The Losing Game (22 page)

A sturdy metal patio chair provided Dante with sufficient height to climb onto the roof of the conservatory. Throughout Dante’s surveillance the upstairs room at this end of the house had remained unused, during the dark hours at least. There were some advantages to surveying in winter, even if the fieldwork was an icy bitch.

Dante slipped on his night-vision glasses, pulled the balaclava over his face, and took out the circular glasscutter from his inside pocket. It took a matter of seconds to remove a twenty-centimeter disc from the outer then the inner panes, enough to reach in and turn the handle on the window. It was unlocked. Good. Dante wouldn’t have to remove a whole pane of glass.

The room was empty save for an unmade single bed. Dante stilled, listening, waiting for his heart rate to slow and his breathing to quiet.

One careful foot after another, he crept to the door and eased the handle down. The door opened easily, soundlessly. On the other side, the empty landing, at the far end, the closed door to the Shaws’ bedroom. Beyond, a low, intermittent rumbling noise.

Richard Shaw (it could have been his wife, but Dante doubted it) was snoring, loud enough the sound carried through his bedroom door to the other end of the house.

Dante stepped lightly to the Shaws’ bedroom, passing three closed doors. For a heart-stopping moment, it occurred to him that Mrs. Shaw might be sleeping in another room. But, no. Dante had only seen the lights to this one room going on and off.

Dante opened the bedroom door to two sleeping figures, Mrs. Shaw to Dante’s left, Richard Shaw to his right. He didn’t dwell on them. Speed was of the essence.

Coming around the right side of the bed, Dante grasped the bulb in Richard Shaw’s bedside lamp. It was the kind that needed to be pushed down and turned, not the kind that had to be unscrewed. Dante removed it in one swift, silent movement. On his back, faceup, Shaw continued snoring. His wife also remained unmoved. In that momentary glance at her, Dante saw the earplug poking from her left ear.

Dante crept to the other side of the bed. He removed the bulb from Mrs. Shaw’s lamp and the handset beside it, crushing bulbs and handset on the carpet, beneath the heel of his boot.

Perhaps that had been unnecessary. Dante didn’t care. The ease and depth of the Shaws’ sleep irked him, no matter that it had allowed him this uninterrupted access.

Dante plucked out Mrs. Shaw’s earplugs. She began to stir as Dante sat beside her on the bed, flicked open his knife, and held it to her neck.

It was incredible, annoyingly so, to see her awake so slowly. Shaw’s snoring was worse. Enough that Dante was tempted to land a punch in his throat just to shut the bastard up.

Dante pressed his wrist against the soft, thick flesh above Mrs. Shaw’s collarbone, exerting enough pressure on the blade that when she finally came to, she would know without a doubt what it was. Not enough to break the skin, but enough to fuel the fear.

Here we go.

Dante bent and whispered in her ear, “Scream, and I will cut your throat.”

Mrs. Shaw’s left arm flew out. She grabbed for her husband, somewhere on his ample gut. He grunted and rolled onto his side, as if he was used to these nocturnal attacks.

Dante used his left hand to hold Mrs. Shaw’s head on her pillow, leaned over her, and with his right hand, blade poking out to one side, punched Shaw in the back of the neck.

That woke him.

While Shaw groped his way back to consciousness, Dante resumed his position, sitting next to Mrs. Shaw with his blade placed strategically and obviously over her carotid artery.

He said, “If you value your wife’s life, you will lay still and listen to me very carefully.”

The couple froze. Dante could see them as plain as day, struggling to focus on their intruder in the blood-red light coming from their digital bedside clock.

Richard Shaw had a pair of glasses on his bedside table. He didn’t reach for them. Mrs. Shaw sobbed. The whites of her eyes shone.

“What do you want?” Shaw said huskily. “I have money. Cash. Downstairs.”

Dante felt preternaturally calm. “I want the gun you used to shoot Lucas Green.”

Shaw spluttered. “Who are you?”

“The gun.”

“I don’t have it.”

“That’s a shame.”

Dante pressed the blade side of the knife a little harder into Mrs. Shaw’s neck. She screeched, and then said, “It’s in the dining room. Taped under the sideboard.”

“Then we’d best go and get it.”

Richard Shaw reached for his glasses first. He was shortsighted, then, and must wear contact lenses during the day.

