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

“I suggest we just pop ’em right here,” the other said, and he lifted the gun to shoot Charles first. She didn’t even think about it and raised her gun and fired once more. The gunman dropped dead.

Garret wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, but somebody was on his side, and he was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth. He was on the second gunman before the guy had a chance to even register that his partner was dead. By the time he had the man subdued, he turned and Charles was at his side, but there was no sign of Kano. Then, hearing footsteps, he suddenly looked up to see Kano, standing there with Astra.

She stared at Garret in shock, still holding the handgun. Charles looked at her, smiled, and said, “I see that, like your sister, you can’t follow orders.”

“And I think this time,” she said, “it was the right thing to do. He came to kill me,” she murmured.

“And what did you do?” Garret asked softly.

“I was actually already over here, but I realized that, once he found me missing, it would be all over.”

“So you shot him?”

“I did. I just don’t know if he’s dead or not.”

With that, Kano took off to check. She walked slowly forward. “I’ve never killed a man before,” she said, feeling her face turning gray.

Garret walked over, wrapped his arms around her, and held her close. “I, for one, am very thankful that you did,” he said. “We were goners.”

She nodded. “He would have shot Charles,” she said, turning to look at Charles. “Why would he do that?”

“Because that’s where the maximum pain would be for Garret. They work it out so they take out the weakest ones and make everybody suffer that much longer,” Charles murmured.

“Assholes,” she said, with feeling.

“It’s part of the game.”

“There’s no game to this,” she said. “It’s deadly serious.”

“That it is,” Charles said.

Kano came back, and the look on his face made her swallow. Garret reached up, hugged her close, and said, “Good,” he said. “The other guy’s dead.”

“I didn’t think I shot him that badly,” she said.

“Maybe not,” Kano said, “but you hit an artery, and he bled out.”

She took a slow deep breath. “So do I go to jail now?”

Her voice was so small and tinny that Garret realized she really had no idea. He wrapped her up even closer and said, “No, absolutely not.”

“I killed two men,” she said, staring at him, her eyes like huge orbs in the darkness.

“You did it to save our lives.” At that, Charles was already on the phone. Garret nodded toward Charles and said, “Charles’s taking care of it.”

“Taking care of what?” she said.

“There won’t be any mention of this anywhere,” he said. “It’ll all go quietly away. I highly doubt these were any exemplary citizens for anybody to be concerned about,” he said. “So you’ll be fine.”

Chapter 11

They and Jonas were at Charles’s place, and Charles was busy pacing, as Jonas reamed him out. It was all she could do to stand here and to listen. And, when Jonas finally came to a stop, Charles turned and looked at Jonas and then spoke in a calm voice.

“Are you quite finished, young man?” Jonas just glared at him and then sagged in place and nodded. “Good,” Charles said. “That, sir, is your free one. See that you never speak to me like that again …”

Jonas opened his mouth, took one look at Charles, and slammed his mouth shut, then nodded. “Fine,” Jonas said, “but this is a shitstorm.”

“Yes, it is, but it’s not of our making,” Garret reminded him. “And we did hand you two live ones.”

“It’s never your fault,” he roared at Garret. “You guys just walk into my country, and all this shit happens. And those two guys know nothing. They will get minor charges but have no clue what’s going on.”

“You might want to remember that we walked into the country because you guys hadn’t found a missing person,” Garret snapped right back.

“And now we have two missing people again? The sister, right?” He turned and looked at her. Astra nodded and chose to stay silent. “This is just too unbelievable. I thought you guys were good at this.”

“We weren’t taking into account the fact that the sister, Amy, might actually listen to somebody in her world to get out of here. She was safe here, if she would have just stayed put.”

“Right,” Jonas said. “As if that’ll happen.”

Astra had to admit that she was surprised at Amy’s behavior too. “I don’t think she thought this would be the outcome.”

“Of course not,” Jonas said. “I guess we’re back to the fact that she’s probably not thinking clearly, right?”

“I really hate the fact that everything comes back to blaming it on her pregnancy,” she announced. “I get that my sister is doing things in her own way, but she’s still in trouble right now, and we need to help her.”

“The bottom line is,” Jonas said, “we need to get Garret’s brother back. That she’s now gone missing is just another power play.”

“So what will we do to get her back then?”

“I’m not sure,” Jonas snapped. “You got any suggestions? It’s your sister, after all.”

“Ouch,” she said, “because the answer is no. I have no clue.”

“Neither do I,” Jonas said, still clearly frustrated.

“I do,” Garret said. “The guy that picked her up is Rick Santino, who used to work for Kingdom Securities. He also offered Gregg a job off the books, private, and Gregg turned him down, according to what we got from Astra, regarding some garbled message from Amy.”

“But we don’t know how factual any of that is,” Astra said.

“We never do.” Jonas raised both hands in frustration. “This is all just hearsay.”

“Sure, it is,” Garret said, “but it’s all we’ve got.”

“Of course it is,” Charles grumbled. “I’ve already got a run happening on this