“Are you all right?”
“There was a little more bleeding. Those safety pins aren’t supposed to be ripped out after you’ve got them in place. But I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”
“You did fine.”
Melody looked in the shadows to where Matthew Goddard’s body lay partially obscured by the couch.
“Why did he want to kill you?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Will you tell me when you can?”
“It would be highly classified.”
“Are you a spy?”
“Not anymore. I’m going to take you home.”
They left the hotel suite. McCall picked up a cab on Sixty-Sixth Street, and they took it downtown to Jane and Eighth Avenue. McCall wanted to escort Melody up to her apartment, but she shook her head. She was more composed now.
“Getting to know you could be hazardous to a girl’s health.”
“I could have told you that.”
“But it’d be worth it.”
Melody kissed him softly on the lips, then got out of the cab and ran up the stairs to her building. McCall gave her time to get up to her apartment. He saw the light come on at her third-floor windows. Then he told the cabbie to take him back to the Liberty Belle Hotel.
* * *
Samantha Gregson sat in the little breakfast nook in her Washington, DC, town house, sipping a glass of cabernet sauvignon. Her boss had not called her when he had said he would. That meant Matthew Goddard was dead. There was no other explanation.
Sam took another swallow of the cabernet and gazed out at the Capitol Building in the hazy drizzle. She knew what she had to do. She would get in touch with other members of the Memento Mori movement. She would find out what steps were being taken to bring the assassins together. Before then, Samantha Gregson made a vow to Matthew Goddard, a man she had worshipped, albeit from far.
She would kill Robert McCall.
* * *
When McCall got back to his hotel suite, Kostmayer and Jimmy had been there and gone. There was no sign of Matthew Goddard’s body and no blood on the polished wood floor. Goddard’s Walther pistol had also been removed. McCall would call Control to tell him what had happened, but that was all. He wouldn’t allow himself to be drawn into the hunt for the rogue Company assassins and what kind of a world conspiracy they were protecting.
That’s what Control and The Company were for.
McCall didn’t turn on any lights. He poured himself a shot of Glenfiddich and sat on the couch in the moonlight and sipped it. He picked up his iPhone. He had thirty-seven messages. All asking for his help. Some would sound genuine. A handful would be legitimate victims who simply had nowhere else to turn. Such as Emily Masden and her mother, Laura, Linda Hathaway and her daughter, Gemma, Melody Fairbrother, and Norman Rosemont.
A chime denoted McCall had a text on his private cell line.
He accessed it.
The text had obviously been sent in haste:
Odds against me. Still a prisoner in NK. Come and get me and others. Granny.
McCall stared at the text. Kostmayer had been wrong. Granny was still alive. Somehow he had escaped and got a text through to McCall. Maybe Granny had been recaptured, or maybe he had used a phone belonging to one of the guards without his knowledge. No one in that North Korean prison camp would have known McCall’s private phone number except Granny.
The Equalizer could not ignore this request for help.
He picked up his cell phone and called Control at The Company HQ in Herndon, Virginia:
“I need to be in North Korea in two days,” McCall said. “Solo mission.”
ALSO BY MICHAEL SLOAN
The Equalizer: A Novel
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MICHAEL SLOAN is the author of The Equalizer and its sequel, Killed in Action. He has been a showrunner on such TV series as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, and The Outer Limits. He has also written and produced numerous television movies and features. He created the series The Equalizer for Universal TV and CBS, and produced the film versions starring Denzel Washington. Michael is married to actress Melissa Anderson, and they have two children, Piper and Griffin. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Also by Michael Sloan
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
KILLED IN ACTION: AN EQUALIZER NOVEL. Copyright © 2018 by Michael Sloan. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by Jeremy Fink
Cover photographs: man © Collaboration JS/Arcangel;
alley © Laura Junka/Getty Images
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-09867-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-09868-9 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250098689
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First Edition: January 2018