Relentless Read Online Free Page A

down. The few remaining pedestrians in the station panicked and ran. Konrad holstered the gun and retrieved a knife from his belt—the same one he’d pressed against Grant’s throat in the apartment. Letting go with his other arm, he slammed his fist into Grant’s face once again. Something cracked this time, but Grant couldn’t be sure if it was his head or the ceramic of the wall. He fought the rising bile in his throat as well as the blackness creeping into the edge of his vision.
    Konrad clutched Grant’s wrist with a powerful, vice-like grip. The blood drained out of it quickly, and soon Grant could no longer feel it. Konrad curled Grant’s other fingers into a fist, until only the middle ring finger remained extended.
    ‘‘Heh,’’ Grant spat deliriously, eyes half-open. ‘‘I’m giving you the finger.’’
    Konrad looked into his eyes. ‘‘No,’’ he said, ‘‘I’m taking it.’’
    His blade touched the side of Grant’s finger, just below the ring, where his finger met his hand, and he started to slice.
    Grant’s head bucked violently and he clenched his eyes closed tight, gritting his teeth. A blinding pain ripped through his head, and his whole body seized.
    No!
    Grant heard Konrad gasp and then the whistle of something flying through the air. The man’s grip relaxed and when Grant opened his eyes, Konrad was staring, neck craned, across the subway station where something glinted on the wall.
    The pain faded as quickly as it had come, and Grant saw his one opportunity. He kneed Konrad viciously in the groin with every bit of strength he had left. Konrad doubled over, coughing and wheezing, then collapsed.
    Grant staggered away from the wall, towering over the man. Despite his pain, he felt an unmistakable rush of satisfaction.
    ‘‘ That was my kneecap!’’ Grant shouted in a blind rage. ‘‘How’d it feel?!’’
    His eyes shifted to the gun attached to Konrad’s belt and lingered there. He couldn’t seem to slow his breathing, giving in to a crazed fit of wrath that erupted from him, swelling through his entire being.
    Konrad spoke in a wheeze, sensing Grant’s next action. ‘‘Think carefully . . .’’ he whispered, ‘‘about your next move.’’
    Grant returned his focus, completely incensed, to the man on the ground, who continued speaking while clutching his privates, his face beet red and tears in his eyes. ‘‘I know who you really are,’’ he wheezed with a slight bob in his eyebrows. ‘‘And if I can’t kill you . . . I’ll settle for those you care about most.’’
    Grant was a bomb ready to explode, his chest swelling equally from the exertion of standing and the outrage he felt. ‘‘There isn’t anyone I care about,’’ he seethed through gritted teeth.
    He kicked Konrad across the face, as hard as he could, and the man on the ground was out cold.
    Grant braced himself against the wall, winded and stunned that he’d just beaten this man—whom he could only assume was some sort of mercenary or assassin. Despite his pain and fatigue, the fight had felt quite natural, even intuitive. Most of the time, Grant found he hadn’t even known what he was doing until it was done.
    How could that be?
    A handful of people—those who hadn’t run at the sight of Konrad’s gun—still hovered, watching him. But his attention shifted away from them to a space across the tracks, where a larger group of people were huddled before a round pillar made of solid concrete. A man in a navy blazer shifted to one side, and Grant saw there, sticking out of the pillar, the hilt of his attacker’s knife. The blade was buried deep inside the column.
    He hesitated, confused. He couldn’t recall how the knife had gotten all the way over there. He thought back to the fight . . . Grant had closed his eyes only for a second when the headache struck, and when he opened them, Konrad’s hand was empty, his attention drawn elsewhere.
    A shot of blinding pain from his leg wrenched