Wicked Games: The Complete Wicked Games Series Box Set

by J. T. Geissinger

  This shit is way more fun when you’re running out the back of a C-130 with your buddies.

  Within seconds, I’m falling at terminal velocity. The force and roar of the wind is enormous, but the fall itself is peaceful. I lie on my belly in the void of the sky, the earth a huge blue crescent below, curving at the horizon, the sun a brilliant white gleam above. The sound of freefall is like an everlasting, crashing wave.

  And all I can think is Mariana. Mariana. Mariana.

  She’s a pulse in my blood. Knowing that I’m this close to her, that I’m almost there, is a kind of madness. I force myself to focus and count the seconds until my altimeter tells me it’s time to pull my chute.

  Once I do, the noise level drops. The roar of the wind abates and there’s only a whistle through the lines of the canopy. Breathing is easier, and everything is peaceful.

  And now I’m a sitting duck.

  If there are antiaircraft missiles on Moreno’s yacht, this is when I’ll find out.

  As I rush closer to the yacht, I see how massive it is, longer than a football field and wider, too. No one is in view on any of the decks, which is a stroke of good luck.

  With the handles on the chute, I steer toward the aft deck. It rises up fast underneath me. As soon as my feet touch down, I’m out of the harness, dropping it over the side of the ship so the chute sails away, drifting down toward the surface of the water. Crouching low, I run to the back of a massive teak bar and take cover behind it. I’ve instantly got my Glock in hand and my ear trained for warning shouts.

  They never come.

  The first niggle of worry crosses my mind, but I shove it aside.

  Keeping low, with my Glock at the ready, I run inside the first deck. The doors are wide open. The interior is just as luxurious as the exterior, but there’s no one here, either.

  Where is everyone? Where are the armed guards?

  I sprint through a living area—bypassing a huge dining room and media room—and head toward the spiral-glass staircase toward the back. I’m on security cameras somewhere by now, but nobody’s coming out to meet me. This ship is as quiet as a graveyard.

  Find the master suite.

  I don’t allow myself to think about why I assume Moreno will have taken Mariana to his bedroom, I only know that’s where I’m headed next.

  The top deck is obviously the helm, encased in glass and deserted, so I’ve got four other decks to clear. I silently ascend the staircase, every sense trained for noise or movement, but I move unhindered through the ship.

  Until I reach the fourth level. Then my heart drops like a rock to my feet.

  The entire deck is a huge nightclub, running the length of the ship, fore to aft. There’s an enormous white dance floor, two bars, sofas lining all the mirrored walls, stripper poles dotting the perimeter, disco balls glittering from the ceiling, a DJ booth on a riser in one corner, and a dozen or more suspended metal cages I have to assume hold dancers.

  And there are bodies everywhere.

  Naked, half-dressed, in bikinis and miniskirts and thongs, young, well-endowed women lie together in sleeping piles, tanned limbs entangled like snakes. There are men as well, but far fewer. Young men in loud, tropical print shirts and board shorts, baby-faced but muscular, college-aged.

  In between all the dozing frat boys and the army of passed-out Playmates are empty bottles—literally hundreds of them—champagne and tequila and wine strewn all over the place, obviously dropped wherever they were emptied. Beneath the bodies and bottles, the floor sparkles with confetti.

  This isn’t a human trafficking operation.

  It’s a fucking bachelor party.

  The point is driven home like a stake through my heart when a guy, not even thirty, wearing nothing but tan cargo shorts and holding an orange drink with an umbrella in it, wanders into the room. He sees me standing there in camouflage, gun drawn, bristling with weapons, and stops in his tracks.

  “Uh, hey, man,” he says, eyeing me. “You part of the show?”

  I bellow, “FUCK!”

  He jumps. A few of the girls stir, yawning and mumbling, but go right back to sleep.

  This is a fucking nightmare. I’m having a nightmare, and a heart attack, and a fucking mental breakdown, all at once.

  I stride over to the guy, point my gun at his nose, and snarl, “Who owns this boat?”

  He peeps out a name, not Moreno’s.

