Burn Notice: the End Game [Mass Market Paperback] Goldberg, Tod

About the Author Tod Goldberg is the author of the novels Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Fake Liar Cheat, as well as the short story collection Simplify, a 2006 finalist for the SCBA Award for Fiction and winner of the Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize. He teaches creative writing at the UCLA Extension Writers' Program. Product Description Ex-covert op Michael Westen has a new client. Paolo Fornelli is Helmsman for a yacht in the Hurricane Cup-a winner-take-all race financed by the super-rich and preceded by a week of highstakes gambling, high-risk business, and high-class attitude. Paolo's family has been taken hostage. If Paolo ever wants to see them again, he must make it to the final race-and lose. To find the kidnappers, Michael will have to infiltrate high society and enter a deadly game against deadlier opponents in a world where money isn't the only thing worth killing for... Review "A keen voice, profound insight...devilishly entertaining." "Deceptively smooth, like a vanilla milkshake spiked with grain alcohol." And for the television series: "Cheerfully insouciant." Featuring a hero who's "handsome, smart, neurotic, tough, funny, sensitive... Jim Rockford and MacGyver filtered through Carl Hiassen." Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 When you're a spy, the word belated gets eradicated from your vocabulary. You don't send belated birthday cards. You don't send belated Christmas cards. You don't send belated wedding, anniversary, graduation or congratulations cards. You don't even bother to send belated wishes via e-mail. You tend to miss physical events like birthdays and baptisms and Bar Mitzvahs, because it's nearly impossible to tell a Taliban assassin you'll have to halt his inquisition until Monday so you can make it to T.G.I. Friday's for your buddy's fortieth. If birthdays, weddings and holidays meant a lot to you, you wouldn't be traveling the world under diplomatic cloak; you'd be sitting in a cubicle, rigging the Secret Santa lottery, drafting memos about the need for casual Fridays, and fantasizing about the person who services the photocopier. Being a spy means never being forced to eat potato skins in a T.G.I. Friday's surrounded by men in Dockers or expressing your emotions through the mystery of Hallmark. When you're no longer a spy, however, you learn pretty quickly that there's no card that says, Sorry I missed the last dozen Mother's Days. I was busy doing black ops. And yet there I was, in the middle of Target in midtown Miami, staring at row after row of greeting cards, trying to find one that might justifiably say that very thing. My ex-girlfriend/former IRA operative/current business associate/confusing-person-of-romantic-interest Fiona Glenanne handed me a card. "This one is cute," she said. The cover read: I'm Sorry . . . The inside said: . . . For being a terrible son. Happy Mother's Day! "Subtle," I said. "I think it would speak to your mother." She handed me another card. This one had a photo of a line of identical puppies trailing behind their mother. On the inside it said: It could have been worse. There could have been ten just like me. Happy Mother's Day! "A lovely sentiment," I said. "But no." "Have you thought about composing your own card?" "Fi," I said, "I don't even want to buy a card. Why would I want to make one?" "I don't know, Michael," Fiona said. "Maybe to show your mother you appreciate her carrying your vile existence for nine months." She had a point. The problem was that if I started making my mother handmade Mother's Day cards now, next year at this time expectations would be astronomical, and next year I planned on being out of Miami permanently. It may be a big city, but when you're essentially trapped in the city limits by your own government, every day it seems to shrink by an inch. One moment, I was a covert operative in fine standing, negotiating a wire transfer with a Russian gangst