Sharks, Matt Rogers [shoe dog free ebook TXT] 📗

on myself. I was dumb and made a dumb call. Just because I can defend myself now, doesn’t mean I should go out seeking trouble.’

‘Why not?’ he said. ‘I do it all the time.’

He kissed her again, then went back to King.

King said, ‘What was that about?’

He didn’t know how to respond, then found the words. ‘I think she’s the one I’ve been looking for my whole life.’

He left it at that.

So did King.

They walked into town, rented an open-topped jeep and drove it out west. There’d been talk about doubling back and gearing up with the HKs, but they had enough tactical awareness to know this wasn’t the right time for a shootout.

If the safe house was fortified, they’d retreat.

If it wasn’t, they’d go in, but it’s much easier to hide a Glock than a fully automatic rifle.

They could run into all sorts who weren’t employed by Walcott — cops making routine checks, port workers on smoke breaks, Good Samaritans pouncing on two heavily-built enforcer-looking types sniffing around places they shouldn’t. It was easier to worm their way out with words than to hold ordinary civilians at the end of HK417 battle rifles.

King drove, drinking in the sun beating down from the open sky. ‘I could get used to this.’

‘Retirement on your mind?’

King smiled at the joke. They’d both tried it before. Separately. It hadn’t exactly worked out.

King said, ‘What’s that quote about insanity?’

Slater grinned. ‘Doing the same thing over and over, expecting shit to change?’

‘That’s the one.’

They used the Warren J. Levarity Highway to circle around the port, keeping the deep blue harbour water to their left, then drove slowly into Southwest Point, just inland from Wild Goose Town. When the road turned from bitumen to sand they pulled to the side, parked the jeep under the shade of a twisted dead tree, and got out. Neither spoke a word, but the tactics were shared. In the field they were becoming symbiotic.

Slater nearly snorted at the thought.

Becoming?

They’d been one connected mind in combat since they first started working together.

The maps application on their phone told them they were five hundred feet from the safe house. It was dead east from where they’d parked, closer to the edge of the harbour, and a chunk of undulating land killed their line of sight.

Good, Slater thought.

It meant no one there would see them coming.

They pulled their Glocks — they were in the middle of nowhere, and if they ran into civilians out here then so be it — and advanced along the trail. Deformed brambles and pockets of leafless trees surrounded them on all sides, but they swept every inch of their field of view regardless. One hundred feet from the supposed location, they began to cover and move. Slater took twenty steps forward as King stayed rigid in place, ready to unload his Glock the moment he spotted hostile movement. Then they mirrored the pattern, and King crested the rise in the land first.

He dropped to his belly, inched along the sand, ignoring its searing heat on his skin. He was sweating all over, but he accepted it as part and parcel out here. He wiped a salty rivulet from his brow before it seeped into his eye and looked out from the vantage point.

Violetta’s estimation was spot on.

It was a plain one-storey structure made with cheap construction materials, every crack overrun with weeds. He realised it was the outbuilding for a factory right at the water’s edge, complete with rows and rows of towering silos for bulk materials. The factory seemed operational, but this place was forgotten. A remnant of the past. Access by vehicle might have been possible five years ago, but not anymore. The weeds had choked everything.

King watched it for ten minutes straight.

He didn’t hear a whisper from behind.

Slater had immense tactical discipline not to belly-crawl up to find out what the hold-up was.

When he was convinced it was abandoned, he held up a brief signal for Slater to see, then rose to a crouch and advanced.

The silos loomed in the distance.

The rising sun cast long shadows, catching them as they closed in.

The door was missing both the handle and the lock. It had a few flecks of its paint job left, but the rest was raw wood. The front windows were smashed in. Glass still littered the sills.

‘Some safe house,’ King muttered, and toed it open with a boot.

Taking up the rear, Slater said, ‘Walcott would have ditched it when he heard Eric got whacked. I’m sure he bought access to the police report. He would have seen the logbook was missing.’

‘Have you been over the intel?’ King said. ‘I only got a look at Walcott this morning.’

‘That late?’ Slater said. ‘You’re getting sloppy in your old age.’

‘I am?’

‘Never thought I’d see the day where I’ve been over the files before you have.’

‘So you know what the slimy bastard looks like?’

‘Oh, yes.’

Slater remembered the glint in Dylan’s eyes. He wouldn’t forget it soon.

They swept the safe house.

Sure enough, they found nothing.

Long dark hallways, empty office space, a few pieces of furniture either overturned and broken or so dilapidated they were practically useless.

They came to the last door and went through just as the government had trained them.

Expertly, smoothly, fluidly, leaving nothing to chance, clearing every inch with methodical precision.

Another miss.

Another empty office.

This one was long and narrow, running down to a broad rectangular window, also smashed in. They crossed the carpet, letting it muffle their footfalls, and glanced outside in separate directions. The windows faced the factory, and the big silos beyond. From here there was no view of the water. Brambles and brush got in the way.

From behind them a voice said, ‘Nice to see new faces.’

46

They whirled round in unison.

Guns came up, locking onto the threat, but what they found deeply contrasted with what they’d been expecting.

There was no threat.

Dylan Walcott stood before them, unarmed, perfectly relaxed.

He looked different to the surveillance photos, and Slater guessed he should have expected it. There’s