  “Take me to him!”

  He spins around so fast, the umbrella flies out of his drink. Then he runs to the door he came through with little skittering steps, like a mouse. I follow on his heels, a volcano erupting from the top of my head.

  He takes me to a large bedroom decorated all in white, where the hairiest man I’ve ever seen is lounging in a big leather chair, smoking a cigar, and playing Grand Theft Auto on a huge TV. His chest hair is like a bear’s pelt. On the bed are two naked girls, gently snoring. A fat Burmese cat wearing a diamond collar lounges between them, licking its tail.

  When we come in, the hairy guy glances at me, at my Glock, then presses a button on a remote that pauses his game.

  He asks, “That a .40 cal or a nine millimeter?”

  I say, “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  The kid in the cargo shorts blurts nervously, “Armin, this dude was just standing there in the middle of the disco—”

  “Shut up, Kenny. The reason I ask is ’cause I got a few nines, but I’m thinking about adding the .40 cal to the collection.” Armin calmly smokes his cigar.

  “I’ll give you this one if you let me borrow your tender to get to the yacht next door,” I tell him.

  Armin’s brows lift. He’s Middle Eastern, Turkish maybe, built like a wall and completely unfazed by my presence. I’m not sure if he’s nuts or if I should offer him a job. Maybe all that hair doubles as body armor.

  He assesses my state of agitation and my outfit of deadly weapons. “Why, you got somebody to kill over there?”

  Kenny draws in a horrified breath and shrinks away from me.

  “Nope, I got somebody to save, and I don’t have time to dick around with conversation.”

  “The ship next door belongs to the Oracle software guy, Larry Ellison. Came in last night with his family. We cruise the same waters lotta the time, recognized his yacht.”

  “Thanks for the intel. You just saved me from crashin’ another bachelor party. You gonna let me borrow your tender or what?”

  “Oh, this wasn’t a bachelor thing,” Kenny meekly chimes in. “Armin gets paid to party by all these different brands. Like, to post pictures on Instagram with all the girls while he’s wearing expensive watches and drinking top-shelf tequila and stuff. He’s totally famous, I can’t believe you don’t recognize him—”

  “Shut up, Kenny!” Armin and I say in unison.

  Kenny shuts up. Armin scratches his bushy beard. “I got a sub on board if you’d rather take that. You look like a guy who likes to take people by surprise.”

  I’m liking this guy more and more with every word coming out of his mouth. “Yes. That’s fuckin’ brilliant. Thank you.”

  Armin smiles. “Cool. But I’m driving.”

  34

  Mariana

  In my cocoon of shock, it doesn’t seem at all strange to order the kneeling assassins to rise. They do, holstering their weapons and clasping their hands in front of their waists as I’ve seen them do countless times before, but never for me. Then they stand there, waiting for my command.

  “Salvatore,” I say quietly, addressing the only one I know by name.

  His gaze cuts to me. “Si, Capo?”

  Capo. I swallow the sick laugh tickling my throat. If I start laughing, I might never stop. “How many other people are on this boat?”

  “Fourteen crew, the captain, and us.” He makes a gesture to encompass his companions, me, and the bodies on the floor.

  “Will the tender hold that many?”

  “Yes.”

  “I see.” I stand ther
e trying to think for a moment, forcing my thoughts around the cotton candy of my mind.

  Salvatore clears his throat, and I focus on him again. He obviously wants to speak.

  “Yes?”

  With surprising dignity, holding himself tall, he says, “I disrespected you earlier, Capo, on the flight. I didn’t know who you were. We weren’t told…” He thinks better of whatever he was going to say and falls silent for a moment. Then he continues in Italian. “It would be my honor to end my life in payment for this disrespect.”

  An aria plays in the background, a pair of soaring sopranos singing about betrayal and heartbreak, their love for the same man. I never would have guessed opera would be the soundtrack in hell.

  “That won’t be necessary. We’ve had enough bloodshed this morning. Thank you, Salvatore.” After a beat, I add, “Your loyalty is appreciated.”

