Immortal Games

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

“He didn’t hurt me, Madeline. I tried to run and fell down the stairs. Should have taken my stupid heels off.” Jo smiled weakly.

A tear rolled down Madeline’s cheek. Jo was barely five foot two, and she always wore those impossibly high heels. Madeline couldn’t understand why she was so conscious about her height. Jo was gorgeous. She was a brilliant computer game designer, but no one could peg her as a nerd. Madeline wiped her tear and smiled back.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine. You take care of yourself, Madeline.”

“I can’t get the blue dots to work, Jo. Can you tell me what the game is about? What am I looking for?”

Jo was about to say something, but Zen yanked her off the phone. “All you have to do is to find out who plays with Jo using the name White Knight. You’ve seen the game—and the player. You should be able to tell who the guy is in real life. I told you he works for the LeBlancs and has been playing from that building. You don’t have to go in. Just wait him out.”

“Do you understand that LeBlanc Pharmaceuticals is a global company that employs millions of people?”

“But I gave you the precise location!”

“I told you, it’s like a military barrack. I used my journalist credentials to ask for an interview with their PR department . . .”

“And?”

“The waiting list is a month.”

“I don’t have a month. I give you three days.”

“It’s not possible . . .”

“I don’t give a s**t. If I don’t get this done in time, I’ll be dead. But I’m not going down alone. I can guarantee you that. I’ll send you more info as soon as I have it. But three days is all the time you’ve got.”

Zen hung up.

Madeline slid down to the floor and curled up next to the sofa. She let the tears fall freely. She could fall apart right here, right now. Nobody knew, and nobody cared. Jo was her family—the only family Madeline had ever known. She had taken her in and had shared her family with Madeline unconditionally. Jo’s parents had never once asked Madeline about her own family—they knew she didn’t have one. Otherwise, she would’ve had to tell them that she had come in a basket, abandoned on the front porch of some random house.

Her teeth chattered, and her body shook with the chill. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten or slept.

At the corner of the room, the fireplace stood cold and empty. She had forgotten to start the fire.

A shadow hovered at the window and tripped over the potted plant at the front door, but Madeline had drifted to sleep and heard nothing.

A piece of paper slid under her door.

A crash woke Madeline. She jumped up to her feet, panting.

Then she let out a sigh of relief. She had kicked the side table in her sleep, and the vase on top of the table had crashed to the floor.

Madeline checked the clock. She must have passed out for the night. It was just past five in the morning. She glanced out the window without any hope of seeing the winter sun at this hour. Madeline went to the kitchen to make herself a strong mug of coffee and to find something with which to clean up the broken vase.

A short moment later, she settled in front of her computer and stared at the mountain of documentation she had researched about LeBlanc Pharmaceuticals.

Secrets.

That was the conclusion she had drawn. Not that she couldn’t find any information. On the contrary, there was too much information. Ten years of experience in journalism had taught her that the information about the LeBlancs was only a facade. Even the underground information revealed nothing about the company that they didn’t want the public to know.

The LeBlanc family was filthy rich—and extremely private.

Madeline had to congratulate herself after hours of searching. She found one picture of the current head of the family, Ciaran LeBlanc. One lousy picture. The picture must have come from a very keen stalker. It was taken from a distance, and the scene it showed was reflected on a traffic monitoring mirror in a car park.

Judging by the proportion of the cars and guards around him, Madeline speculated that Ciaran was tall and well-built, but on the slender side.

Young, she mused, and maybe long hair. The picture was so distorted that Madeline wasn’t sure she would have recognized Ciaran if she met him in the flesh.

She drew imaginary lines with her finger around Ciaran’s face, trying to make out the part that the poor quality image didn’t catch.

Then she glanced at the corner of the door, on the floor, and saw the note.

Madeline picked the note up.

It read, “Hyde Park.”