Dangerous Games

by Danielle Steel

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Ben confirmed. “I did some pretty nasty missions with the SEALs. I was the only survivor once, in the Sudan. And my three-year-old drowns in a swimming pool, with his mother ten feet away from him. It never made sense to me either. You read about that stuff, but you think it will never happen to you. And once you know it can and does, life is never the same again.” Alix nodded, she felt that way too.

  “I used to have nightmares that she’d get meningitis and die, or have an accident, while I was away. But by now, I figured she was home free, or almost, at her age. I guess you’re never home free, no matter how old they are. It’s all a matter of luck or chance, think of how all those parents must feel, or those awful kindergarten shootings. You drop them off at school with a Tinker Bell lunchbox, or in their Spider-Man sneakers, and then someone kills them while you’re at work and think they’re safe. They’re never safe, and we aren’t either. Look at my father.”

  “Do you think we’re crazy to do what we do?” he asked her honestly. “Sometimes I wonder. It doesn’t matter so much for me. My brothers will show up at my funeral, if they have time, and that’ll be it. There will be no one sobbing over me, no wife, no girlfriend, no kids.”

  “Felix and I will come,” she said to lighten the moment, and he smiled at her.

  “Thank you. Maybe you should switch to something a little tamer one of these days, for Faye’s sake,” he said seriously. The shooting that morning had brought the point home to both of them.

  “Maybe one day. But for now I’d rather be dead than bored to death for the next thirty years, and we can’t just live our lives in fear. And nothing’s happened to me yet.” She justified the kind of work she did. She loved it, and it would be hard to give up now.

  “You take a lot of chances, Alix,” he reminded her, and she felt guilty when he said it. She knew she did.

  “You keep an eye on me,” she said, and they were both aware that it was true.

  “You’re a hard woman to keep track of once we’re out there.” She nodded in acknowledgment.

  “At least they don’t send us to the hot spots all the time,” he said somberly. They talked about the Vice President then to pass the time, and the stupidity of the risks he’d taken and what he’d been doing. It was all about greed for him.

  “I swear, he’s a classic sociopath,” Ben commented. “He’d screw anyone over, his wife, his country, his President, his best friend, his kids. It’s all about what he wants, and whatever he has to do to get it. I hope they nail him, he deserves it. And I hope he doesn’t pull Bill Foster down with him, if Clark tells a bunch of lies now to save his own ass.”

  “I think Olympia Foster will do everything she can to see that doesn’t happen.” Her dinner with Tony Clark, wearing the wire, was the next day. “There’s a woman who doesn’t do enough with her life. She might as well have died when Bill did. Maybe this will shake her up and wake her up again. Sometimes you can love someone too much, the way she did him. That’s a dangerous thing too,” Alix said, feeling sorry for her again.

  “It sounds like survivor guilt to me. She was with him when he got shot. Maybe she wishes it had been her, or doesn’t understand why it was him, and not her, who got killed. We don’t get to make those decisions. I used to wish that I had died, and not Chris. But it’s not up to us, is it?”

  They alternately talked and were silent on the way to Durham. He kept up a good speed, and it was almost ten o’clock when he pulled into the hospital parking lot, after a thirteen-hour drive. Ben and Alix hadn’t stopped for food or coffee on the way. They immediately noticed a helipad for the trauma unit when they got there. It was the best hospital in the area, and the parking lot was jammed with cars, police vehicles, and ambulances. Most of the critically and seriously injured victims had been brought there. She jumped out of the car as soon as he pulled over, and ran into the building, and he followed her two minutes later. She asked for Faye at the nurse’s desk, and a harassed attendant looked her up and sent Alix to the treatment room where they had kept her. Alix whispered a silent prayer of thanks that she was still alive, and she found her easily after she made her way through the gurneys in the hall, with nurses and paramedics standing near them. Most of the faces were young, and parents everywhere looked panicked and were crying. There were little clusters of people talking to doctors and it was obvious that some had gotten bad news and were sobbing, and then Alix found Faye in a large treatment room with a dozen beds separated by curtains. Her head was heavily bandaged and she looked dazed, and she started crying the minute she saw her mother. Alix put her arms around her and held her tight, crying too, and neither of them noticed Ben standing a few feet behind Alix, with tears rolling down his cheeks as well.

