Dangerous Games

by Danielle Steel

  Dangerous Games is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Danielle Steel

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  DELACORTE PRESS and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Names: Steel, Danielle, author.

  Title: Dangerous games : a novel / Danielle Steel.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Delacorte Press, [2017]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016035941 (print) | LCCN 2016045704 (ebook) | ISBN 9781101883884 (hardcover : acid-free paper) | ISBN 9781101883891 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Investigative reporting—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Sagas. | FICTION / Romance / Contemporary. | GSAFD: Romantic suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3569.T33828 D36 2018 (print) | LCC PS3569.T33828 (ebook) | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/​2016035941

  Ebook ISBN 9781101883891

  randomhousebooks.com

  Book design by Virginia Norey, adapted for ebook

  Cover design: Derek Walls

  Cover photo: © Jan Hakan Dahlstrom/Getty Images

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Dedication

  By Danielle Steel

  About the Author

  Come not between the dragon and his wrath.

  Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides.

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, KING LEAR

  Chapter 1

  It was nearly four in the morning when Alix Phillips ran for cover as gunshots rang out. A fruit-canning factory had been shut down in Alabama, putting thousands out of jobs. The union had been trying to stop the shutdown for months, and finally violence had broken out in the town, out of desperation and frustration. Most of the factory workers were African American, some of whose families had worked there for generations. There had been looting and destruction in the town and surrounding area all night, and two young men had been killed. The riot police had been called in from nearby cities, and the acrid smell of tear gas was everywhere. Alix was reporting from a live feed, and had to abandon the spot where she’d been standing, as Ben Chapman, her cameraman, grabbed her roughly by the arm and forced her to leave. He nearly had to drag her to get her away from the scene, as troops narrowed in on the area, and flames exploded the windows as looters set a building on fire. She had just been saying on her broadcast for national TV that nothing like it had been seen since the riots in L.A. in 1992.

  “Are you fucking crazy?” Chapman shouted at her, as they took refuge behind a building around the corner, and National Guardsmen and riot police thundered past them. Ben and Alix were wearing their press badges around their necks and had been on the scene all week. Alix’s face was smudged with soot, and her eyes were watering from the tear gas heavy in the air. “Are you trying to get killed?” They had been working as a team for four years, and got along well, except in moments like this.

  To her own detriment, Alix Phillips would put herself on the front line of any battle, riot, demonstration, or dangerous situation in order to bring the reality of it to their viewers. Ben loved working with her, but they’d argued about it before. Her fearlessness made for award-winning footage, and the network loved it, especially at a time in broadcasting when few reporters were willing to take the risks she did. It was in her DNA. But there were times when reason had to win out, or should have, and with Alix it never did. Once she was in the heat of a story, she was blind to all else. She’d been a TV news reporter since she graduated from college seventeen years before, and at thirty-nine had made a powerful reputation for herself, reporting from every hot spot on the planet. She covered the news abroad and in the States, on special assignment, and the producers loved her because she never turned anything down, and her brilliant editorials and assessments were known around the world. She was a legendary reporter whom everyone admired, and was a household name. Working with her was a privilege Ben enjoyed, except when she went too far and put their lives on the line. He was a brave man, but not foolish. But nothing stopped Alix, she was passionate about every story.

  Ben was forty-two, and had been in the military until four years before. He had been part of an elite Navy SEAL team, which made him well suited to the kind of assignments Alix preferred, and he had signed on enthusiastically to work with her. Other more cautious cameramen had turned the opportunity down. She was healthy, extremely fit, headstrong, honorable, courageous, afraid of nothing, and very smart. Her stories were flawlessly covered, and his talent with a camera in his hands was equal to hers as a reporter. Their producers and audiences loved them. They were the perfect combination and complemented each other. Both were known for their professional integrity and in-depth stories. They had been all over the Middle East together, had covered military takeovers and civil wars in South America and Africa, natural disasters, coups d’état, and a number of important political exposés in the States. Trouble of any kind was their specialty, and they made it riveting to watch with his images and her words and presence on the screen. Ben always teased her that if there was a disaster somewhere in the world, Alix would find a way to get there, and risk her hide and his, just as she had already done several times that night in the Alabama riots.

  They heard an explosion a few minutes after they’d taken cover. Alix dashed back out before Ben could stop her, and he followed. He was as zealous as she was, but he felt it his duty to protect her too, which she ignored whenever possible.

  “Are you ever going to ask me if I think it’s smart to go back out or if we should wait?” he complained when he caught up to her. They were both tired and hadn’t slept more than a few hours in days.

