Reckless Games

by M. J. Lowell

  It was Nico. Behind everything.

  “And Lulu?” The way he said my name made it sound like a curse word. “That brandy in your cocoa? Actually liquid diazapem. It’s a muscle relaxant. My doctor prescribed it for the back spasms I get from rowing. I gave you a much higher than recommended dose. That’s why you’re having trouble moving.”

  I stared at him, stunned, my body as limp as a rag doll.

  He shook his head. “I don’t want to complain, but you made it almost too easy.”

  And I was completely at his mercy.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I was still trying to make sense of what I was hearing. How could Nico have deceived me so completely? I’d seen how good he was at charades at Christmas, but that was only a parlor game with Val’s family. This was life – and death – and he’d had me utterly fooled.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “You were bleeding. You were hurt. I saw it. If Davies didn’t beat you up, then who did?”

  “I did. Or anyway I gave myself a cut. It hurt like hell, but I needed it to be bad enough to look realistic.” He smiled again, that same nasty smile. “But I was touched by your concern, Lulu. You cared about me – just not that much.”

  I let that sink in. Then another piece fell into place. “The groceries,” I murmured.

  “What about them?” said Nico.

  “You said you’d just come back from the market when you were attacked. But then you said there was nothing for dinner with Val. I knew something was off, that I was missing something, but I didn’t realize what.” I tried to gather my thoughts through the fog gripping my brain. “Why, Nico? Why would you fake the whole break-in, and getting beaten up?”

  He rolled his eyes impatiently. “To shut down your questions, obviously. I thought I’d finally gotten you to accept that your father committed suicide, but Val had to go chasing after all the patent information. I figured if you thought someone had attacked me, you’d never suspect me, and if we were both being threatened, I’d be able to get you to abandon this whole quest of yours.” He sighed. “I was partially right. You didn’t suspect me. But you didn’t let the threats stop you, either.”

  “Then it was all you? Everything? Even that phone call about M.E.? All of it? Even—” I could hardly say the words “—even my father?”

  “I don’t know about the phone call, but the rest of it, yes,” he said. “It was all me.”

  There was pride in his voice. He was proud of what he’d done. He was proud of murdering my father. I thought I was going to be sick.

  “My father thought of you like a son,” I said. “He treated you like his own child.”

  “Given how he treated you, that’s not exactly a dream come true,” Nico said sarcastically.

  “My father loved me.”

  “He left you broke.”

  “You left me an orphan,” I retorted. “There’s more to life than money.”

  “That’s what the rich want you to believe, so you don’t try to take their money away. You don’t see many wealthy people volunteering to be poor, do you?”

  “I’d rather have my father back than all the money in the world.”

  “You could have had both. But your father couldn’t see that. CF-64 was a gold mine. And he wanted to give it away, make it all open source, out on the Web, for anyone to use, free of charge. The possibilities for profit were endless, and he didn’t care. I couldn’t sit back and let him make that mistake.”

  “So you killed him?”

  “He left me no choice. I filed my own patent, and when his patent was denied I told him it must be because his formula didn’t work. He insisted on rerunning the tests, so I tampered with the results. I figured he’d give up eventually and move on. Then I’d wait a few weeks, hand in my resignation, and we would all part as friends.”

  “But he wouldn’t give up,” I said, remembering our final talk. “He said he was going to rerun the tests again.”

  “And he was so damn trusting, so excited when the new tests finally worked, that he called to tell me. He never suspected me of anything. Which was why he was so easy to kill. He invited me over to celebrate our success, this technology that was going to be available to every research lab on the planet. Sat right on that ratty couch in your living room, drinking the doctored Scotch I’d brought and smoking his damn cigar.”

  “You killed my father because of money,” I said hollowly. I still couldn’t believe it.

  “Big money,” Nico corrected me. “Twenty million dollars so far, and that’s just from the gaming industry. I haven’t even tapped the military yet. Or medical applications.”

