Randall #03 - Sherwood Ltd. Read Online Free PDF

hair and shoulders. I stepped out of the car and ran with him to the back of the building. He unlocked a door and gestured me into the darkness.
    It felt like one of those dumb-teenager scream movies—and this was the scene where they went into the crypt to be eaten by mutant zombies. But I’d thrown in my lot with these people, and I was going to have to go inside, zombies or no zombies.
    Liam led me along creaky wooden floors and down a brick-walled hallway that led to a cavernous room with barred windows. Large machines formed menacing silhouettes against oily yellow light from the street lamps outside. Men’s voices rumbled from behind double doors. Somebody let out a yell.
    Liam draped his damp arm over my shoulder and shouted in the direction of the double doors.
    “Just Liam and me girlfriend here.”
    He took me into a smoke-filled cafeteria, lit by a couple of elderly fluorescent light fixtures that buzzed and sputtered on the grimy ceiling. A group of scruffy men sat on greasy couches and assorted plastic chairs, mesmerized by a snowy television that broadcasted the soccer game that had been playing on the car radio. The men barely looked up as we entered.
    “Here she is, mates, me girlfriend, um, er… Camilla.”
    This interested no one but a bald, gray-bearded man who straddled a chair in the center of the room. Square and muscular, with a patch over one eye, the man held in one hand a nearly empty bottle of Jack Daniels, and in the other—a chef’s knife.
    A very big knife.

Chapter 9—Welcome to Sherwood
     
    The man with the eye patch turned and stared at Liam and me, scrutinizing me like an item for sale.
    “Camilla?” His voice was larded with scorn. “We’ve got ourselves a bleeding duchess, have we?” He took a swig of the whiskey. “Where the fuck is Peter, Rasta-boy? I’m done waiting. And tell him his whiskey is witch’s piss.” He jumped up and came at us, waving the knife. I couldn’t tell if he was waving his weapon so near Liam’s throat out of homicidal menace or drunken stupidity. No one showed much fear, so I assumed he was simply drunk.
    I wondered where Peter was. His absence was now bordering on rudeness.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. I had no idea if this was how these people entertained themselves, but the knife was simply too much. “I’m terribly jet lagged and that’s making me nervous. Would you mind putting it away?”
    The man gave a roar and aimed the knife at me. His powerful forearm, adorned with a tattooed anchor, looked as if it could do serious damage, with or without sharp, pointy kitchen implements. I tried to divert the blade from the vicinity of my throat with a finger against the blunt side of the blade, but that made him angrier.
    “Your duchess thinks this is funny, Rasta-boy.”
    He felt the sleeve of my coat with the back of his finger, then gave me a one-eyed stare that froze my blood.
    “Not a bad Burberry knock-off,” he said. “And those McCartney boots look almost genuine. You get them off Peter?” He turned back to Liam. “Rasta-boy, you couldn’t pull a posh bird like this. She’s Peter’s tart, ain’t she?” He felt my coat again. “I hope that twatface didn’t tell you this is the real thing?”
    I couldn’t have spoken, even if I’d had a response to give this madman. My knees had turned to custard. I held onto Liam, whose face was a mask of stony calm, although every muscle of the arm that circled my shoulders had gone tense.
    “How much time left?” Liam said to the television watchers, whose faces showed similar indifference to the armed and dangerous fashion policeman.
    “They’re going to chuck it any minute,” said one, lighting a cigarette. The others said nothing, only glancing for a moment from the television that transfixed them. Apparently nothing could pry them from their game, even a homicidal maniac.
    The man moved his knife back toward Liam.
    “They’ve all been getting mysterious calls on their mobiles.