  “Of course not.” She grinned at him, and ran alongside a group of soldiers who had been sent to reinforce the riot squad. But in spite of the hazards, he liked working with her. They were combat buddies and partners in crime. He was six feet five with powerful shoulders, and in remarkable shape. She was a foot shorter, with a lithe, athletic body and long blond hair, and she liked to think she was as physically capable and tough as he was. She trained at a gym every day when they were at home in New York, and she loved to box. But twenty years as a Navy SEAL and sheer size made Ben the stronger of the two, inevitably, whether she admitted it or not. She was beautiful when she cleaned up, but was perfectly at ease in combat clothes, covered in grime. She didn’t care how she looked when she was working. All that mattered was getting the story, whatever it took.

  The riot went on until seven in the morning, when all the rioters and looters had been rounded up and taken to jail. The fires continued to burn white-hot and weren’t put out for several days. The small factory town remained under military control when Ben and Alix left and
got on a plane to New York in Birmingham, after driving fifty miles in their rented car to get there. The town they’d just left had almost been destroyed, and because of the factory closing, most of the locals were now unemployed and on public assistance of some kind, and many had already lost their homes. It was a sad story, and Alix had blamed local government in her broadcast for providing so little support and being so ill prepared to quell the riots and looting before they got out of hand. The mayor was said to be corrupt, although she implied it but didn’t say it, and the town was bankrupt. The region had been declared a disaster area on the morning after the riots began. She was pensive and quiet as they flew back to New York. It was hard to imagine such extreme poverty in the United States, but they had seen it before. And it tore at her heartstrings when she saw the kids, barefoot and in clothes that were ragged and too small, and many homeless now as well.

  “What are they going to do now?” she said softly, glancing at Ben, as the flight attendant served their lunch in business class. Due to the hardships of their work, the network paid for them to travel business class whenever possible. It was one of the perks they both enjoyed about their job.

  “Go on unemployment, or move away, if they can,” Ben answered seriously, remembering the poverty they’d seen there. It upset him too, although they had seen far worse things in the wars and horrors they’d covered together around the world. It helped that they were both unencumbered, neither of them with someone waiting for them at home, and Ben assumed they’d be back on the road again in a few days. They usually were. A new dire situation would happen somewhere and they would be sent there. It was not unlike his life in the military with the SEALs. Ben had been defending the people and principles he believed in all his life.

  —

  Alix came by her talent and courage honestly. Her father had been a famous British journalist and had been killed by a bomb in Ireland while covering a story, when she was a child. She remembered him only dimly, but from everything she knew about him, he had been a wonderful man. Her mother, Isabelle, was French. Alix had grown up in London, gone to college in the States, and once she decided to stay there to work in TV news for a major network, her mother had moved back to the small town she came from in Provence. She had been a good mother, and never interfered with what Alix chose to do. Alix loved her fiercely and visited her whenever she could, which was never often enough.

  Alix’s college years in the States had been turbulent and stormy. A romance in her sophomore year had led to the birth of a daughter a year later. The baby’s father had been a year younger, a sweet boy who was passionately in love with Alix and tried to match her courage when she decided to have the baby, much to his parents’ dismay. They were cool Bostonians from a wealthy banking family, and their dreams for their son did not include an illegitimate child, nor marriage to an unknown girl from London, from what they considered an insignificant family, no matter how bright Alix was. And her dreams of following in her father’s footsteps as a journalist did not please them either, although Wyatt thought she was amazing. Despite his parents’ protests, they were married less than a month before Faye was born.

  The delivery was easy, but everything that came after wasn’t. Wyatt’s parents cut off all financial support, and Isabelle came from London to help them with the baby, although she wasn’t thrilled with Alix’s decision either, but young love had prevailed over reason.

  And three months later, the unthinkable happened. While vacationing with friends in Nantucket, Wyatt was killed in a boating accident, and Alix became a twenty-year-old widow with a three-month-old infant. Still in shock over Wyatt’s death, Alix and her mother attended the funeral in Boston, where they realized that Wyatt’s family had told no one about their son’s marriage or his child, and Alix and her mother were treated like unwelcome strangers. A somber conversation with Wyatt’s father the day after the funeral made clear that his family wanted no contact with Alix or their granddaughter in the future. They considered her nothing more than a youthful mistake he had made, and they felt no bond to mother or child. They wouldn’t even look at their son’s infant daughter.

  Alix went back to London with her mother then, and after a month of long, tearful discussions, Isabelle convinced her to go back to school and leave Faye with her in London. Alix was torn, even as she boarded the plane to go back to school in the States to finish her junior year. And once there it became obvious that it had been the right decision, and her mother had been wise.

  A year later, with near-perfect grades, Alix graduated with honors and got an extraordinary opportunity in network news in New York. She was on her way. She went home to visit her mother and daughter whenever she could, but she was deeply immersed in her demanding job for several years. Isabelle moved back to France then, to Provence, and took Faye with her, while Alix accepted every challenging assignment they gave her. She could never have achieved the early years of her career with a baby to care for, and Faye thrived with her grandmother. She was five when Alix finally decided to bring her to New York, which was challenging, but she wanted her daughter with her and felt ready to cope.

