The Devil's Game (The Game Trilogy Book 2)

by Sean Chercover

  “I don’t suppose you’ve ever flatlined,” said Daniel.

  “What?”

  “Ever been brought back from death after your heart stopped.”

  “I know what it means.” She stared at Daniel with her mouth slightly open as tears welled in her eyes. “I mean, yes. I flatlined when I was four years old.”

  “And you remember it.”

  “Vividly.” Kara sipped some wine and took a very long, very deep breath. “I—I drowned, actually.” She wiped her eyes with a sleeve. “We . . . had a swimming pool in the backyard. My big brother, Adeeb, was in the pool with his friends from down the block, playing water basketball with the net that floats around. My father had just lifted me out of the pool and helped me out of my water wings and wrapped me in a red terrycloth beach towel. It could go around me twice, it was so big. I wasn’t allowed in the pool while the big kids played roughhousing games. My father put me down on the grass, away from the pool in the shade, and went back to reading his newspaper up on the porch.”

  “But you wanted to play with the big kids.”

  “Yes. I went back along the pool deck wrapped in my towel—I had to shuffle not to trip over it—and I stood at the edge of the deep end. I leaned forward to speak to Adeeb but he and his friends were splashing around and calling to each other and he didn’t notice me. The ends of the towel hit the water and the towel acted like a sponge. It was suddenly very heavy, pulling me forward. I pulled back but I wasn’t strong enough and I went headfirst into the water and the entire world became a swirl of red cotton and blue sky and white concrete and bubbles all around me, thousands of tiny bubbles coming from the towel and larger ones from my mouth as I sank deeper. I remember my back hitting the bottom. Then it goes black.” She took another long breath and let it out slowly.

  “What’s the next thing you remember?”

  Kara turned her wine glass by its stem and looked at the surface of the wine as she spoke. “I’m lying on the pool deck, heaving up water and gulping down air, and my chest hurts so badly. My father is holding my shoulders and patting my back and shouting something to me. When the water stops coming, I look up and there are all these faces. My father’s right over me, and Adeeb and his friends behind him, and everyone is crying. My mother is right behind me, just screaming. A horrible sound. And then my father is hugging me and sobbing and stroking my hair and kissing my face. And that’s when I started bawling.” She swallowed some wine. “When I was older, I was told that my father had heard a kid scream and dived over the children and down to the bottom and dragged me up. But when they unwrapped me from the towel, I wasn’t breathing and had no pulse. He performed CPR and brought me back.”

  “That’s quite a memory,” said Daniel.

  Kara looked like she was trying to decide. Then decided. “It’s much more than that. It’s my very first memory. I don’t remember anything before it.” She was silent for a moment. “I could tell you stories of things that happened when I was two or three, but those aren’t memories. They’re fantasies, imaginings based on the remember when stories I heard from my parents and brother over the years. I sometimes visit them as if they were memories, but they’re not. My first memory is of dying.”

  Kara reached forward across the table, and Daniel held her hand in his. She said, “And I’ve kept that secret all my life, I don’t know why. You’re the only other person who knows it.”

  In a parallel universe, Daniel swept the dishes off the table and pulled her into his arms and kissed her, opening the floodgates to what they’d both been holding back. But not in this universe. In this one, he gave her hand a squeeze and let go, thinking: She couldn’t be more vulnerable than she is right now. Right place, wrong time.

  He reached for the wine bottle to top up her glass, but she shook her head, saying, “After everything I’ve seen since yesterday, I’ve decided not to block the voices—this AIT, as you call it—with booze anymore. Whatever this thing is, it contains real information that can help us, and it’s getting stronger. Voices have grown to feelings and dreams and fainting spells and . . . as freaky as it all is, we need it to happen in order to find the truth, right? So blocking it doesn’t make much sense.”

  “You’re a brave woman, Kara Singh.”

  Daniel made a pot of tea, and they moved to the living room, where he connected his iPod to the Bluetooth speaker and put on Dr. John. Kara sat on the couch. She raised an eyebrow when Daniel sat a safe distance away in a chair, but she didn’t comment on it.

