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

You want me to send the text, or do you want to fight for your lives for no good reason?’

‘Send the text,’ Slater said. ‘No one’s going to read it.’

King said, ‘Your men are dead.’

Silence.

Dylan said, ‘You’re bluffing.’

‘We don’t bluff,’ Slater said. ‘And we could have thrown your words right back at you when we met at the safe house. There’s things you don’t know. Things that’ll make you feel stupid for ever getting involved with us.’

‘You brought the fight to me. How was I supposed to ignore you?’

‘You should have rolled over and begged for mercy,’ King said. ‘You underestimated us.’

‘You’re a couple of trained enforcers,’ Dylan said. ‘I’ve seen worse.’

‘You haven’t,’ Slater said.

A longer pause.

Walcott said, ‘As soon as you said my men were dead I hit the alerts on their phones. None of them have hit the kill switches in response. So I believe you. Now what?’

‘Now we talk.’

‘That’s all I wanted,’ Dylan said. ‘How did it have to get to this?’

‘Because you couldn’t be content with a few mil in the bank and a couple of vacation homes and a worry-free life,’ King said. ‘You wanted it all. Look where that got you.’

‘You’re talking like you have the upper hand,’ Dylan said. ‘As far as I can see, this is a stalemate.’

‘How so? Your tac team’s lying dead in our bungalow. Your other tac team’s lying dead in your brother’s home.’

‘I have more men.’

‘Can’t be many more,’ Slater said. ‘I can hear it in your voice. You’re out of resources. You’re scared. You’re in a position you’ve never been in before.’

Dylan said, ‘And yet, it’s still a stalemate.’

Slater waited for him to elaborate.

Dylan said, ‘I own most of Freeport. I might not have biological resources — men — at my disposal, but I have every other resource you can imagine. One phone call and I’m gone. That wouldn’t rub you the right way. The guy you think is the devil incarnate, getting away scot-free. You want my head on a stake.’

King said, ‘If you wanted to disappear, you would have disappeared already.’

‘You’re prescient,’ Dylan said. ‘I don’t want to vanish. You were right before. I could smuggle myself into any country on earth right now, with a few mil in the bank and a couple of vacation homes and … what was it? … ah, yes, a worry-free life. But I don’t want those things any more than you two want those things.’

Slater got it.

Dylan Walcott was what he and King would be if their moral compasses were broken.

Rest and relaxation weren’t in any of their vocabularies.

Slater said, ‘So what do you want?’

‘To talk,’ Dylan said. ‘I know you think that’s all I’m good for, but I think you’ll see the light if the three of us sit down together. Maybe we can come to an … arrangement. I back off on certain avenues of business. I’m willing to compromise.’

‘You have to know we’ll kill you the moment we see you.’

‘If you’re as good as you say you are,’ Dylan said, ‘then you would have done it at the safe house. But you didn’t. Why’s that?’

‘Because you had a sniper pinning us down.’

‘But not really,’ Walcott said. ‘That was one of my aides with a laser pointer, and I think deep down you two knew that.’

Silence.

Dylan said, ‘You know what I think?’

‘What?’

‘Under all that disdain, all that disgust, there’s some level of respect.’

Slater said nothing.

He thought King might, but King didn’t.

Dylan said, ‘I want to meet. I’ll come alone.’

King scoffed.

Dylan said, ‘You don’t believe me?’

‘Why would we?’

‘Because I don’t need to defend myself. I have a priceless insurance policy. The old woman and the boy. Anything happens to me, they get the same treatment.’

Dylan waited for a response.

He knew he had them.

And they knew it, too.

Slater said, ‘Where?’

‘Out east. Way east. I’ll leave my jurisdiction, the streets I control, to give you some sort of comfort. You don’t know the area, either, so it’ll be the same for you. Take Grand Bahama Highway all the way to the end. There’s a series of cays. The trail will take you to the reef between McLean’s Town Cay and Big Harbour Cay. Meet me at the water’s edge.’

‘And what’s our insurance policy?’ Slater said.

‘Huh?’

‘You bluffed with your sniper at the safe house, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have one. What’s stopping you from dumping our corpses on the reef and carrying on with your life?’

Dylan pondered that.

King said, ‘I’ve got something.’

Dylan said, ‘You do?’

‘Well, we both do.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘We have Theodore.’

A pause. ‘Are you bluffing?’

‘No.’

‘You have him there with you? Let me speak to him.’

‘He’s not here. He’s with our partners.’

‘Partners,’ Dylan scoffed. ‘Your girlfriends, you mean?’

‘Partners,’ King reiterated. ‘You know, the ones who took out your five best men all on their own.’

‘Four best men,’ Dylan clarified. ‘And one useless kamikaze.’

‘The kamikaze didn’t do his job, then. You’re supposed to gain some sort of upper hand by carrying out a suicide mission. All he ended up doing was throwing away his own life.’

‘I’m sure he died satisfied,’ Dylan said. ‘One of your partners took something from him. He volunteered for the job.’

Slater spoke up. ‘You’re going off on a tangent so we don’t address the fact that Theodore Walcott means nothing to you as a hostage. After all, you want him dead more than anything.’

‘I wasn’t going to say it.’

Slater said, ‘Think of this as the inverse of your typical hostage situation. If something happens to us out on that reef, our partners will set Teddy up with a whole new life. He’ll live out the rest of his days in comfort. Happy. At peace.’

Cold silence.

Slater said, ‘If it all goes well, we’ll hand him over so you can punish him.’

‘I thought you were here to help the downtrodden.’

‘He dug his own grave,’ King said. ‘There’s nothing downtrodden about him.’

‘So you think he’s a monster, too?’

‘No,’ Slater said. ‘I think he’s confused. You’re the only monster on this island. Which leaves us in a tight spot.