Mistress of the Game

by Sidney Sheldon

  “Rob? What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  Tony Terrell sat down on the couch beside the radiant blond boy who had miraculously walked into his life two weeks ago. He knew nothing about the kid except that he was beautiful. So beautiful, it was astonishing he’d even spoken to Tony, never mind come home with him and proceeded to make love with sobbing, passionate desperation for five straight hours. Of course, it couldn’t last. Beautiful boys like Rob didn’t settle down with gentle, neurotic, prematurely balding poets like Tony. But Tony would savor the two weeks they spent together for the rest of his life.

  “It’s my sister.” Robbie was still staring at the TV.

  Tony laughed. “Yeah, right. In your dreams, buddy. That little girl’s a Blackwell.” Then he noticed Robbie’s ashen face. “Oh my God. You’re serious. She really is your sister.”

  “I have to go home.”

  Eve stared out of the tinted glass window of the limousine. It was more than a year since she’d set foot outside the apartment. The streets of New York were so intensely alive, they made her eyes hurt. Ice-cream and hot-dog vendors on every corner, two old men fighting loudly over a cab, Wall Street businessmen in smart suits eyeing pretty girl joggers as they passed.

  I miss life. I miss the world. This is what Keith stole from me.

  She glanced at her son, gazing sullenly out the other window. Max didn’t want to be here any more than she did. Eve had taught him to hate his Templeton cousins, fed him on an intravenous drip of loathing since before he could crawl.

  We don’t hate anyone, Max. Especially not family.

  Beneath her veil, a smile danced across Eve’s lips.

  Lexi was giggling. Sitting cross-legged on the floor with Peter and Rachel, her interpreter, she was playing a game of pick-up sticks.

  She signed to Rachel. “I’m winning.”

  The interpreter, a pretty redhead not more than twenty or twenty-one, grinned and signed back: “I know.”

  Lexi’s progress had been astonishing. Within a week, she had picked up the rudiments of sign language and her lip-reading was quick and accurate. When her body rejected the cochlear implant, Peter had broken down in tears. But Lexi herself was as confident and unfazed as only an eight-year-old could be, taking her deafness in stride. Apart from the lone screaming episode on the first day, she’d displayed no signs of trauma or distress whatsoever.

  “It’s not uncommon for children to have a delayed reaction to these things,” the chief psychotherapist explained to Peter. Using dolls and pictures, Lexi had shown the police and the doctors exactly what had happened to her-the sexual and physical abuse-but she had done so with a cheerfulness that was almost disturbing. “What you’re seeing now is a self-defense strategy. But she won’t be able to block this stuff out forever.”

  As part of Lexi’s rehabilitation, she was taken to the burn unit to visit Agent Edwards, the man who’d risked his life to save her. Against all the odds, he had survived, but the burns to his torso and face had left him permanently disfigured.

  “She may well break down,” the psychologists warned Peter. But Lexi did not break down. She walked calmly to Agent Edwards’s bedside, took his hand, and smiled.

  Afterward, Agent Edwards said to Peter: “That’s quite a kid you’ve got there.”

  “I know. And she’s only alive thanks to you.”

  That afternoon, Peter deposited $3 million into Agent Edwards’s bank account. He couldn’t give the poor man back his face. But he could ensure that he lived the rest of his life in luxury. It was the least he could do.

  A nurse knocked on the door.

  “You have a visitor.”

  Keith Webster had let Peter know that he, Eve and Max were on their way. The call was a surprise. The two families had never been close. Peter didn’t trust Eve as far as he could throw her, and Keith had always struck him as a little odd. But Max seemed like a sweet kid. It would be nice if he and Lexi became friends.

  “Show them in.”

  The door opened. Lexi’s eyes lit up like candles on a birthday cake.

  “Hey, kiddo. I missed you.”

  Robbie swept his little sister up into his arms. The two of them clung to each other like limpets.