  Instead she said, “So maybe my experience of dying changed something, rebooted my electrical system or altered my brain chemistry, which somehow caused AIT later in life?”

  “Maybe,” said Daniel again. “Which doesn’t explain the phenomenon itself, how the information comes to you or where it’s coming from. We still have no idea what AIT is, we only know that it is.”

  Kara said, “The same can be said of existence itself.”

  Daniel said, “I wish you’d stop saying things that make me want to kiss you.” But not out loud. Out loud, he said nothing at all.

  They drank tea and listened to the music in silence for a couple of minutes. Then Kara said, “Do you think he died, the man in the cave?”

  Okay. So they were gonna talk about that.

  “You’re the doctor.” Daniel sipped his wine. “You tell me.”

  “I’ve seen people succumb to lesser head traumas. Would it bother you if he died?”

  “No. When he chose not to respect our right to live, he relinquished his own. Live by the sword . . .”

  Kara leaned forward. “This isn’t the first time you’ve killed a man, is it?”

  How to answer that question? If the man in the cave died, he would be the fifth. The first three were corrupt soldiers storming a church basement in Honduras to kill a political reformer. There had been six on the hit squad. Pat Wahlquist had killed the other three. That was almost five years ago. The fourth was a professional assassin gunning for Tim Trinity.

  “Not the first,” said Daniel.

  “How does it feel? To take a life, even in self-defense. Doesn’t it keep you up nights? Don’t you think about it later?”

  “I’m not a moral relativist when it comes to self-defense,” said Daniel. “So no, it doesn’t keep me up nights. But it still feels . . . ugly. It’s a weight you carry, and yes, you think about it later.”

  Kara shook her head slowly. “You walked into my life as this oddball business consultant. And then this morning”—a short bewildered laugh—“you transform right before my eyes into some kind of secret agent man.”

  “Oddball?” said Daniel.

  “I like oddballs,” said Kara. She held his eyes and patted the couch cushion beside her. “Come.”

  Ah, what the hell . . .

  Daniel abandoned his tea and sat beside her on the couch. She raised her hands and he put his palms against hers, barely touching, feeling her heat merge with his and grow into something new and powerful. He leaned forward and so did she, her eyes closing, lips opening slightly.

  He stopped when their mouths were barely a couple inches apart and whispered, “I read somewhere that a shared brush with death can cause an intense feeling of intimacy between two people.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “It can be a very difficult feeling to resist.” He moved an inch closer.

  “So are you going to kiss me?” she said.

  “I might.”

  She moistened her lips with her tongue. “Soon?”

  He brushed his lips against hers, ever so gently, and she made a small animal sound and her fingers interlaced with his, the strength of her grip astonishing.

  He kissed her now, hard and deep, still keeping their bodies apart, Kara returning the kiss with pent-up passion, her body arching off the couch, straining closer, her hands squeezing so hard it was lik
e she was trying to break his, so hard it hurt.

  He broke the kiss and rested his forehead against hers, their breaths coming ragged and hot. He said, “The people back at the office are expecting me for a video conference. In fact, I was supposed to check in two hours ago. That’s a serious dereliction of duty.”

  “Very serious,” she said. She thought he was kidding.

  “Those people back at the office are going to help me keep you alive, Kara. So we’re gonna table this discussion again for later.” He kissed her quickly, disengaged his hands, and headed for the stairs, tossing a grin over his shoulder. “Because we can both be such reasonable people.”

  “You really are a bastard,” said Kara, trying not to smile.

  “Blame John Rector. He gave me the laptop.”

  “Oh! I hate you.”

  Daniel started up the stairs. “I’ll see you in my dreams,” he said.

  30: THESE DREAMS OF YOU

  Daniel sat cross-legged on the bed, the laptop computer open on a pillow in front of him, Raoul and Ayo looking back from the screen. He gave a concise account of the events in the valley that morning—Kara leading them to the stone foundations and the cave with the fire pit and skeletal remains and scarred rocks. And then the arrival of bad guys with guns, the confrontation and escape.

