White was trapped. On his left was the Range Rover, and on his right was the parked taxi.
Damn it!
Behind the Range Rover, another SUV screeched to a halt. Men jumped out of the vehicle just as White realized the taxi had a sunroof. Thankful for the warm weather and the fact that the driver had left it open, White exited the vehicle through the sunroof amid the loud objections of the driver. He jumped from the roof of the taxi to its front hood, followed by a quick step onto the parked taxi’s bumper. White jumped off the parked car and landed on the sidewalk, not wasting any time looking behind him to see how many men were after him.
A small group of tourists had gathered at the base of the steps leading to the hotel and were blocking White’s direct escape path. White sprinted through them, accidentally shoving two young men aside, their unfolded tourist map flapping in the air as one of them fell backward.
He didn’t see the hotel doorman until it was too late. Homing in on him like a torpedo, the burly man tackled him. The doorman’s shoulders smashed into White’s exposed rib cage, knocking him off his feet and sending both of them rolling into the street. The doorman was the first to stop his momentum and scrambled to his feet. He came at White and telegraphed a right hook. White dodged to the side and buried his fist almost to the wrist into the doorman’s stomach. The man doubled over and fell face first into the street, gasping for air like a fish out of water.
White dashed across the street and ran between two passing cars. Vehicles honked and swerved as their drivers performed last-second maneuvers to avoid running him over.
He had no time to think. No time to assess what had just happened. He ran. But in the back of his mind, there was a little voice that refused to go quiet.
Someone betrayed you, the voice said as White’s feet continued to pound the pavement. Shouts coming from behind told him the men chasing him were also being slowed by the pedestrians.
White took the fact that he hadn’t been shot in the back as good news. Clearly, someone wanted him alive. Glancing behind him, he saw five men running. Two of them made a hard left into a side street, probably in an attempt to cut him off farther down. There was nothing for White to do but run like hell. He had to slip away, but this wasn’t a city he knew. He’d studied the area around his hotel prior to his arrival, but it remained unfamiliar to him, especially now that darkness had fallen.
The humidity was stifling. White could feel his sweat soaking through his shirt and trousers. His lungs were burning, but he kept pushing. He was now four or five blocks away from his hotel, and the sidewalks were filled with cheap street vendors, tourists crowded in front of them looking for a bargain. Both sides of the street were lined with shops: a men’s clothing store, take-out restaurants, and coffee shops. White crossed the street again, aiming for an alleyway he’d spotted on his left next to a pizza place. He sprinted between speeding bicycles and vehicles, narrowly dodging them as he moved.
From his open car window, a taxi driver yelled something at White that he didn’t understand. The man was looking straight at him, waving his fist menacingly in the air as he accelerated to block White’s path—until the driver had to press the brake hard, almost running his vehicle into the rear bumper of the black Mercedes sedan in front of him. White cut across a last string of cars and hit the sidewalk on the opposite side at full speed. He entered the alleyway sprinting and almost fell on his ass, his right foot losing its grip on a shiny oil puddle. Off balance, his body slammed into the wall of one of the buildings, costing him all his forward momentum.
The alleyway was narrow, dirty, and barely large enough to accommodate the width of a MINI Cooper. White had hoped there would be back doors to the retail shops and restaurants on both sides that he could access, but this wasn’t the case. There was nothing but two plain brick walls and a couple of windows far too high to be reachable.
“Damn it,” he said out loud as he started to run again. The last thing he wanted was to get surrounded in the alleyway.
An instant later, White stopped dead in his tracks. The two men who had peeled from the main group two street blocks away emerged at the end of the alley.
Behind him, the three other men, all dressed in dark clothes, blocked his escape route.
Out of breath, his chest heaving, White had a decision to make. Either his pursuers had been given the order to kill him, or they hadn’t. One way or the other, he wasn’t going to let himself get taken without a fight.
The smaller group of two men was quickly closing the distance. Both were approximately the same height as White, but he had at least twenty pounds on them. That was the good news. The not-so-good news was that compared to the three men behind him who were panting hard from the chase, these two looked as cool as cucumbers. As they got closer, White got a better look at them. They were identical twins. Both were slim but muscular and had their hair cut tight. Their eyes were set in a cold, hard stare as they closed on White. Instead of stopping, like most people would when confronted by five men, White summoned up his strength and sprinted toward the twins.