Murder to Order: Fourteen

Caine rose from where he had fallen, dust on his suit, a thunderous expression on his face. All around his, his staff were trembling and groaning, as smoke filled the bunker, mixed with the dust of tunnel collapses.

"You are a fool, Caine." The Green Man spat the words out with contempt. "Did you imagine that I would step into your trap so easily? No, it is you who have stepped into my net, and now your career is at an end. At last I can destroy you."

"The vengeance of the Green Man?" Caine laughed, "how romantic! But if you kill me, what will the world think?"

"That doesn't matter." The Green Man stepped forward, drawing his gun. "Do you think that the road of justice is soft and easy? No." He cocked the gun. "There are men like you, men outside the law, who can only be stopped by death. Let the world think what it may. I know you are evil, and as such you must die."

"Then kill me," Caine laughed. "Deal out instant justice like you always do."

"Not this time." The door behind Caine opened and Lady Sylvia stepped through, holding a rifle, her face grubby, hair untidy. "He did this for me. You killed my brother!"

"Warren Vaughan?" Caine aughed, "if he hadn't sought to prove me a killer, he would still be alive. He should have kept his nose out of my affairs!"

"That wasn't his mistake." Lady Sylvia's eyes were hard. "His mistake was trying to tell the Police, rather than taking you down himself. And that's a mistake I don't intend to make."

Her gun spoke, and Caine pitched over the railing, a neat hole in his head.

"Now come on!" Lady Sylvia shouted to her colleagues. "In a moment this whole complex is going to detonate!"

They ran past her, all but the Gren Man, who walked normally, turning over the body of Caine so that he could look into the man's dead eyes. Putting an arm around Lady Sylvia's shoulders, he escorted her from the chamber of death.

Ms. Madison was already waiting by an exit from an escape shaft when they got there, Mr. Rake's arms around her. Lady Sylvia held onto the Green Man's sleeve, a little frightened by what she had done. The ground shook under them, as the bunker detonated.