surely appeared from the shadows of the room. Estelle caught his movements late as he silently approached the bannister, raised his arm and threw, with ferocious accuracy, his first knife straight for Estelle’s head. She turned fast just as the knife whizzed past her chin, missing her face by millimeters before stabbing straight into her left shoulder, right up to the hilt.

  The thudding pain was excruciating and almost sent her hurtling down to the bottom of the stairs. But she gripped the banister hard and held herself upright before quickly raising her gun hand to fire, but the last remaining thug had already darted back behind the study room door. In the back of her mind, she knew without any shadow of a doubt that if she got her aim exactly right, she could blow a hole right through the door and hit the slippery fucker somewhere, anywhere.

  She guessed his position and took aim. The gun clicked, then clicked again. It clicked several more times before Estelle realized she was firing nothing but stale air from the gun’s empty chambers.

  Suddenly the thug emerged from behind the doorway, knife in hand and smirking at Estelle. Before she could even think about her next move, he began sprinting fast along the first-floor landing and down the main staircase, knife at the ready, straight towards her, ready to carve her up. With no time to lose, Estelle ripped the other knife right out of her shoulder blade, just as the thug dove straight into her ribs, rugby-tackling her broken and battered body all the way down to the bottom of the staircase.

  With what little strength that remained in her body, Estelle somehow managed to both turn the thug around and stab him in the rib cage mid fall. The man howled in pain as he landed on the marble floor at the bottom with Estelle miraculously on top. He’d somehow taken the brunt of the fall and lay badly winded now.

  Estelle ripped her knife from his ribs and made her move to stab him in the throat this time but the thug blocked her fatal blow at the very last moment and somehow began fighting back. The two wrestled furiously all over the marble-tiled floor, both desperately trying to stop the movement of the other one’s knife.

  The thug finally managed to pin Estelle down with her back to the cold hard floor, gaining the upper hand on her depleting energy. But still, from somewhere deep inside, Estelle somehow managed to hold his knife hand, way up in the air and away from her throat with the final flicker of strength and determination left in her body.

  Suddenly, Estelle remembered a small hidden knife tucked in against her ankle inside her boot. But she realized too that the only way to reach that knife would be to let go of the thug’s hand and possibly suffer another painful stab wound or fatal blow to her upper body. The moment the thought entered her mind and with nothing left to give she had no time for hesitation. She knew what she had to do. It was a high risk move with a high-risk reward: her life and the chance of seeing this shit show of a hornet’s nest she’d stirred up, through to its bitter and twisted end.

  In a split second she released her grip on the man’s knife hand. He hadn’t expected her to give up so easily, and with the force he’d already pressed down upon her, he could only slam the knife straight down, back into her shoulder blade again.

  Chewing her lip and swallowing the excruciating pain, Estelle reached deep down inside her boot just as the thug pulled his knife out from her shoulder and readied himself to slam the blade straight through her neck this time. But Estelle had already pulled the small flick knife out from her boot. Before the man had time to blink, she flicked the blade out from its handle and pierced it straight through his throat, jamming it hard into his wind pipe.

  The man’s eyes widened with shock and fear then finally defeat. In the space of one final, dying heartbeat he dropped his large knife to the ground. With all her remaining strength, Estelle ripped the blade of her small knife in a zig zag motion all the way along his vocal cord, from one side of his throat to the other.

  Blood splattered across her face as the man coughed and spurted out more blood followed by bile, and bits and pieces of his insides from the huge opening in his throat. He fell down lifeless, right on top of her, blood seeping down her hoody and onto the marble-tiled floor.

  Estelle took a deep breath and for the next few moments listened to nothing but the silence in the air all around her.

  Chapter 22

  Outside, Luke carefully watched and eagerly listened to the action coming from within the house, all from the comfort and safety of behind his closed car door. For the past few minutes, he’d looked agitated as hell as he listened to the sound of his men dropping like flies from behind the old stone walls. Until it had all just suddenly stopped… He couldn’t hear a single damn thing coming from inside the house anymore. Not even one of his men screamed in pain or rushed outside to inform him that they’d taken the bitch down and he could come inside now to finish her off.

  There was nothing. Not a peep. And it both annoyed him and terrified the shit out of him at the exact same time.

  In the back of his rational mind, Luke knew he should’ve just driven away, right there and then and cut his losses. Disappear from Glasgow and start another criminal organization somewhere else, another town, another place possibly down south. By Christ, he had the contacts for it. The police would arrive there any second too. If he stayed in the vicinity any longer, he’d no doubt be flung into prison for the remainder of his days just for being caught carrying a damn firearm, let alone trying to explain the death, chaos and carnage that surrounded him at every single glance inside and outside of the property.