  I feel his pride at that statement, that I’ve said it in front of the other men, his chest swelling with it, and the urge to laugh returns tenfold.

  I’m losing my sanity. Perhaps I’ve already lost it.

  Perhaps I never had it at all.

  “I want you to take everyone except the captain and get on the tender,” I instruct, walking slowly to Vincent’s body. In my gauzy dream, I bend down, fish the Hope Diamond from his jacket pocket, and curl my fingers around the stone as I gaze down at his lifeless face.

  There’s blood and spittle in the corners of his lips. He didn’t shave this morning. His chest is still warm.

  I straighten and direct my gaze to Salvatore again. “Everyone who’s alive, I mean. Get on the tender and go to the nearest island. Do it now. Take nothing with you. Before you go, tell the captain to come to me here.”

  His brow creases, but he doesn’t contradict me or ask for clarification. He simply murmurs, “Si, Capo.”

  He turns and leaves the room, the other men right behind him. I’m left alone with four dead bodies and the muggy chaos of my thoughts.

  I walk to the outside deck and raise my face to the morning sun. It’s warm and sunny, the smell of the ocean strong. A light breeze plays with my hair. I don’t know how long I stand like that, in a trance, but when I hear an engine roar to life, I look down. There on the surface of the white-capped water below is a boat with four men in black suits, and fourteen others in navy-and-white uniforms.

  Salvatore is at the helm. He guns the throttle and makes a heading for the island in the far distance, not turning to look over his shoulder even once.

  Absolute power corrupts absolutely, said Lord Acton. Now, for the first time, I have a true idea of what he means.

  I head inside to wait for the captain.

  35

  Ryan

  Armin and I are trotting out of his bedroom when we hear the explosion.

  It’s huge and somewhere not far away, judging by the concussion that rattles all the windows a second later.

  We look at each other at the same instant. He says, “That doesn’t sound good.”

  My heart stops. Mariana.

  I shove past Armin and run through the yacht the way I came in until I reach an outside deck and see what caused all the noise.

  On the eastern horizon, a big orange fireball illuminates the sky.

  It’s not the sun.

  “Get us over there!” I scream at Armin when he appears on deck. He pulls a cell phone from his pocket, touches a number, lifts the phone to his ear.

  “Let’s go check out that explosion, Captain. Somebody’s gonna need help. Full steam ahead.” He listens for a moment. “All right, as close as you can.” He clicks off, then stands looking at the fire in the distance with his arms folded across his chest. “She can do thirty knots when she’s up to speed. We’ll be there in under ten minutes.”

  Ten minutes is too long. I pull my own phone out and call Connor. He answers on the first ring. “What’s your status, brother?”

  My voice comes out hoarse with stress. “I’m on the wrong fuckin’ yacht! The one Mariana’s on just blew up! You got satellite feed?”

  “Blew up?” Connor mutters a curse. “We’re not live streaming. I won’t have an updated shot for about ten minutes.”

  Ten minutes, again. I throw my head back and roar my frustration. Beside me, Armin doesn’t even blink. The man is unflappable.

  “It’s gonna be okay, Ryan,” says Connor firmly. “Listen to me—”

  “I’ll never forgive myself if anything happens to her,” I say, struggling to breathe, adrenaline lashing through me, my stomach in ropes. “If she’s hurt, or worse—”

  “Stop!” shouts Connor. “Focus!”

  I close my eyes, drag air into my lungs, drawing on all my training for high-stress situations. But no mission has ever been this personal before.

  No mission I’ve ever been on has included the possibility that the woman I love dies in a fiery explosion.

  “Can you get closer to the other yacht?” Connor asks in my ear.

  “We’re on the way.”

  “We?”

  “Long story. Call the FBI. Call Interpol. Call everyone. Get that fuckin’ boat surrounded and get a medical emergency response team out there as fast as you can.” I hang up before he can answer and spew a blistering string of curses, panic pulsing through me like another heartbeat.

  Watching black smoke rise in the distant horizon, Armin says, “I take it someone you care about is on that ship?”