  Peter stood rooted to the spot. It was awful to admit it, but in the last three weeks he had not thought about Robbie once. Lexi’s kidnapping had driven every other thought out of his mind. Robbie and his problems felt like part of another lifetime. But now here he was. It was only three weeks since their last meeting, but his son looked different.

  “I’ve stopped drinking, Dad. And the drugs. For good.”

  Lexi was superglued to her brother’s neck as he spoke.

  “I made a deal with God. If He saved Lexi, if He let her be okay, I’d get my shit together. I’m gonna make something of my life, Dad. I promise you.”

  “I hope so, Robert.”

  Peter put an arm awkwardly around his son’s shoulders. He remembered what a beautiful, gentle little boy Robbie used to be. Was that person still inside somewhere? If he was, would he ever be able to forgive his father for what he’d done?

  I could have shot him. I could have killed my own son.

  Still holding on to Robbie, Lexi put one arm around Peter’s neck, pulling father and son closer together. Reluctantly, Peter met Robbie’s eyes. The old anger was gone. But there was still a sadness there. Perhaps there always would be.

  What a lovely family, thought the interpreter, Rachel. They’ve been through so much. No wonder they’re so close, poor things.

  “I hope we’re not interrupting. We can come back later, if you prefer.”

  Keith Webster was smiling in the doorway. Behind him stood Eve and Max, hand in hand.

  “No, no.” Peter pulled away from his children, glad of an excuse to break the tension. “It’s good of you to come. You remember Robert?”

  “Of course.” Keith smiled. “My goodness, you’ve grown. Last time we saw you, you were knee-high to a grasshopper, wasn’t he, Eve?”

  “Mmmm.” Eve nodded.

  Shut up, you obsequious cretin! What the hell is Robert doing here? He’s supposed to be shooting up in a doorway somewhere. Lionel Neuman told me he’d signed away his inheritance. Has he come to try to claw back his shares in Kruger-Brent?

  Since Alex’s death, Eve and Keith had seen Peter and his kids a handful of times at family functions, but the two families were not close. Years ago, Peter had warned Alex about her twin sister’s psychotic personality, a slight that Eve had neither forgotten nor forgiven.

  “Max. Go say hello to your cousin.” Keith pushed the boy forward. “Why don’t you give Lexi her present?”

  Reluctantly, Max thrust a brightly wrapped box at Lexi.

  The two children eyed each other warily.

  Max thought: I hate you. You and your brother. You want to steal Kruger-Brent from me.

  Lexi thought: He hates me. I wonder why?

  She opened the present. It was the latest limited-edition Barbie doll. The one with roller skates that she’d been hankering after all summer. Before it happened. Before the terror. Before the pig.

  The psychiatrists thought Lexi was blocking out what had happened to her. She could read their lips: Repressed memory syndrome. Classic posttraumatic stress responses. But they were wrong. They were all wrong.

  Lexi remembered everything. Every hair on his forearm, every mark on his skin, every cadence in his voice, every grunt, the fetid smell of his breath.

  She may have nightmares. Deep-rooted fear of the bad men returning.

  Lexi wasn’t afraid. She was determined. She knew her kidnappers had escaped justice and she knew why. Because it was her destiny to find them, to pay them back for what they’d done. She had told the police nothing. Pretended that she remembered no details. But she remembered it all.

  One day, pig, I will find you.

  One day…

  “Lexi” Rachel was signing at her. “Aren’t yo
u going to say thank you?”

  Lexi looked down at the doll. She touched her lips with the front fingers of her right hand, then moved her hand away from her face with her palm upward, smiling.

  “That’s the sign for ‘thanks,’” Rachel explained.

  Max said, “You’re welcome.”

  His mouth returned his cousin’s smile. But his glinting black eyes were as cold as the grave.

  THIRTEEN

  SOUTH AFRICA WAS BEAUTIFUL.

