The Losing Game

by Lane Swift

  “Oh, Lucas.”

  “They’ve pinned and wrapped my collarbone with titanium. Good as new. Nerve damage might be permanent, though. Don’t know yet. Have to wait for swelling to go down.” He coughed laboriously and cleared his throat. “Arm or hand might be paralyzed. So, um, I’d appreciate if you didn’t squeeze the life out of the good one.”

  Dante hadn’t realized. He released his grip. Lucas placed his right hand on Dante’s jaw, rubbing his thumb back and forth across Dante’s cheek.

  “My jaw has a hairline fracture. That’ll heal without doing anything.” The left side of Lucas’s face, that wasn’t swollen to the size of a grapefruit, lifted. “No toffees for Christmas.”

  “How about grapes?”

  “You have them.”

  Dante didn’t want the grapes. He wanted to slide onto the bed next to Lucas and hold him, to feel the pulse in his neck against his lips. He wanted to crush Richard Shaw in his fist. Except it wasn’t only Lucas’s arm that was paralyzed.

  Lucas sighed. His hand fell to his side. He blinked rapidly, returning to the land of the conscious, if only for a short visit. “I know you saved my life, and it’s not like I’m not grateful. But you owe me an explanation. I promise I’ll listen, and I’ll try to understand. That’s fair, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I expect you’re going to want me to explain myself to you.”

  “When you’re up to it. Have the police spoken to you yet?”

  “No.”

  “What are you going to tell them?”

  “Nothing. I’m going to say I don’t remember anything except going out for a night run after my date with you.”

  Dante drew the curtain around the bed and returned to his chair, close to Lucas. Close as a conspirator.

  “I made a mess of everything.” He should have trusted his instincts from the start. There was no room for excuses.

  Lucas closed his hand over Dante’s clenched fists. “Tell me. I’m doped and incapacitated. You aren’t going to get a better chance.”

  Dante hung his head. “It was a game. A losing game.”

  He told Lucas about his wager with Jim and the terms he’d set. He soldiered on, describing the surveillance on Lucas and Shaw as a silent tear slid from Lucas’s eye and into his ear. Dante didn’t stop until he’d confessed his pièce de résistance—the GPS tracker he’d placed on Lucas’s handset, after Avery’s memorial.

  He waited for Lucas to tell him to leave. But Lucas said, “When you asked me out to dinner, was it so you could find out if I still planned to go after Shaw?”

  “No.”

  “Liar,” Lucas said, without bite.

  “I asked you out to dinner because I wanted to know you better. Because of my feelings for you.”

  Dante was about to reach for Lucas’s hand, but Lucas motioned for another drink. The beaker shook as he drank. When he was done, his head fell heavily onto the pillows. “I ought to be livid, hadn’t I? I can tell—you’re waiting for it.”

  “Give it a chance to sink in. You’re exhausted.”

  After a grim stretch of silence, Lucas said, “I had no idea. You were spying on me, following me. All that time, and I had no fucking clue. It’s a wonder I’m alive.” He shifted his hips and shoulders and winced. His gaze didn’t leave the ceiling. “I don’t think Shaw meant to shoot me. Do you think he’ll go to the police?”

  “No. Accident or not, he left you to die.” Just as he had Lucas’s sister. “There’s no defense to mitigate that decision.”

  “Do you think he’ll try to finish me off?” Lucas’s voice was unsteady. His good fist clutched his bedclothes. “Or get someone else to?”

  “I don’t know him well enough to say.” Dante had considered this at length. He’d considered many things during the wakeful hours of last night. “He took your gun. You were wearing gloves. There’s no evidence it was yours.”

  “Except the bullets under my kitchen cabinet.”

  “I can get rid of those if you’ll let me go to your house. While I’m there I can pick you up pajamas and toiletries and anything else you need.”

  “All right.”

  Lucas’s face screwed up, but Dante couldn’t say whether the expression was purely pain, or fear or anger or confusion. Probably, it was all of those, topped off with a dismal sense of betrayal.

  “I don’t want you to be scared. There’s a way out of this for you. I’ll take care of everything.”

