Garret's Gambit, page 16
After that rampage, Garret wondered if he should just take him out. But what he needed were the people coming to pick up his brother. And that transaction was something Garret couldn’t allow them to complete, but Garret still needed the big guy to start the exchange. So Garret couldn’t take the big guy out just yet.
Garret sent a message to Kano, telling him that he needed backup. Only the one big guy was left, and they needed to move to set up a sting for the people coming to collect his brother. He got an affirmative response and settled in to wait. They would need some distraction in order to get the upper hand here. This guy was no fool now, and he was on high alert and edgy as hell. He would be trigger-happy, and anybody who got in his line of fire would go down. Garret just had to make sure it wasn’t him or any of the people he had with him. Neither woman could handle the kind of damage this guy could inflict, and, if Garret lost Kano, well, this guy would pay in a big way.
Chapter 15
“What’s going on?” Astra murmured. Kano filled her in. “How will you do that?” she asked.
“We need a distraction,” he said, just as they watched the house door thrown open.
He roared, “Send that bitch back in here, or I’ll kill the boyfriend.”
Amy gasped, and Astra froze at that. “Is he likely to?”
“Hell yeah, he’s likely to, but we also have to remember that Garret’s in there.”
“Sure,” Astra said, “but he can fire anytime and not let this guy take out Gregg.”
“Garret could also take several gunshots himself,” he said.
“Right, so the best thing is for me to go in,” Astra said. “It’s me who the gunman’s pissed at.”
He looked at her in shock, and her sister cried out, “No!” she said. “You can’t do that.”
“Yes, I can,” Astra said, hopping to her feet. “And I still have that handgun.”
He thought about it and said, “It could get ugly.”
“It already is ugly,” she said. “The trouble is, I need to know my sister will stay out of this.” She turned to look at Amy, but she was curled up and shuddering in fear. “I mean it, Amy. No more backstabbing, no more lying or telling me that you’ll do one thing and then go sneaking out the door.”
Amy just glared at her. “But you’ll get killed.”
“Yeah, well, in that case, maybe you’ll do a better job raising your child. If I’m not around, maybe it’ll be a reminder to you to do the best you can.” She looked at Kano and said, “I’ll walk across. You take your time setting up, so you know that you’ve got this big guy, so you have Garret covered.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You know what’ll happen when Garret finds out what you’ve done.”
She chuckled. “Yeah, he’ll be pissed. But you can deal with it.”
He just shook his head. “Maybe you don’t know him that well.”
“No, but I understand the kind of guy he is,” she said. “He’ll be pissed.” She got up and walked across the yard, calling out, “Don’t hurt him.”
The big man stood there, his hands on his hips. “Where’s the other one?”
“Lost in the darkness,” she snapped. “She took off on me.”
“Well, it’s betrayal everywhere around here right now,” he said.
“Well, what did you expect me to do?” she sneered. “Not try to escape?”
“Honestly it makes sense that you did,” he said. “But hats off to you for succeeding. Of course it just made me more pissed off than usual, and I’m really looking forward to beating the shit out of you for that.”
Her steps faltered, and he nodded with satisfaction. “You better be afraid, bitch,” he snapped. “You’ll pay for what you just did.”
“I didn’t do anything,” she said. “We just ran out of the kitchen.”
“How the hell did you even get a knife?”
“What are you talking about?” she said. “You left it on the kitchen counter.”
He stopped, nonplussed. Then he shrugged. “Maybe I did,” he said, and, as soon as she got up on the porch, he grabbed her roughly and dragged her into the living room.
She dropped down beside Gregg and checked his pulse. “What did you do to him?” she cried out. But, inside, she was absolutely delighted to see him.
“Doesn’t matter what we did,” he said. “It’s what we’re still doing.”
She glared at him. “Like what?”
“Don’t you worry,” he snarled. “This deal’s finally going down.”
Then she saw the blood on the floor. “Jesus!” she said. “What the hell did you do in here?”
“I didn’t do anything. You remember that.”
“Well, blood’s all over the floor, so obviously you did something,” she snapped.
“One of my team decided to backstab me,” he said, with a growl. “That’s what happens to betrayers.”
“Right,” she said. “Can’t blame you there. I feel the same way.”
He seemed somewhat mollified. “Get him to wake up,” he snapped, “before I come charging in with all kinds of ways to make him wake up.”
She reached over and gently shook Gregg’s shoulder. “Gregg, are you there?” He just moaned. “Jesus,” she said. “Did you guys pistol whip him or something?”
“Or something, but it wasn’t me. He just got here. Remember?”
She glared at him, not sure where the hell Garret was but trusting that the guys had her back. She said, “So now what? You have all the money for yourself?”
“Hell no,” he said. “Two more guys are outside.”
She stared at him in astonishment. “What? I didn’t see any guys outside.”
He nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I’m wondering about too.”
He looked at her intently, but she just shook her head. “I didn’t see anybody,” she said.
He started to swear. “Goddammit, if those two little pissants took off, I’ll come after them and make them darn sorry for leaving me like that.”
