The Rig 3: Eye of the Hurricane Read Online Free

on the stairs. She stepped down one step at the time, resting on each one. It was torture, and she felt herself getting dizzier and dizzier each time. But she managed to get down.
    Joy steadied herself against the bar. A look around left her feeling shocked. She knew what had happened, but she did not realize the carnage that had been caused by the blast. She tried to block it out as she made her way out of the bar. But in the Plaza she stopped and felt the tears well up. Friends and acquaintances lay here. Dead and gone because of some idiot’s outrageous and radical ideas.
    That sound was fainter here, but it was there. She blinked slowly, trying to snap out of it. It came from the staircase. Skirting the walls, holding on to them as she slowly made her way to the doors, she stepped over debris and sidestepped the bits she was not confident she could step over. Eventually, she passed through the doors and went down the corridor to the staircase. She sat down at the top of the stairs, squeezing her eyes shut again. She felt sick. The stars had come back, as had the dizziness. Then the noise came back, now with a pang and a shattering of glass. Suddenly she knew what she had been hearing.
    Joy willed herself to get up again and she slowly descended the stairs. At the bottom she looked ahead, trying to keep her vision as straight as possible. She knew she was swaying like a tree in the breeze, but she managed to get a clear view of what was ahead of her. She noticed the last lamp before the docks was out. And there was someone in the shadows there. She heard another bang. The noise drilled straight into her brain, the flash burned in her eyes. There was a voice in the docks. She could not understand what the voice said, but she knew the voice. It was Dave.
    A bullet struck the wall not far from her. She felt she had to do something suddenly. If Dave was down there, there was a chance Wes and Sheila might be there, too. And if this guy was shooting at them and someone was returning fire, they were in danger. She looked around and found a piece of piping that had come away and dropped to the floor. She reached over and picked it up. Slowly and as quietly as possible she went down the corridor. The man took another shot and then she heard a click. A bullet whizzed past from the docks and she suddenly realized what the click was as something dropped to the floor by the man's side. He was changing magazines. She took her chance and lifted the pipe. The man turned as he heard her, but the pipe already came hurtling down to his head.
    He slumped to the floor and Joy slumped beside him. “Dave?” she called, shutting her eyes again.
    “Joy?” Dave's surprised voice called back. “Joy, what are you doing here?”
    But Joy did not answer.
     
     
    Chapter Three
     
    Elly Boukhari looked up at the window. She had just sent a text message to Helen to say she believed Akhmed had not set off any bomb, that she did not believe he was an extremist terrorist and that she wanted to help her clear his name. There was nothing she could do now but wait. So she stood on the corner between Helen's apartment block and the coffee shop where she worked and did just that.
    Helen had turned her tablet and laptop off. She could not bear to hear more about the whole situation. She was constantly bombarded with tweets about how she was the whore of an extremist, how Akhmed was evil, how she was deranged. It was surreal, frightening and depressing. And that was how she felt. She felt frightened and depressed, but somehow the whole situation seemed quite surreal.
    Her phone beeped. A text message. Nobody sent her text messages anymore. It all went through social media and Whatsapp. She picked up her phone and opened the message.
    “I believe Akhmed's innocent. Got some information from a source about it. Want to talk to me without cameras? Elly Boukhari, CBS.”
    Helen thought about it. She really did not want to talk to this woman. It was Elly Boukhari