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

to matter. He’d lived a sheltered, deceitful life. He’d lied to the people he loved. He’d lived in fear this whole time, looking over his shoulder fifty times a day with the worry that his jig was up, his true nature was exposed.

He’d never been in a fight. He always told himself he could defend himself if he needed to, but he had a role to play, and that role was the feeble old man. But you dive into any role for long enough and it becomes who you are. Undercovers can attest to that. It’s the reason they all have a mandatory expiration date, before they become the junkies and criminals they’re pretending to be.

So to forgo all that neurological wiring and simply smash the drawer to pieces against the cuff was invigorating.

It stirred his soul.

He thought maybe there was a way out of this after all.

The car kept coming. It wasn’t sticking to the trails. From his position he could only see in the direction of the port, which didn’t help. All he could hear was the incessant drone of the engine and the rumbling of off-road tyres.

Someone was coming for him.

Dylan, or Jason, or Will.

No option was better or worse than the other.

They’d all lead to a bullet in his dome.

At the thirty-six minute mark the chain between the cuffs broke, the twisted metal finally snapping under his relentless barrage. He jerked his hand away and it flared with pain he’d never felt in his life. He was an amateur in the matter of physical discomfort. Sure, Vince Ricci had slapped him around, thrown him over tables, but Theodore had always maintained smug satisfaction under the surface. Vince didn’t know that Theodore was the one tearing his operation apart behind-the-scenes, turning his men on each other, and if he had to take a beating while Dylan’s empire burned down, then so be it.

Now he looked down at his wrist.

It was swollen purple, puffed up, the skin fat and inflamed around the biting steel. It hurt bad. He wanted to cry, fall back into the comfort of the role he’d been playing for thirty years. It’d probably take another thirty years to break out of that conditioning.

He didn’t have thirty years.

He had seconds.

Whoever was coming for him … they were at the door.

He heard two low female voices, almost whispering back and forth.

He paused, frozen in the middle of the room.

Not Dylan.

Not Jason.

Not Will.

Someone else.

Determination stirred in him. He’d been faking almost every aspect of his existence for as long as he could remember. Inside he was a twisted mess, but there was discipline there amidst the knots. When he put his mind to something, he did it. He’d proven himself over the last two months with each body added to the count, with each hit executed by Vince or Eric or those two labourers or any of the other men he’d paid to whack each other.

He was Theodore Walcott.

He could damn well put on one last performance.

Especially if his life was at stake.

Just as Jason and Will had filled the office’s entranceway thirty minutes ago, so did the two newcomers now. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, but they didn’t have the same bulk. Two women who looked to be in their early thirties, both drop-dead gorgeous, one blonde and one dark-haired. The blonde looked vaguely Scandinavian and the dark-haired one was Caucasian. Blue and green eyes, respectively.

But behind the eyes they weren’t the ditzy supermodels he imagined. They were cold and calculating and restrained. There was no overreaction to spotting him there.

They had 9mm Glocks, the same as Jason and Will’s.

Teddy realised he was looking at the duo’s partners.

He didn’t let any of it show.

Tears fell from his eyes, and his shoulders slumped, and he held up his mangled wrist for them to see.

His voice barely above a whisper, he said, ‘Please. I’m not who everyone says I am. There’s … there’s been a huge misunderstanding.’

He fell back into the chair, and sucked in air like he was hyperventilating.

They half-bought it.

The dark-haired one stepped forward. The blonde didn’t budge.

Theodore displayed his destroyed hand. It looked like a water balloon, blood swelling under the surface, turning the whole appendage purple. More tears flowed as he said, ‘They didn’t have to do this to me, you know. They didn’t have to do this.’

The dark-haired one kept her distance, kept her gun raised, but she couldn’t take her eyes off his hand. ‘Who did this to you?’

‘The two men,’ he croaked, encompassing the role. He was old. He was frail. He was the victim. ‘They came here with … their anger … and they crushed my hand. Before … I even had the chance to speak. Before I could explain myself. There’s so much they don’t know. There’s so much they’ve misunderstood. Ah, God. It hurts. Where’s my grandson? Is he safe?’

The dark-haired one’s face twisted. She looked over her shoulder.

The blonde one was unreadable. She clearly didn’t know what to think.

You dumb bitches, Teddy thought. You’re buying it.

The dark-haired one turned back. ‘You need to come with us. We’re going to keep you safe.’

Teddy Barrow sobbed.

Theodore Walcott waited for his opportunity.

74

Back in their jeep, out the front of the Barrow/Walcott homestead, Slater’s phone rang.

It was Lyla’s number.

Slater said, ‘I’ll put it on speaker.’

He answered. ‘Lyla?’

Dylan Walcott said, ‘Cut the shit.’

‘Okay.’

‘Is your friend alive too?’

King said, ‘Nice of you to care.’

Walcott said, ‘Where are you?’

‘At your brother’s house,’ Slater said.

A pause.

Walcott said, ‘So you do know.’

‘We put it together eventually.’

‘I told you there were things you were missing. I told you you’d feel stupid for ever getting involved.’

‘We don’t feel stupid,’ Slater said. ‘Not yet. Well, I can only speak for myself…’

King said, ‘All good here.’

‘You won’t be for much longer,’ Dylan said. ‘If you want to preserve your health I suggest we come to a truce quickly. I have a wet-work team en route to the house you’re sitting in. It’ll only take one text message to call it off.