The Games

by James Patterson

  We returned to Spirit favela and that same spot against the retaining wall high in the slum, up against the jungle. Urso was there, eating and drinking with four or five of his homeboys.

  Tavia marched up to him with the bandages on her arm exposed and a .380 in her hand.

  “We had an agreement, Bear,” she said, aiming at his head. “Does your word mean nothing?”

  Urso’s hands flew up. “Hey, fuck, Reynaldo! What you talking about? The Bear’s word is gold.”

  “We got attacked on the Alemão gondola. Street trash with knives. They targeted us.”

  “That’s nothing to me,” Urso said. “I can’t keep freelancers from moving into Alemão. That’s the BOPE’s job.”

  Tavia was still mad and skeptical. “You saying those weren’t your boys?”

  “Hello?” said the Bear. “We got a deal, right?”

  “So why aren’t you out looking?” I asked.

  “Been looking all day, L.A.,” he said. “You’re getting your money’s worth.”

  “So what have you heard about those girls?”

  “People saw them dragged into a gray van down the hill from all the shooting. No license plate, so that doesn’t tell us anything, but we’re working out from the point where they were put in the van.”

  “Narrow your search area,” Tavia said, and she told him that the girls were being held within hearing distance of train whistles and close to barking dogs and wind chimes.

  “Trains?” the Bear said. Then he nodded. “Okay. That helps. But chimes? Shit, man, everyone’s auntie got chimes. Different size, shape, tone. And there are dogs everywhere.”

  “We can send you a digital file of the exact sounds,” I said.

  Urso brightened. “That works. After we eat, me and the boys will go down by the tracks, listen for chimes and dogs barking. We good?”

  Tavia studied him critically again for several beats before saying, “Okay, Bear, we’re good.”

  Chapter 24

  DRESSED TO KILL in heels, a tight black leather skirt, and a black silk blouse that showed off her ample figure, Luna Santos was in her mid-thirties with lush black hair and a gorgeous olive complexion. Her heart pounded with anticipation as she exited a taxi by the aqueduct, two stories and eight hundred feet of stark white arches in the heart of Lapa, an edgy entertainment district in Centro.

  On one side of the aqueduct, fans were already lined up to get into a sprawling outdoor music club. The square on the other side of the arches was jammed with revelers. Seven days to go until the Olympics, and already the city was packed with people ready to bust loose and celebrate. Luna was more than ready to party with them.

  She bought a caipirinha, a potent cachaça rum drink and sort of Brazil’s national cocktail.

  Luna walked on, sipping the minty, sweet booze, feeling the alcohol fire through her, aware of but not acknowledging the men who openly admired her as she passed. The fact that Lapa could be a little dangerous after dark only added to the general thrill.

  I want fear tonight, she thought. I want drama and passion and sweat.

  Her brain began to imagine the forbidden pleasures the night might bring, and she felt herself tremble with excitement and—

  Luna’s cell phone rang. She stopped on the crowded sidewalk, dug her phone out of her evening purse, checked the number, and felt the anticipation drain out of her.

  Cupping her hand around the mouthpiece, Luna answered. “Antonio?”

  “I’m sorry, baby,” her husband said. “I have to work late.”

  “I figured,” she said. “Sleeping at the office again?”

  Her husband, defensive, said, “Just a few more days, Luna, and I’ll be—”

  “Gone for the next sixteen.”

  Exasperated, Antonio said, “You understand what I’m doing is important?”

  “Sorry, but I’ve got to go. My movie’s about to start.”

  Luna hung up and then turned the phone off.

  Tonight is not about Antonio and his career, she thought. Tonight has zero to do with the Olympics. It’s about me. It’s about the needs of Luna Santos.

  That decided, she set off again toward the entrance to Rio Scenarium, a famous samba club, trying to imagine what her new lover had planned for the evening. He’d said that after drinks and dancing he would take her someplace gostosa, someplace hot.

