Game of Death (46 page)

‘What did she know?’

‘When she was with Josh, she went through some of the company financial records and figured out that some of the revenue wasn’t legit.’

None of this makes any sense to me. ‘Not legit?’

‘We were booking revenue that didn’t align with the actual purchases online. The company had revenue streams that hadn’t been allocated to any source at all.’

I almost don’t want to ask the question. ‘Where was the revenue coming from?’

‘Some of the company’s more illicit activities.’

‘Such as?’

He shrugs. ‘NetMaster really is a master,’ he says. ‘Josh knew what he was getting when he hired him, but he thought if he paid NetMaster enough, he’d change and only do
what he was told. A man like that doesn’t change.’

‘Where was the money coming from?’ I demand.

‘Extortion,’ he says flatly, as though it’s nothing. ‘Identity theft. Various sales of illegal substances. Knowledge is power, and it can be used in an infinite number of
ways, if you know how.’

‘How did NetMaster get the information?’ I stare at him. ‘You cracked the algorithms.’

A beam of pride lights up his face. ‘I did,’ he says. ‘Josh always underestimated what I was capable of.’ He looks down at Josh’s body and his expression goes dark.
‘Not anymore.’

‘Why?’ I ask. I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

‘At first it was to try to raise revenue for the company, to make myself look better. I was under so much pressure, I didn’t know what else to do. Once we were able to connect the
information on our users from their activities across all of the company’s platforms, a world of possibilities opened up. I knew NetMaster had the connections to make it work. When I saw how
much money we could make, I started to wonder why I would give it to the company. For a while, it was perfect. We were making more than Josh could even have imagined.’

‘But Kendra found out what you were doing,’ I say.

‘Some of it. She was trying to find something to get Josh to leave her alone, and she realized that there were . . . irregularities in the finances, shall we say? She thought Josh was
responsible for what was going on, though, so she came to me to warn him off.’

‘And you never told Josh at all, did you?’

He shakes his head. ‘I couldn’t. He had no idea what NetMaster and I were doing. Oh, I convinced him to stop seeing Kendra, but that wasn’t particularly difficult. He
wasn’t nearly as obsessed with her as she assumed.’ He raises his eyebrow. ‘He was less obsessed with her than you were, Nick. He was obsessed with power, and with his money he
could find an endless string of women willing to play with him in this twisted little dungeon. He didn’t need Kendra for that anymore. But even after they stopped seeing each other, I knew
that she presented a risk – one that I couldn’t leave out there forever.’

‘So you were
De Sade
?’ I ask, my head still spinning.

He scoffs. ‘Of course not.’ He looks around the room with disgust. ‘You really think I’m like these perverts?’ He moves toward me and Yvette. ‘That was
François, the sick bastard. So much for Santar’s hope that he can rehabilitate people like that. But I needed to get rid of Kendra, and when I found out about it, it gave me an idea.
When I discovered she was one of the models in François’ LifeScenes, I hoped François was going to take care of her without my ever having to get involved. But then you had to
interfere. If it had taken another day or two to figure out that François was
De Sade
, he would have killed Kendra, and none of us would be here. I had no idea what I was going to
do, until I realized that you and she were going to end up together. You always had a savior complex, y’know that? I wish it had been someone else. But I had to take the opportunity when it
presented itself.’

‘So you killed her and framed me.’

‘I killed her. You framed yourself.’

‘And this?’ I waved my arm around the room.

‘This is the way I put all of this behind me,’ he says. ‘This is Josh’s little hobby room. I knew neither one of you would go away easily, particularly her,’ he
nods at Yvette, who is still groggy. ‘She wasn’t going to let the man she loved go to prison without a fight, and she’s a hell of a hacker. This way, I give the cops their easy
solution. They’ll find the LifeScene I planted on Josh’s computer and assume Josh killed you both, and then accidentally killed himself while jerking off. Auto-asphyxiation can be a
tricky business.’

‘So here we are,’ I say.

‘Here we are,’ he agrees. ‘I’m not happy about it, but I have no choice.’ He reaches into his pocket. ‘Fortunately for you, I’m not cruel, and I like
you.’ He tosses a bottle of pills at my feet. ‘Take those, and you won’t feel a thing.’

