Garret's Gambit by Dale Mayer (book club books .TXT) 📗

“Did he break up with you?”

“Of course not,” she snapped. “That’s not something he would do.” He just raised an eyebrow at her. “Well, it isn’t,” she said.

“Does he know about the baby?” Garret asked Amy.

She gasped in horror. “What do you know about the baby?” she cried out. One hand went to her belly, as she spun to look at her sister.

Astra stared back. “Do you think people won’t know?” she asked in surprise. “And, yes, I told him about the baby. For all I know, that’s why Gregg disappeared.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” she said. “He’s a good man.” Then she shot another sideways look at Garret, as if to suggest that he wasn’t.

He rolled his eyes at that. “Yes, my brother’s a good man. Especially when he’s not screwing around with someone else’s fiancée.”

At that, her face turned beet red, and she said, “See? No point in having him here.”

“Maybe not,” Astra said, “but we’re here because of Gregg, to find out what’s going on with him. I came because you disappeared. He’s here because his brother is gone.”

“Well,” Amy said, “Garret has all kinds of connections, so he can find Gregg on his own.”

“Which is exactly why you contacted me,” Garret said. “But I need more than he’s just not answering your calls.”

She munched away furiously, filling her cheeks like a chipmunk as she chewed, and she said, “It was two days ago.”

“What was two days ago?”

“I told him that I was pregnant. He was shocked, but I don’t think he was terribly upset. I just think he didn’t have time to sort his way through it all. He asked me what I wanted to do, and I said I didn’t know. He got a phone call and told me that he had to leave for a meeting, but we would discuss it when he got back.”

“But he didn’t come back?”

“No,” she said. “He didn’t come back.” And, once again, the tears welled up in her eyes. “I don’t know what happened.”

“What time of day was it?” Kano asked.

“Dinnertime,” she said. “I held off telling Gregg until then.”

“Why is that?” Kano said.

“Because I worried about it all day, wondering if I should even tell him or if I should just walk away.”

“Why would you do that?” Garret said. “It’s his child, after all.” Then he stopped and said, “It is his child, isn’t it?”

She shot him a baleful look. “Yes, it’s his child, which makes you an uncle.”

“What makes you think that he didn’t just take off?” Kano asked, trying to insert a voice of reason.

“Because he’s not that kind of a guy,” she snapped. “He wouldn’t leave me like this.”

Kano looked at Garret, who shrugged, conceding the point. It wasn’t what he would have expected of his brother, but that didn’t mean that Gregg didn’t need some time to clear his head and had walked away for a few days. “How does he typically contact you?”

“On my phone, or he could come home of course. We’ve been living together for the last year.” She shot Garret a hard look. “Like you don’t already know that.”

“I don’t know anything about you guys,” he said. “I haven’t had any contact with my brother since we broke up.”

Her gaze widened. “Wow, what a surprise. And you being all about family.”

“Until I found out you had changed the family roles behind my back,” he said. “Instead of dealing with it head-on and telling me—preferably before you started sleeping with my brother.”

She glared at him. “You can insult me all you want,” she said, “but, Garret, you don’t understand.”

“Probably not,” he said, tired of the whole mess. “The bottom line is that he’s my brother, and he’s missing. I’ll do my best to find him, if I can.”

A little bit of hope clung to her gaze, and she asked, “Do you know how?”

“Well, if you can’t give me any more than what you’ve given me so far,” he said, “it’ll be damn hard.”

She just frowned at him again.

He groaned. “You’ve got to tell me a little more about that phone call. Was a name mentioned? Did it seem like it was somebody he knew? Did it sound like a work call or what?”

She frowned. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I mean that for real because he never talked about work.”

“Where were you living?”

“Belgium,” she said. “I wanted to move back to England, but he didn’t want to.”

“Of course not,” he said. “Why did you want to come to England?”

Just as she was about to launch into this big tirade, he stopped her and said, “Never mind. The fact is, you were still in Belgium when it happened. So where in Belgium were you living?”

She gave him the address, and he said, “How long did you live there?”

“One year,” she said.

“So why did you run to England?”

“Because I wanted the baby born here,” she said.

Astra just stared at her. “What? You’re hardly even showing yet. You had plenty of time. The minute your boyfriend doesn’t answer your phone calls, you come running to England. Why?”

“Because he told me to,” she said resentfully.

“When?” Garret asked, and now he was all business. “You said you’d had no contact.”

“Because of his work, he told me that, if anything ever happened to him, that I should leave, take nothing, and just go to London.”

“Well, that’s generally good advice,” he said, “but it’s not helpful at all in terms of finding him.”

“Well, he knew I wouldn’t find him anyway. I was supposed to go, to save myself.” She just stared at him, offended by his incredulous stare. “Like you wouldn’t have done the same.”

“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t have, but I can understand my brother telling you to.” He stared at Kano, looking for a clear perspective. “Suggestions?”

“Get back to civilization, where we can access our laptops, and figure out what we need to do.”

“We can do some of that here too,” Astra said. “An internet café is not very far from here. Otherwise no