Garret's Gambit

to start our investigation.”
She frowned at him. “I don’t work in quite the same field as you, but I wanted to start tracking her online.”
“What you mean is that you’ve already started, right?” he said, studying her carefully.
She smiled. “You know me so well.”
“In many ways I do,” he said. “For a while there, it seemed like I was spending more time with you than with Amy.”
“I know,” she answered, trying to keep her feelings out of her expression. “So why the hell did you even keep waiting around for my sister?”
“I don’t know. I should have seen what she was like from the beginning.”
“What I think you should have seen was the attraction between Amy and your brother and the fact that they were hiding something,” she said.
“Yeah, I know, but it’s hard to see that kind of stuff when you’re locked inside your own feelings,” he said. “I honestly didn’t see it.” Realization dawned on his face. “Are you saying that you did?”
She nodded. “I did.”
“Did you think that maybe you should have said something to me?”
“Are you kidding? Nobody could tell you anything,” she said in exasperation. “Especially me.”
He burst out with a laugh. “Well, that hasn’t changed. I’m still pretty bull-headed.”
“Surprise, surprise,” she murmured.
He just looked at her, as she shrugged. Then came a knock on the door. “I imagine it’s Kano.”
At that, the knock continued with an odd pattern to it.
Garret nodded and said, “Definitely Kano.” He walked over, opened the door, and smiled when he saw his buddy.
“Good thing you’re still around,” Kano said. “I had visions of you getting a hot lead and taking off on me.”
“Not yet, but we need to get some intel pretty quickly.”
“It’s possible we could get some from Jonas,” Kano said, “and Charles is expecting us tonight.”
“Good, at least we have that locked down.” Looking at Astra, he said, “So, outside of Belgium, what do you have to offer?”
“I’m not even sure Belgium has anything to offer,” she said. “All I can tell you is that none of my sister’s credit cards have been used in the last twenty-four hours and neither has her cell phone.” Hesitating, she finally added reluctantly. “Your brother’s phone hasn’t been used either.”
“You tracked it?”
She nodded. “That was the easy part. After that, it gets much harder.”
“That’s true,” he said.
*
Garret didn’t know what to make of Astra at this point. She was so different, and it was hard to see the young girl he recognized from before, yet she came out in little glimpses. He took a deep breath. “Why do I feel like you’re holding something back?”
She hesitated and then nodded. “Part of the reason for Amy moving from Belgium to London was that she’d given your brother an ultimatum.”
“Why?”
She sighed, then shrugged. “Amy’s pregnant.”
That news was like a punch to his gut. “Jesus,” he said. “Did my brother know?”
“I don’t know if she told him or not. What I do know is that she wanted a different life, and it was important to her.”
“So it’s my brother’s child?”
“It’s your niece or nephew, yes,” she confirmed.
He stared off in the distance, still getting his mind wrapped around it.
“So, whatever feelings you may still have for her,” she said, “you probably need to walk away from them completely.”
He waved a hand at her. “I walked away a long time ago.”
“But I still get the feeling that you’re emotionally affected.”
“Not by her but by her deception, her affair with my brother,” he said. “However, for my brother, a pregnancy would be a big deal.”
“Any reason why?”
“He’s always said he didn’t plan to be a father,” Garret murmured.
“Plans change when the facts hit the fan,” she said, her voice cool. “I wouldn’t think he’d be somebody to ditch his responsibilities though.”
“Oh, I don’t think he would either,” he said. “I’m not sure that we know what’s going on in their personal life, outside of the fact that a big change is happening.”
“Exactly,” she agreed.
“And, if my brother is missing and if it’s something suspicious, it would make sense that she would reach out to me through my team,” he said.
“Why not the cops?”
“Because of the type of work my brother does, which is very similar to what I do for Bullard—meaning we avoid local law enforcement at all costs and only communicate with the big agencies as a courtesy. Also we heard some suspicion or a theory that he might have had something to do with the plane crash.”
At that, Astra looked at him in shock. “The plane crash you were in?”
He shrugged. “I wouldn’t have thought my brother hated me that much, but honestly I don’t know. Maybe he does.”
“I would say that he did not, but you’re right. We don’t know because we haven’t seen them in years,” she said heavily. “I do talk to Amy at times, but only because she’s called me to complain. And you have to take her words with a grain of salt.”
Garret nearly growled.
Astra nodded. “People change, but I would hope not to that extent.”
“You and me both,” he said, with a hard look.
She nodded and said quietly, “I get that you don’t like hearing about any of this going on between Amy and Gregg, but it’s still totally possible that Gregg had nothing to do with it. I’d like to believe he’s better than that. Especially as I heard he wanted to reconcile with you.”
Garret was still dealing with the shock of thinking of his brother as a father. Gregg was younger, a little wilder, and didn’t have quite the reasoning ability that Garret had. But they’d always been close—until Amy came between them. And, for that, he would always hold Amy off to the side because she’d been the thorn that festered.
Kano, quietly listening from the corner, joined the conversation. “That also explains why she may have disappeared now,” Kano interjected.
“How so?” Garret asked.
“Hormones. Pregnancy sets off a storm of hormones, and she may well be seeing things that aren’t there,” he said, “or interpreting