“Maybe they saw you kill that guy, the backstabber, and they didn’t want any part of it.”
He stood here, his eyes closed, his hands on his hips, as if thinking it through, and then nodded. “And that’s probably exactly what happened.” He brightened at that. “But then again, I don’t have to pay them, so that’s all good.”
“Did you even get a paycheck?” she said, with a half smile.
“No, they’re on their way. Right now. So payday is coming.”
She stared at him in shock.
He nodded. “You didn’t think you would get out of this unscathed, did you?”
“Well, I’d hoped so,” she said, sagging onto the couch. Just as she wondered what she should do, Gregg gently squeezed her hand. She let out a slow deep breath and squeezed his fingers back. What she needed to know for certain was what this big guy knew or to be sure that he didn’t have any clue.
She looked at the bully. “And when they come, then what?”
“Then you and him will get hauled out of here, and I’ll get paid, and I’m leaving,” he said. “Before any more shit goes wrong.”
“And the blood and wherever the bodies are that you’ve got stashed here?”
He snorted. “I can’t go out and deal with them right now,” he said. “So I’ll make it a part of the deal, for them to take care of.”
“If you say so,” she said, frowning. “But what if they won’t pay you, when they see the mess you made?”
He just glared at her, but she could see that she’d gotten him thinking.
“Shit,” he said. Just then came the sound of a vehicle coming up the road.
She looked at him. “Well, guess you’ll find out soon enough because it looks like we’ve got company.”
“Oh, yeah, we got company all right,” he said, with a big smirk. “And you’ll finally get what’s coming to you.”
She glared at him. “I haven’t done anything to you. I don’t know why you’ve got such hate for me.”
“I hate all bitches,” he said. “Ones with brains are the worst.”
She looked at him, smiled, and said, “Thank you, that was an obvious compliment. I knew you didn’t hate me.”
“It wasn’t meant that way,” he snapped.
She shrunk. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll take it anyway.”
Just then the vehicle pulled up into the driveway, and the lights shone on the house. He walked toward the front door, then stopped and looked at her hesitantly.
“Where am I going?” she asked. “I already came back.”
“No, I can’t believe that. Not the way things are going tonight.” He walked back over beside her and hit her hard in the side of the head. She collapsed onto the couch without another word.
*
Swearing heavily at that little scenario, Garret waited until the big guy headed out the front door. Then he raced into the living room. He said to Gregg, “Wake the hell up.” Then Garret picked up Astra and carried her out to the back porch, returning once more to the front room.
Gregg said, “I’m here. I’m here.”
Garret shoved the handgun Astra had kept in the back of her waistband, under her jacket, to Gregg. “Now that she’s safely out of the way, we need to get all of them.”
Gregg, keeping up with the headlights still shining in the front, stood, a little wobbly at first, then said, “Come on. Let’s go.”
They immediately stood on either side of the front door, hidden by the old thick ornate curtains covering the windows on each side.
Outside, yelling was going on.
“I guess they found the bodies,” Garret noted.
“What the fuck, man,” the one guy said. “We can’t deal with these bodies.”
“It’s not my fucking fault,” the big guy said. “The first one was his bullshit because he didn’t want to share, and he wanted whiny guy to just shut the hell up. Then the fucker pulled a gun on me, so I had to take him out. What the hell? Do you think I would stand here and get myself shot?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “This is all bullshit.”
“Maybe so, but, if you want your prisoners, come get them,” he snapped. “They’re on the couch. The girl too.”
“The girlfriend?”
“No, the girlfriend’s sister.”
“Well then, we’re not paying you full price. You didn’t fully deliver,” he said.
“You’re paying me full price,” he said. “I had the girlfriend. I went through too much for this.”
“We wanted the girlfriend, not the sister,” he said. “Anybody with brains would know that.”
“Well, with these two prisoners, you can get the other one.”
But, as far as Garret and Gregg could see, the one guy was backing up toward the car. “No, you clean up this shit first.”
“You get the hell in here and get your prisoners,” the big guy roared. “Otherwise I’ll release Gregg and the girl. And then you can deal with whatever.”
The new arrival had a conversation with somebody on the driver’s side. “Fine, I’m coming in to get him,” he said. “But I want you to step out first. No way you’ll shoot me, like you shot your brother.”
“Oh, no. No way,” he said. “You owe me some money. Until I get my money, I’m not giving you nothing.”
“You told me to come get him,” he said, exasperated.
“Well, I’ve already seen too much tonight,” he said. “This can go down easy, or it can go down seriously ugly.”
“Well then, ugly it is.” The guy dropped to the ground.
With that, the driver reached out of the car window and fired twice. The big man stood in shock, getting hit once in the arm and once in the leg, and then he roared and started toward the one man still outside the vehicle.
“Fuck, shoot him again, shoot him again,” screamed the man outside the car. “Jesus Christ, this is a shitstorm. Kill him.”
Two more shots were fired, hitting the big man in the torso, and he stopped and swayed in place. The final two shots did him in, and he fell flat, facedown on the ground.
