Читать книгу Dying To Play - Debra Webb - Страница 16

How did one top one’s best effort?

The Gamekeeper knew how.

He smiled. It had been so easy. He’d reinvented himself, and his adversary had no idea. Not just yet. He laughed out loud, the sound satisfying, exhilarating. He just kept getting better and better. Closer and closer to his ultimate goal. Closer than anyone suspected.

He was so very clever…so absolutely perverse. This new game was perfect. A unique and unparalleled original creation. No one had ever done anything this magnificent before.

Agent Callahan had not been victorious two years ago, as he so arrogantly thought. The Gamekeeper had been the triumphant one in the end. He gritted his teeth against the bad thoughts. Held them at bay. It wasn’t time. Not yet. The pain had been almost unbearable. Weeks of agony had followed that fateful night. The tremendous mental anguish that had accompanied the immense pain had been cleansing and at the same time intoxicating. He’d loved it. Baptized himself in it and was reborn.

The Gamekeeper closed his eyes and relished the triumph of rising again. Just like Christ himself. No mere man could keep the Gamekeeper down.

Certainly not Agent Trace Callahan.

He was right where the Gamekeeper wanted him. He felt giddy with the knowledge that the plan had worked so quickly. The danger of getting closer and closer, drawing his enemy deeper into the game, made each calculated move all the more thrilling.

It wasn’t about increasing his body count…never had been. It was the danger that sent adrenaline pumping through him…that turned him on. Oh, he did love the game.

And it was only going to get better.

Because no one was as smart as he was. No one else had the game.

Only he was genius enough to have created such a flawless masterpiece that conquered the final frontier—the mind. No one had gone this far before.

He remembered as a child the batteries of intelligence tests, the psychoanalyzing. He was a genius, and most certainly not from the gene pool of the obsequious pair who’d adopted him at the tender young age of two.

What had all the pathetic adults in his childhood expected? He’d been far smarter and more capable than any of them. None had recognized the full extent of his genius…the potential of his abilities. Instead they’d feared him. Put him on medication, treated him like a freak.

But he’d made a special game for all of them. They had thought they were so smart…so invincible.

No one was as smart or as invincible as the Gamekeeper.

Not Agent Callahan. Or his new partner, the lovely Deputy Chief Jentzen.

Hmm. This was just like old times. They were both much more vulnerable than they knew. They had no idea just how vulnerable.

Because no one could beat the Gamekeeper at his own game.

So many had tried.

All had failed.

No one would ever catch him…not in a million years. He was too perfect…too smart. Too invisible.

The Gamekeeper leaned forward and began typing words into the chat box on the computer screen.

Time to play.