  Lucas turned his head. “I told you—”

  “I’m not going to kill anyone.”

  “How, then? And why? Why would you do that for me?”

  Now there was a million-dollar question.

  The clank and squeak of a tea trolley sounded in the corridor. Through the top half of the partition, where the flimsy curtains weren’t drawn, Dante watched a wide lady push the trolley around the corner and into the ward. She poked her head in.

  “Tea?”

  Lucas replied, “Yes, please.”

  She left a stiff brew on the bed tray at the foot of the bed.

  “You have it, if you like,” Lucas said. “I can’t stand the stuff.”

  “You don’t like tea?”

  “No.”

  Lucas’s admission made Dante uneasy. He took a sip of the lukewarm, copper-colored liquid, then another. For a hospital brew, the flavor was tolerable, if overstewed, and its effect was bracing.

  Lucas looked as if he was ready to go back to sleep, but he rubbed his weary eyes and said, “I brought this upon myself. I don’t know what happened to me. Why I thought….” He took a shivery breath. “I wanted to be able to kill Shaw more than I actually wanted to kill him. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes.”

  “I almost killed a man. You tried to warn me…. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wouldn’t listen.”

  “Shh. It’s all right. It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t listen.” Dante rubbed soothing circles over Lucas’s shoulder. “Where’s your handset? I’ll remove the GPS tracker.”

  “In that drawer, up there, with my house keys. You’ll need those.”

  Dante was glad to have something to busy himself with. That way he didn’t have to look at Lucas to say, “When I go to your house, I’ll remove the surveillance. Although, with your permission, I would prefer to keep it there, until we know what Richard Shaw’s plans are.”

  “If you think it’s a good idea.” Lucas sighed again. “None of this means we’re all right. After everything that’s happened, I don’t know if I can be…. If we can be…. If there’s an us.”

  “Rest. I’ll visit again tomorrow.”

  Lucas closed his eyes with a weary murmur and returned to sleep. Dante continued to sit by his side, eating the grapes to ward off his growing hunger.

  He’d meant to ask Lucas why he was in a Health Service ward. A large employer like Excelsior would surely furnish its employees with top-up health benefits, allowing Lucas access to a smaller ward and possibly more state-of-the-art treatment. Dante would make inquiries on his way out, and if necessary, make arrangements for the upgrades. It was the least he could do. The very least he could do.

  During the drive home, Dante brooded.

  Tired as he was, when he reached his office, he checked the surveillance on Shaw’s house. The Shaws were home, and the lights were out.

  Still, Dante couldn’t settle. He contemplated the gin. He decided against it. He needed his wits about him. When a plan went awry like this, the aftermath could be unpredictable.

  The house quieted as Lois and Kit went to bed. Using his palm and his fingertips, Dante tried to squeeze out some of the tension in the back of his neck. He rolled his head from side to side. His vertebrae made an unpleasant grinding noise, which he doubted was normal, except perhaps for a man his age with a tendency toward irascibility.

  Because people didn’t have the guts to do the right thing. People like Shaw….

  There was no time to waste. Dante raced to the b
asement, unlocked the safe, and kitted himself in his field gear. He checked his spring-loaded knife, pressing the button on its side. The blade popped out with a satisfying click, just as it had the last time it had been used. Fifteen years sitting in the basement safe hadn’t dulled the mechanism or its shine.

  After returning to his office for one last look at the monitors, Dante pulled on his thin polymer gloves. He left via the back door, stole into the alleyway behind the Mill Street houses, and slipped silently into his car.

  Across the Roseport Road, Dante pulled over at the end of a row of parked cars, close to the passageway between two houses that led into the wider streets of Milton. At this late hour, the residential streetlights had been dimmed. With his woolen balaclava rolled like a hat, low over his brow, Dante strode briskly, his head down, confident in his anonymity.

  At Richard Shaw’s house, the lights were still off. The alarm box on the outside of the house flashed its warning. Inside the house, Richard Shaw and his wife slept. Perhaps. Or perhaps, Richard Shaw and his wife were lying in bed awake.

  Undeterred, Dante slid along the inside of the high hedge fronting the house.

