Gamma Blade - Tim Stevens Page 0,10

those who’d supported him, and who were of sufficient quality that they’d continue doing good work. Which meant Venn himself was likely to move up. Captain next, and then... who knew?

Beth knew all of this, and appreciated it. But Venn was aware too that she was afraid for him. Every day he strapped on his holster and went out there, there was some part of her that feared the urgent phone call, the notification that he’d been seriously injured, or worse. God knew, she’d been caught up in the violence of his life more times than he cared to think about. They’d met when they were both on the run, and even after they’d gotten together, Beth had been subjected to a kidnapping and a murder attempt.

The stress of it all, the bouts of terrible, merciless violence, had taken their toll, and for a while last fall, Beth had left Venn. He’d gotten her back, and the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder she’d suffered seemed to have abated. But just this winter past, in January, Venn had almost been killed at the hands of the serial killer responsible for the so-called Sigma murders in Manhattan. And he’d narrowly escaped death from a suicide bomber during his investigation into the Martha Ignatowski murder last month.

He was in a high-risk profession. He was in the firing line, constantly. And that wasn’t the kind of life in which to bring up a child. A life with a father who ran the risk, every single day, of failing to come home.

And there was Venn’s dilemma. Because he loved his work. Loved the adrenaline surge when his quarry had been identified, and he got on the trail. Loved the complexities of the investigations he undertook, the piecing together of the evidence, and the final, often brutal end game.

If he got promoted, and worked his way up the ranks, he’d move away from the front line. Life would become safer. He’d be earning a whole lot more.

And on the surface, that sounded ideal.

But Venn couldn’t shake off the niggling worry that it also sounded... dull. That he’d turn into the kind of chronically dissatisfied, disillusioned man he’d seen sometimes among the senior echelons of the Chicago Police Department, where he’d worked years ago, and in the NYPD itself. Hell, even among some of the top brass in the US Marine Corps.

He wasn’t, in his blood, a desk guy. And there was no use in pretending that he was.

*

They were drawing parallel to the jetty running to their right alongside the Merry May’s berth. A string of people, all male, stood along the jetty. Five of them, Venn counted. He had a cop’s habit of adding up the numbers in any bunch of men. It was a survival technique.

The men were evenly spaced, all with their backs to Beth and Venn and facing the boat. They had their feet apart, their hands crossed in front of them, their heads slightly lowered.

Venn recognized the pose. It was the sign of a guy who was waiting.

Waiting, but not passively. Rather, preparing for sudden action.

Venn slowed. He reached his arm across Beth.

She said: “What -?”

“Hold on.”

His eyes flicked across the backs of the heads arrayed along the jetty. None of them moved.

It suggested discipline.

Purpose.

These five men were professionals.

Now, that could mean a number of things. The yacht was a high-end model. The owner was rich. The men might be private security staff, employed to watch it.

If they were from a security firm, it was one which had strict rules. Because every single one of the heads was shaved bald.

Venn evaluated the men. They were all dressed in dark clothes, unusual for a Miami night in May. They were of varying height, but all of them looked trim and agile. None of them bounced on the balls of their feet, like boxers, but in their stillness they conveyed the impression of coiled springs, ready to erupt into movement on cue.

Venn was aware of Beth tugging on his arm and saying something, but he’d zoned out. His mind was flicking through the index cards which had been drummed into it during his military and police training, sorting them and arranging them according to prominence.

This was Miami.

An expensive yacht was berthed on the marina - nothing unusual there - but there were five menacing-looking, fighting men watching it.

Drugs came to mind.

Venn was a cop. He was way out of his jurisdiction, but he was a cop nonetheless, and duty-bound to take note of