Gambit by David Hagberg (fantasy novels to read txt) 📕

Antonio shook his head.

“Including a down payment on the yard.”

Antonio shook his head again.

“You can’t refuse,” Hammond said.

“Three years.”

“Thirty months, starting today. Give me a dollar figure, and I’ll write the check. Then we’ll have some lunch, and I’ll show you some sketches I made.”

“The Russian won’t like it,” Antonio said.

Viktor Sheplev’s yacht Anna was larger than Glory but so over-the-top glitzy that most of the players on the circuit thought it was tacky.

“He won’t know the difference. No other private yacht in the world will be classier.”

“Yes, sir. And I will make sure of it,” Sophia said. “Now, I would like a glass of champagne, and I would like to make a few sketches for you and your beautiful lady.”

After a very long lunch, which included Hammond’s check to Codecasa for $150,000,000, he and Susan went for a long walk on the beach, just beginning to empty out of the tourists going back to their hotels to clean up and get ready for the dinner hour.

“When did you come up with this idea?” she asked.

“When I decided that I’d had enough of Alaska, because up there in the wilderness, I was starting to get nervous.”

“Fear is sometimes good,” Susan said. “You were spending money, but you weren’t really in charge. Here is different. Like you said, Nero fiddled while Rome burned. I get it. But why name what’s going to be the grandest yacht on the circuit after me?” They stopped and she looked up at him. “Tommy, are you saying that you’re in love with me?”

“If I was, would you tell me to go to hell?”

She pursed her lips, but then shook her head. “No one has ever said that they were in love with me and meant it.”

“I am,” Hammond said, and he meant it. But one distant part of him realized that he wanted Susan close to him just as a drowning man wants a life jacket. He was drowning over the McGarvey thing, and he didn’t want to go under without company.

THIRTY-THREE

McGarvey walked down to the dock where his forty-two-foot Whitby ketch was secured and buttoned up against the weather. It was early afternoon, a light sea breeze making the summer heat and humidity bearable on the Gulf Coast island of Casey Key.

To his right on the expansive lawn that ran down from the two-story Florida-style house and uncaged pool behind it was the gazebo he’d had built for his wife Katy. It had also become Pete’s refuge even before they’d gotten married. A place of peace and tranquility, both women had said at one point or another. Safety.

The island here was so narrow, bounded by the Gulf to the west and the Intracoastal Waterway to the east, that there was only one road, and the house lots took up the entire width.

Pete came from the house with a couple of frosty bottles of Corona with slices of lime in the necks. “Are we going for a boat ride?” she asked.

“I was thinking about it. Might not be a bad idea to head a few miles offshore and putter around for a day or two. Maybe catch some fish, go for a swim if the days are calm enough.”

“And have an unlimited view in every direction.”

“Including up,” McGarvey said.

Pete was a little startled. “I didn’t think of that one.”

“If I were gunning for me, I might consider using a lightplane.”

“That would mean at least two of them. The pilot and a shooter.”

“I would shoot back.”

“We would shoot back,” Pete said. “And forget about trying to send me back to D.C. It’s more dangerous up there than here. Especially if you didn’t announce where we were heading.”

“But I did. I had Otto send emails to Ward over at the DIA and Sherman at the White House, in case either of them wanted to talk to me again.”

Pete grinned. “I’m sure they both realized that you still didn’t trust them and were setting them up in case something happened down here. Which couldn’t have made them very happy.”

“No.”

“Something is going to happen here, isn’t it?”

“I think so,” McGarvey said.

Lou’s voice came from a speaker in the gazebo. Otto had set it up about six months ago as part of the house security system and as a means of instant communications.

“You have visitors pulling into the driveway,” she said.

“Are you carrying?” Pete asked, and McGarvey nodded.

“Can you identify them?”

“Two men, one of whom is James Forest, but the other is unknown to me.”

Forest was chief of detectives for the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, and an old local acquaintance of Mac’s. He’d been involved in one way or another in several incidents that had happened here, including one at New College when a bomb went off in Mac’s car, taking his left leg off just below the knee and nearly killing him.

“Tell them to come around back to the pool,” McGarvey said.

“Of course,” Lou said.

“Word gets around,” Pete said as they headed up to the house.

Forest was a very young-looking, dark-haired man in his early forties who not long ago had worked as an undercover drug enforcement officer posing as a teenager. He was dressed in a sport coat and open-collar shirt, while the other, much larger man with thinning blond hair, a beak-like nose, and sour expression wore a shirt and tie despite the warmth. McGarvey immediately pegged him for a Bureau agent.

“That sounded like Otto’s wife at the front door,” Forest said.

“It’s his new AI program,” McGarvey said.

The other man nodded. “I’m Special Agent Owen Spader, SAC Tampa.”

“Would you gentlemen like a beer?” Pete asked.

“Not on duty,” Spader said, his tone abrupt enough to be irritating.

McGarvey motioned for them to have a seat at the poolside table. “What brings you guys out here?”

“We want to know why you’re here,” the Bureau SAC said.

“This is our home, and other than that, it’s none of your business.”

“You were involved in two shooting incidents in Washington.”

“Georgetown, actually,” Pete said.

“There were two fatalities.”

McGarvey just looked at the