  From the surveillance footage and the daily switching on and off of the lights, Dante had deduced the Shaw’s bedroom was upstairs, at the far end of the house. They didn’t own a dog. Dante’s easiest route to cutting the electricity supply to the lights would be the fuse box, but the ground floor was protected by the alarm. Dante had no choice but to take his chances without tampering with wires.

  A sturdy metal patio chair provided Dante with sufficient height to climb onto the roof of the conservatory. Throughout Dante’s surveillance the upstairs room at this end of the house had remained unused, during the dark hours at least. There were some advantages to surveying in winter, even if the fieldwork was an icy bitch.

  Dante slipped on his night-vision glasses, pulled the balaclava over his face, and took out the circular glasscutter from his inside pocket. It took a matter of seconds to remove a twenty-centimeter disc from the outer then the inner panes, enough to reach in and turn the handle on the window. It was unlocked. Good. Dante wouldn’t have to remove a whole pane of glass.

  The room was empty save for an unmade single bed. Dante stilled, listening, waiting for his heart rate to slow and his breathing to quiet.

  One careful foot after another, he crept to the door and eased the handle down. The door opened easily, soundlessly. On the other side, the empty landing, at the far end, the closed door to the Shaws’ bedroom. Beyond, a low, intermittent rumbling noise.

  Richard Shaw (it could have been his wife, but Dante doubted it) was snoring, loud enough the sound carried through his bedroom door to the other end of the house.

  Dante stepped lightly to the Shaws’ bedroom, passing three closed doors. For a heart-stopping moment, it occurred to him that Mrs. Shaw might be sleeping in another room. But, no. Dante had only seen the lights to this one room going on and off.

  Dante opened the bedroom door to two sleeping figures, Mrs. Shaw to Dante’s left, Richard Shaw to his right. He didn’t dwell on them. Speed was of the essence.

  Coming around the right side of the bed, Dante grasped the bulb in Richard Shaw’s bedside lamp. It was the kind that needed to be pushed down and turned, not the kind that had to be unscrewed. Dante removed it in one swift, silent movement. On his back, faceup, Shaw continued snoring. His wife also remained unmoved. In that momentary glance at her, Dante saw the earplug poking from her left ear.

  Dante crept to the other side of the bed. He removed the bulb from Mrs. Shaw’s lamp and the handset beside it, crushing bulbs and handset on the carpet, beneath the heel of his boot.

  Perhaps that had been unnecessary. Dante didn’t care. The ease and depth of the Shaws’ sleep irked him, no matter that it had allowed him this uninterrupted access.

  Dante plucked out Mrs. Shaw’s earplugs. She began to stir as Dante sat beside her on the bed, flicked open his knife, and held it to her neck.

  It was incredible, annoyingly so, to see her awake so slowly. Shaw’s snoring was worse. Enough that Dante was tempted to land a punch in his throat just to shut the bastard up.

  Dante pressed his wrist against the soft, thick flesh above Mrs. Shaw’s collarbone, exerting enough pressure on the blade that when she finally came to, she would know without a doubt what it was. Not enough to break the skin, but enough to fuel the fear.

  Here we go.

  Dante bent and whispered in her ear, “Scream, and I will cut your throat.”

  Mrs. Shaw’s left arm flew out. She grabbed for her husband, somewhere on his ample gut. He grunted and rolled onto his side, as if he was used to these nocturnal attacks.

  Dante used his left hand to hold Mrs. Shaw’s head on her pillow, leaned over her, and with his right hand, blade poking out to one side, punched Shaw in the back of the neck.

  That woke him.

  While Shaw groped his way back to consciousness, Dante resumed his position, sitting next to Mrs. Shaw with his blade placed strategically and obviously over her carotid artery.

  He said, “If you value your wife’s life, you will lay still and listen to me very carefully.”

  The couple froze. Dante could see them as plain as day, struggling to focus on their intruder in the blood-red light coming from their digital bedside clock.

  Richard Shaw had a pair of glasses on his bedside table. He didn’t reach for them. Mrs. Shaw sobbed. The whites of her eyes shone.

