Arrow's Rest by Joel Scott (best way to read books txt) 📕

“Sit down and take the weight off your feet. You did exactly the right thing. Well, maybe not the giving him your real name part. That was unfortunate. And you’re absolutely certain that you weren’t followed here? Excellent. You should probably stay out of sight for a while now; we can’t have them spotting you again. I can help you out with that. Go ahead and pour yourself a drink.”

The accountant opened the laptop, tapped away at the keyboard, paused and tapped again.

“Okay. So, Jared Kane, you say? Let’s see. This yacht club program has got to be the slowest in the civilized world. My old Commodore 64 could pull up information faster. Okay, here we go. Hmm. No mention of a Jared Kane anywhere in the club database. Not a member, not up for initiation, not on the waiting list. So he’s lying about all of that. Not to worry. I’ll find him somewhere, if that’s really his name. It’s a small world these days and getting smaller by the hour.”

He tapped out another entry and checked the screen again. “Not on Facebook, no surprise there, but you never know, be stupid not to check. And I’m not stupid. Well, not about most things anyways.”

He half turned and winked at the man. He opened a desk drawer and pulled out a notebook and flicked through it. “Here we go, just need the right password and Bob’s your uncle.” He hit some keys. “And, wait, wait, and wait, and . . . bingo. I’m in like Flynn. Just put in the name, check the old arrest sheets and court records. Oopsy, here we are. Oh, the sweet boy. So young back then. A little skinny for my taste though. Uh-oh, he’s been baaad.”

He shook his head in disapproval and scrolled through the report. He stopped and frowned at the screen, then picked up the cell phone that sat on the desk alongside the laptop and made a call.

“Hi. It’s me.” He paused and listened. “Yes, he’s here now. I checked the records, it’s like you figured. Yep, both of them. Okay, sure, I can take care of that. Half an hour then. Not a problem. Yep. He did real good.”

John Newcombe poured himself a drink and stood by the bar, glancing back at the accountant. The fat little homosexual gave him the creeps. Maybe even scared him a bit sometimes.

“Here, take off your jacket. It’s dripping on the carpet. Clint and Travis are on their way over to give you a hand with those naughty boys. Hang it up in the wet locker by the cabin door, there’s a good fellow.”

He trailed Newcombe back towards the entrance. “Here, let me help you.”

He took the drink from him and set it on the counter. As Newcombe took off his anorak and turned to open the locker door, the accountant pulled a small .22 calibre pistol out of his vest and shot him twice, carefully, in the base of the skull.

“Dumb cluck. Why does he think they put wet lockers and drains on boats, for gosh sakes?” Grunting with effort, he dragged Newcombe forward another couple of feet and centred him over the drain. Panting heavily he picked up the freshwater hose that hung in the locker and rinsed away the traces of blood. He curled the man’s legs tight up against his body and with some difficulty was able to close the locker door on him.

“There we go now, Bob’s your uncle. No fuss, no muss, no bother.”

His good humour restored, he picked up the man’s drink, drained it, and dropped the glass into the garbage container under the sink. He paused, sighed, slapped his wrist in mock disapproval, then took the glass out again, double-bagged it in Ziplocs, and used the cleaver from the galley to smash it into small pieces. Then he went out on deck and poured the fragments over the side and into the water before returning to his desk and tapping away on his laptop, nodding and muttering to himself as the information rolled across the screen.

“Okay, so here we are. Hello again, Jared. Bit of a bad boy early on, two years in the slammer for assault, couple more incidents on the sheet, nothing too, too serious. Hmm. Not really my type, though I might be persuaded.” He licked his lips. “Now I could go for the big fellow, though. He looks dangerous. Probably need the brothers to give me a hand with that one. Speaking of which.”

He glanced around the cabin though he knew he was alone and spat on his hand and reached down under the desk. His eyes switched from the computer screen to the wet locker and back and forth again, and his breath grew raspy and uneven.

Twenty minutes later there was a knock on the hull and the brothers came aboard. They brought industrial-strength garbage bags with them, and the three of them put on disposable rubber gloves. Within half an hour they had lowered the mahogany launch into the water, and John Newcombe was on his way out of the harbour and under the Lions Gate Bridge, triple-bagged and trussed in old anchor chain. A mile out in a hundred fathoms of water the brothers shut off the engine and slipped him quietly over the side into the dark water. They lit cigarettes and waited in silence for a few minutes, though neither of them could have said exactly why. They hadn’t even liked him, and he sure as hell wasn’t coming back up.

A freighter herded up with a pair of tugs moved past a half mile out and rocked them with its wake. Clint threw his cigarette butt over the side, then flipped the engine into gear and headed back to the club. When they arrived back at his berth, the accountant was waiting with the slings and helped them crane the boat up out of the water and onto the upper