Garret's Gambit by Dale Mayer (best sci fi novels of all time txt) 📕

to start airing more grievances. She knew it would happen again, when they found his brother, assuming Gregg was alive. But Garret still had so much hurt inside that he would have to deal with it and with Gregg at some point. But, if she could help mitigate some of that in the meantime, it would make life easier on them all. She turned back to look at Kano, who was busy on his phone. “Can you get what you need here?”

“To a certain extent, but we need information. We’ve got people on it, but they’re not exactly getting what we need right now fast enough.”

“Can you find it faster?” she asked.

He looked at her, surprised. “It’s hard to say,” he said, “but I don’t have what I need here. The internet’s just funky enough, and my phone isn’t the best thing for accessing some of these databases.” He walked back into the living room, where Amy was curled up in the chair. “We need addresses for where he’s been living, where he works, his license plates, anything you can tell us about his friends and other cohorts.”

Her sister supplied as much of the information as she could, and she had a much more mollified attitude now, enough so that Astra wondered if Kano had said something to her.

“Now that you have whatever you deem as important,” Amy said, “you can leave.”

“I can,” Garret said, quite happily, “but I’ll make this one-time offer. You can come with us and stay safe, or you can stay here and do you.”

“That’s easy. I’ll stay here and do me,” she said instantly in a sarcastic tone.

“That’s fine,” he said. “I will also tell you this only once. Somebody was watching the hotel room you disappeared from.”

She stared at him and asked, “What do you mean?”

“Somebody,” Astra said, immediately stepping in, “was watching your hotel room. When we went in, they came in too, and they tried to attack us.”

Amy looked from one to the other in confusion. “Why do they care?”

“Well, that’s what we were hoping you could tell us,” Garret said. “Somebody is either looking for my brother and thinks you have information, or, because they already have my brother, they’re looking for you for leverage.”

“Leverage?” her voice squeaked.

“Yes,” he said. “Leverage. To make my brother talk.”

“And why would he do that?”

“Well, that’s a good question,” he said, “but, if they have you, they can hurt you and can get Gregg to reveal what they want before they hurt you too badly.”

She just stared at him, her hands going to her belly, her skin suddenly pale.

“You didn’t have to say it quite that way,” Astra said to him quietly.

“No easy way to tell her,” he said. “She’s in trouble, whether she wants to admit it or not.”

“But I don’t know anything,” Amy said.

“Well, they won’t care because my brother does know a lot,” he said. “If anybody knows that you lived with him, which I assume they do, then they’ll know that you might have information they could possibly use.”

“So what am I supposed to do?” she said.

“Hope that we weren’t followed,” Kano said quietly. “Hope that not too many people know about this place.”

She stared at him blankly. “I don’t know who might know, but I’ve never tried to hide anything.”

“Which is why it’s interesting that my brother was living with you,” he said, “because he should have known better. He should have known that he was putting you in danger.” He tilted his head to the side. “Was he there all the time?”

Slowly she shook her head. “No, not all the time, only when he could get away, which wasn’t often,” she admitted slowly.

“Where did he stay the rest of the time?” Kano asked immediately.

She glared at him.

“This isn’t about your relationship,” Astra said, getting frustrated with her sister. “This is about all of it, and you have to do what you can to keep the baby safe.”

“Like you care about the baby,” she snapped.

Astra groaned. “Let’s not bring up any more about family crap, okay? Let’s just deal with the facts at hand.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” Garret said. “The facts are that somebody was hunting you at the hotel, and others could be coming here to look for you.”

“Well, what happened to the ones at the hotel?” Amy asked.

“MI6 has them now,” Astra answered.

“But Gregg says MI6 is bad,” Amy said. “You just gave the enemy to the enemy?”

“Interesting that he would say that,” Garret said, “because we tend to have a dim view of MI6, but that’s only because they’re another band of authority. None of us like having to play all these games, but I wouldn’t have said they were bad.”

“That just goes to prove that your brother is smarter than you,” she said, with spirit, as if loving the fact that she could say something that might get to him.

“So here’s your chance. I’m heading out the front door right now,” Garret said, turning, walking outside, with Kano right behind him. “Either come along or stay here.”

Astra ran behind him. “Surely you won’t just leave her like that?”

“What do you want me to do?” he said, turning to look at her with surprise. “I’m not going to kidnap her. She’s already called the cops on me once, and I’m not giving her the ammunition to do that again.”

She winced. “She’s still carrying your niece or nephew, and she still might know something valuable about your brother. Think about the information she just gave you now.”

“You mean, the fact that she lied again, and that Gregg wasn’t actually living with her?”

Astra winced. “I know,” she said, “but we did get information we needed.”

“What do you want me to do?” he said.

“I want you to put aside your past grievances. If this were me, what would you do?”

He looked at her in surprise, then shrugged and said, “I wouldn’t give you a choice. I’d pick you up, toss you in the car, and take you along.”

“And why is