Mistress of the Game

The crackle of the radio startled Keith so much he dropped the camera. He watched in horror as it spiraled silently into the abyss.

"Dr. Webster." There was an urgency to Kurt's voice. "Do you copy? Over. The wind speed is picking up. We need to get you boys down."

Thank God, thought Keith.

Max barely managed to scramble back down into the gondola before his father turned around.

"Answer them. Tell them we copy, I'll bring her down now."

That night, in their tent, Keith tried to cheer Max up.

"Don't look so crestfallen. I'll buy you another camera."

I don't want another camera, you son of a bitch. I want your head on a plate to bring home to my mother.

Katele said: "Your son is an excellent shot, Dr. Webster. Are you sure he's had no training?"

"Quite sure."

Eve promised Keith that Max had never used his treasured gun. Keith had no reason to disbelieve her. But he had to agree with Katele. His son's accuracy on their first hunting trip was quite extraordinary.

"Here, Dad. You try."

Max handed Keith the pistol. They were lying in the long grass with Katele, stalking a young gazelle.

Keith demurred.

"Me? Oh, well, I...I'm not much of a shot."

"Go on. It's easy." Max's small boy's fingers encased his father's adult surgeon's hands. "Hold it steady. That's right. Now line up that groove at the top with the white marking between the eyes. See?"

Keith nodded nervously.

"Good. Now squeeze."

Keith pulled the trigger. There was a loud bang. The young gazelle kicked up its hind legs and darted for the safety of some nearby trees.

"Bad luck," said Katele. "It's harder than it looks, isn't it?"

"Apparently so."

Max gave his father a withering look.

"Next time, try keeping your eyes open."

They hunted almost every day. But Katele insisted on going with them.

"Can't we go on our own?" Max pleaded with Keith. "It's so much more fun when it's just the two of us."

Keith was overjoyed. He'd been starting to feel a little jealous of Katele. Max seemed to idolize him, and it wasn't hard to see why. To a young boy's eyes, the native must have appeared like a god. The fact that Keith Webster was a world-renowned surgeon and highly regarded, self-made man, and that Katele was one step above a savage, living hand to mouth on an African nature reserve, meant nothing to a ten-year-old. Katele could shoot arrows, fly planes, skin rabbits and make fire with pieces of flint. He was a hero.

"I'm glad you feel that way, sport. I do, too. But this is Africa, Max. It's not safe to go into the bush alone, without a guide."

Keith watched his son's face fall.

"Don't worry." He laughed. "When we get to Cape Town, it'll be just the two of us."

But Max was worried.

There would be no hunting in Cape Town. No chance to carry out his mother's plan.

I have to do it. I promised Mommy. I have to find a way.

The hotel was pleasant. A simple, whitewashed farmhouse on the edge of Camps Bay, it was not the kind of five-star accommodation that Max was used to. But after eighteen days of camping, sleeping in a bed felt like the last word in luxury. The hot showers, in particular, were bliss.

At breakfast, Keith asked: "What would you like to do today?"

I hate you. I detest you. Why are you still alive?

"We could drive up the coast, along the wine route? Or take a picnic to the beach? Or, you know what, we could go shopping. Get you a new camera? Whaddaya think?"

Max didn't miss a beat. "I'd like to go up Table Mountain. There's a hiking route, the landlady told me. It's supposed to be the best view in all South Africa."

Keith beamed. "Sold. Table Mountain it is."

"I mean it, Max. Get away from there."

The wind whipped away Keith's words, turning his shout into a whisper. Max was dancing on one of the small boulders close to the edge of the cliff. Long tendrils of jet-black hair blew against his face, and his slender olive limbs waved rhythmically to some inner music. He was a beautiful child. Almost as beautiful as his mother.

There's nothing of me in there. Nothing except my love.

"Max!"

Reluctantly, Keith Webster began walking toward his son. Below them was a drop of well over three thousand feet. His little stunt in the hot-air balloon had frightened Keith more than he'd realized. Every night since the incident, he'd woken with nightmares. He imagined himself falling, like the camera, spinning around and around in the emptiness, waking just seconds before his body would have slammed into the earth. He could imagine the pain, his bones shattering inside his body like broken glass, his skull caving in like a rotten grapefruit, brains oozing out into the dust.

If anything should happen to Max...

Christ. Where is he?

Max was gone. But he couldn't be gone. He'd been right there, pirouetting on the rock, and then...Keith felt his stomach lurch and his knees start to give way.

"MAX!" It was half scream, half sob. "MAX!"

Keith was running, sprinting toward the cliff edge, propelled by something bigger than himself, some irresistible force. Love. Scrambling up onto the stone, all fear for himself gone, he leaned out, straining his entire body into the emptiness.

"Max! Can you hear me? MAX!"

Below him the clouds lay as thick as butter icing, obscuring everything. A child's picture of heaven.

"I can hear you, Keith."

Keith looked down. On the underside of the rock was a tiny tuft of grass, stuck like a limpet to the side of the mountain. It was so small it could never have borne an adult's weight. But Max, crouched like a leprechaun, could support himself comfortably. Reaching up, he wrapped a hand around Keith's ankle.

"Max, thank God! I thought I'd lost you."

"Lost me?" Max laughed: an awful, maniacal strangled sound that made Keith's blood run cold. "You never had me in the first place. Loser."

Keith felt a tug at his feet. Instinctively, he reached out his arms, grasping for support, but there was nothing. Another tug, harder this time. Keith looked down. Max was staring up at him, a twisted smile dancing across his face.

He smiles like Eve.

Keith looked into his son's eyes and saw the deep well of hatred there. The last emotion Keith Webster felt was not fear or even sadness. It was surprise.

I don't understand it. We were getting along so well...

The clouds rushed up to embrace him, soft, white, welcoming.

Then nothing.

It was the night after Keith Webster's funeral. Max lay in his mother's bed in their New York apartment with Eve's arms wrapped around him. The bedroom window was open a crack, allowing the familiar noises of Manhattan to float in from outside: honking traffic, music, shouts, laughter.

Africa had been beautiful. But this was home.

"You were wonderful, darling," Eve whispered in Max's ear. "No one suspected a thing. I'm so proud of you, my big, grown-up boy."

Eve had been going out of her mind with worry, waiting at home for news of an "accident." She'd rehearsed everything with Max so thoroughly, so endlessly. She really believed he was ready. But as the days turned into weeks and still nothing happened, she began to fear that the boy had lost his nerve. Or what if it was worse than that? What if Max had tried and failed? What if Keith now knew everything and was on his way home to exact his revenge?

But Max had not lost his nerve. He had pulled it off in the eleventh hour, staging a fall so natural that there hadn't even been an inquest. Tourists fell from Table Mountain almost every year, idiots fooling around too near the edge. Keith was just another statistic. A number. A nobody.

"You realize that you're the man of the house now?" Eve cooed. "You'll never have to share me again."

Max closed his eyes. He felt the warm silk of Eve's negligee caress his bare back. "Can I sleep in your bed tonight, Mommy?"

Eve sighed sleepily. "All right, darling. Just this once."

Tomorrow morning it would be back to work, for both of them. With Keith gone, it was time to begin the second part of Eve's plan: winning back control of Kruger-Brent. Max would be the linchpin of that strategy, too. But for tonight at least, he'd earned his reward.

Max waited till his mother was deeply asleep. Then he lay awake, smiling, remembering the look of surprise on his father's face as he fell.

You're the man of the house now.

You'll never have to share me again.