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

appearing on the scene out of nowhere, ready to feel sorry for an old man who’d made a few bad choices.’

‘More than a few,’ Teddy said. ‘As you can see.’

Slater already knew how it was going to go, but he thought he’d help Teddy along. ‘You’re an evil mastermind, aren’t you?’

Teddy looked up with tears in his eyes. ‘No.’

Slater knew.

He just wanted to hear it himself.

‘Dylan knows now,’ King said. ‘That you were the one who killed off most of his underlings, who splintered his operation. Sure, we helped, but his scheme was already on shaky legs when we showed up. All thanks to you. So he has to know now. He’ll put it together. You know what this will do?’

Teddy squeezed his eyes shut.

King said, ‘He’ll come for you.’

‘And Lyla,’ Slater said.

Teddy’s eyes shot open. ‘No. He can’t. She can’t pay for my mistakes.’

‘She already said she would,’ Slater said. ‘When we spoke to her. She said she loves you, and she’ll be with you no matter what.’

‘But that was about the initial loans,’ Teddy said. ‘Not this. She can’t ever know about this. I … I don’t know how this happened. I don’t know how I took it so far. I wasn’t thinking.’

‘You know how this happened,’ Slater said. ‘And you know exactly what you were thinking.’

Teddy sat there, looking like a skeleton with paper skin.

Bearing the ghastly burden of the consequences of his own actions.

King crossed to the logbook and hunched over it. Flipped through pages. Read names. Noted whether the debts had been collected. Then he looked up and turned back to Teddy. ‘How much did you borrow from Dylan’s loan sharks? How many false names did you use?’

Slater said, ‘King.’

King waved him off. ‘Answer me, Teddy.’

Teddy was staring at Slater.

King said, ‘Tell us now.’

Slater said, ‘King.’

A little louder.

King ignored it. ‘Tell me!’

‘A shade over a million,’ Teddy said. ‘Enough for as many hits as I deemed necessary.’

King shook his head in disbelief.

Slater stepped forward and put a hand on the back of King’s shirt.

King wheeled. ‘What?!’

Slater’s hand came away, and with it a tiny microphone covered in a small strip of tape.

The tape still sported the fibres of King’s shirt.

King stared at it. ‘What’s that?’

‘You tell me.’

King couldn’t take his eyes off it.

Slater couldn’t either.

They turned to Teddy. ‘You know about this?’

Teddy shook his head, confused.

Slater fell quiet.

King said, ‘Oh my God.’

Slater said, ‘What?’

King remembered.

The warm embrace of an old, scared woman.

Teddy wasn’t the only one in the relationship who could hide their true intentions.

King reached out, took the small listening device, put it on the desk under his calloused palm and crushed it. Then he looked up at Teddy.

Teddy said, ‘What?’

King said, ‘You kept your wife in the dark but she sure suspected something. She got desperate for answers we couldn’t give her. She took matters into her own hands.’

Slater said, ‘Oh, shit.’

Teddy shook his head like it couldn’t possibly be true.

King pinched the broken pieces of the microphone and lifted them up for Teddy to see. ‘Now Lyla knows.’

‘It’s not true,’ Teddy said in a small voice. ‘She wouldn’t.’

‘She would,’ Slater said. ‘Anyone would.’

King said, ‘How the hell did she get her hands on a listening device?’

Slater said, ‘It’s not a listening device. Have you seen listening devices these days? They’re microscopic. That’s a wireless lapel mic. She probably brought it home from work. She’s in customer service.’

King turned to Slater. ‘What will she do?’

‘We need to go back there.’

Teddy said, ‘No.’

They turned to him.

Teddy said, ‘She’ll go to Dylan.’

‘What?’

‘She’s met him before. She went to him without telling me, months ago, when I first told her about the debt. I was so scared, I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I thought he’d tell her the truth, tell her we were related. But I guess, in one way at least, he’s a good brother. He took her concerns on board, reassured her that he wouldn’t resort to predatory methods to get the money back from “Teddy Barrow,” and sent her on her way.’

Silence.

‘But she sure knows how to find him.’

King said to Slater, ‘You think she’ll be that angry?’

‘Yeah.’

Teddy said, ‘Yeah.’

Slater ripped the handcuffs out of his back pocket, taken from the accessories Wayne delivered the previous morning. Teddy offered no resistance. He was broken. Slater cinched one cuff tight over the old man’s wrist and fixed the other to the desk leg. It was a heavy wooden piece, and there was no way a sixty-something-year-old who looked seventy-something was moving it anywhere.

They bolted for the car.

69

The house in Sunrise Park didn’t feel so homely anymore now it was deserted.

King knocked once, twice, then shook his head and stepped aside.

No time for this.

Slater smashed the door open with a well-placed teep kick. It didn’t break the lock, just the flimsy wood all around it, and the door swung in on its hinges and bounced off the wall.

They went through.

Cleared the hallway, the living room, the kitchen, the dining room, the study, Teddy and Lyla’s room, and finally Caleb’s.

All empty.

King said, ‘Shit,’ for no one but Slater to hear.

They’d called Lyla eight times on the way over, each one unanswered. Her phone wasn’t off — she was ignoring their calls. They all went straight to voicemail, to a pleasant, quiet grandmotherly voice instructing them to leave a message that would be returned at the first available opportunity.

King imagined that quiet restraint was gone.

Slater said, ‘Where would she go? I don’t believe Teddy.’

‘Above all else she wants Caleb safe,’ King said. ‘She’s gone to Dylan.’

Slater rubbed a hand up one cheek, distorting his face into a twisted grimace. ‘What’s our goal here? What are we trying to do?’

‘We need to de-escalate things.’

‘I don’t know if that’s possible now.’

‘Why would she bring a wireless lapel mic home from work?’ King said. ‘Who does that?’

‘She’s in customer service,’ Slater reiterated. ‘There were probably a bunch of them lying around. They’re not exactly technologically advanced. She would have gone to work yesterday and