  They managed, Faye spent summers with her grandmother in France, and a nanny cared for her in New York while Alix traveled for her job. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked. And Alix and her daughter had in common that they had grown up without their fathers. It created a special bond between them, and Faye worried fiercely about her mother when she saw her on TV when she was away or on assignment. Isabelle had never complained about Alix’s chosen career, but Faye did, all the time, and accused her mother of being irresponsible and trying to get killed.

  “I don’t have a father. What will I do if something happens to you?” she said angrily.

  “You’d go to live with Mamie,” she said, referring to her mother in Provence. Faye’s paternal grandparents had never made contact again in nineteen years. Alix had always thought they would eventually, but they never did. Faye didn’t exist for them. She remained an embarrassment they chose to deny, with no sentiment for their late son’s only child.

  “That’s not good enough,” Faye would say to her mother in a fury about the dangers of her job. “I need you too. Not just Mamie.”

  The truth was that Alix and Faye needed each other, but Alix loved her career too, and was determined to stay in it. And when Faye left for college, Alix felt free to take tougher, longer, more dangerous assignments than ever. Every fiber of her being came alive on those assignments. Faye was proud of her but upset about it too. It was a constant battle between the two women.

  Faye was nineteen years old and a sophomore at Duke, and she knew that if there was a war, an uprising, or a terrorist attack somewhere, her mother would wind up there, drawn like a moth to flame. And the network she worked for took full advantage of her willingness to leave at the drop of a hat, and go anywhere they sent her. Anyone who knew Alix was acutely aware of the fact that nothing could stop her. If there was trouble somewhere in the world, Alix had to be in it, just as she was now. And because of the way she’d grown up, Faye was fiercely independent too. She was as determined as her mother. She wanted to go to law school after college, and Alix was sure she would, and she could afford to send her now. Her job as star reporter for a major network paid her well. But her work wasn’t about money for Alix. Her career was her passion, she loved what she did. She found each assignment new and exciting, and she was the consummate professional. Like her father, Alix was a journalist to the core, and she liked being a war correspondent best of all. She and Ben had that in common, which was why they worked well together, on the toughest assignments the network could give them.

  Alix never talked about her personal life or her past. Ben had been startled to learn a year after they started working together that she had a child. Her willingness to risk her life in the line of duty had never suggested to him that she had a family at home. And in fact she didn’t. All she had was Faye, and her mother in France. In that sense, she and Ben were ver
y much alike. In his case, he was divorced with no children, and she knew he had parents and three brothers somewhere in the Midwest, whom he rarely saw. He had nephews and nieces, although he saw little of them, and said that he and his family had nothing in common. They thought him an oddball for leaving home and joining the SEALs. He said that the military had been his family for many years. He had strong moral values and a need to protect those around him, but he had no close personal ties Alix was aware of. And when she had questioned him about why he left the SEALs, all he said was “It was time,” and clearly didn’t want to talk about it. Like Alix, he was an intensely private person. They were there to do a job together, and that was what they did, like two soldiers of fortune, bringing the truth to their viewers, and shedding light on treason, betrayals, and crimes against humanity around the world. Above all, Alix believed in exposing evil deeds and shocking events, and so did Ben, whatever the risk to them to do so.

  “Did you have time to call Faye?” Ben asked casually as they flew back to New York. He liked hearing about her, and he thought Faye a bright, interesting young woman, like her mother, willing to stand up for her ideals.

  Ben had left home more than twenty years before, and had been divorced for fourteen years. He never talked about his ex-wife, and Alix correctly sensed he didn’t want to, so she didn’t ask. They were each entitled to their memories and secrets. They were colleagues, not lovers, and had become friends working hard together.

  “I did,” Alix said about calling Faye from Alabama. She tried to call from wherever she was.

  “How is she?” he inquired.

  “Pissed, as usual,” Alix said, grinning. Faye still hated it when her mother went on dangerous assignments, and this one was. “I think she’d like me to cover baking contests, dog shows, and county fairs.” He laughed at the idea. Faye never failed to remind her mother that she and her grandmother in Provence were all she had, and accused her of being selfish. As a result of the constant reminders, Alix had taken out a hefty life insurance policy for her, as her own father had done for them. It had allowed Alix to get a decent education, and her mother to take care of her full-time while she was still at home. But even though she pretended to be cavalier about it, there was no question that being a single mother weighed on Alix heavily at times. Not enough to make her change her life or give up her job. She couldn’t at this point, and didn’t want to. But she felt guilty whenever Faye complained.