  No question about it. Here was beauty on a grand scale. Epic beauty. Awesome beauty. The sort of beauty that man, over the centuries, had tried to imitate with his cathedrals and temples and pyramids, his feeble attempts at grandeur. Keith Webster was well traveled. He had been to Carnac in Egypt, to the Great Wall of China, to Notre Dame cathedral in Paris. He had stood on top of the Empire State Building, marveled at the Colosseum in Rome, and gazed in wonder at the Taj Mahal in India. Now, standing on Table Mountain with the wind in his hair and the city of Cape Town sprawled out below him, he thought of all those places and laughed. Just as God must have laughed:

  You call that beauty? You call that greatness? Is that really the best you can do?

  Keith Webster had been in the country for three weeks. He was flying back to America tomorrow, and though he longed to see Eve-it was the longest they had been apart since they married-he realized he would be sorry to leave Cape Town. Not just because it was beautiful. Cape Town was magical in a way that Keith had never experienced before. But because it was here, in South Africa, that he had finally managed to bond with his son. For Keith Webster, Cape Town would always be the city that brought Max back to him. The city of hope, of joy, of rebirth.

  It was Eve’s idea.

  “You and Max should go away somewhere together, on your own. A boys’ camping holiday. Just think what fun you’ll have!”

  Keith thought what fun they’d have: Max ignoring him, pouring scorn on all his suggestions for activities, glaring stony-faced at his jokes. Laughing while he failed to erect the tent. Pleading to be allowed to return to his mother.

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. I’ve never really seen Max as the camping type.”

  It had been two years since Lexi Templeton’s kidnapping and rescue; two years since Max had sat in the back of the family’s limousine and admitted to his father that he hated his cousins.

  Nonsense, Max. We don’t hate anyone.

  That’s what Keith Webster had told his son. But even as he said the words, the thought hit him: He hates me, too. He always has. Up until that day, Keith had never admitted this ugly truth, not even to himself. It was easier to make excuses for Max’s behavior.

  He’s overprotective of his mother because she’s so vulnerable.

  Because he’s an only child.

  Because…

  Because…

  What had Max’s teacher said? Yes, that was it. Your son is extraordinarily gifted, Dr. Webster. Gifted children often struggled to form attachments. It was nothing to worry about. The boy would grow out of it.

  But deep down, Keith Webster knew the truth.

  Max hated him.

  The only thing he didn’t know was why.

  Now, though, Max no longer talked about hating Lexi Templeton. Indeed, in the years since he first visited her in the hospital, the boy seemed to have developed some sort of rapport with his poor, deaf cousin. Friendship would be overstating it. But there was something between the two children, some understanding, a flashing of the eyes whenever they met, that had given Keith Webster hope.

  If he can learn to love Lexi, maybe one day he can learn to love me?

  Keith hadn’t wanted to go on this camping trip, but thank God he had. God bless Eve! The vacation had changed everything.

  At ten years old, almost eleven, Max was still small for his age. He could easily pass for eight or nine, although grown-ups who knew him well-his teachers, his baseball coach, even his uncle Peter-all noted something jarringly adult beneath the boyish exterior. An old soul-that’s what people called him. Around Keith, Max was usually sullen and silent. But with others, he was highly articulate.

  Keith waited for his son to pooh-pooh the idea of the “boys’ holiday,” certain that Max would treat it with the same withering scorn he poured on all Keith’s efforts to bridge the emotional gap between them. But incredibly, Max was eager to go.

  “Can we, Dad? I’ve never been to South Africa. Lexi and Robert go all the time; it’s supposed to be amazing. Pleeease?”

  “You realize Mommy won’t be going.” Keith tried to conceal his surprise. “It would just be you and me.”

  “I know, but Mommy’s already been there, loads of times, so I don’t think she minds. Please?”

  Keith felt close to tears. Max wanted to go. With him.

  He’d even called him Dad.

  Was this it? After ten long years, could this really be the turning point?

  “Come on, Dad, come over here. Look how high up we are!”

  Keith turned to see Max, right at the canyon’s edge, hopping from boulder to boulder like a mountain goat. He’s fearless. Not like me. Clouds snaked around him like cigarette smoke. Occasionally a larger cloud would descend from the heavens and engulf the boy completely. Whenever that happened, Keith felt his heart stop.