  Luna hoped it was a first-class love motel. Rio was peppered with facilities that catered to couples in need of a discreet meeting place. Some of these were spectacular, just like the finest suites in the finest hotels in Copacabana and Ipanema, except you paid by the hour.

  The year before, with her old lover, Luna had been in one that had its own pool, sauna, and all sorts of accoutrements that made her…well…very satisfied.

  The bouncer at the samba club leered at Luna as he opened the door for her. She didn’t give him a hint of encouragement. She would never cheat on Antonio with such a man.

  Luna had a high standard for lovers. They had to be educated, well spoken, and within ten years of her age. They had to be physically fit and more than capable in bed, and a sense of mischief and daring helped immensely.

  Her new lover met all these requirements and more. He was frankly gifted in affairs of the flesh. Luna shivered as she entered the club. Pounding samba music played. Lights flashed over a packed dance floor. The ceiling soared two stories up. The second floor was more like a balcony where partyers drank and commented on the skills of the writhing bodies below.

  Luna sniffed at the sweet smell of sweat and raging pheromones in the club and got even hornier. She scanned the eclectic interior, paying scant attention to the suits of medieval armor on one wall, clock collections on another, and mirrors and paintings on a third. She wasn’t seeing her man.

  Luna got a double caipirinha this time, sipped at it, loving the way the mint, ice, sugar, and rum slid down her throat and made her feel like someone else indeed. She moved closer to the dance floor. In the strobe light, the mob of dancers looked like one sensual creature and—

  Luna felt strong hands on her hips, felt a man press himself just hard enough against her bunda that she knew he was as aroused as she was. Purring with pleasure, Luna threw her arm up, back, and around his neck, delighting at the way he nuzzled her.

  She gasped softly at his slow, grinding embrace and then pivoted to press her breasts and hips against him.

  “Doctor,” she said, pouting. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming to see me tonight.”

  Dr. Castro let his eyes go dreamy, kissed her passionately, and said, “How could a man ever stay away from a woman like you, my little orchid?”

  Chapter 25

  AS THE MUSIC beat faster and the dancing became more and more frenzied, Luna throbbed in his arms. Doctor was a master of samba, of offering and denying, of sweating and sliding against her until she was drunk with wanting him and then changing to cold and removed, which drove her passion to flames.

  Doctor was a mystery and that made him all the more alluring to Luna. She had no idea what his name was; she called him Doctor, and he called her Orchid. They’d met two weeks before at another dance club and there’d been this immediate physical connection that didn’t require details like backgrounds and names.

  The music wound down into a slow bossa nova that made her want to press into him all the more. But Doctor held her at bay, a brush of hips here, a moment chest to chest, but no delicious melding of bodies.

  Luna said, “Sometimes I see you staring off, Doctor. Are you thinking of your other lover?”

  “There is no other lover,” he assured her.

  “Wife?”

  “I had one. She passed.”

  “So sad for you, but a pleasure for me. Where are you taking me?”

  “That’s a surprise,” he said. “Shall we get our drinks and go?”

  Luna just wanted to go, but he’d ordered them glasses of wine. He got plastic cups, poured the wine into them, and they left the
club arm in arm to join the rest of the mob drinking and partying in the streets.

  “To pleasure,” Doctor said, touching his cup to hers.

  “To no strings,” Luna said saucily, and she downed the wine.

  In his car, she rubbed her hands all over his chest, said, “I can’t wait to be alone with you.”

  Castro kissed her, said, “It won’t take long for my little orchid to bloom.”

  He drove. Luna felt pleasantly hammered, not thinking a bit about her husband, only about Doctor and how unbelievable he’d made her feel their first time together. She prayed she was going to feel even better tonight.

  “Where are we going?” she asked once she realized they’d gotten onto the highway. “There are excellent sex motels around Lapa.”

  “But nothing like this one,” Doctor said, and he rubbed her thigh.

  Luna purred, realized she was drunker than she’d thought. Not sick drunk, but stripped of any and all inhibitions.

  Free to do what I want.

  She squirmed her hips in protest when his hand left her leg.

  “You torturing me?”