Garret and Gregg looked at each other, as the vehicle stayed where it was. “Now what we need,” Garret said, “is for these two last guys standing to come in and get you.”
“But will they? It looks like a trap. What are the chances that they’ll just leave us and run?”
“The one guy’s on the phone.” They watched as he paced back and forth, swearing and cussing into the phone. They couldn’t hear the words, but it was pretty easy to read his body language.
Finally he walked around to the driver. “We’re supposed to leave it all,” he said. “Call the cops and bring them in, but make sure that Gregg’s dead too.”
“Then go do it,” the driver said.
“Shit,” he said. “It looks like a goddamn trap to me.”
“Stop being such a wuss,” the one guy yelled, as the other man walked slowly toward the front door. “Well then, I’m coming in behind you, as backup.”
“At least we got paid already. Not only that but we’ve also got the money we were supposed to pay these guys.” The first man, closest to the house, turned and said, “We still have to kill Gregg. If we don’t shoot him, you know they’ll come back on us.”
“No, go shoot him, put him down, take out the girl too,” he said. “Then we can get the hell out of here.”
He walked into the house, and immediately Gregg grabbed him and pulled him to the side. He held a gun to his head, then Garret fired his gun once and then a second time into the floor. Then Gregg said, “How about you head back out there to your buddy?”
The guy just looked at Gregg in shock, bolted out the front door, and met with two more gunshots from the driver. The one man they had just tagged, fell facedown, dead. The other man, now in the vehicle, ripped out backward, while they raced toward the car, but it was gone in the darkness.
“Goddammit,” Gregg said, limping badly as they stopped.
“Yeah, you’ve got a bit of talking to do,” Garret said.
“Yeah, you’re not kidding,” he said. “What a fucking mess.”
“You want to tell me what the hell’s going on here?”
“Well, I can tell you some of it,” he said, “but it’s kind of shitty.”
“What’s that?”
“They were trying to use me as a patsy for taking down your plane, realizing that we’d had a split over Amy. They would use that to make it look like I was trying to get rid of you permanently.”
Garret stared at his brother. “I guess they don’t understand brothers, do they?”
With that, he could see some of the stiffness and the stress in Gregg’s shoulders ease back. “Thank you,” he said. “I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me.”
“There’s a lot in life I believe,” he said, “and there are shitty things in life you’ve done to me, but I didn’t ever think that you would have done that.”
“And yet, for many people,” Gregg said, still wary, “they would think that moving from screwing your girlfriend to killing you isn’t that big of a step.”
“Yeah, maybe so,” he said. “So the next time you decide you’ll go knock up one of my girlfriends, I suggest you make sure that we’re done first.”
“Shit, man. I’ve loved her since forever.”
“She’s bad news for me, and I shouldn’t have anything to do with her, but really? … You couldn’t have just told me that you loved her?”
“I should have. I know. But it was a stolen weekend, and then, after we fought, she left. She went back to you, when she was supposed to go home to break up with you and to come back with me, but she didn’t. She went back to you instead and stayed there. Until I couldn’t stay away, and you caught us.”
“Yeah, nothing’s terribly straightforward about Amy.”
“Will you forgive me for that ever?”
“Yeah, but only for two reasons,” he said. “Believe me. I’ll never forget it because that’s just a shitty thing to do to your brother. And it’s been eating away at me for a long time.”
His brother winced at that. “So what are the two reasons?”
“First, Amy and I would have been an absolute disaster of a relationship,” he said. “I can’t stand anybody without any guts or grit. And, second, because her sister and I will be an item, whether Astra knows it yet or not.”
At that, Gregg stared at him in surprise. “Seriously?”
“Yeah,” he said.
Gregg started to laugh. “You know what? That’s the best thing ever,” he said affectionately. “I told Amy that the two of you would be great together a long time ago. She told me that I was off my rocker and that it would never happen.”
“Well, with any luck, it’s already happened,” he said. “It’s just that we’ve spent the last however many shitty days trying to find you.” He helped his brother back into the house. “We’ve got a hell of a mess here to deal with now too.”
“Not only do we have a hell of a mess,” he said, “but we still don’t know who’s behind that attack on the plane. And it wasn’t me, dude. I swear to God. It wasn’t me.”
“So who the hell was it then?” Garret snapped.
“Somebody needs to have a talk and, I mean, a forceful talk, with Deedee. I don’t know that she’s behind it, but she sure as hell knows more than she’s letting on.”
“She’s such a bitch,” Garret said.
“Yeah, she’s also one of Bullard’s exes too. You know that, right?”
“So what? Or are you thinking a woman scorned and all that?”
“It’s possible,” Gregg said. “It’s definitely possible.”
“But then it’s not just Deedee, is it?”
“No, it isn’t, but I don’t know who all has been carrying a torch all this time.”
“Goddamn relationships,” Garret said. “Gets you in trouble every damn time.” After he helped Gregg back into the house, Garret walked straight through the house and out to where Astra was lying on the back porch.
She opened her eyes, as he approached. “That guy’s got a hand like a sledgehammer.”
“I saw you pull back, ever-so-slightly, before you took the hit.”