  “I got shot, Mommy,” Faye said, sounding like a little girl again.

  “I know, baby, I know…I’m here…You’re okay…” She was trying to reassure herself as much as her daughter, and a doctor joined them a few minutes later and said that Faye had been incredibly lucky. A bullet had grazed the side of her head, and only done superficial damage. It had never entered her skull as it whizzed past her.

  “Another half inch and it would have been a different story,” he said, looking at both of them. He had seen several tragedies that day, and miraculously Faye wasn’t one of them. “She’s staying tonight for observation, but you can take her home in the morning.” He said she had a mild fever, most likely from the trauma of the injury, and they wanted to be sure the wound didn’t get infected. Faye said she could still remember the sound of the bullet flying past her, as she saw other students fall all around her, and two of her classmates and her roommate had been killed. She said that the FBI agent with her had tried to protect her as soon as the shooting started. He had taken two steps toward her, been shot in the leg, and dropped like a rock next to her. She had turned to look at him when the bullet whizzed past her. Faye still couldn’t believe all that had happened. She said the FBI agent had been flown to Washington, and she had been told he was in stable condition. His replacement was in the hospital corridor when Alix and Ben arrived, and introduced himself to them when they left Faye for a few minutes. One of the nurses told Alix that local residents had been arriving by the score to lay wreaths and bunches of flowers at the shooting sites, which seemed like all they could do now.

  The doctor left them a few minutes later to tend to other patients, and when they went back to Faye, Ben approached her bed cautiously.

  “You gave us a hell of a scare, Faye,” he said to her in a deeply moved tone, which touched Alix, especially after what he’d told her earlier about his only son.

  “Me too,” she said, and winced as she lay back against the pillows. The wound still smarted, and they didn’t want to sedate her too heavily to be sure she was alert.

  “Do you two want something to eat?” he asked mother and daughter. Both of them declined and Faye smiled up at him, grateful that her mother was with her.

  “How did you get here?”

  “We drove up from New Orleans as soon as we heard, we were on a story there,” Ben answered.

  “I want to go home, Mom,” Faye said in a tired voice. The university had announced that they would be closed for two weeks, to honor the dead, tighten security measures, put new systems in place, and give everyone a chance to calm down. Alix didn’t want to tell her that with the threats against her because of the investigations into the Vice President’s involvement with the lobbies, they couldn’t stay at their apartment, and she was still staying at Ben’s. There was time enough to tell her on the way home. And Alix didn’t ask her if she wanted to return to Duke after what had happened. But it could have happened anywhere, and was all too normal an occurrence these days. Campus shootings had become almost commonplace.

  Three of Faye’s friends had come to see her earlier and she told Alix that they talked about her roommate who had died. Her funeral was going to be in Atlanta, where she was from. The nurse came to give Faye a mild
tranquilizer to help her sleep finally, and Alix and Ben went to the cafeteria to get something to eat, while Faye dozed off. She’d had an incredibly traumatic day. They walked past the FBI guard again and he nodded and remained discreetly at his post. In the chaos of the hospital, he didn’t stand out at all. In the cafeteria, Alix looked relieved and exhausted and so did Ben. His heart had been with hers as they drove as fast as they could to reach Faye and see how badly she was injured. She had been incredibly lucky compared to some of the others. The death toll was still at twenty-one. And it had been announced on the news that Alix’s daughter had been among the injured at Duke. She was startled to get a call from Olympia on her cellphone when she was leaving the cafeteria.

  “I don’t want to bother you, but I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your daughter,” she said in her soft smoky voice, which Alix recognized immediately despite the blocked number she’d called from. “How is she?”

