Private Games

Chapter 103

FOR THE LAST thirty minutes, his mouth taped shut, his head pounding and painful, Knight had alternated between trying to break free of his bonds, gasping in frustration, and looking longingly at his comatose children, dully aware of the marathon coverage blaring from the television in Lancer’s spare bedroom.

It was 11:55. In mile eleven – kilometre nineteen – just shy of an hour into the race, runners from the UK, Ethiopia, Kenya and Mexico had broken away from the main pack along the Victoria Embankment. They were using each other to chew up ground as they headed past the London Eye towards Parliament at sub-Olympic-record pace despite the blistering heat.

Knight wondered grimly what atrocity Lancer had waiting somewhere along the marathon route. But he refused to contemplate what Marta might have in store for him and the twins in the aftermath of the last race of the Games.

He closed his eyes and began to pray to God and to Kate, pleading with them to help him save their children. He told them he’d be fine about dying if that meant he’d be with Kate again. But the children, they deserved to …

Marta walked into the room, carrying the black assault weapon that Knight had seen the night before as well as a plastic bag containing three litre-sized Coke bottles. Her dark locks had been chopped and dyed, leaving her hair a violent blonde tipped with silver highlights that somehow matched the black leather skirt, tank top and calf-length boots she wore. Her heavy make-up changed her appearance still further. If Knight hadn’t spent so much time around her in the last two weeks he might never have recognised her as the plain nanny who’d first approached him at the playground.

Marta paid Knight no mind, as if he and everyone else in the room were afterthoughts. She set the Coke bottles on a dresser, then cradled the gun and went to Daring’s side. She set the gun down, picked up a hypodermic needle and shot it into the IV line that had been inserted into the museum curator’s arm.

‘Time to wake up,’ she said, and gathered up the gun again.

She fished an apple from her pocket and bit into it. Her attention shifted lazily to the marathon coverage.

Luke stirred and opened his eyes, looking right at his father. His eyes went wide. Then his brows knitted, his face grew beet-red and he began making whining noises, not of fear but as if he desperately wanted to tell his father something. Knight recognised that red-faced expression and understood the meaning behind the stifled cries immediately.

At the noise, Marta looked over with such a cold expression on her face that Knight’s pounding brain screamed at him to make her look at him and not at his son.

Knight began to moan behind his tape. Marta glanced over, chewing her apple, and said, ‘Shut up. I don’t want to hear you cry like your little boy.’

Instead of complying, Knight moaned louder and smashed his feet against the floor, trying not only to alert someone below but to bother Marta. He wanted to get her talking. He knew enough about hostage negotiation to understand how crucial it was to get a captor talking.

Isabel woke up and started to cry.

Marta took up the gun, stomped over to Knight, and laughed. ‘We own the flat below, too. So go ahead, make noise. No one hears you.’

With that she kicked him in the stomach. Knight doubled up and rolled over on his back, gasping and feeling glass from the shattered fruit-juice tumbler crunch beneath him. Luke began to wail. Marta glared at the children. Knight was sure that she was going to kick them. But then she squatted down and ripped the tape off Knight’s mouth. ‘Tell them to shut up or you’re all dead right now.’

‘Luke wants to use the loo,’ Knight said. ‘Take the tape off. Ask him.’

Marta shot him a foul look, then scuttled across to his son and peeled off the tape over his mouth. ‘What?’

Knight’s son shrank away from Marta, but looked at his father and said, ‘Lukey need go poop. Big-boy loo.’

‘Crap in your pants for all I care.’

‘Big-boy loo, Marta,’ the boy insisted. ‘Lukey go big-boy. No nappy.’

‘Give him a chance,’ Knight said. ‘He’s just three.’

Marta’s expression turned into a disgusted sneer. But she got out a knife and cut free Luke’s ankles. Gun in one hand, she hauled Knight’s son to his feet and snarled, ‘If this is another false alarm, I’ll kill you first.’

They moved past Daring and disappeared through the door into the hallway. Knight glanced all around, rolled back slightly, and heard glass crunch again, felt tiny shards of it pricking his arms and back.

The pain jolted his brain into realising his opportunity, and he began frantically arching his back and moving around, fingers groping desperately beneath him. Please, Kate. Please.

The index finger of his right hand felt the keen edge of a larger shard of glass, perhaps two inches long, and tried to coax it into his hand. But he fumbled and dropped it. Cursing under his breath, Knight groped again. But he hadn’t found it when he heard Luke cry, ‘See, Marta? Big boy!’

A second later, he heard a toilet flush. Knight’s fingers searched in a frenzy. Nothing. He heard footsteps, arched his hips one more time and pushed himself back closer to where the glass had shattered. Then Luke walked in, wrists still taped in front of him, beaming at his father.

‘Lukey big boy now, Daddy,’ he said. ‘Lukey three. No nappies.’