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

She quickly joined him, as she heard a card key swiping in the lock at the same moment that Garret got the connecting door unlocked and pulled her inside.

“You don’t know who it is,” she whispered. “Why are we running away?”

“Last time I looked, we didn’t have permission to be there,” he said. “Besides, this way we get to know who else is coming in.”

Just then she heard a voice on the other side of the connecting door.

“I thought you said you saw them come in here?”

“I thought I did too,” he said, “but now I don’t know.”

“There isn’t any room for ‘I don’t know.’ We have to keep an eye on anybody that’s in this room.”

“I still don’t think she would know anything.”

“She buggered off on us while we were trying to keep track of her, so we have to assume she knows something,” one man said.

At that, Garret stepped out of the adjoining room and said, “Hello, gentlemen. Were you looking for me?”

Chapter 4

Astra watched through the crack, as the two men stared at him in shock. They were obviously not hotel employees.

“Who are you?” one of the men asked rudely.

She heard the crispness in Garret’s voice as he spoke. “Well, obviously, if I’m part of the other suite, I’m looking for the woman who’s in here. She’s with my party.”

“Sure,” the one guy said, with a sneer.

Then, in a move so smooth and practiced, she was almost shocked when Garret’s right hand smacked the guy on the side of the head with a light punch.

“Don’t talk about her that like that,” he said.

The guy stepped back. “What the fuck?”

“I said, what do you know about her, and why are you watching her room?”

“You don’t know anything about me,” the one guy said. “I don’t have to stay here and talk to you.” And, with that, he strode to the door and flung it open, only to see Kano standing there, a grim smile on his face. He stepped in, pushing the two men back into the room.

“Now you are the guys we want to talk to,” Garret said. “So talk. What do you know about her disappearance?”

“We don’t know anything. We were just supposed to keep an eye on the room, and I saw these two go in, so I told my boss,” the one man said, as he was still nursing his sore cheek. “And I didn’t need to get punched in the face for it.”

“Well, you’re the one who’s tracking a single woman,” Astra said angrily, coming into the room. “And why is that again?”

The men looked at her, looked at Garret, then looked back to Kano and said, “We don’t have to talk to anybody.”

“Well, you don’t have to,” Garret replied, and, with that, pulled out his phone and said, “You can talk to MI6 instead.” At that, the two men froze. “I thought so,” he said, as he hit Jonas’s number and said, “Jonas, I’m sending you photos of the two men, watching Amy’s room. We’ve got them pinned inside her room right now.”

“Don’t kill them,” Jonas’s voice came through the phone, sharp and crisp.

The two men stared at the phone in shock.

“I’ll try not to,” he said, “but you don’t like it when we cause damage. Isn’t that what you said when you picked us up at the airport? That we always cause damage?”

“Yeah, and, in this case, I suspect you’re about to cause damage to a hotel room and several people. Well, if they need to be damaged, then I guess I’m okay with it.”

“You know how I feel about assholes.”

“Yes, I do,” he said. “I’m on my way.”

“Better get here fast.” He hung up the phone, looked at the two intruders, and asked, “You want to talk to us, or you want to talk to MI6?”

“We don’t want anything to do with MI6,” one man said, looking at the other. “We’re actually from Scotland.”

“You don’t have accents,” she said, stepping up beside Garret. “I don’t believe you. What do you have to do with my sister? Did you have anything to do with her disappearance?”

The first man raised his hands, palms up. “No, we were hired to keep an eye on the apartment and to see who came to look after her, to look in on her, I mean.”

“It’s a hotel room, not an apartment, dumbass,” Garret said. “So you better get things straight here. Because we’ll check it out, and, if you’re lying, I will personally take you apart.”

“Look. We were hired to keep a watch on this place. That’s it. It was my watch, when you guys showed up. I reported seeing you go in. That’s all there is to it.”

“And you told who?” Kano asked, coming around to study the two men, as he sent pictures to his team and to Jonas.

“The guy who hired us,” he answered. Then quickly added, “And I don’t know anything about him. I get a phone call. I get a deposit of money in my account, half up front, half when the job’s done. Other than that, I can’t tell you anything.”

“Not sure I believe you,” he said. “What’s the number?”

He hesitated and immediately Kano came and searched him. He pulled out his wallet, cell phone, and, with a quick search, found a piece on his ankle. He pulled that out and whistled. “Jonas will love this.”

“No, he won’t,” Garret said, “he won’t love it at all.”

“But that’s all right. He needed a reason to come and get you guys anyway.” Kano sent a picture of the handgun to Jonas, and then they went through the guy’s wallet.

“Hey, you don’t need to do that.”

“What I see is that you don’t have enough to buy yourself some chips at the corner store,” he said. “So maybe you better try that line again.”

“It’s the truth,” he said. “I don’t have any money. That’s why I’m even doing this, and it’s all bullshit.”

Kano checked out the guy’s name. “Funny, you got IDs