“No lights,” Dante said, preempting Shaw’s attempt to reach for the lamp as he helped Mrs. Shaw out of bed.

Shaw walked ahead, buttoning his pajama top as he went, stumbling, cursing, groping for the door and the alarm panel on the landing. He punched in the numbers. The mechanical voice in the panel announced the alarm was disabled.

Shaw snarled and curled his hand into a fist. He was thinking about whether he could take Dante. Whether it was worth the risk. The fool.

Dante took no pleasure in slicing the strap on Mrs. Shaw’s nightdress. She jumped and screamed. The fabric slipped from her shoulder.

“Do as he says, Richie. Please, just do as he says.”

“Listen to your wife, Shaw. This knife is very sharp.”

“All right.
All right
.” Richard Shaw lifted his hands in supplication and led the way down the stairs to the dining room.

The gun had been placed in a clear plastic bag. Dante removed it and released the magazine. It was still loaded. Good. He placed it in his pocket.

“Is it wiped clean?”

“Yes.”

“You should think yourself lucky. I’m getting you off the hook. Lucas Green won’t talk, and from now on, he’ll keep away from you. In return, you will keep away from him. If you so much as set foot within a mile of his house or his place of work, I’ll know, and I’ll be back.”

Mrs. Shaw whimpered.

Shaw stepped in front of her and, full of venom, said to Dante, “What’s this got to do with you?”

Mrs. Shaw pleaded, “Richie, shut up, for God’s sake.” To Dante she said, “He’ll do as you say.”

Dante left through the front door of the Shaw’s house. Two streets away, he paused inside the entrance to a long driveway, taking cover between two thick fir trees. He drew in long, deep breaths, one after the other, until the urge to vomit passed.

Back in the day, Dante hadn’t been involved in fieldwork for the pure and simple reason that it wasn’t in his skill set. Flynn employed other people for fieldwork. Dante planned the burglaries because that was what he was good at. His one and only foray into the field had been an act of necessity. He’d derived no satisfaction from it. Only relief and the certainty that the job had been done, and done right.

Just like tonight.

BETWEEN DOZES,
on Sunday, Lucas was moved into a ward containing three other beds. A nurse stuck a biofeedback microchip pad to the back of his neck, which communicated with the drip-pack in his arm, to allow more steady pain management. He dimly wondered if there had been some mistake. He’d never opted into the Premier Health Service package at work.

Later in the evening, the staff nurse informed Lucas that Dante had made the arrangements for the upgrade. Lucas slept uneasily. He appreciated Dante’s gesture, but Dante should have asked him first.

It was still dark outside when the inmates of Ward 6 were awoken with hot beverages and, soon after, the arrival of Monday’s breakfast. For all its similarity to coffee, the umber liquid in Lucas’s pale blue mug might as well have been a brew of roadside grit and pencil shavings. He suffered it as a sluice to wash down a rubbery triangle of toast, sparingly spread with a red gelatinous paste that was meant to pass for jam. (So much for the upgrade!)

At first he didn’t notice his fingers on his left hand move. He thought it was a natural tremor. When the middle and forefinger twitched again, Lucas found he was holding his breath, willing the movement to happen once more. The middle finger resisted. The forefinger lifted, like it was pointing to the man in the next bed.

With his right hand, Lucas experimentally jabbed his left arm at intervals from his upper arm to his fingers, desperately trying to feel something and failing, until exhausted, he gave in to the overwhelming urge to close his eyes and doze.

The efficacious hand of the bearded Nurse Sage, yanking on Lucas’s ankle, awoke him.

“You need to be up and about. No loafing around in bed all day.” Sage’s bright, cheery eyes were a startling shade of blue, and his beard looked like it was sprayed on. His appearance seemed too beautiful to be real. However, the kind of android that could pass for a human was still safely in the realm of science fiction. Even if it wasn’t, Lucas doubted an android would smell quite so strongly of body spray.

Lucas had the urge to say something crass.
I need a shit and a shave.
He opted for, “I’m getting there. Give me a sec.”

“See if you can get up by yourself. If not, I’ll help you.”

Twisting to one side, Lucas lifted his knees and pushed himself into a sitting position using his right elbow.

“Brilliant. You’ll be out of here in no time.”

“Except for this arm.”