  But Luke wasn’t listening to the rational side of his brain that screamed at him to get the hell away from there. To cut his losses and leave. Instead, he let his emotions take over like he always did. And there was no better example of that than while he sat in the stadium of his beloved Glasgow Rangers FC cheering them on at all costs. Do or die. No surrender.

  He wanted that bitch dead more than anything else in the whole damn world. Even more than to see his beloved football team, the Rangers FC, his absolute passion and blood in life, win another damn trophy again. Nobody got the better of him. No one. If he must be imprisoned for a lifetime inside a five-star Scottish prison in exchange for taking the time to end her life, just like he’d ended her sister’s, then so be fucki
ng it. He could live with that. And prison wasn’t so bad these days anyhow. Especially in this country and this day and age. Christ, he’d be king of the joint in under a week.

  No, he had one more final trick up his sleeve for that bitch Estelle. A last resort and a last hand card trick that he didn’t think he’d ever have to play in a million years. But fuck it. Here he was. We all have to put our lives and reputations on the line at some point, he mused. And today Luke was finally done with living his life on the edge of a knife. Today he would jump off the razor-sharp blade and into the abyss of no return, just to see what lay in wait at the very bottom.

  “Right, fuck this!” Luke raged in frustration. His mind already made up in a matter of seconds. He would go into that damn house and take care of the bitch himself.

  Luke climbed out of his car and hurried around to the boot. He popped the trunk open and grinned mischievously at his small arsenal and array of weapons inside. From the bottom of the pile he pulled out his favorite weapon of them all. A weapon he’d only been able to have the pleasure of using in practice once way up in the solitude of the Scottish Highlands: a fully loaded submachine gun.

  “This ends right fucking now.”

  Still lying at the bottom of the stairs, Estelle pushed the lifeless and bloodied body of the last remaining dead thug fully off her chest and stomach. At that same moment, Luke appeared on the front porch, hovering behind the wreck of a front door still hanging off its hinges, with his brutal new toy tucked firmly into his good arm.

  As soon as he saw Estelle still alive and scrambling onto her feet at the bottom of the stairs, his eyes lit up with a rage and hatred that he’d never felt within himself before, ever. Even during an old firm derby football match between his beloved Glasgow Rangers and their bitter archrivals way across town in the east end of the city, Glasgow-Celtic.

  When he watched Estelle climb up onto her feet like a little injured doe, he felt like he was about to explode on the spot.

  When Estelle saw Luke, she sucked in a deep hard breath and pushed all of her physical pain and hurt to one side and leapt back onto the staircase. She turned and bolted like an Olympic hurdler, climbing and clawing all the way up to the top and the first-floor landing.

  Luke unleashed a deafening roar and let rip with his machine gun as he followed Estelle’s rapid movements with a never-ending splattering spray of bullets. Before she managed to scramble up onto the first-floor landing and out of Luke’s line of fire, she miraculously only took two bullet hits to her upper right calf and lower leg.

  Luke continued firing, even up into the ceiling directly above him and beyond the stairs. Plaster, rubble, and burst radiator pipes began spraying and pouring down all over the ground floor of the house. His bullets had completely destroyed the downstairs internal décor for sure.

  Luke snarled and roared again like a man possessed. He then mounted the stairs and began to follow Estelle all the way up onto the first floor. Trigger happy as hell with his machine pointing out at the ready, he casually stepped over two more of his dead men, their lifeless bodies still lying in the middle of the staircase.

  “Hello, Estelle. Come out. Come out wherever you are.” Luke teased in a sarcastic tone as he finally reached the top of the landing. He glanced left then right. He gazed into the open doorway of the study and saw more of his men lying dead.

  In another blind rage he let rip again with the machine gun, all over the front side of the house: into the study and the neighboring rooms nearby. He felt like Rambo, but to anyone else he just looked like some angry crazed tattooed thug with a machine gun.

  With only half his ammo remaining, Luke stopped firing and casually checked the rooms for any sign of life. All he could find were more dead bodies of his fellow gang members, but none that resembled the female form of Estelle.

  Luke spun around one hundred and eighty degrees. He made a bee line back along the first-floor landing and towards the rear of the house. Both bedroom doors were lying wide open. On the carpet of the second bedroom, just outside the doorway, he could clearly make out drips and stains of blood. It had to belong to her. It just had too.

  Luke smiled to himself and imagined the wounded Estelle cowering and hiding somewhere inside. He’d definitely shot that bitch somewhere on her lower body, he felt sure of it. He took a quick and cautious peek inside the huge second bedroom. Immediately he saw Clark, his so-called employer for his recent race hate attacks around the city, lying sprawled out against the far wall, right beside the bathroom ensuite. He looked dead as a door nail, covered in blood from head to toe with even more thick blood stains smeared upon the white carpet all around his legs and backside.