‘What are they?’ I ask.

‘Rohypnol. It’s a high concentration – the same thing I gave her,’ he nods again at Yvette. ‘If you hadn’t been early, she would never have been aware of any
of this. Seriously, who comes to something like this early?’ He laughs at his own joke. ‘You always were the conscientious one, weren’t you?’

‘You didn’t . . . ?’ At this point I’m not sure even why the answer matters to me, but it does.

‘Touch her?’ Jackson smiles. It’s the first time I’ve really seen the evil in his eyes. ‘This isn’t about sex for me, Nick. This is about money and power.
With the information that NetMaster and I have access to, through the system, we can make more money than even Josh could have imagined, and the amount of power we have is immeasurable.’

‘He’s dead,’ I say.

Tom hesitates. ‘Who is dead?’

‘NetMaster. I killed him.’ It’s only partially true, but I’m trying to rattle Tom as much as possible – trying to buy some time. By the look on his face, I
have.

It takes a moment for him to respond, but he regains his composure. ‘An inconvenience, to be sure. But I have access to his networks, and it’s the information that matters most.
People across the world log onto our system, and give us their names and their identification numbers and their credit-card numbers. They let us watch as they surf for porn, and email old lovers
and order hookers. And all the while they assume that their information is safe. Why? Because we tell them it is. They’re willing to stick their heads in the sand because we offer them
convenience – one-stop shopping for everything they want to do. They believe their information is safe because we tell them it is.’

‘You have stock in the company,’ I say. ‘Why would you need this?’

‘I want both. And I wanted the ability to tell this asshole to fuck off.’ He points his gun briefly at Josh Pinkerton’s corpse. ‘You never had to deal with him very
often. His idea of a management strategy was to humiliate those who worked hardest for him.’ He looks around the room at all the implements of torture. ‘Apparently that was a theme that
ran through his private life as well. He had no idea what was happening anymore, right up to the point where I came up behind him.’

‘You don’t have to do this,’ I say.

‘Yes, I do. Now take the pills.’

‘No.’

He walks around me, brandishing his gun the entire way, moving over toward Yvette. She is still chained to the wall by one hand, still wobbly. Her free arm dangles loosely at her side, and
she’s leaning heavily against the wall. He puts the gun to her head. ‘Take the pills, or I’ll kill her now.’

‘You’ll kill her anyway.’

He cocks his revolver. ‘Now.’

‘Okay!’ I shout. I lean down and pick up the pill bottle. I open it and take one out, pop it in my mouth and swallow. I look at her. ‘I’m sorry, Yvette.’

‘It’s not your fault. Are you ready?’ She’s slurring still, and for a moment I don’t understand what she is saying. I give her a curious look. ‘Are you
ready?’ she asks again. Suddenly she straightens up and her free hand grabs for the gun pointed at her head. ‘Now!’ she yells.

Her attack takes both Tom and me by surprise. Tom’s arm jerks upward and the gun goes off. I can hear the bullet ricochet off the rock ceiling, and feel a rush of air as it passes close by
me. I dart toward the two of them, my shoulder lowered, driving into his chest. He is thrown back into the leather-covered wall, loses his gun. It clatters across the floor to the other side of the
room. I pull my fist back and I hit him hard in the stomach, knocking him to the floor. I’m on top of him, pummeling away at his face and torso.

‘Get him!’ Yvette screams. I can see her, frantically trying to free her other hand from the wall, but with only one hand to work on the straps, it doesn’t look like
she’s having much success.

Tom is so shocked by the instant turn of events that it takes him a moment to react. Once he does, though, he fights back hard. He manages to block two of my blows in succession and lands two of
his own, right in my face. I’m knocked back and hit the wall, stunned. It’s odd – they were decent punches, but they seemed to have a greater impact on me than I would have
expected.

I flail around, trying to grab something to fight with. My hand grasps something long and thin and metal, hanging from the wall. I pull it free and get to my feet, holding it like a spear.