“In the old days, they’d have let that collarbone heal by itself, unless you had the cash to get it fixed. Once the doctors know more about what’s going on with the nerves in your arm, if you need it, you can have those fixed too.”

Lucas didn’t need the lecture. Neurosurgery had come on in leaps and bounds since the 2020s. A child born with spina bifida, like Lily had been, could undergo reparative surgery in infancy that often resulted in full mobility. But for her, the technology and opportunity had come two decades too late.

Visitors could come to the hospital from eleven, and Lucas was saved from further badgering as Dante arrived promptly, carrying a holdall that Lucas didn’t recognize. Sage moved on with an unperturbed spring in his step to his next victim.

The passage of a day and the subsidence of the anesthetic had sharpened Lucas’s senses and memory. Dante looked sheepish.

“Is that for me?” Lucas said, pointing to the holdall.

“I didn’t know what sort of luggage you owned or where I would find it, so I took one of mine to your house.”

Lucas didn’t mention that Dante had had no compunction sifting through his private life before. He knew contrition when he saw it. He swung his legs over the side of the bed.

“You can put the bag here.” He patted the space next to him. “Would you mind giving me a hand unpacking?”

Dante placed the bag on the end of the bed and paused, not letting go of the handle. It took a few seconds for him to return Lucas’s conciliatory smile. “How do you like the ward?”

“It’s nice. Quieter than the last one. Thank you. You didn’t need to.”

“I wanted to. You’ll heal quicker with the biofeedback chip and a better night’s sleep.” Dante then asked, “Do you remember much of yesterday?”

“Everything.”

Lucas reached for the zip on the bag. His fingers brushed over Dante’s, and the contact seemed to shake him.

“Let me,” Dante said and unpacked Lucas’s pajamas and some socks onto the bed. “How’s your arm?”

“They’re hopeful I’ll mend without neurosurgery, maybe close to completely.”

“Only close?”

“I don’t know. It’s too early to tell.”

Dante removed a toiletry bag from the holdall, one that Lucas also did not recognize as his own. “You went to a lot of trouble. Thanks. I was about to head to the toilet. Can you give me a few minutes?”

“You’re okay to walk? Do you need help?”

“I can walk fine.” Lucas tentatively ran his fingertips over the side of his face, not at the epicenter of the swelling, but at its periphery. The skin felt tight, and the terrain beneath his fingertips foreign, but the pain wasn’t much of a bother. “I’m supposed to be moving around as much as possible. I’ve just got to be really gentle with this jaw. They’ve injected the site with something to take down the bruising and help the bone fuse, but it’s going to be vulnerable for a couple of weeks.”

Dante didn’t look convinced by Lucas’s optimism.

“I’m all right,” Lucas reiterated. “I’ll be back in a sec. I’m not going to shave, though. I haven’t quite worked out how to do that one-handed, or if I want to put any pressure on either side of my face.”

Dante reached for Lucas, then withdrew his hand, as if he were unsure whether it was okay to touch him. “I think some stubble will suit you very well.”

“You can sit. Make yourself comfortable. Unless you’re rushing off.”

Dante unbuttoned his coat. “No. I’d like to stay.”

Lucas went to the toilet and, while washing his hands, carefully avoided his reflection in the mirror over the sink. He hadn’t been going to look, but at the same time, he wanted to see what Dante saw when his gaze wouldn’t meet Lucas’s eyes.

Bracing himself, Lucas stood in front of the mirror and visually examined his jaw for the first time. He’d been lucky, the doctor said, that he hadn’t suffered more damage to his jawbone or lost any teeth. Lucas didn’t dispute the doctor’s opinion, but he did dispute his luck. Luck had had nothing to do with his current situation.

The tape holding down the dressing on his shoulder had peeled at one corner. Lucas’s bowels clenched as he gave it a tug. He lifted the corner tentatively, as if revealing the laceration one millimeter at a time, drawing out the experience by degrees, would make the horror more bearable.

Incredibly, the line of stitches and his stitched-up skin didn’t look that bad. The scar running over his collarbone sliced directly through where the bullet had hit. The surgeon had done a neat job, reconstructing the bone by wrapping it with plates and screws. He’d explained speed was of the essence. After an accident, the body responded and was primed to repair a fracture. The biochemical responses that would aid healing would diminish quickly, and repairing the bone immediately allowed nature to do the rest.