  So, Estelle had taken some revenge and retribution already, he smugly thought. But he was glad Clark was dead. He didn’t like the posh upper-class MP prick one bit.

  Luke stepped cautiously into the bedroom. He glanced all around every which way he could, making sure the coast was absolutely clear. When he felt safe to proceed inside, he made his way slowly over towards Clark and the locked ensuite bathroom door. As he approached, he aimed his gun directly at the door again, ready to shoot straight through the thick oak wood with no care in the world for whomever or whatever lay hidden behind it.

  But then thinking better of making another panicked attack, he decided to kick the door open instead while holding his gun at the ready. If the badly injured Estelle was indeed hiding inside, then he didn’t want to go all gung-ho on the bitch. He at least wanted to look her dead in the eye while giving her his best smug grin, letting her know that he had prevailed and come out on top on this occasion, before he riddled and filled her body with more lead than you’d find in the entire dated plumbing system of Glasgow’s inner city.

  Luke kicked the door open with such force that the damn thing slammed off its hinges and fell hard against the bathtub, before falling down and covering half the tub with its wooden bulk.

  Clark’s wife Victoria couldn’t help herself from screaming out from underneath the covers that she and her son Philip were still hiding beneath. Luke unleashed a sinister grin. He took a hold of his gun with his bad hand, still securely tucked into its cast, and stepped further into the bathroom. With his good free hand, he whisked away the bed covers and grinned even harder when he saw Victoria and Philip both cowering at his presence inside the bathtub.

  Luke lowered his gun and pointed it straight at Phillip’s head.

  “So, this is the root of all our fucking problems then, isn’t it?” Luke stated in a calm but mischievous manner. He raised his voice for the whole damn house to hear.

  “Come out in five seconds, Estelle, or I will redecorate this lovely clean bathroom with your little blind bastard nephew here!”

  Silence engulfed the room. Luke sighed and began counting down.

  “So be it.”

  Suddenly, Clark, barely alive and still resting up against the wall beside the ensuite, slowly raised his gun and pointed it straight at Luke’s groin. Before Luke could even fathom what the hell was happening, Clark pulled the trigger with what little life and energy he had remaining.

  But nothing happened. Nothing at all.

  Luke unleashed a nervous chuckle. He smiled wildly down at Clark before turning his machine gun right at the dying MP. Without any further hesitation in the slightest, he blasted the shit out of him, filling his entire upper body with over a dozen bullets.

  While the sound of the machine gun fire exploded out in all directions, Estelle slithered out from underneath the large king size bed in the middle of the room. She carefully rose back up onto her feet and slowly but surely began to sneak, calm and composed, right up behind Luke. Every single deliberate movement she made was simply hidden by the noise of the rapid machine gunfire.

  Estelle raised her blood-stained flick knife and without pause, stabbed the length of it hard, straight into the back of Luke’s thick neck muscles before whipping his shocked and paralyzed body right around to face her. She yanked the ma
chine gun out from his grasp. Then without even pausing for breath, she grabbed Luke by his broken arm and swung him violently hard over towards the rear bedroom window, before chucking him all the way through it.

  Luke went head first through the glass. He rolled and bounced awkwardly down the conservatory roof before landing in a broken heap on the stone garden path below.

  Estelle glanced out through the shattered window. She seemed a little surprised to find Luke still alive and the handle of her flick knife still sticking out from the back of his neck as he began making his slow, crawling, painful escape towards some bushes and trees at the back of the garden.

  Estelle frowned. She was too tired and sore to climb out of the window after him. So, she limped and hobbled casually back down the main staircase of the house instead before making her way out through the conservatory and into the huge back garden.

  Luke wasn’t even a quarter of the way towards his destination when Estelle finally caught up to him. He was still crawling as best he could with the use of only one arm. His right leg looked clearly broken from the hard fall. But his moans and groans were growing more intense by the second as he struggled to move any further.

  Still limping and hobbling painfully herself, Estelle stood over Luke’s upper body. She crouched down, kneeling hard into his back as she ripped out the flick knife from the back of his neck. Blood squirted out and Luke squealed like a pig with the sharp pain of the violent action. Without words, Estelle pressed his face firmly down into the mud and grass. She took a hold of his remaining good arm and slid her legs over his upper back and shoulders while sitting upright on the lawn, and just as she’d done back in the toilets of the football stadium almost twenty four hours earlier, she cracked back his other arm, right the way over his upper back in the most unnatural angle possible, as she rolled back hard herself, snapping his arm right out of its socket.