Dragon Head - A Beatrix Rose Thriller: Hong Kong Stories Volume 1 (Beatrix Rose's Hong Kong Stories Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

distraction. She opened the rear door and slipped inside. The limousine was a riot of bad taste. It was equipped with three mirrored LCD TVs, stainless-steel headliners, and twinkle fibre optics on the ceiling and around the full-length champagne bar. It had two large bench seats facing each other and another that extended between them along the side of the car that was flush against the kerb. Gao was sitting in this seat, his back to the action outside. The girls would have been able to notice it had they been looking, but one was occupied with trying to open a bottle of champagne and the other was nuzzling into Gao’s neck.
    The girl with the champagne saw her. “Hey!” she protested.
    Beatrix heard Chau shut the front door and the engine throbbed as he fed it revs.
    “Get out!” the girl said to Beatrix, and then screamed as Beatrix showed her the Glock.
    “Goodbye.” Beatrix nodded to the open door and waved the gun at them.
    The girls quickly got the picture. They grabbed their clutch bags and stumbled out into the street.
    Gao cursed in Cantonese and started to rise. Beatrix turned the gun on him.
    He sat down again.
    She crouched and reached for the door, yanking it shut just as Chau let off the handbrake and pulled away.
    #
    BEATRIX SAT in the rear seat at ninety degrees to Gao, but close enough to reach out and touch him should she need to. She regarded him and carried out a quick assessment. He was angry and confused. Beatrix could sympathise. He had lost money at the roulette wheel and now his plans for the rest of the evening had taken an unexpected turn for the worse.
    He jabbered angrily at her in Cantonese.
    Beatrix ignored him.
    Chau accelerated and the automatic locks clicked, securing the doors from anyone outside the vehicle. Keeping the gun trained on Gao’s head, Beatrix turned and looked back through the rear window. She saw the chauffeur on the side of the road, shaking his fist at them. The two doormen were next to him, one of them with a cell phone pressed to his ear. They needed to move quickly. They would report the hijack to the police and a car as ostentatious as this would be easy to find, even in a city that was as flush with excess as Hong Kong.
    They rushed by the parking lot. Beatrix craned her neck around and saw the crippled Discovery. It was crawling onto the road, all four tyres completely flat. The guards were out of the game.
    Beatrix would have been more confident if she had been driving, but she couldn’t have trusted Chau to keep Gao under control. This could only be a two-person job, and he had to be the driver. She needed him to follow through.
    Gao spat out another burst of invective that Beatrix was unable to translate. She didn’t need to. She could guess what it comprised: indignation, threats, bluster. She knew Gao’s type. He was an important man, used to getting his own way. This would be an outrageous imposition. Perhaps he thought that he could shout and threaten his way out of it? If he did, he was mistaken. Next, he would try to buy his way out, asking her how much she wanted. That wouldn’t work, either.
    He fired another volley of abuse at her and, when that had no effect, he tried to raise himself out of his seat. Beatrix was ready for that. She turned her hand ninety degrees, reached across the cabin and drove the butt of the Glock into his nose. He fell back onto the seat again. Blood ran out of his right nostril onto his upper lip. He reached up with his fingers and dabbed at it. She turned her wrist again so that the barrel was pointing straight at his head and put her left finger to her lips. Quiet . He looked at her with newfound fear and was silent.
    The Hummer was too big and the traffic too dense for Chau to drive quickly. He proceeded with care instead, following Jaffe Road onto the tangle of on and off ramps that gave access and egress to the main highway that ran east to west across the island. He picked up speed a little, passing the Wan Chai