The Games (Private #11)(38)

4:30 a.m.



BY THE TIME we got to the private hospital in Leblon, I was thinking that we’d been played by very sophisticated criminals who now held hostage one of the richest men in the world. His abduction could not have happened as a secondary crime of opportunity. This was planned. Get Wise to walk away, expecting to be picked up, and then, when he was far from the Sambadrome, with everyone thinking the play was over, attack.

It had all happened on my watch. I had failed miserably. I felt like the world’s biggest f*ckup.

Wise’s wife certainly thought so. She’d said it to me at least twenty times since we’d brought Samuels and Branco to the same hospital where the twins were being treated. I was actually surprised she hadn’t fired us.

“Will Andy be held for ransom as well?” she asked in the hallway outside the girls’ room.

“I would think so,” I said.

“I can’t imagine they’ll be happy about being shorted twenty million dollars for the girls,” Cherie said. “His own damn fault. The cheap idiot.”

She was trying to act tough, but you could see the stress she was under.

“Stay focused on the girls for right now,” Tavia said. “They’ve been through a lot. They’re going to need you to be strong for them.”

Cherie sniffed, said, “Don’t worry about me. I can be Jackie O. when it’s called for.”

Two doctors came out of the room. They said that Alicia had blunt-force trauma injuries to the right side of her head from being hit by the blackjack. She had considerable swelling, and it had taken them fourteen stitches to close the scalp wound. There were clear indications that she’d suffered a concussion, but the CT scan showed no skull fracture or head bleed. She was occasionally confused, but most of the time she was oriented to self, place, and events.

Natalie’s right cheekbone was broken. So was her right orbital bone. So were two small bones in her left hand. She was on narcotics for pain, and the broken hand had already been set and splinted. The doctor recommended that one of Rio’s world-famous plastic surgeons be brought in later in the day to work on her face.

“Can I go back in to see them?” Cherie asked.

“Please. They’ve been asking for you.”

Tavia and I went in with Cherie. In a beautifully decorated, homey room, the girls were dozing side by side in hospital beds, surrounded by various monitors. Bandages were wrapped around Alicia’s head. The right side of Natalie’s face was grotesquely bruised and swollen.

Natalie’s good eye opened. “Mom?”

“Right here, baby doll,” Cherie said and kissed her delicately on her forehead. “Right here.”

“Mom, what happened to us?” Alicia said.

Her mother turned and kissed her other daughter. “You don’t remember? You were kidnapped.”

Alicia licked her lips, and her eyes widened. “That’s right.”

“I’ve told her, like, a hundred times, Mom,” Natalie said.

“Where’s Dad?” Alicia asked.

Cherie seemed paralyzed by the question for a moment, then said, “He’ll be here soon.”

Natalie seemed to pick up on something through her painkiller haze. “Mom? What’s wrong?”

Cherie looked lost, tears dripping down her cheeks.

Tavia said, “We think he’s been taken hostage by the same people who kidnapped you.”

Alicia looked more confused than ever. “What?”

“It’s true,” I said. “So we need your help. Whatever you can tell us about the people who took you—what they said, a name, a noise, anything—might help us in rescuing your father.”

Natalie said, “They knocked us down and blindfolded us after the shooting. They dragged us in the darkness. We ended up in the back of a truck and then we were carried into a place that smelled like tobacco.”

Alicia nodded. “I remember that. And there was this woman named Rayssa who gave us food.”

“You see her face?” Tavia asked.

Natalie said, “She always wore a mask when our blindfolds were off.”

“No other names you heard?”

The girls shook their heads.

“No other voices?”

“We heard other voices,” Alicia said. “Two different men.”

“When they moved us,” Natalie said. “Both times.”

“They knew who you were, correct?” Tavia asked.

“They knew all about us,” Natalie said.

“Did they say how?”

Before she could answer, the door to the hospital suite opened and in stormed a very tired, very angry federal military police lieutenant.

Bruno Acosta pointed at Tavia and then at me, said, “You two are under arrest.”





Chapter 43



“ON WHAT CHARGES?” Tavia demanded.

“Obstruction of a federal police investigation, obstruction of justice, failure to report a multitude of crimes,” Lieutenant Acosta barked. “Not to mention repeatedly lying to a federal investigator.”

“We haven’t lied to you,” I said.

“No?” Acosta thundered. “What about the real identity of these girls? What about withholding information about ransom demands? What about keeping us totally in the dark!”