  “There’s a fine line between pain and ecstasy.”

  Ecstasy. When was the last time Antonio spoke of such things? Maybe I should leave Antonio before I do something stupid like get pregnant. Maybe I should…just…

  Her vision blurred and distorted. She was aware they were driving through an industrial area she didn’t recognize.

  “Where you taking me, Doc?” she slurred.

  Luna’s eyes drifted shut. She felt as if she were spinning slowly off a cliff, like a bird hovering on updrafts.

  Far behind her, from back on that cliff as she twirled and glided toward nothingness, she heard Doctor reply, “My lab, Luna.”

  Chapter 26

  SCI AND MO-BOT arrived in Rio around eleven that night, and Tavia and I took them to see Andrew and Cherie Wise in their suite at the Marriott. We brought the couple up to speed on what we’d learned in the past five hours and gave them an overview of our strategy to find their daughters.

  Maureen Roth typed on her iPad, linking it via Bluetooth to the flat-screen on the wall. A satellite image of Rio appeared, the mountains, the canyons, the beaches, and the sea. Mo-bot typed a few more commands, and six flickering pins appeared, three red, three yellow, superimposed on the image.

  “These three in red are the charities where the girls worked in the past three weeks,” Maureen said. “The yellows are the hostels where they stayed. And now, I’ll filter out all areas more than two miles from a train or Metrô track, and…”

  Large pieces of the image vanished, and it was like we were looking at Rio as an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. But it was clear from the pins that the hostels and all three charities were within our search area. So were the Spirit and Alemão favelas.

  I said, “We’ve got people working the tracks near the abduction site first and then expanding out. In the morning, we’ll be at those charities and hostels.”

  “How can this help?” Cherie asked. “I mean, look at the density. Millions of people live in those parts of the city.”

  “True,” Tavia said. “But at some point, Mrs. Wise, your daughters appeared on someone’s radar. Likely at the hostels or the charities. If we can figure out where and how they were targeted, we can figure out who has them.”

  Wise said, “A search is your only strategy, Jack?”

  “It’s the one that seems most promising at the moment.”

  “You’ve got less than forty-two hours,” he said. “I’ve arranged to withdraw thirty million dollars’ worth of Brazilian reais on Sunday.”

  “They said fifty million,” Cherie said.

  “I can’t get fifty,” he said. “And they’ll never know the difference. It will be a big stack of money all strapped down, and that will be enough. Why? Because they won’t stop to count it and we’ll put newspaper cut like cash deep in the pile. They’ll give us the girls and take the money at the same time or no deal.”

  His wife looked dubious, but she nodded.

  “That is going to be a big stack,” Sci said.

  Wise nodded, said, “The bills are roughly the size of U.S. currency. Given that every dollar weighs a gram, and using a fifty as the likely denomination, we’re talking about eleven hundred pounds.”

  Sci said, “They’d be smarter to ask for it in gold. At this morning’s spot price, that drops the weight to nine hundred and thirty pounds.”

  Wise stared at him, said, “Well done.”

  Cherie looked disgusted, shook her head, and said, “It’s always about mental gymnastics with you, Andy. Can’t you just once look at life emotionally?”

  “Emotion won’t get Alicia and Natalie back,” he snapped. “Strategy, a plan, and meticulous execution of that plan will get them back.”

  “And what if it doesn’t?” she said, starting to cry as she gestured at the screen. “What if they take the money and kill the girls, and we never see them again?”

  “That’s not happening.”

  She wiped her bloodshot eyes, looked at the four of us from Private, said, “You see it, don’t you? With everything we’ve got, my girls are all I have.”

  Chapter 27

  YOU’RE ENOUGH TO get what we need, Rayssa thought as she shone a powerful flashlight beam in the frightened eyes of her captives.

  The Wise twins were bound at the wrists and ankles and sitting on filthy mattresses, backs up against the concrete wall.

  “Do we have to wear the gags and blindfolds again?” Alicia Wise said in a pleading whine. “We won’t scream.”