  My heart pounds so hard, I’m surprised he can’t hear it. Through gritted teeth I say, “Yes.”

  He nods, his expression thoughtful. “We can get over there faster if we take the speed boat. She’ll do up to eighty knots on calm waters.”

  When he looks at me, I say, “Let’s go.”

  As we slice through the water toward the burning yacht in Armin’s yellow cigarette speed boat with the busty pin-up girls painted on the sides, I try not to think of worst-case scenarios or all the horrible possibilities. I try not to think of anything at all. But the closer we get to the ship, the more obvious it is that the only possibilities I’m dealing with are bad.

  Worse than bad.

  Not only is the yacht on fire, it’s sinking.

  Listing on her starboard side, flames roaring through all the decks and spitting high up into the sky, the craft is almost completely demolished. The satellites on the helm have been blown off. All the glass on every deck is shattered. Smoke and chemical fumes billow from the length of the hull in acrid clouds that sting my eyes.

  There’s an enormous debris field around the remains of the yacht, chunks of fiberglass and furniture and metal, partially submerged, bobbing in the waves, blackened and twisted into ugly shapes. There’s diesel fuel, too, a slick film floating on the water, reflecting oily rainbows in the light.

  I don’t see any bodies, but it’s obvious by the level of destruction and the blistering heat of the fire that if anyone was on board, they couldn’t have survived.

  Armin cruises in slow circles around the hulking carcass of the ship, keeping a safe distance from the roaring flames as he steers carefully through the field of debris. I lean over the side and hunt desperately for any sign of life, for anyone waving from the water, for the smallest hint that would give me hope.

  There’s nothing.

  The yacht is a burning, blackened husk of death, the ocean all around eerily silent.

  It isn’t until I hear the helicopters and look up into the sky that I realize I’ve fallen to my knees.

  And that awful animal scream that seems to be coming from everywhere is coming from me.

  The next few hours are a blur. People. Activity. Noise. Questions.

  So many fucking questions.

  The Croatian coast guard arrives on scene first, followed by their navy, search and rescue teams, Interpol, and finally, the FBI. There are also plenty of lookie-loos in boats cruising around, along with news and paparazzi choppers whizzing overhead.

  Field officers from the FBI and Interpol team up to debrief me
while the search and rescue teams get to work. I remember nothing of what was asked or answered. I do remember having to be physically restrained as I was removed by police from the scene, and Armin telling them to chill out because I was cool.

  But I wasn’t cool. I’d never been less cool. I was a rage and self-blame machine, desperate for any other reality than the one I was living.

  In the port at Vis, I’m released by the FBI and told I’m free to go on my way, that they’ll contact me if necessary. I think they were just sick of dealing with me by then. I heard more than a few mutterings of “lunatic,” “head case,” and, “meltdown.” I meet up with the rest of the team from Metrix, who, as a unit, take one look at me and call Connor for support.

  I can’t talk to him, though. All my words have dried up. I stand in a parking lot in the waning hours of the day, holding a phone to my ear, listening to my best friend speak, anguish roiling inside my belly like a nest of snakes.

  For a moment, when he tells me there are satellite pictures of a tender leaving the yacht just before the explosion, hope floods back in a sweet, heady rush that leaves me trembling. But then he says video footage from security cameras at the port captured good quality images of everyone who got off that vessel, and Mariana wasn’t among them.

  Neither was Moreno.

  The implications of that…of what she might have gone through, of why he’d send the entire crew away to be alone with her…

  I go numb then. Blank. Everything is put on pause, except the nasty little voice inside my head telling me if I’d only landed on the right yacht, everything would be different.

  If I hadn’t failed, Mariana would still be alive.

  Afternoon fades into evening, and still I stand on the docks, gazing west, watching smoke rise in the distance, hoping for someone to come and tell me there’s been a miracle, that it was all a mistake. That she wasn’t on that yacht, that she was found safe and sound with Larry Ellison and his family, or floating unharmed on a piece of flotsam, or had escaped Moreno and was waiting for me on the other end of the docks the entire time.