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

Again he studied his brother’s condition, calculating if he could move on his own or if Garret would literally have to pick him up and carry him. His brother was six-two and an easy 240 pounds. He’d carry him if he had to, but it sure as hell wouldn’t be easy, and he wouldn’t get very far, very fast. It would be a lot better if Gregg could move on his own steam.

Just then the whining voice said, “You got any food in this place? We didn’t even stop and get anything.”

“But we’re here now,” the other man said, “so it’s all good.”

“Yeah, food’s in the kitchen,” the big man said. “Not much but probably something in the fridge, leftover pizza maybe.”

“Perfect,” the one guy said, as he scrambled into the kitchen. He came back with pizza, and, hearing absolutely nothing unusual, Garret frowned, wondering how long it would be before anybody realized the women were missing. The whiny guy kept eating pizza and talking about getting paid and what he would do with his money. The other guys didn’t say anything, but Garret caught an odd look in the gaze of one of them. Garret wondered if the whiny dude had any idea that the chances were good that he wouldn’t live to spend his money.

Why would they share three ways, when they could share only two? Garret had seen it happen time and time again. Once the gunmen realized how little their money would actually buy and what they had risked to get it, they thought about getting a bigger share of the pie. Garret was pretty damn sure that’s what was going down, based on the one guy’s gaze.

Just as he was about to put another bite of pizza in his mouth, the one guy Garret could barely see came up behind him and smacked him hard in the head. He crumpled to the ground, and there was immediate silence.

The big guy asked, “So did you mean to do that?”

“I wanted him to shut the fuck up,” he said.

“Or are we talking about shutting him up permanently and not having to share with him?”

The other guy chuckled. “I knew you’d catch on pretty damn fast.”

“Oh, I caught on,” he said. “I just want to make sure you don’t have any plans to treat me the same way.”

“Like hell I would. Come on. We go way back.”

“I remember, but I don’t know where you found this pissant,” he sneered. “Because he’s definitely not somebody I want to listen to for long.”

“Of course not. He’s just a pain in the ass. That’s what he is.” He looked at the unconscious guy and said, “Another blow to the head? What do you think?”

“If you got a gun, use it,” the big guy said.

“That would make a hell of a mess though. What I don’t want to do is leave any trace of him.”

“It’s not our place,” he said. “I’m not even sure who the hell’s place this even is now.”

“I thought you said it was yours?”

“Well, it was, but we didn’t keep up the property tax, so who knows what happened then,” he said. “I just knew that nobody was living here.”

“Sweet,” the other guy said.

“You’re right though,” he said. “Let’s leave no trace.”

“I hear you. Let’s take him outside and then finish the job. Another blow to the head might do it better though.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” the big guy said. He turned and watched the other guy, and there was that odd look in his gaze again.

Garret had unknowingly picked a wonderful spot to see this whole scene play out.

“Are we deep-sixing the guy who was lost, that we finally found again?” the big guy asked.

“I don’t have any orders to do that,” he said. “You can bet I won’t take on a murder rap for the paltry money we’re being paid.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why I was thinking of upping the money, just a little bit.”

“I got no argument with that,” he said. “I would do it just to shut up this whiny asshole.” At that, he sniggered and picked up the lamp off to the side, took out the light bulb, and pulled back hard, slamming the unconscious man in the head. He hit him once, twice.

On the third blow, the big guy said, “Don’t you think it’s done?”

Garret noted how the big guy hadn’t broken up, as he watched his unconscious coworker take multiple blows. But the big guy was watching the other guy carefully, as if wondering what the hell he was up to. You couldn’t trust anybody who would pull a deal like that because, as soon as the other guy thought about splitting the money down from three to two, it was an easy jump to think about taking it all for himself.

The other guy nodded his head slightly and said, “Yeah, I should stop.”

“I just didn’t want to have too much blood around.”

“Actually, that stayed fairly well contained,” he said, with a half snort.

“Almost looks like you’ve done it a time or two,” the big guy said.

“Only when I had to,” he said. “With other losers, like this one.”

The big guy just nodded and didn’t say anything more.

Garret watched in shock, as they calmly cleaned up a little bit of splatter.

The big guy said, “Let’s get this guy out to the front yard. If the women even see this, they’ll freak out.”

“Yeah, where are they anyway?”

“Oh, I’ll take you to meet them,” he said, “but let’s get this guy out of here first.” It didn’t take much, and they picked up the dead man and carried him outside.

Immediately Garret skirted from his hiding spot and headed toward the kitchen. He needed a better hiding place because, once they got to the kitchen, that’s when the shit would happen. The pantry would do. The fact that they had already removed one more of the guys was hugely