The Games (Private #11)(67)
Cherie Wise didn’t hear and sobbed in grief and loss.
“Cherie, baby doll, I’m right here.”
A Private nurse pushed in a wheelchair bearing Andrew Wise. The billionaire sported a whopper of a bandage around his head and looked as weak as a newborn colt.
Cherie raised her head, saw her husband alive, and fainted dead away.
Chapter 81
AFTER MO-BOT GAVE her smelling salts, Cherie gazed at her husband in wonder and confusion. “You’re alive.”
“Thanks to Jack’s skills,” Wise said, holding her hand. “He shot her through the right side of her chest, spun her away from me before she pulled the trigger. Her bullet cut a bloody groove across my forehead.”
Cherie started to cry. “Why did you do this? Why did you torture me?”
For the first time, the billionaire turned his attention to his daughters, who wilted helplessly under his unblinking appraisal.
“Before she died, Amelia told me I’d been betrayed by my own girls. She said she wanted that to be my last thought.”
Natalie looked ready to disintegrate and Alicia began to weep. “What have we done? Oh my God, what have we done? She said it was all about money.”
The billionaire watched them without emotion, as if he were studying some interesting object in nature.
“Maybe you didn’t know Rayssa planned to shoot me,” Wise said at last. “So I forgive you for that.”
Natalie trembled, said, “Dad?”
“I’ve had some time to think,” he said, more to his wife than his daughters. “Amelia Lopes was right. I made too big a profit. It is time to give back. So I forgive the girls for that as well.”
Alicia tried to go to him, but Lieutenant Acosta stopped her, spun her around, and started putting handcuffs on her. “Alicia Wise, you are under arrest for conspiracy to kidnap and murder.”
“No,” she whined. “We didn’t kill anyone.”
“You participated in the murder of two of my people,” I said angrily. “Or have you forgotten the two bodyguards who died in the fake kidnapping?”
“We didn’t know that’s what was going to happen!” Natalie said as Acosta put her in cuffs as well. “Amelia kept us in the dark, said it would be better.”
Cherie had gotten enough strength to hold on to her husband as Acosta prepared to take their daughters away.
“Dad?” Natalie said. “You said you forgave us. Won’t you help us?”
“I’ll pay for your attorneys,” he said. “But I will testify against you.”
“So will I,” Cherie said, and she cried harder.
“Get them good lawyers,” Lieutenant Acosta said. “With all the media attention, they’re both going to wind up in prison. There’s no way around that now.”
Chapter 82
Friday, August 5, 2016
7:00 a.m.
Twelve Hours Before the Olympic Games Open
DR. CASTRO CAME awake slowly, groggily. He was still in the hazmat suit, lying on his back on the floor of his lab. How long had he been…
Castro bolted upright, feeling claustrophobic, and gazed around wildly until he saw the clock on the wall: 7:01 a.m. He’d been asleep—what, almost ten hours? At least that.
He had to move, now, leave this lab forever. Castro got to his feet, opened the lid of the freezer, and saw that Leah’s clothes had ice on them and that her strangled expression had frozen in place.
He shut the freezer, went to the refrigerator. He opened it and looked at all the vials and bags of blood, virus and mutation, virus and mutation, the whole history of Hydra-9’s development from the very beginning laid out on shelves, oldest on the bottom, state-of-the-art up top.
Castro took bags of Luna’s contaminated blood and used a funnel to make the transfer into a lightweight titanium cylinder, then he screwed on a pressurized fitting with a short, stout piece of hose dangling off it. He did the same thing with bags of Ricardo’s blood and then wiped down both cylinders with a bleach solution.
At 7:40 a.m., the doctor looked around, feeling like he’d forgotten something. But he couldn’t put his finger on it, decided it was nothing of real consequence, and left the lab.
After he stripped off the hazmat suit, Castro took the cylinders to his workbench and a green-gray North Face Cinder 55 internal-frame backpack that he’d bought online at Moosejaw.com. The Cinder 55 had 3,356 cubic inches of space inside and thick, rugged outer walls of abrasion-resistant nylon. Serious mountain climbers used these packs to lug gear to and from base camps.
The backpack was almost full already, but there was still room for the blood cylinders, a bota bag of wine, water, and dried meat and fruit. His last lunch. His last supper.
He put a rain jacket on top of his supplies and equipment, toggled shut the main compartment, and then turned the top flap over. He unzipped the top flap pocket, slid in a nine-millimeter pistol with two full clips, and cinched the pack tight.
Hoisting it onto his back, he guessed the weight at forty-five pounds, and he made adjustments to the shoulder straps and waist belt so it rode snugly above his hips, centered along his spine. He was satisfied with the Cinder 55 and the way he’d packed it.
And he was more than satisfied with the items inside it and all the details that had gone into their design and construction. Things were coming together now. Preparation was about to meet opportunity.