  “What do you want?” Shaw said huskily. “I have money. Cash. Downstairs.”

  Dante felt preternaturally calm. “I want the gun you used to shoot Lucas Green.”

  Shaw spluttered. “Who are you?”

  “The gun.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  Dante pressed the blade side of the knife a little harder into Mrs. Shaw’s neck. She screeched, and then said, “It’s in the dining room. Taped under the sideboard.”

  “Then we’d best go and get it.”

  Richard Shaw reached for his glasses first. He was shortsighted, then, and must wear contact lenses during the day.

  “No lights,” Dante said, preempting Shaw’s attempt to reach for the lamp as he helped Mrs. Shaw out of bed.

  Shaw walked ahead, buttoning his pajama top as he went, stumbling, cursing, groping for the door and the alarm panel on the landing. He punched in the numbers. The mechanical voice in the panel announced the alarm was disabled.

  Shaw snarled and curled his hand into a fist. He was thinking about whether he could take Dante. Whether it was worth the risk. The fool.

  Dante took no pleasure in slicing the strap on Mrs. Shaw’s nightdress. She jumped and screamed. The fabric slipped from her shoulder.

  “Do as he says, Richie. Please, just do as he says.”

  “Listen to your wife, Shaw. This knife is very sharp.”

  “All right. All right.” Richard Shaw lifted his hands in supplication and led the way down the stairs to the dining room.

  The gun had been placed in a clear plastic bag. Dante removed it and released the magazine. It was still loaded. Good. He placed it in his pocket.

  “Is it wiped clean?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should think yourself lucky. I’m getting you off the hook. Lucas Green won’t talk, and from now on, he’ll keep away from you. In return, you will keep away from him. If you so much as set foot within a mile of his house or his place of work, I’ll know, and I’ll be back.”

  Mrs. Shaw whimpered.

  Shaw stepped in front of her and, full of venom, said to Dante, “What’s this got to do with you?”

  Mrs. Shaw pleaded, “Richie, shut up, for God’s sake.” To Dante she said, “He’ll do as you say.”

  Dante left through the front door of the Shaw’s house. Two streets away, he paused inside the entrance to a long driveway, taking cover between two thick fir trees. He drew in long, deep breaths, one after the othe
r, until the urge to vomit passed.

  Back in the day, Dante hadn’t been involved in fieldwork for the pure and simple reason that it wasn’t in his skill set. Flynn employed other people for fieldwork. Dante planned the burglaries because that was what he was good at. His one and only foray into the field had been an act of necessity. He’d derived no satisfaction from it. Only relief and the certainty that the job had been done, and done right.

  Just like tonight.

  Chapter 23

  BETWEEN DOZES, on Sunday, Lucas was moved into a ward containing three other beds. A nurse stuck a biofeedback microchip pad to the back of his neck, which communicated with the drip-pack in his arm, to allow more steady pain management. He dimly wondered if there had been some mistake. He’d never opted into the Premier Health Service package at work.

  Later in the evening, the staff nurse informed Lucas that Dante had made the arrangements for the upgrade. Lucas slept uneasily. He appreciated Dante’s gesture, but Dante should have asked him first.

  It was still dark outside when the inmates of Ward 6 were awoken with hot beverages and, soon after, the arrival of Monday’s breakfast. For all its similarity to coffee, the umber liquid in Lucas’s pale blue mug might as well have been a brew of roadside grit and pencil shavings. He suffered it as a sluice to wash down a rubbery triangle of toast, sparingly spread with a red gelatinous paste that was meant to pass for jam. (So much for the upgrade!)

  At first he didn’t notice his fingers on his left hand move. He thought it was a natural tremor. When the middle and forefinger twitched again, Lucas found he was holding his breath, willing the movement to happen once more. The middle finger resisted. The forefinger lifted, like it was pointing to the man in the next bed.

  With his right hand, Lucas experimentally jabbed his left arm at intervals from his upper arm to his fingers, desperately trying to feel something and failing, until exhausted, he gave in to the overwhelming urge to close his eyes and doze.

  The efficacious hand of the bearded Nurse Sage, yanking on Lucas’s ankle, awoke him.