  Hard to believe it was still the same day.

  “How’s the good doctor holding up?” said Ayo.

  “She insists on continuing forward with this, wherever it leads. She’s incredibly brave, actually.”

  “She’ll need to be,” said Raoul. “We got a hit on facial recognition. Turns out the guy whose skull you caved in with a rock—he croaked by the way, nice work, Grasshopper—was a paramilitary contractor.”

  “As I reckoned,” said Daniel.

  “Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back,” said Raoul, making up for his earlier compliment. “Here’s where it gets interesting: The PMC your guy worked for is small and elite—all their mercs are former ranking military—and their team leaders all served at one time under Colonel Michael Dillman.”

  “That is interesting,” said Daniel.

  “Boys, we don’t have time,” said Ayo. “Dr. Alexander Klukoff—our highest-ranking ally in the field of microbiology—suffered a massive coronary last night, died in his sleep. This afternoon a colleague of his at the CDC named Hasting topped himself. The suicide note said he was distraught over the loss of his mentor. Only the men didn’t actually get on that well. And here’s where it gets interesting: It was Hasting who ran the blood analysis on the soldier with AIT. He was a Council ally.”

  “Oh shit,” said Daniel. “If this was staged, then Conrad Winter sacrificed his own man to make it clean. He’s tying off loose ends.”

  “Which means,” said Ayo, “whatever they’ve been planning, they are now doing. And we still don’t have enough dots to connect.”

  Daniel woke to the turning of his bedroom doorknob. The nightstand clock glowed 3:00 a.m. The door opened and Kara stepped into the room, silhouetted by the hallway light. Daniel drew in a breath. She couldn’t have been more beautiful.

  Or more naked.

  She leaned back against the open door, out of direct light, barely visible now. Daniel felt himself growing hard under the sheets. There was no way he would turn this woman down again.

  Not after today.

  And not after the stunt he’d pulled downstairs. Kara thought she was here by invitation, and Daniel couldn’t honestly say she wasn’t. This was going to happen, right now.

  “Hey you,” he said, “come on over here and let’s continue that discussion.”

  Her voice sounded far away, her tone mournful. “The path you’re walking will lead you into darkness. It’s . . . so cruel, this place.”

  A chill ran through Daniel’s core. “Kara, what’s wrong?”

  “So cruel, no escape. No mercy . . . and no relief.”

  Daniel tossed the sheets aside and jumped out of bed. Closer, he could now see the thousand-yard stare. Kara was sleepwalking, unaware of her nakedness, unaware of his presence.

  “Dozens of them,” she said, staring right through Daniel, “restrained, held somewhere between life and death, allowed neither to die nor to live . . . such unfathomable cruelty . . .” A single tear slid down her face.

  Daniel put his hands on her shoulders as gently as he could and guided her into the hallway. “All right, Kara, you’re okay, you’re just dreaming and I’m taking you back to bed now. Everything’s fine . . .” He steered her back into her room, got her into the bed, and pulled the covers over her. He sat on the edge of the bed and patted her head.

  Her eyes closed as the dream evaporated.

  31: DISSOLVED GIRL

  London, England

  2:35 a.m.

  Descia, wake up. Descia. Wake up now.”

  It sounded far away.

  Descia felt a long way beneath the surface, and it took some effort to pry herself out of the dream she was having. In the dream, she was in her office talking to all the spooks at the same time. Mike Stotter, the handsome one from MI5, and Evan Sage, the tough Homeland Security man, and the Foundation’s new man, Daniel Byrne. She was pacing the floor, warning them about the coming plague, but they weren’t listening to her. They were sitting around her desk playing poker, ignoring her completely.

  “Descia, time to sit up.”

