Necropolis Rising Read Online Free Page A

to their advantage. Sure, what he had in mind wasn’t perfect. But he knew if they could get past the cordon it would definitely work.
    “ You want to enlighten me?” Suzie’s face suggested a degree of irritation. Her smooth forehead was now furrowed and her mouth adopted a pout that had O’Connell yearning for a moment alone with her, a moment of intimacy where he could hold her to him and stroke the nape of her neck in the way that made her giggle and sigh in one hit.
    But Suzie would never show her feelings for him here. Here there was only the job and getting it done. Her professionalism was one of the many things he loved about her.
    She shouldn’t have turned out so organized. As a woman Suzie should’ve turned out a mess. When O’Connell had first met her she was high on coke and threatening to throw herself from a multi-storey car park. He’d watched, fascinated as her magnificent body teetered on the parapet as she yelled curses at the twinkling, smog-hazed lights of the city skyline.
    Much of it was aimed at Toby Hanks, her father, a man who enjoyed too many evenings reading his little girl bedtime stories about monsters before clamping a hand over her mouth and proving that the real monsters are sometimes the very people in which we place so much trust. Suzie’s mother often lay in a stupor downstairs in their lounge as Toby Hanks lay in bed with his “little girl”, telling her never to talk about their “little secret”.
    O’Connell had found all this out on that night; watching her on the multi-storey, a symbol of beauty and rage and self destruction. And on that night he made a promise that had stopped her from jumping. That night he promised this beautiful, coked-out-of-her-brain woman that he would make things right.
    At the time she’d laughed. But what he promised to do, in exchange for her climbing down and talking to him for a few more minutes, was that he would find Toby Hanks and bring him to her and make him beg for forgiveness.
    And then, O’Connell assured her with unerring conviction, he’d put a gun to her abusive father’s head and put a bullet in his brain.
    At first Suzie thought he was joking, and then she saw his deep brown eyes: unwavering, honest and mesmerizing. If anyone ever asked her when she’d fallen in love with Kevin O’Connell she would’ve said it was the moment she saw those eyes; and the truth living within them.
    “ Hey,” Suzie’s voice slapped him from his reverie. “Stay focused, O’Connell.”
    “ I am focused, Susan!” He tipped her a wink, knowing how much she hated being called her Christian name. “Stu, tell me we’re on.”
    The big man clicked off his phone and walked back to the group.
    “ You bet your fuckin’ Porsche, we’re on!” he laughed.
     
    ***
    The same room – a different plan. It was two hours later and the crew were standing is a semi-circle checking each other over.
    Their clothes had been replaced by green military fatigues; O’Connell adjusting the packs on the webbing lashed about his shoulders and waist.
    “ Are you sure this is going to work?” Clarke said doubtfully as he rolled the cuffs of his tunic up several times before he could find his arms.
    “ Don’t fret, Clarkey,” Stu jibed. “You might grow into it.”
    “ We ain’t all fat fucks like you, Stu,” Clarke grumbled.
    “ Knock it off,” said O’Connell sternly. “I’m going to run the brief, and I want you to listen up. This is a new plan and it has holes. I don’t want any of us falling through 'em, got that?”
    The silence told O’Connell that they’d all gotten it pretty good.
    “ We’re using the uniforms to move around. Stu has called in some pretty big favours tonight and got us enough kit to walk the walk. Downstairs we’ve got us some serious transport to make the going a little easier.”
    “ What you got us, Stu, a tank?” Clarke scoffed.
    “ I didn’t have enough time,” Stu said with the kind of seriousness that