Private Games (Private 3) - Page 43

Petra’s attitude hardened. ‘What if we get caught?’

‘We won’t.’

‘But—’

Teagan cut her off, asking archly, ‘Do you honestly want me to call Cronus and say that now, at the last minute, you are leaving this to me? Do you really want to provoke him like that?’

Petra blinked and then her expression twisted towards alarm. ‘No. No, I never said anything like that. Please. I’ll … I’ll do it.’ She straightened and brushed her jacket with her fingers. ‘A moment of doubt,’ she added. ‘That’s all. Nothing more than that. Even superior beings entertain doubt, sister.’

‘No, they don’t,’ said Teagan, thinking ‘impetuous’ and ‘lacking in attention to detail’ – wasn’t that how Cronus had described her younger sister?

Some of that was definitely true. Petra had just now proved it, hadn’t she?

As they’d waited on a pavement near King’s College, their only stop on the way to the gymnastics venue, the youngest of the Furies had forgotten to keep her gloves on when getting out the latest letter to Pope. Teagan had gone over the package with a disposable wipe, and had then held it with the wipe until she could pass the envelope to a bicycle messenger who gave them a sharp but cursory glance in their fat-women disguises.

As if in reaction to the same memory, Petra raised her chin towards Teagan. ‘I know who I am, sister. I know what fate holds for me. I’m clear about that now.’

Teagan hesitated, but then gestured to Petra to lead on. Despite her sister’s doubts, Teagan felt nothing but waves of certainty and pleasure. Drugging a man to death was one thing, but there was no substitute for looking the person you were about to kill in the eye, showing them your power.

It had been years since that had happened – since Bosnia, in fact. What she had done back then should have been fuel for nightmares, but it was not so for Teagan.

She often dreamed of the men and boys she’d executed in the wake of her parents’ death and the gang rape. Those bloody dreams were Teagan’s favourites, true fantasies that she enjoyed reliving again and again.

Teagan smiled, thinking that the acts she would commit tonight would ensure that she’d have a new dream for years to come, something to celebrate in the dark, something to cling to when times got rough.

At last they reached the X-ray screeners. Stone-faced Gurkhas armed with automatic weapons flanked the check-point, and for a moment Teagan feared that Petra might baulk and retreat at the show of force.

But her sister acted like a pro and handed her identification to the guard, who ran her badge through a reader and checked her face against computer records that identified her as ‘Caroline Thorson’. Those same records indicated that she was a diabetic and therefore cleared to bring an insulin kit into the venue.

The guard pointed to a grey plastic tub. ‘Insulin kit and anything metal in there. Jewellery, too,’ he said, pointing at the pitted silver ring she wore.

Petra smiled, tugged the ring off and set it beside the insulin kit in the tray. She walked through the metal-detectors without incident.

Teagan took off a ring identical to her sister’s and put it in the tray after her credentials checked out. ‘Same ring?’ the guard said.

Teagan smiled and gestured towards Petra. ‘We’re cousins. The rings were presents from our grandma who loved the Olympics. The poor dear passed on last year. We’re wearing them in her honour to every event we work.’

‘That’s nice,’ the guard said, and waved her through.

Chapter 54

THE ORBIT’S OBSERVATION deck revolved slowly clock-wise, offering a panoramic view of the interior of the Olympic Stadium where several athletes and coaches were inspecting the track, and of the Aquatics Centre that Knight had only just left.

Standing at the deck’s railing in a cooling east wind that sent clouds scudding across a leaden sky, Mike Lancer squinted at Knight and said: ‘You mean the television guy?’

‘And Greek antiquities curator at the British Museum.’

Jack Morgan said, ‘Does Scotland Yard know about this yet?’

Knight had called Jack Morgan and had been told that he and Lancer were up on the Orbit, inspecting security on the Olympic flame. Knight had rushed over. He nodded to Jack’s question and said, ‘I just spoke with Elaine Pottersfield. She has squads en route to the museum and to his house.’

For several moments there was silence, and all Knight was really aware of was the smell of carbon in the air, coming from the Olympic cauldron burning on the roof above them.

‘How do we know for sure that Daring has gone missing?’ Jack asked.

Knight replied, ‘I called his secretary before I called Elaine, and she told me that the last time anyone saw Daring was last Thursday night around ten o’clock when he left the reception for his exhibit. That was probably six hours after Selena Farrell was last seen as well.’

Lancer shook his head. ‘Did you see that coming, Peter? That they could have been in on it together?’

Tags: James Patterson Private Mystery
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