  “She’s okay, a bullet grazed her head and she has a superficial wound. It could have been so much worse.” As she said it, a family walked past her, with their arms around each other, in deep mourning. Their son had just died from his wounds, which brought the death toll to twenty-two.

  “I’m so glad to hear that she’s all right. These things are so terrible.” Alix knew that it struck close to home for her, a crazed gunman shooting someone she loved. “We need a better warning system and treatment plans for these untreated mental patients that slip through the cracks in our society. We need better gun laws, to keep firearms out of the hands of unstable people. They let them out of mental hospitals and then they do something like this.” Countless lives had been destroyed that day, parents, children, friends. No one would ever be the same, just as she wasn’t after Bill’s death. “I’m so glad she’s going to be okay. I thought about you the minute I heard it on the news.”

  “Thank you for calling me,” Alix said, genuinely touched. Olympia was such a nice woman, she hated to see her lead such a sad life now, and with her children so far away. “And good luck tomorrow,” she said and meant it. She knew how hard it was going to be for her to be used as a decoy to try to trap Tony, if they could.

  “I’m not looking forward to it.” She felt sick as she said it. She had ordered his favorite dinner and felt like Judas.

  “You’ll do fine,” Alix said and hoped it was true. “We’ll be back in the city by tomorrow night, if Faye feels up to going home tomorrow. They’re keeping her for observation tonight.”

  “I hope she’ll do well,” Olympia said warmly and a moment later they hung up. The two women had a definite affinity for each other, and a deep respect. Alix really liked her, and was sure she would have liked the senator too, and she said as much to Ben.

  “He was a great man,” Ben agreed. “Do you know her brother, the senator from Connecticut?”

  “I know who he is. He’s kind of a colorless sort, very straight, very serious. He has a dull wife, six kids, and there’s nothing remarkable about him. Just good, solid people. There’s something special about her,” Alix said.

  “Yes, there is.” Ben nodded. “I would have loved to see the Fosters in the White House, not what we’ve got there now, or Tony Clark and his child bride, God forbid. He’s in it for the money, and she for the thrill of power. Not exactly what I’d call true love.” He sounded cynical as he said it, but Alix thought so too.

  “He’s a real politician, in the worst sense of the word.”

  “I’m surprised he didn’t try to marry Foster’s widow. It would have been a perfect political and PR move for him, and just the kind of thing he’d do to win the election,” Ben said in a tone of disgust.

  “I don’t think she would have. She’s too loyal to her husband’s memory. Too loyal for her own good, in fact. I think she’s planning to mourn him forever.” The book she had written about him was testimony to that, and the fact that she had vanished from public view and retired from the world. She hadn’t even appeared when her brother won his last senatorial campaign, and she always had before. Marrying Tony Clark and going to the White House with him did not fit that picture.

  They went back to Faye’s cubicle then, and found her asleep. And as Alix looked at her, she was grateful again that she was alive. The plan was to leave the next day, if Faye was up to it, and Alix was going to sleep in a chair next to her that night. She wanted to keep an eye on her.

  The next morning, after they started the paperwork for her release, Faye looked at her mother with worried eyes.

  “I don’t know if I want to come back, Mom,” Faye said softly. Her head hurt and the wound burned. “Maybe I want to go stay with Mamie for a while in France.” She would feel safe there, far from the traumatic events that had just happened, and her friends who had died. And she’d been planning to spend time in France that summer anyway. Maybe she’d just stay.

  “You can take a term off, if you want to, or transfer to another school,” Alix said quietly. “Whatever you want to do, you don’t need to make the decision now.” They called Isabelle a little while later to tell her what had happened, and say that Faye was all right and Alix was with her. Isabelle said that she had seen something about it on the news, but didn’t hear which university it was and make the connection with Duke, or she would have panicked and called Alix immediately. She was upset to hear about Faye’s injury, but grateful it wasn’t worse. Gabriel was with her, and she told him while she was still on the phone with Alix.