  “Gaming,” I whispered. “Playtime.”

  And with a jolt of recognition the final piece fell into place. The shirt Nico had worn the morning I’d caught him at the rowing machine – it had been white with blue piping. Identical to the men’s shirts in the photo I’d seen in East Hampton.

  “You approached Rhys,” I said. “You knew him before all this.”

  Nico shrugged. “We row together at the Kings County boathouse. I gave him first dibs.”

  “That’s why there were calls to him on the phone bill. You were the one making the calls, not my dad.”

  “Of course. Your father would never have had that kind of vision,” he added smugly. “As it turned out, neither did Rhys. He consulted with some experts and they started asking questions about the documentation I didn’t like. The whole thing was taking forever so I found another buyer. Someone who doesn’t need to consult with experts about every little thing.”

  “Not Rhys?” I repeated, trying to make my eyes focus. “Then who?”

  “That’s for me to know and you to never find out,” he said.

  The muscle relaxants were wreaking havoc, making my eyelids heavy and my limbs impossible to manage. I was trapped in my own body as rage coursed through me. My brain was beginning to feel sluggish, words and ideas seeming to float around the edges, ungraspable. But there was one thought that did not waver: I would destroy Nico, I vowed, as heartlessly as he’d destroyed the only family I had left.

  “How does it feel to know that all of the terrible things you did are going to add up to nothing?” I said. “It’s out in the open now. You’ll never get away with any of it.”

  “Out in the open?” he asked calmly. “You told me yourself that nobody knew about any of this except you and me. All Val knows is that a holding company called Playtime has the patent.”

  “I won’t let you get away with it. I’m going to tell the whole world as soon as I get out of here.”

  “You’re not going to be in a position to tell anyone anything.” That awful smile flashed again.

  “What—” I started to ask.

  “You’ve officially become what they call a loose end.” He shrugged. “Sorry.”

  Only then did the full scope of his plan push its way through the haze in my brain. I wasn’t going anywhere. He was going to kill me. I took a deep breath, trying to still the surging panic. “You can’t poison me, too,” I pointed out. “You do that, do anything that looks like suicide, the police will have to investigate.”

  “No, no suicide for you, Lulu. You’re just going to disappear – poof – in a puff of smoke.”

  The Magician, I thought, remembering Aunt Breezy’s words yet again. A wolf in sheep’s clothing. I’d been so busy looking at Rhys I hadn’t seen the enemy standing in front of me.

  “You must really hate me,” I murmured.

  He shook his head. “No. You’re just in my way.”

  He bent down, out of my range of vision, but I could still hear him. “I did hope to share it all with you. Remember, I invited you to come to San Francisco with me, to start over together. But you’re like your father. You think small and you trust the wrong people. And now this is the way it has to end. It’s really more your fault than mine.”

  “What about Val? I thought you liked her.” My tongue felt odd, thick.

  “I liked
that she could help me keep tabs on you. You were so cute, running around playing detective. I just regret I didn’t think about the effect Rhys would have on you. I thought you were stronger, better. But all he had to do was snap his fingers and you spread your legs, didn’t you?”

  Think, Lucy, think. But it was hard to think. My head was swimming, and the nausea kept getting worse and worse. Nico was only a few feet away, but that now seemed impossibly far. “What’s your plan, then? What do you intend to do?” I asked, dragging my tongue over the syllables.

  “I’ll miss this lab,” Nico said. “But it is convenient to have such an extensive supply of flammable chemicals on hand.”

  “An explosion.” The realization was enough to shake me even through my wooziness. “A lab accident. Like you told Val you’d had the other day.”

  “A tragic lab accident since your body will be found among the rubble.” Nico’s face swam in and out of focus. “Speaking of which, I think it’s about time to get you into position.”

  His arms reached for me, began pulling me from my safe spot. I swore at him, but my voice was weak. I tried again to make my body move, to wrest my arms free, to kick at him, but my limbs were lifeless, the floor a turbulent sea.

