Mistress of the Game

“You can’t. Not without the code. We’ll have to climb over, boss.”

The senior officer sighed. He was getting too old for this.

“Come on, then. Dax, Willoughby, you drive around the back. Wits about you lads, eh? You never know. This could be the real thing.”

“Sure, boss.” They all laughed.

Five o’clock. Forty minutes to change a stupid tire. You’re pathetic, Gabe McGregor. Pathetic.

Turning the corner, Gabe saw two squad cars parked outside his gates.

“Sorry, sir. You can’t go up there.”

“What do you mean I can’t go up there? This is my house. What’s happened? Where’s my wife?”

Blood drained from the young cop’s face. “Just stay here, sir. I’ll fetch DI Hamilton.” He set off at a run up the drive.

Bugger this, thought Gabe. Grinding the Bentley’s gears into first, he slammed his foot down on the gas pedal, sending his wheels spinning and throwing up a plume of dust like a sandstorm.

“Sir! Stop!” But it was too late. Gabe’s car shot up the hill like a bat out of hell. Seconds later, he sprinted into the house. Cops swarmed the entryway like sand flies.

“Tara!” Gabe shouted into the rafters. He could hear the panic in his own voice. “Tara? Darling?”

A policeman approached him.

“Gabriel McGregor?”

Gabe nodded mutely. “Where’s my wife? Where are the children?”

“If you’d just sit down a minute, sir…”

“I don’t want to sit down. Where have you taken my children?”

A man appeared at the top of the stairs. In his arms was a gray canvas body bag.

It was only four feet long.

TWENTY-FOUR

THE BRUTAL SLAYING OF GABRIEL MCGREGOR’S WIFE AND children was a story that gripped not just South Africa but the world. It was a Greek tragedy: the white philanthropist and his doctor wife, attacked by the very people they had spent their lives trying to save.

A few weeks after the killings, the gruesome drama took another, unexpected twist. Gabe McGregor walked out of Phoenix’s office one lunchtime as usual. He hadn’t been seen or heard from since.

Conspiracy theories abounded on the Internet: Was Gabe involved in the murders? Maybe Tara was planning to divorce him, and he had her killed to protect his fortune? He discovered the kids were not his and murdered them in a jealous rage? Had he killed himself out of remorse? Had he assumed a new identity and fled justice?

Of course, there wasn’t a shred of evidence to support such lurid speculation. But that didn’t stop tabloids around the world from dredging up every buried secret from Gabe’s past, his drug addiction, his record for assault and battery, his investigation for fraud, dissecting each of them in salacious detail and salivating over their imagined “implications.” Many people spoke up in Gabe’s defense, among them the police investigating the McGregor killings, Robbie Templeton, the world-famous pianist and AIDS campaigner, and Dia Ghali, Gabe’s former partner at Phoenix and a hero to many black South Africans. But their voices were drowned out by the baying of the mob.

Race relations had come so far in the new South Africa. No one wanted to believe that this beautiful white doctor and her photogenic children had been slaughtered by a gang of angry black men whom the cops had no chance of catching. Not when there were so many other, more interesting possibilities.

For those who knew Gabe and Tara, however, this was no soap opera. It was sobering, unimaginable reality.

Lexi was in her office in New York when she got word of the murders.

“But they can’t all have been killed. Not the children, too. There must be some mistake.”

There was no mistake. Lexi’s first feeling was pure compassion. Poor Gabe. All of them, his whole family, gone! She wanted to call or write to him, but quickly realized how inappropriate that would be. She and Gabe hadn’t spoken in more than two years. And for a very good reason. As she was fond of telling Robbie and anyone else who would listen, Lexi Templeton hated Gabe McGregor.

Lexi saw the world in black and white. She did not operate in grays. Ever since she was a little girl, playing with her dolls, she’d divided the people around her into two camps: friends or enemies.

Robbie was her friend. Her love for him, and her loyalty, were bottomless and would remain so all her life.

The men who kidnapped her were her enemies. Max was her enemy. Now, since her revelation on safari, Gabe was her enemy. Enemies must be destroyed.

Hovering above this black-and-white worldview loomed a single, even greater imperative: Kruger-Brent. Kruger-Brent was the beginning and end of everything. It was Lexi’s religion. Her god. Max had stolen Kruger-Brent from her. That made him the greatest of all her enemies. But Gabe McGregor ran a close second. Not only had he outperformed Lexi in business, but he had also succeeded in keeping his soul intact. For this crime alone, he must be damned, eternally undeserving of her compassion.

And yet Lexi did feel compassion. How could she not? When she heard about Gabe’s disappearance, she felt something even deeper. She imagined him alone in the bush somewhere, tortured, crawling away to end his life in unutterable grief and despair. And all at once the world became grayer. For the first time in her life, Lexi Templeton took a day off from work. She spent it in her apartment sobbing, unable to get out of bed.

David Tennant came to see her. A senior member of the Templeton board, David was a lawyer by training. He looked like a character from a Dickens novel. He wore full Victorian sideburns, carried a pocket watch, and had a long bulbous nose that always made Lexi think of Mr. Punch. But beneath his comic appearance, David Tennant was sharp as a tack. He was one of Lexi’s most trusted advisers.