  “I want to come and stay with you, Mamie,” Faye said when she talked to her.

  “Of course, whenever you want to. After you finish the semester,” she said matter-of-factly, “you can spend the whole summer here.” Faye was a little startled. Her grandmother was old school, and believed in getting back on the horse, and finishing the term, even if you’d been shot. Alix laughed when Faye told her after the call.

  “That’s my mother. You don’t screw around with school with her.” Ben laughed and then went to get breakfast from the cafeteria for the three of them. The food service had been disrupted and was late, and the hospital food was awful, but none of them cared. The cafeteria food was slightly better, and Alix was pleased to see Faye eat something after the trauma of the day before. Ben and Alix left her then to talk to her FBI agent on duty and tell him they were leaving that morning. He would accompany them to the airport and leave them there. New York–based agents would be assigned to her in New York, and he was going to notify the New York field office of their plans. After they spoke to him, Ben and Alix walked around the parking lot for a few minutes. Alix looked exhausted, and had hardly slept all night. She kept waking up to check on Faye.

  “What a day yesterday was,” Alix said with a long, tired sigh, as Ben put an arm around her.

  “You were very brave, Alix,” he complimented her and she smiled up at him.

  “So were you. Thank you for dealing with Felix and getting us here so quickly. There’s no way I would have stayed in New Orleans until last night.”

  “Neither would I,” he assured her. Their replacements had already been on the air the night before from New Orleans on the ten o’clock news, so Felix had it covered. He had wanted them to cover the story at Duke, and Ben had refused that too. He said that Alix was in no condition to do it, and they had sent another team to the campus. You had to draw the line somewhere and they had. They went back to Faye then. A doctor was checking her, and said they would discharge her if she felt up to it. Faye said she did. She was anxious to go home. All she wanted was to get away from Duke now, and the scenes of carnage she knew she would never forget. The memory of it was forever engraved on her mind. Alix could see all of it in her daughter’s eyes as she helped her dress to go home. Her hands shook every time she thought of how close Faye had come, and her bandaged head was a reminder to them all. Alix had never felt as lucky in her life, as she put her arms around Faye and held her tight.

  “Let’s go home,” she said to her daughter in a choked voice, and Faye no
dded, as tears ran down her cheeks again.

  Chapter 10

  On the flight back to New York on Saturday, Alix explained to Faye that they had to stay at Ben’s, because of the threats she’d been getting. The FBI would assign Faye three shifts a day of agents in New York. She groaned but wasn’t surprised.

  “I wanted to sleep in my own bed,” Faye said plaintively, but Alix didn’t want to take any risks. Three death threats were enough to convince her they might not be safe at home, and Ben could protect them at his apartment in Brooklyn. The threats went with the territory of investigating and reporting on crime. And an exposé of the Vice President, and his accepting bribes from the Saudis and possibly from key lobbyists, was serious business, although she couldn’t discuss the story with her daughter. Faye didn’t argue with her about it, she could guess that it was an important story, but she was disappointed to still need security and not be able to go home. The two women had to share the bed in Ben’s guest room and it was cramped. His room was no bigger or he would have let them sleep in his. Alix was grateful they could stay there, even if Faye wasn’t pleased. The FBI agent hadn’t arrived yet so she had to wait to go out. Faye had called several friends when they got to Ben’s, and two of them promised to come out to see her in Brooklyn, they were so happy to know she was all right. By the time she finished her calls, the FBI bodyguard was standing outside Ben’s apartment.

  “Thank you for letting us invade your space,” Alix said to Ben, looking embarrassed. “If you want, we can stay at a hotel.”

  “I love having you here,” he said, and sounded as though he meant it. He tidied up as best he could, and he and Alix went to buy groceries, while Faye stayed in bed, texted her friends, and watched movies on her laptop, which she’d brought home with her.