  “Buddy, I’ve told you, get back from the edge. Quit fooling around like that, it’s not safe.”

  Cape Town was the last stop on their great South African adventure, and the only place where they were staying in a hotel rather than camping. Up until now they’d traveled from reserve to reserve and from camp to camp across the Karoo with their guide, Katele, a permanently smiling six-foot Bantu native with the sort of six-pack abs Keith had only ever seen on television commercials for torturous-looking exercise equipment. He looked like an extra from one of the early Tarzan movies. Keith felt weak and inadequate in his presence, but he tried not to show it.

  Katele told a wide-eyed Max: “The Great Karoo is the largest natural ecosystem in South Africa-and one of the world’s great scientific wonders. Its rocks contain fossil remains spanning three hundred and ten million years. You can do everything here. Hot-air balloon flights, horseback riding, stargazing. We have some of the best rock climbing in the country.”

  “What about the animals?”

  Katele grinned. “You won’t be disappointed. We have animals you haven’t even heard of, my friend. Kudu, gemsbok, aardwolf, klipspringer. And plenty that you have: black eagles, baboons, rhinos, mountain zebras.”

  “Can you hunt them?”

  Keith was shocked. “We’re here to observe beauty, Max, not kill it. I’m sorry, Katele.”

  But the guide was on Max’s side.

  “It’s quite all right, sir. Of course the boy can hunt if he wishes. I’ll take you to Lemoenfontein. The big-game hunting there is exceptional.”

  “Can we, Dad? Pleease?”

  “We’ll see,” said Keith.

  He did not approve of ten-year-old boys handling guns. In fact, he’d argued with Eve on this very point only days before they left, when she finally admitted to giving Max her grandfather’s pistol.

  “He’s never used it, darling,” she assured him. “It’s never even been out of the safe. Besides, it’s so old, I’m sure it doesn’t work anymore.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on it.” Keith turned the pristine Glock over in his hands. In its own way, it was a thing of beauty.

  “I gave it to him as a token,” said Eve. “Something from his family heritage to make him feel grown up. Don’t be a spoilsport about it.”

  Max begged to be allowed to bring the gun to Africa.

  “Mommy got me the papers specially. I’m allowed to take it because it’s a family air balloon.”

  “Heirloom, darling.” Eve smiled indulgently, rolling her eyes at Keith as if to say, See how innocent he is?

  “I’m not sure, Max. A gun is not a toy.”

  But in the end, Keith was so overjoyed
to be in Max’s good graces for once, he’d let his happiness cloud his judgment. The gun was packed, but on the strict condition that it would not, under any circumstances, be used.

  “I tell you what.” Keith put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Why don’t we forget about hunting for now and start with a hot-air balloon ride? That sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”

  “Sure, Dad. Whatever you say.”

  Max was anxious.

  He wanted to use his gun. A hunting accident, that was the plan. His mother had told him to stick to the plan. Max had never strayed from Eve’s instructions before.

  But a hot-air balloon ride? It was a gift.

  He played out the scene in his imagination.

  I couldn’t stop him! I told him to get down, but he was trying to get a better picture. He slipped and…oh, Katele, it was awful. I saw him fall, I watched him get smaller and smaller, and then he was gone, I was up there all alone…

  Damn. That was a problem.

  If Keith had an accident hundreds of feet above the Gariep Dam and plunged to his death, Max would be stuck in the balloon by himself. How would he get down?

  I’d better figure out how hot-air balloons work.

  Katele spoke to Keith: “That’s a bright boy you have there, sir. Incredibly curious.”

  “Thank you. Africa seems to have brought him out of himself.”

  The guide shrugged. “Naturally. It’s in his blood. You know he spent the whole afternoon with our balloon team, learning the ropes.”

  “Good.” Keith forced a smile. “He can help me when I’m up there panicking and forgetting everything they taught me.”