Gambit, David Hagberg [most life changing books .TXT] 📗

television and radio stations and newspapers came up on the screen. She chose WWSB, the ABC affiliate in Sarasota.

“If the former director of the CIA and his wifey get into a gun battle, it’ll hit the news almost immediately,” she said. “We just have to sit back and wait.”

Hammond had to smile despite himself and despite what he had put into motion. “In the meantime, we’ll just have to amuse ourselves any way we can.”

“I can think of a couple of things,” Susan said, setting the iPad aside.

Taio checked his watch. Traffic on the ICW came in spurts. At times, the waterway was busy, almost crowded, but then for stretches of time, no boats passed. But if Li had made it to the house and the surveillance system had picked up her presence and the McGarveys had been notified, they should have turned around and come this far by now.

He tried her cell phone again, letting it ring ten times before he hung up.

The only thing left at this point was to salvage whatever he could to get them the hell out of harm’s way.

Switching the AR-15’s safety on and taking out the magazine so that the gun would fit into the umbrella bag, he got off the pontoon boat, untied his Jet Ski, and headed back out to the ICW, keeping his eye for the Whitby in case his timing was off.

They had lowered the dinghy into the water on the way up from Venice and, because the seas were mostly calm, towed it on a fairly short tether. The Kawasaki was barely moving on dead idle, and as they slowed down and approached it, McGarvey called Otto.

“We’re just offshore. What’s the situation at the house?”

“Nothing’s changed. The woman is still sitting in the gazebo.”

“Waiting for her husband?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Has she found the Beretta?”

“No,” Otto said. “But it’s within arm’s reach, so when you go in, take care.”

McGarvey rang off. “Get down in the dinghy, and I’ll get you close to the Jet Ski,” he told Pete. “See if she left anything behind.”

Pete hung off the transom and pulled the little boat close aboard, and as soon as she was in, McGarvey maneuvered the Whitby over to the Jet Ski.

Pete reached over and pulled something from one of the compartments. “A cell phone in a plastic bag.”

“Stand by. We’re going in,” McGarvey said.

He went forward and lowered the Danforth anchor. The water here was only twenty feet deep, so he let out one hundred feet of line, cleated it, then went back to the helm and put the ketch in reverse until the anchor bit. He shut down the engine and pocketed the key.

Pete was waiting in the dinghy. He handed her pistol down, shoved his in the waistband of his shorts at the small of his back, and climbed down into the dinghy, and they headed to the beach.

Taio maneuvered slowly past the boats waiting for the Blackburn Point Bridge and crossed beneath the low span and through the several boats waiting on that side, careful to make no wake, which would make people angry at him. Angry people remembered those who did something to them.

When he was clear, he sped up and came within sight of the McGarveys’ house and the empty dock, and he throttled down again and made his way slowly ashore, all of his senses alert. The situation had gotten completely out of hand. All he wanted now was to collect Li and get the hell out.

Easing the Jet Ski behind the dock of the house two doors down from the McGarveys’, he tied it off, got the AR-15 from the bag, loaded it, and headed off.

Li thought she’d heard the distinctive growl of the Jet Ski that Taio was driving, but then it stopped. It had been very close, perhaps less than a hundred meters to the south. Whoever was monitoring the house surveillance system knew that she was here, but it was unlikely that they were aware she’d spotted the pistol taped under the seat just in front of her.

It was a race now. Either Taio got here first or the McGarveys would.

Pete ran the bow of the dinghy up on the beach and cut the engine as Mac jumped out, his Walther in hand.

A car passed on the road above, and Pete was right behind him as he went across the low sand dune and held up.

He called Otto. “Has anything changed?”

“Yes. The other Kawasaki pulled up at the Parkers’ house two doors down from you. A man carrying an AR-15 got off and is heading your way. ETA maybe three minutes tops.”

McGarvey pocketed the phone. “Company’s coming,” he said to Pete over his shoulder and hurried across the road.

He didn’t bother with the front door, but both of them went around back to the rear of the house, where they pulled up.

The woman was seated in the gazebo her back to them. She was bent over again, her head down as if she were frightened or in pain.

“Get to your feet with your hands up!” McGarvey shouted.

The woman rolled to the left onto a knee as if she were startled out of her mind and was collapsing. At the same time, her right arm came around.

She had the Beretta in hand and started firing, the rounds smacking into the side of the house inches from where McGarvey had been standing.

“Keep her busy, but try not to kill her,” Mac told Pete, and he raced to the front of the house, and, rounding the corner, ran to the to the south side and toward the rear.

He could hear Pete firing back, her shots measured, but the Beretta was finally silent, the fifteen-round magazine dry—either that or the woman was down.

“Li!” a man shouted at the same time Mac reached the back of the house and cautiously peered around the corner.

The same one from the Kawasaki that had passed them on the ICW was rushing