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

Alexis’ gaze linger, as if an idea had struck her.

Violetta didn’t like it one bit.

They went inside and rented two mopeds.

25

Both King and Slater thought Vince was going for a car.

Turned out he wasn’t.

He made it to the opposite end of the lot and then kept running. Burst onto Coral Road and legged it inland, away from the tiki hut and the beach and the tourists flocking to the ocean view.

Slater didn’t like that.

He went forward like an Olympic sprinter coming out of the starting blocks.

King couldn’t keep up. He could only hope to not fall too far behind.

Slater thrashed his body to its limits, which it turned out were pretty far past the ordinary athletic spectrum. He picked up staggering speed across the lot, nearly went head over heels to avoid a rented hatchback backing out of its parking space, and then came out on Coral Road.

Which, as it turned out, was exactly what Vince wanted.

Turns out you can take advantage of recklessness.

Slater knew better than anyone, but he’d lost his head in an effort to wipe that smug look off the loan shark’s face. If there was anything he hated most in the world, it was those who preyed on the vulnerable. So the old man’s kind eyes were in the forefront of his mind as he sprinted out onto the road, pulling his Glock at the same time, but what he entered was a good old-fashioned hostage situation.

Slater had his gun up before anyone could blink, which was the only thing that prevented him from catching a bullet, but Vince was already shielded behind a chubby middle-aged tourist. The guy looked like Santa Claus out of uniform — huge bulging belly, big white beard, pale skin, red face, glasses resting on the bridge of his nose, thin hair matted to his scalp by sweat. Vince skewered the barrel of a Ruger into the side of the tourist’s skull, making his eyes roll back out of fear and pain. Given the swim trunks, the open floral shirt exposing the rotund belly and the sandals on his bare feet, he’d been heading to Coral Beach for either a swim or a cocktail or three at the tiki hut. Slater studied the man’s physique and decided it was probably the latter.

Vince had grabbed him and yanked him off the side of the road, burrowing into a nook in the tree line. It blocked the view of the hostage situation from any tourists in the area.

Luckily there weren’t any.

Slater aimed his gun right back at them, screeching to a halt on the asphalt.

‘Drop it,’ Vince said. ‘And step in here, nice and slow. Off the road.’

‘No.’

‘You’ll be outnumbered soon. My men are on their way.’

Suddenly King was there in the midst, pulling his own piece at lightning speed, getting the Glock up to shoulder height like he’d magically snapped it into existence. Vince might have reflexively shot the hostage out of surprise if he knew what had hit him.

Santa Claus started crying. ‘Please. I have a fam…’

He trailed off, incapable of finishing.

Vince shook him by the collar, his black eyes boring into King and Slater. ‘What was that? You have a what?’

‘A family,’ Santa Claus managed. ‘I have a family.’

‘You hear that?’ Vince said. ‘He has a family.’

‘Put it down, Vince.’

‘Not happening.’

‘Then aim that Ruger at us,’ King said. ‘Let him go.’

‘Thank you,’ the hostage spluttered.

Vince eyed him from behind. ‘Thank them for what? They haven’t done anything yet. Shut your mouth unless someone’s speaking to you.’

A car fired up in the tiki hut’s parking lot, maybe fifty feet to Slater’s left, separated from a clear line of sight by the tree line. But soon the car would come out to Coral Road, or someone would follow in Santa Claus’s footsteps en route to the beach, or any number of witnesses would appear. It was an inevitability, not a possibility.

Slater stepped off the asphalt, onto the gravel of the mini-clearing.

King did the same.

Vince said, ‘That’s better.’

No one moved.

Vince said, ‘Now the guns. Down.’

‘No.’

Vince jerked Santa’s collar. The old man choked and spluttered, his face bright red, on the verge of an aneurysm.

He kept staring at the sky, pleading for his life.

Vince said, ‘You two are composed. Got some experience? You know it doesn’t mean anything. You know if you put one between my eyes it’s over for Grandpa here. Look at my finger.’

They did.

It was inside the trigger guard, resting on the trigger.

It only needed an ounce of pressure for the Ruger to blow an innocent man’s brains out of his head.

Vince said, ‘About time you lot revealed yourselves.’

King said, ‘What?’

‘Why’d you do it in a public place?’ Vince said. ‘Why not after hours? It’s your fault this poor chap’s involved.’

Santa managed, ‘Please let me go…’

Slater said, ‘What are you talking about, Vince?’

Vince stiffened, then shrugged. ‘Makes sense that you’d know my name. You somehow got your hands on the logbooks, after all.’

Slater elected to stop asking questions and let Vince explain himself.

King had the same idea.

After a long silence, Vince squeezed the Ruger harder against the fat man’s head. Santa whimpered.

Vince said, ‘We were talking…’

‘You were talking,’ Slater said.

Vince rolled his beady eyes. ‘You playing dumb now? That’s what this is? Some unknown player managed to tamper with our books so that I’ve spent the past two months running around chasing ghosts, and you’re telling me that wasn’t you?’

Slater thought, What the hell is he talking about?

But he went with it and said, ‘Yeah, that was us.’

Vince said, ‘How’d you do it?’

Slater shot for the moon and hoped he’d stick the landing. ‘We took loans from Dylan Walcott using false identities. That’s why everything in your logbook is turning up blanks. How much do you think we borrowed — a mil, maybe more? Took you long enough to figure it out.’

Vince said, ‘My books contain six hundred and fifty thousand dollars I can’t account for. They lead to false addresses, or empty houses. You telling me you borrowed more