The Final Twist by Jeffery Deaver (free ebooks romance novels txt) 📕

(a knife fight—between them—had figured) but they really hadn’t known each other all that long.

“Either’s good.”

“Any excitement yet?”

“Not so much.”

“Keep me posted on that.”

“Most definitely.”

“How do you like your pheasant?” Victoria asked.

“Never been asked that before.” This was true. He considered. “Probably rarer than weller.”

“I agree. Mary Dove and I’re cooking tonight. A bird she got last season.”

“You hunt?”

“I have but the last time I got pheasant was a couple years ago.”

“What’s your scattergun?” He was thinking of his father’s wonderful Benelli Pacific Flyway, with a chrome receiver. An elegant weapon.

“I don’t have one.”

“What’d you borrow?”

“I didn’t use a shotgun,” she said.

“I don’t think you can legally use a rifle on birds. Not in California.”

“It wasn’t in California and I didn’t use a rifle.”

“You didn’t use a rifle?”

“Colter, how many times are you going to keep asking me questions I’ve already answered.”

“Well, what did you use?”

“My Glock. The seventeen.”

“In the air?”

“Of course, you can’t shoot a bird on the ground. And it wasn’t quick-draw Annie Oakley or anything like that. I was already holding the weapon.”

“How many . . .” His voice faded.

“Rounds did I use, you were going to ask?”

He’d stifled the insulting question, but yes, that was what he was going to ask. Her Glock would hold seventeen rounds and you could probably get off three a second, aiming carefully.

Then he noticed she was silent once again.

Finally Victoria said, “It was one.”

He reminded himself not to ask: A single shot?

Shaw was talented with sidearms but he didn’t think he could hit a flying bird with either of his pistols and never with one shot.

“I mean, I aimed. I wasn’t firing from the hip. Anyway, I agree: rare is best. Pheasant’s lean. Dries out when you cook it too long. When are you back?”

“Hope it’s not more than a couple of days.”

“You need any help, I’m feeling better.”

Victoria ran her own security consulting firm, based out of Southern California.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You know, Colt, there are two kinds of people in the world.”

Living/dead. Blond/brunette. Short/tall. Liberal/Conservative. Sexy/not so much. He did not, of course, say this, but replied with: “Okay?”

“Those who keep something in mind when they say they’re going to keep something in mind. And those who have no intention of keeping something in mind when they say they’re keeping something in mind.”

“I’m the first type.”

“I had a feeling you were. But I liked hearing you say so.”

They made conversation for ten minutes or so, then he was eager to get on the trail of the BlackBridge evidence. He told her he’d better go. “I’ll call you soon.”

“You know, Colt, there are two types of people in the world . . .”

He laughed and said goodbye and they disconnected.

The two of them were similar in many ways. She was nearly as itinerant as he was, and as much of a calculated risk-taker. They shared a wry humor and an intolerance for bullying and stupidity. They’d certainly developed a rapport in Washington State and it didn’t hurt that not only had he saved her life, but that she’d saved his.

And that kiss . . .

The relationship had a way to progress on that slippery, serpentine road on which matters of the heart pace before certain things could be said and asked.

This was fine with him. He was in no hurry. Velocity in love, like velocity on the motocross course, had in the past occasionally gotten Colter Shaw into trouble.

Best for restless men to take things slowly.

19

Shaw told himself: assess.

He was in the kitchen of the safe house. He’d supplemented Mack’s research on the two leads as to where Amos Gahl might have hidden the BlackBridge evidence. Morton Nadler, who owned the house in Burlingame that his father had been interested in, was retired. He had spent most of his working life as a management-level employee at San Francisco airport. What was his connection to Gahl? Would he have left Nadler the evidence to keep safe? Or was Nadler the source for incriminating information about BlackBridge, maybe because of his connection to the airlines and private aircraft?

The other spot, the Haywood Brothers Warehouse in the Embarcadero, had survived the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. It had not been a functioning warehouse for some years, which did not bode well for Shaw’s mission. Probably the building had been emptied out and if Gahl had hidden anything there the evidence would likely be in some other facility or, more likely, a landfill. Because the building was for sale, there was a representative on-site, from whom Shaw might learn something.

His Android hummed. He pressed answer and before he could say a word there came: “You into coincidences, Colt?”

The voice was a grumbling baritone. Caller ID told Shaw who the person on the other end was but even if it hadn’t he would’ve known with the first syllable. Teddy Bruin was a former Marine who—along with his wife, former soldier Velma—ran the business side of Shaw’s reward operation. They lived beside Shaw’s property in Florida, though he’d seen them just the other day; they were on a road trip out West and had spent a few days at the Compound with Shaw, Victoria and Mary Dove.

A call from the Bruins meant one of two things: He had failed to collect a reward check, which usually happened because the offeror turned out to be on hard times.

Or they’d just learned of an offer.

“Coincidences?” Shaw queried.

“Three weeks ago, give or take, that offer in Silicon Valley, that girl? Father worried about her?”

“Right.”

The reward that sent him deep into the world of the video gaming industry. A missing student had been kidnapped, it appeared, by a perp who was acting out a violent video game in real life.

“Well, we got a replay.” Teddy chuckled. A joke on the game motif, Shaw noted. Teddy looked and sounded scary but he had quite the sense of humor.

“Hi, Colter.” A woman’s voice, as melodious as her husband’s was raw.

“Velma. Where are you two?”

“Reno. I have a roll