  “You know we won’t,” Natalie said. “Who would hear us anyway?”

  Rayssa thought a moment, said, “Fine. No gags. No blindfolds. But start screaming for help or try to escape and they go back on.”

  “What about our parents?” Natalie asked.

  “I’m sure they’ve seen the video by now.”

  “Mom must be freaking out,” Alicia said.

  “They’ll pay,” Natalie said, as if trying to convince herself.

  “Sure, they’ll pay,” Alicia said. “Why wouldn’t they? They’ve got, like—”

  “Billions,” Rayssa said. Then she shut the door and locked it.

  Rayssa turned and used the flashlight to make her way down a long, low-ceilinged corridor. It smelled of tobacco and led to a steep staircase. She climbed to a heavy wooden door and thumbed off the flashlight.

  Turning the dead bolt, she opened the door and stepped out into a high-ceilinged space, dark but for narrow slats of light coming in between boards nailed over the windows. Except for broken glass crunching under her feet and the wreckage of wooden tables and stools, the place was empty.

  Rayssa let her eyes adjust, then crossed the space to another flight of stairs. She paused at the bottom, listening.

  The wind was up. She heard chimes and the not-so-distant rattle of a train.

  And then something more?

  Something or somebody outside?

  Dogs began to bark, but this was different from their normal yapping. The dogs were agitated, alarmed.

  Rayssa reached to the small of her back beneath her sweater, retrieved a blunt-nosed .38. She slid her shoes off and crept up the stairs.

  She returned to the long-abandoned office where she’d been sleeping but didn’t turn on the light. Rayssa went to the window, looked out between the slats, and peered down. Except for a weak cone of light cast by a spot on the warehouse next door, there was only gloom, and the chimes, and the wind, and the far-off blare of a train horn.

  Rayssa stayed there, waiting, scanning the shadows for many minutes, before her suspicions were confirmed. She spotted a buff guy moving along the rear of that cone of light. Then he stepped into it. She saw his tattoos and, when the chimes rang again and he looked up, his face.

  Rayssa gripped the revolver tighter and fought the urge to panic.

  What the hell was the Bear doing here?

 
Chapter 28

  Saturday, July 30, 2016

  3:00 a.m.

  LUNA SANTOS AWOKE slowly, groggily, aware that she was under sheets and naked. Well, that was good, right? Must have been a heck of a—

  Luna heard movement, blinked her eyes, saw only fuzziness. Her head started to clang. A stark white room came into focus, spinning slowly. She was lying in a hospital bed. There was an IV bag on a stand next to her, with a line running below the sheets.

  Confused, Luna tried to raise her arm to look at the IV, but her wrists were lashed to the bed rails. She tried to move her legs and found her ankles tied to the rails too. And there was something between her legs.

  Like a thin hose or something!

  Luna rolled her head, the pain splitting, said, “Help me. Where am I?”

  But her tongue was so thick and her mouth so dry, the words came out weak and garbled. Despite the pounding in her skull, she forced herself to lift her head, looked around, and saw someone standing there in one of those hazmat suits like they had for Ebola, white smock, hood, visor, gauntlet gloves, and all.

  The figure came to Luna’s side, looked down at her, spoke through a small speaker clipped to the smock, his voice as strange as an astronaut’s coming from outer space.

  “There you are,” Dr. Castro said.

  “Where am I, Doctor?” she said.

  “In my lab.”

  “What happened to me?” she asked, bewildered. “Am I sick?”

  “Just side effects. They’ll clear up soon.”

  Side effects? Luna thought. Of what?

  But before she could ask, Castro said, “Just relax. You were chosen, you know. For so many good reasons, I chose you. And now here you are, Luna, where I always dreamed you’d be.”

  “What?” she said, vaguely aware that he’d used her real name and not Orchid. “I don’t…chosen for what?”

  The doctor held up a gloved index finger as if to hush her and walked off.

  Luna rolled her pounding head, watched him cross the lab to four glass cages beneath digital readouts. She saw a white rat moving around in one of the containers and no movement in the others.