The Hostage: BookShots (Hotel Series) Read Online Free

eyes, ready to embrace the darkness. Softly his head fell into Roscoe’s arms and he drifted away.
    ‘Stanley!’ Roscoe cried, ripping off his jacket and bundling it up to support Stanley’s head.
    Stanley opened one eye. ‘Can’t a guy get any peace and quiet round here?’
    ‘Thank God! I thought you were checking out on me. We’re going to get you some help, buddy, I promise you.’
    Carefully he opened Stanley’s blood-soaked jacket, seeing the size and severity of the knife attack. Blood continued to ooze from the wound. He cursed himself for leaving Stanley alone to chase the killer, telling himself that he should never have gone outside. He was the one who knew how to stop a killer, not Stanley.
    Roscoe tore off his shirt and pressed it onto Stanley’s stomach in an attempt to staunch the bleeding. Stanley yelled out as the pain shot through him.
    ‘It’s okay, buddy. We’ve got to stop this bleeding.’
    ‘It’s not good, is it, Jon?’ Stanley murmured.
    ‘I said I was going to get you some help, and I will.’
    Roscoe bent down and summoned all his inner strength. With a guttural cry he strained every muscle in his body and lifted Stanley into his arms.
    Staggering under Stanley’s not inconsiderable weight, he made his way down the four flights of stairs to the lobby. At the foot of the stairs, he kicked open the door and stumbled out. Carefully he lay Stanley down on the marble floor. As he did so he collapsed, exhausted.
    Down on his knees beside his friend, Roscoe called out urgently across the lobby, ‘Man down! I need help here right now.’

CHAPTER 6
    COVERED IN SWEAT and smeared with Stanley’s blood, Roscoe shouted again.
    ‘I’ve got a stab victim. He needs immediate medical attention!’
    Aware that his blood-covered T-shirt was sticking to his body, Roscoe staggered to his feet. Two paramedics raced across the lobby.
    ‘He’s been stabbed in the stomach,’ he explained as the two women approached. ‘I’ve tried to stop the bleeding, but he’s still losing a fair bit of blood.’
    As the paramedics knelt beside Stanley and started to tend to him, Roscoe took a step back. He felt dazed. He wanted to give them space to work on Stanley and to give himself space to think where he went next. Minutes earlier he was drinking a coffee and looking forward to the opening of the most prestigious hotel in London. Now he was standing in the lobby of that hotel, covered in the blood of one of his closest friends and colleagues, while the owner of the hotel lay dead on the front lawn. A killer was on the loose somewhere within the hotel’s forty floors and he had no idea where. He knew the killer had been in the Presidential Suite because that was where Jackson Harlington had been killed. He knew the killer had access to private rooms. But where he would head next, Roscoe had no idea.
    He looked out across the marbled lobby, a vast room filled with dignitaries and journalists. Some looked fearful, but all of them were waiting in anticipation to see what happened next. He had noticed a number of the journalists snapping pictures of him as he’d carried Stanley into the lobby, and he imagined them already appearing on Twitter feeds and news websites around the world. Hotel staff had started to congregate in the lobby, adding to the general levels of confusion. Roscoe realised if the killer could make it to ground level he might easily take the chance to slip away in the midst of all the chaos – that was, if escaping the building was what the killer wanted to do. But now he wasn’t so sure. Why had he run back up into the hotel after attacking Stanley? Why not head for a way out?
    Roscoe knew he had to try to get inside the killer’s head; he needed to see his brutality close up. He wanted to see what had happened on the thirty-eighth floor.
    ‘He’s going to be okay, you know,’ said Anna Conquest, making her way to Roscoe’s side as he unlocked the elevator bank.
    He turned to face