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

He finally killed the call with Lyla and passed the smartphone back to Dylan.

Dylan said, ‘Now let me talk to my brother.’

‘What do you want to say to him?’

‘Are you stalling?’ Dylan said.

King said, ‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’

He pulled his own phone out and hoped like hell that Violetta and Alexis had Theodore Walcott with them.

77

Violetta’s phone beeped a confirmation.

She barely registered it.

Shock set in.

She and Alexis stood over Teddy.

He lay face-down in the sand, unmoving. A viscous patch of crimson swirled around his head, sinking into the ground with each passing second. They’d caught up to him, screeched to a halt where he’d fallen, looked down and gasped in mutual horror.

A pointed rock had gone through his skull, driving up through his face.

He’d impaled himself on a piece of the landscape.

After a prolonged silence Alexis said, ‘That was your phone.’

‘What?’

‘Your phone. It buzzed.’

‘Oh.’

Violetta fished it out of the back pocket of her jeans and glanced down.

Well, she thought, at least that worked.

A location notification flashed on a satellite map of Freeport, revealing Lyla Barrow’s location as deep in the heart of a resort complex overlooking the Bell Channel Bay, just inland from the south shore. The phone was wirelessly connected to her open laptop in the car, which had been running a tracking service on every incoming call to the cell tower in the east of Grand Bahama. Lyla was positioned right at the water’s edge, no doubt in a villa that Walcott owned personally.

She could find which house was his by combing through the labyrinth of documents she’d amassed.

Violetta returned her gaze to Teddy’s body and said, ‘We got her.’

It didn’t sound like she was the one speaking.

That’s the shock.

Her phone rang.

Inevitably.

She looked down, saw King’s contact name, clenched her teeth and sucked in air.

Alexis said, ‘What do we do?’

‘What can we do?’

‘You have to answer it,’ Alexis said.

‘I know,’ Violetta said. ‘But what do I say?’

‘You’re the operator. I’m the civilian.’

‘I don’t know about that anymore.’

Alexis said, ‘Give it to me.’

Violetta did.

Her own actions surprised herself, but she was still looking in on her body as a distant observer, unable to comprehend what had happened. So it was someone else passing the phone to Alexis Diaz, who a few months ago had been a paralegal in New York, who hadn’t so much as been in a physical altercation her whole life before that. Now she was taking the reins, wading through the uncertainty, charging ahead.

She swiped her finger across the touchscreen to answer and said, ‘It’s Alexis.’

King said, ‘Is Violetta okay?’

‘Yes. She’s right beside me.’

‘Put Theodore on.’

Alexis stared at Teddy’s corpse at her feet. The skin paling, the halo of blood spreading wider.

Alexis said, ‘I can’t do that. He tripped on a rock and it went through his skull. There was nothing we could have done to stop him. But you need to pretend I told you something different.’

Like nothing was amiss, King said, ‘Well, wake him up.’

She didn’t say anything.

King said, ‘What do you mean he passed out? From what?’

Alexis stayed mute.

King said, ‘Oh, fear? Really? That scumbag’s been pretending he was someone else for the past thirty years and now he’s so scared he couldn’t possibly stay conscious? That’s what you’re telling me?’

Alexis was detached from King’s cover story. She was thinking hard. Finally she said, ‘We have Lyla’s location. She’s at a resort in the Bell Channel Bay. We can be there in fifteen minutes. Maybe less.’

King almost sighed with relief, but reined himself back in and said, ‘Good. I know where that is. We’ll be right behind you. Thirty, tops.’

In the background, a voice that could only be Dylan Walcott said, ‘Thirty? Where the hell are you going?’

The cover blown.

An unstoppable chain of events set in motion.

The grand finale.

King said, ‘Gotta go. Are we on the same page?’

Alexis said, ‘Yes.’

The line died.

Alexis handed the phone back to Violetta and said, ‘We have to go for Lyla. Right now.’

Violetta said, ‘What if there’s an army defending her?’

‘Then we go through them.’

‘Are they joining us?’

‘Thirty minutes, they said.’

‘So we’re on our own for fifteen.’

‘We can’t stall. We have to move.’

Violetta said, ‘I know.’

She allowed herself a single second to mourn Teddy Barrow. You can’t put on a facade for thirty years. Half of Theodore Walcott was Teddy Barrow. Maybe more than half. The rest had been deep under the surface, fighting not to take over, but it had escaped eventually. As soon as Teddy realised Theodore could pay mobsters to execute each other. He’d kept the guilt at bay with his childhood conditioning, living two lives in one. Most of him had been a good, confused man, unsure why he had such dark urges, willing to do anything and everything to protect the woman and child he loved.

Violetta had seen the look in his eyes when he’d charged out of the room. His hands had been inches away from Alexis’ Glock. Alexis hadn’t realised it. Violetta had. At the last second Teddy had changed his mind and decided to run instead of fight. He might have succeeded. There was no doubt in Violetta’s mind he could have killed her, if he wanted.

Alexis was already halfway to the car. ‘What are you doing?’

Violetta hovered over Teddy’s corpse, facedown in the sand.

Under her breath she muttered, ‘The choices we make…’

Then she forgot about him and started for the car.

78

King took the phone away from his ear to a tirade of abuse.

Walcott’s hair was far from perfect now, hanging in fronds over his forehead, accentuating his crazed eyes.

He shouted, ‘What are you two up to? If I don’t get an explanation in ten seconds, that stupid bitch is dead and I’ll make her grandkid watch as my men—’

King ripped his Glock free, slipped a finger inside the trigger guard and pressed the tip of the barrel through the veil of hair draped over Dylan’s forehead.

It touched his skin with a soft thunk.

It stayed there.

Dylan froze. His eyes twisted with hate. ‘You’re making an enormous mistake.’

‘I’m afraid