  I was going to die in an explosion, I realized, just like Faust. That struck me as funny and I wanted to laugh, but the laughing took too much energy. My eyes were heavy, too heavy, I couldn’t keep them open, they were closing. They were closed.

  Everything went black.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Someone should shut the parrot up, I thought. The squawking was shrill and persistent, and it was ruining my nap on the beach. The sun was beating down relentlessly, even the breeze was hot, and the air was hazy, sharp, with an acrid edge. Smoke, my mind registered. From a bonfire, probably. Surfers making a bonfire in the dunes.

  I tried to open my eyes, but they were too heavy, and the air stung.

  To my right I heard a series of popping noises and felt a spray of something cool and pointy. A wave, I thought, tide coming in. I tried to brush the mist off, but it clung to my hand, pricked me. Ants. Red ants. The kind that bite. I wished they would go awa—

  Some of the haze lifted, and I remembered I wasn’t on a beach. I was in my father’s lab, it was on fire, it was going to explode. I had to get out.

  Focus, Lucy, you have to focus or you are going to die, I told myself. But the haze was back and I was on the beach again.

  I’m going to die, I thought, but it seemed less important than it had a moment ago. It was so nice on the beach. A little hot, but there was nothing to worry about. Just sand and water and sky. And someone running along the shore, making patterns on the sand. Rhys.

  He was wearing a shirt and pants. “Take off your clothes,” I told him, just like he always said to me, giggling at my own joke. But he didn’t seem to hear me.

  “We have to get you out of here, Tuesday.”

  “The beach is nice,” I protested. “Lie down next to me.”

  But he was stubborn, always got what he wanted. Instead of joining me on the sand he bent and scooped me up.

  “Figures,” I said. “You always have to have your way.”

  “You should probably shut up,” he said.

  That made me laugh, and so did the way my head was bouncing against his shoulder. Bounce, bounce.

  It occurred to me that I must be hallucinating, because there was no way Rhys Carlyle could be there. Nico had sent him away. No one could find me. I was trapped alone in my father’s lab and it was on fire and I was going to die.

  But that was okay, I decided sensibly, because if I had to die, dying while firmly wrapped in the arms of a hallucinated Rhys wasn’t the worst way to go. He might be Marina’s in real life but he could be mine in my final moments.

  “I love you,” I told the hallucination. “I loved our time together.”

  “Please stop talking, Tuesday,” said the hallucination, which weren’t exactly the last words I thought I’d hear before I died, but at least he was polite. I was suddenly aware of the pounding of the ocean, the waves crashing against rocks, loud and furious below me.

  “Kiss me,” I said, over the noise of the surf. “Kiss me once before I die.”

  “You need to shut up,” he said, less polite. I felt a blast of cold air, and Rhys’s face contracted into a sooty frown.

  It wasn’t a dream, I realized. The pounding of the ocean had been his footsteps on the stairs up to the catwalk, the cold air from the lab’s open doorway. He really was carrying me. Carrying me toward the doorway.

  It beckoned enticingly just in front of us, promising escape. What were we waiting for? I wondered. Then I saw that a section of the catwalk had collapsed, leaving an empty gulf separating us from safety.

  “Hold onto me,” Rhys ordered. “As tight as you can. Don’t let go, whatever you do.”

  Work, I begged my muscles. I clasped my arms around his neck, knitting clumsy fingers together and felt him jump.

  Just in time. A blast of heat exploded from below. The metal grating beneath us gave a terrible wail as the remainder of the catwalk ripped away from its joists. It crashed to the floor, and for one endless moment we hovered over empty space. Then my back hit something solid and Rhys caught the bottom edge of the door. The impact knocked the breath out of me and sprayed black spots before my eyes.

