Sharks - Matt Rogers (classic books for 11 year olds txt) 📗

‘Use your brain next time.’

‘I always use my brain.’

‘No,’ Slater said. ‘You don’t. You lecture me on not seeing red, on thinking with a level head and not letting my emotions get the better of me. But all I’ve seen lately is you making mistakes, you fucking everything up. You couldn’t have coaxed him out to the parking lot before you put a bullet in him?’

‘He wouldn’t have come with me. He didn’t trust me at all. And there were no cameras in that room. Lagoon is going to suppress this as best they can. They might even move the body, set up a scene in one of the dumpsters out back. Make it look like he was dumped there. That’d be the only way to cover up the reason he was there. What’s it going to look like if a cop’s found executed in a back room that he shouldn’t have been in?’

Slater went quiet.

King said, ‘I told you. I always use my brain.’

Silence.

King said, ‘Now what do you say we take a trip to the Bahamas?’

‘You really want to see this through to its conclusion, don’t you?’

‘Don’t you?’

Slater thought it over, and realised he did.

He said, ‘I need a vacation, anyway.’

13

They drove back to “The Ridges,” and pulled into the estate.

Parked in the giant garage, locked the Audi, and went inside.

Violetta and Alexis were in the living room, restless, practically squirming. King stepped into the giant space with its towering ceiling and ornate furniture tastefully spread over thick lush carpet and realised he’d barely spent a moment in here since they’d bought the place. Alexis had decorated it almost single-handedly — King had never seen her loft in the Bowery where she’d used to reside, but Slater had promised she had a knack for interior decoration, and it paid off.

When they entered, Violetta said, ‘Could you have been any more cryptic than “We’ve got something”?’

King said, ‘Sorry. We were preoccupied.’

‘With what?’

Alexis said, ‘There’s blood on your face.’

King touched a hand to his right cheek. He’d tried to smudge off the fine crimson spray with the help of the Audi’s passenger mirror, but he mustn’t have got it all.

Violetta said, ‘What happened?’

King said, ‘I shot a Vegas PD lieutenant in the head in the back room of a casino.’

Silence.

Violetta said, ‘What?’

Slater said, ‘Any chance you two might be interested in a trip to the Bahamas?’

Alexis said, ‘What?’

King said, ‘We should probably explain.’

So Slater did. All of it, leaving nothing out, because they weren’t a team if they lied to each other. He didn’t even tell the tiniest white lie, because he knew that’s how it started — you think you’re immune to corruption, but you make one dumb decision because everyone else is doing it and before you know it the ground has opened beneath you and you have no idea how you got so far away from the good man you started out as.

The solution is simple.

Never compromise.

Never settle.

Violetta said, ‘Métier Bank International? That’s the name?’

King said, ‘Yes.’

‘Let me do some digging, see what I can come up with.’

‘Where are we going to start?’ Alexis said. ‘This is bigger than last time. Last time it was a sheriff, a judge and a DA. There were only a few key players at the top. This is a whole bank?’

‘That’s the way it always goes. It’ll be the same this time, and the same next time. There’ll be underlings, mercenaries, gangsters, criminals, mobsters, you name it. But it’ll all lead to someone at the top of the pyramid, someone high up in Métier who first gave all this shit the green light. We do exactly what we did last time. We follow it to its conclusion.’

‘Simple as that?’ she said.

‘Simple as that.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to the beach.’

It wasn’t false confidence. He could tell. Pride stirred in his chest like nothing he’d ever felt. She’d had her reservations, but she hadn’t stuck to them. The comfort of your usual routine is alluring. Slater couldn’t remember what that felt like, and figured he’d rewired his brain over the last decade. See a problem, go towards it. It was the way he and King had been operating for most of their lives.

Violetta said, ‘You want me to book flights?’

King smiled.

Slater understood.

There should have been a lengthy discussion about upheaving their life, following the name of a bank to the Bahamas on some sort of wild vigilante crusade, but there was none of that. They’d collectively made the decision, and no one was protesting it, so the only thing left to do was act. The particulars and the finer details could be sorted out later. There was no use dwelling, hypothesising, mulling over what might be. There was only action.

King said, ‘Sure.’

‘For tomorrow morning?’

King glanced at his watch, and shrugged. ‘Why waste time?’

He turned to Slater, who nodded his approval.

Slater turned to Alexis, who nodded hers.

They had streamlined their lives. There were no pressing distractions, no responsibilities that demanded they remain in Vegas. They owned this estate, but that didn’t mean it was their fixed abode. Flexibility was the key to all of this. And it filled him with pride that Alexis had taken this approach in stride. It’s hard to detach yourself from everything, to flow freely wherever the job demands it, even if that means jetting off to another country at the drop of a hat.

She was doing it all without complaint.

And grappling with new demons on top of it.

Violetta got to her feet. ‘Let me look into Métier. Reconvene in an hour?’

King said, ‘Perfect. I need to clear my head.’

After executing a corrupt police officer, that would ordinarily mean seeing a shrink, getting counselling, staying cautious of all the early warning symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Which is what Alexis interpreted it as.

She said, ‘You okay?’

‘Yeah,’ King said. ‘I just mean I’m going for a run.’

14

King hit the pavement and didn’t look back.

He’d already done the patented eight mile loop to the shooting range on the other side