Free Torsten Dahl book 1 - Stand Your Ground by David Leadbeater

anything for a client.”
    “And you pissed this guy off?”
    Dahl nodded, watching the street around them, getting Johanna and the girls moving again. “Twice, yeah.”
    “And then he shows up on our family holiday?” Julia raised her hand like a student. “Maybe he lives here?”
    Dahl nodded again. “Maybe.” Telling Jo that he thought he’d ID’d the guy back in Dulles airport wasn’t going to help right now. “Now, watch where you’re going, Julia. Turn around.”
    “Okay, okay.” The petulant reply was part of the nine-year-old’s make-up right now.
    “I don’t like him,” Isabella spoke up. “He’s a criminal.” She drew the last word out as long as possible, making a big deal of it.
    “How are you guys doing?” Dahl stopped with them for a moment in the shadow of a metal-roofed, windowless hut. Some kind of food stall, he guessed, currently unmanned. He held both girls at arm’s length, checking their arms and legs and then recalled yet another major problem.
    “Shit, we need to get clothing.”
    Isabella stared wide eyes as Julia clucked. “Did you just swear, Dad? Did you?”
    Their spirits certainly weren’t crushed, he saw. The only good news of the moment, it both elated and chilled him. They weren’t close to being out of this yet. One chance encounter and their world would come crashing down. Again.
    What to do ? Dahl used his training, seeing it as the only thing that could keep them going, the one thing that could ultimately save them. Trust your training. It will see them through.
    Johanna didn’t want to let go of her earlier line of questioning. “You still haven’t told us who this man is and, really, why he’s after you alive. I mean, he easily could have . . .” She looked at the girls and stopped herself.
    Dahl could explain, but to do so would only corrupt young ears. He tried to think of the short, edited version. “Grant lays down the poison that later spreads and destroys. He’s not good. You don’t notice him, that’s how he works. A ghost without feeling. He believes I am to blame for certain things that happened to him.” He shrugged. “He may have a valid reason to hate me, yes, but only in the eyes of a madman.”
    “You did something to him? How bad was it?”
    Dahl took three deep breaths but didn’t answer. “Up ahead,” he said. “One more intersection and then we’ll come up with a new plan.”
    Johanna appeared somewhat mollified by that idea and took both girls by their hands. Dahl had to tear his mind away from how fragile his family looked, how exposed, and remain alert. He’d already seen men eyeing Johanna and her bikini; it was only a matter of time before they came across individuals who might try to take it further.
    What could they do? He saw no shops for clothing, and he had no money. No proper houses in sight. No real businesses. Everything around consisted of what amounted to small, unidentifiable commercial buildings, interspersed with the occasional warehouse. No shortage of poverty. They hadn’t visited the local areas the last time they came as a couple on Honeymoon. Back then it had all been vans driven to a Reggae beat, sparkling waters and vibrant nightlife. He wondered for the first time now if Johanna had been hoping to rekindle something with this particular destination. She had booked the vacation, made all the arrangements.
    An unspoken statement: ‘If Barbados can’t save us, nothing can’.
    They had to press on.
    He crossed the road ahead as the sun began to wane in the sky. After three in the afternoon, he estimated. His mind sifted quickly through the day’s events, dwelled on the deaths of the cops and the holiday rep.
    His family paused at the next road, all eyes on him. They’d reached the intersection. Time to decide, time to choose one mortal danger from another: where to go, and what to do?
     

THIRTEEN
     
    An enormous money-fueled merry-go-round was turning the cogs that ran Barbados, and Dahl