  Descia opened her eyes. Everything was wavy. Someone was tugging at her arms—a man, the man who had spoken—and then she was sitting up. A man with an American accent. In her room. An American man. And why was everything so wavy? She knew the answer, she just couldn’t locate it . . .

  The American man was helping her to her feet . . .

  Ambien. She’d taken an Ambien before bed. That’s why, wavy.

  He was helping her walk . . .

  Living room now. Couch. He sat her down on it, stood behind her. She tried to speak. Her tongue was thick in her mouth, and she couldn’t make the words come out.

  Soldier. The man was big and thick, like a soldier . . .

  There was a second man, sitting in the wing chair. Hard like the other, but older—salt-and-pepper hair, close-cropped mustache . . .

  She tried to speak again. “What’re you sitting . . . Who? Are you?” Her voice sounded small to her, and slightly slurred.

  The older one sitting in the chair looked at her pleasantly. “I’m Mike. The man behind you is Bobby.”

  Mike was also American.

  Then Descia’s muddled brain put the pieces together. Bobby and Mike were here to kill her. That’s why they were here. The thought caused panic to balloon in her chest, but her body was becoming a foreign thing—she could barely even make it sit up. And everything was getting wavier . . .

  She concentrated on making her mouth work. “You know, you don’t have to . . .” She heard herself slurring from far away. “Just a research biologist . . . don’t know anything . . . nothing at all, really.”

  Mike said, “You and I both know that’s not true, Descia.” He got up out of the chair and walked closer, but it was like she was looking through the wrong end of a telescope and he was very small, at the end of a long black tunnel.

  She felt Bobby pressing his hands down on her shoulders from behind. Hands like heavy pillows . . .

  Bobby said, “Rest assured, Doc, your reputation will be intact. You didn’t commit suicide. You were just careless with your sleeping pills.”

  She let her head loll back against the couch, looked up at him. He was now small, too, at the end of the black tunnel. She opened her mouth, willing herself to speak again. When her voice came, it didn’t sound like her. It sounded impossibly slow. “Only . . . took . . . one . . .”

  “I came by earlier, switched your pills.”

  “But . . . I’ve . . . my deadbolt cost
fifteen hundred pounds.”

  “You overpaid.”

  And then Mike again, standing very close now but still looking far away. Holding something in his right hand. A bottle. Two bottles. She squinted. No, just one bottle. A blue glass bottle. He lifted it higher . . .

  She searched for the right words, made them with her mouth. “Mike, Bobby, please . . . I don’t want to die.”

  Bobby said, “You took a sleeping pill, but you forgot and took a second. It happens. Then you were sleepwalking, went to the liquor cabinet . . .” He stuck something in her mouth, held it there. A tunnel . . . no . . . not tunnel . . . a tube . . . not tube . . . funnel.

  Mike tipped the blue bottle, and Descia thought: Oh. It’s gin.

  Then the funnel was gone and someone lifted her legs and she was lying on her back on the couch, but the couch was dissolving into waves, and then everything was dissolving into waves, even the men standing over her.

  The whole world, merely waves. Waves of light . . . waves of not-even-light . . . waves of almost nothing . . . waves of nothing but probability.

  And then Descia herself dissolved into waves.

  32: LAWYERS GUNS AND MONEY

  Daniel had just finished sliding the carafe back into the coffeemaker when the doorbell buzzed “Shave and a Haircut.” He pulled the Sig Sauer from the fridge, held it down by his side.

  The electric lock buzzed the front door open. “Don’t shoot, broheim.” Pat Wahlquist’s distinctive drawl—somewhere between Cajun country and Mid-City New Orleans—was like a letter from home. Pat hip-checked the door wide and stepped inside, a large black duffle bag dwarfed by his muscular frame. He winked at Daniel. “I’ll be your escort home.”

  “Geez Louise, I must be important.” Daniel put the cold gun on the counter. “Coffee?”

  “Always.” Pat dropped the duffle with a thud and bounded into the kitchen. He clasped a paw on Daniel’s shoulder and took the steaming mug with a nod. “Nice to see you not full of holes.”