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spraying out over me. He clutched at me with his free hand, getting a grip on the cloth at my right shoulder, while I jammed his weapon hand under my left elbow. I nutted him again. Then I twisted, using the pivoting action to wrench him around and power him at the wall nearest the doorpost. As he was slammed against the wall, I disengaged quickly, stripping the machete from his hand but relinquishing half of my shirt, which he clung to for grim death. It wasn’t a fair trade for him. So I gave it him back.
    Wedging my left forearm in his throat, I drove him tightly to the door frame, allowing him no room for escape and leaving him wide open for the blade as I forced the tip in under his ribs. He fought to push me away, but I thought of the boy’s bandaged hand, and gritted my teeth. I leaned my weight in, shoving the blade deep into his body.
    A flashlight beam played over us.
    Distantly I recalled there was still one man unaccounted for.
    But I was too busy contending with my opponent to worry about him now. The kidnapper still refused to die. He clawed for my eyes with both hands. I squeezed my eyelids shut, pulled out the machete then instantly drove it in again. Then again. The fingers fell away from my face. I wasn’t content that he was fully dead. I rammed the machete in a fourth time and felt it slide with little resistance through his body until it drove into the wall with a dull thud. I gave it an extra bit of pressure and left the man hanging on the blade like a display in a psycho killer’s trophy room.
    Stepping away, gasping for breath, I stood there for a moment. Gravity and the weight of the man’s upper body did their combined work. The blade sagged, was pulled from the wall, and the kidnapper splayed on the floor before me. I felt no satisfaction at his death. I was only relieved that his machete had completed its final work, and this time it wasn’t on a boy’s fingers.
    Thinking of Stephan, I turned and saw Rink pull him from the broken window. Rink looked at me, and his head jerked in warning.
    Again light played over me.
    Swinging around I saw the fourth man standing in the doorway. He was looking not at me, but at his dead buddies. But then he brought up the flashlight again and it settled on my upper body.
    He cursed, and I braced to take a bullet.
    Yet the man spun on his heel and took off down the corridor, calling out in fright.
    He was no Usain Bolt.
    I could have caught up to him. But two things halted me: for one he was running away and no threat. The other was Rink’s command.
    “Let’s get these kids outta here.”
    I n recollection, it had to have been the guy with the flashlight who’d got a good look at my tattoo. From the way in which he’d fled the scene, crying out for assistance that would never come, I didn’t think for a second that he was the man now pressing Jolie for my whereabouts. A more likely scenario was that when the remainder of the gang had heard about what had gone down at the abandoned holiday complex, they’d got the description from their final man on the ground. We never identified the men in Miami, but because that was where the money drops had gone down, it was apparent to me that they were the key players. The thugs on the island were simply that. Men who didn’t shy away from chopping off the fingers of rich young American kids, or burying at sea the boat’s crew snatched alongside them. The Miami connection were the brains of the outfit, and better placed to discover who was responsible for snatching their prizes away from them.
    Although few people were aware of my tattoo, or what it signified, it wasn’t exactly a secret either. Recently I’d even seen a photograph of the tattoo design on the Internet, and wondered which of my old Arrowsake colleagues had been stupid enough to post it. It was only after I realigned the image that I understood the pic had been taken while its wearer was horizontal, lying dead on a morgue slab. The number of my