  Rhys was hanging by his fingertips and I was hanging onto him, crushed between his body and the wall, the floor a hellscape forty feet below. Flames had already engulfed much of the lab, and as I watched a ribbon of fire licked its way toward the cabinet where all of the chemicals were stored.

  My arms still weak from the drugs Nico had given me, my grip starting to give way. “I can’t hold on,” I said.

  “Don’t you dare let go, Tuesday,” Rhys said grimly. “You and I have too much to discuss.”

  “No, it’s okay. I understand about Mar—”

  “I’ve got you, sir.” Davies’s voice came from above, and he was wrapping his strong hands around Rhys’s wrists. He heaved us up with a ferocious grunt, dragging us through the door onto the ground outside the lab.

  I lay there for a moment, panting. I’d never breathed anything more delicious than the cold, fresh air tinged with the scent of frozen pavement.

  Rhys knelt beside me. “We can’t stay here – the place is going to blow. Are you able to walk?” he asked.

  “Of course,” I said, willing my body up. But I couldn’t move.

  Davies reached for me, but Rhys already had me, lifting me up and off the ground. “Mad as a hare,” I thought I heard him say under his breath but it was hard to make out over the pounding of his footsteps as he began to run.

  Davies ran alongside, and we’d just reached the Bentley, parked halfway down the block, when Rhys shouted, “Down!” He shoved me behind the car and dropped his body on top of mine.

  The explosion felt like an earthquake, shaking the ground under us. The building roared as if in protest, there was a surge of heat, and shattered glass began raining down on us.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  By the time the firemen finished, the chalky winter sun hung high in the sky. It didn’t occur to me to leave, and nobody suggested it. Instead, tears streaming down my face, I watched as they fought to control the blaze. But Nico had been thorough. When they’d quenched the last flame, all that was left was a smoking ruin.

  The lab had been like a second home to me, and every part of it was infused with memories of my father. Losing it was like losing him all over again. Another devastating loss on a day filled with them.

  I was alive, but everything I cared about was gone.

  I hazarded a glance at Rhys, still standing beside me. I’d tried to tell him earlier that he and Davies didn’t have to stay, but he’d cut me off with an abrupt “nonsense” and I hadn’t protested. It had been comforting to have him there, even though I knew he only stayed out of courtesy – a courtesy I didn’t deserve from him, not a
fter all I’d done.

  Davies had moved the Bentley down the block to make room for the fire trucks and police cars, but he went to retrieve it once the street began to empty out. As we waited for his return, I allowed myself one final look at Rhys’s profile, at the firm jaw, the impossibly high cheekbones and fathomless blue eyes, the sheer beauty of him. I might never see him again, not in person. He’d be with Marina, and I—

  I would find some way to start over.

  “Thank you,” I said, offering him my hand. “For saving my life.”

  He turned to face me, his expression impassive. He stared at my outstretched hand but made no move to take it. “You saved mine first.”

  I let my hand drop. “None of that matters now.”

  “On the contrary, it matters quite a lot,” he said as Davies pulled up. “We’ll see you home, Lucy Flannigan.”

  Through the buzz of exhaustion and grief, I felt a stab of panic. He knew my name, and the way he used it left no question that he knew exactly who I was. He and Davies must have pieced it together, figured out my relationship to my father, and to Nico, just as I’d guessed. And now he must also know that I’d lied to him from the very beginning, misled him in countless ways, all while suspecting him of the worst. I couldn’t begin to imagine how angry he must be.

  “That’s okay,” I began, “I can—”

  Rhys opened the door to the backseat. “Get in the bloody car.”

  His tone didn’t allow for argument. I got in, and he slid in next to me. Silent tension hung heavy between us as Davies pulled away from the curb.

  It was time. Time for me to explain everything.

  With a kind of queasy relief I realized all of the reasons I’d had for not coming clean were no longer important. I’d been afraid if Rhys knew about my lies he’d hate me, that it would be the end of us. But there had never been an us, not really, and there never would be. Marina had made that only too clear.