Tom is struggling to get to his feet, his face bloodied. He looks for his gun and sees it across the room. I swing the pole at his head and hit the mark – the point opens up a gash above
his right eye. I bring the pole back and ready myself for a second swing, but as I do, my vision blurs, and the momentum of my backswing carries me to the floor. I try to get up, but my legs
don’t seem to be working. I realize that the drug is taking effect, and the recognition makes my struggle to control my muscles more desperate. I feel like a fish on land, though, as I flop
and toss myself to try to get vertical.

Tom sees my distress and clambers to his feet. He walks steadily over to his gun and picks it up, walks back to me and looks down at me.

I can no longer move. I am lying on the floor, my eyes open, just taking it all in. The drug is so powerful that I no longer even care, really, and I am willing to accept my fate.

Tom points the gun at my head. ‘I’m sorry, Nick. I really am.’

Behind him, I sense movement, and even in my haze I’m curious about what it could be. Tom’s mouth opens wide, as though he’s going to say one last word to me, but no sound
comes out. He looks so odd, just standing there in silence, his gun raised at me.

I see it come through his chest. It pokes out at first, like a worm trying to get out of his shirt. The fabric tears and I can see the sharp point as the red stain on his chest appears and
grows. The tip grows and gets longer, sticking out of his chest like a horizontal flagpole. Then it withdraws and disappears. Tom still stands there, looking at me as a dribble of blood runs from
the corner of his mouth.

He collapses, and once he does I can see behind him. Yvette has managed to free her hand, and she is standing there with a sword she’s taken from the wall. She’s holding it like a
warrior, the blood running down the blade.

I smile at her. ‘You’re a remarkable woman,’ I say. ‘Can I say it now?’

She nods.

I take a deep breath. ‘I love you, too,’ I say.

The world narrows and fades to black as I pass out.

I open my eyes and she is there, lying next to me in her bed, half covered with the sheet. I can see the soft curve of her shoulder and the undulation of defined muscle where
her shoulder rolls into her triceps. Her back is lean, her skin smooth, marred only by a two-inch scar where she cut it on a fence when she was thirteen. I remember when it happened; I was there.
She and I were drinking down by the old junkyard by the water, sipping some God-awful Mad Dog she’d boosted from the bottle that her dad kept under the kitchen sink. It was one of those
nights that sticks in the memory like a marker in time. Our lives have moments like that – primary moments – from which everything else flows. The day my father died . . . the night I
lost my virginity . . . the day I left MIT: these are the turning points that tie the other events together. Everything else is before or after. That night with her in the junkyard is one of those
nights.

I can still remember exactly how she looked just before she leaned in to kiss me. My heart was beating so hard it felt like my ribs might shatter. And the moment her lips touched mine and I
realized that she would let me touch her – that she
wanted
me to touch her, and that she
wanted
to touch me – was a moment of discovery and awakening as powerful as
any other in my life.

When we saw the police lights we immediately assumed that her father had sent the cops after us, and we ran. Clambering over the chain-link fence at the back of the property, she let out a
little gasp, but we kept moving until we made it back to my house. Ma was out, still trying to drink off the pain of my father’s death years before. There, in my bedroom, I cleaned the cut on
her back, put butterfly bandages and Band-Aids on it. She probably should have had stitches, but neither of us was anxious to explain to anyone what had happened. We spent the next hour there on
top of my bed, exploring and touching and kissing. That bond of flight and excitement and discovery has never left us.

I reach over and touch the scar. She lets out a soft, tired moan and her back arches. I run the tips of my fingers along her skin, up over her shoulder blades and to the back of her neck, down
the sides of her arms and up her sides.

Her body responds to my touch. It’s been nearly a month since that night at Josh’s, and there was a brief time when I thought we were both too damaged ever to let anyone touch us
like this again. That fear lasted for about ten seconds after we were alone for the first time together. We fell into each other’s arms with a desperate passion, clawing at each other as
though we could use one another to cleanse away all the darkness of the past. It worked, too, at least for a little while. In the end we both know that some of the darkness lives within us and
always will. That’s okay, I suppose, as long as we understand it and learn to control the desires.