Private Games by James Patterson

destroying the modern games? And who was to say that Selena Farrell wasn’t the gunman in black leather and a motorcycle helmet? She’d been holding an automatic weapon in that picture in her office.
    Maybe Pope’s instincts were spot on. Could the professor be Cronus? Or at least involved with him? What about Daring? Didn’t he say he’d known Farrell from somewhere in his past? The Balkans back in the 1990s?
    Then another voice inside Knight demanded that he think less about villains and more about victims. How was his mother? He’d not heard from her all day.
    He’d go inside. He’d call her. But before he could get his key into his front lock he heard his daughter Isabel let loose a blood-curdling cry: ‘No! No!’

Chapter 29
    KNIGHT THREW OPEN the front door into the lower hallway as Isabel’s cry turned into a cutting screech: ‘No, Lukey! No!’
    Her father heard a high-pitched maniacal laugh and the pattering of little feet escaping before he entered the living area of his home, which looked as though a snow tornado had whirled through it. White dust hung in the air, on the furniture, and coated his daughter, about three years old, who saw him and broke into sobs.
    ‘Daddy, Lukey, he … ! He …’
    A dainty little girl, Isabel went into hiccupping hysterics and ran towards her daddy, who tried to bend down to comfort her. Knight gritted his teeth at the throbbing ache all down his left side, but scooped her up anyway, wanting to sneeze at the baby-powder. Isabel’s tears had left little streams of baby powder paste on her cheeks and on her eyelashes. Even covered in talc like this, she was as beautiful as her late mother, with curly fawn-coloured hair and wide cobalt-blue eyes that could cleave his heart even when they weren’t spilling tears.
    ‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ Knight said. ‘Daddy’s here.’
    Her crying slowed to hiccups: ‘Lukey, he … he put bottom powder on me.’
    ‘I can see that, Bella,’ Knight said. ‘Why?’
    ‘Lukey thinks bottom powder is funny.’
    Knight held onto his daughter with his good arm and moved towards the kitchen and the staircase that led to the upper floors. He could hear his son cackling somewhere above him as he climbed.
    At the top of the stairs, Knight turned towards the nursery only to hear a woman’s voice yell, ‘Owww! You little savage!’
    Knight’s son came running from the nursery in his nappy, his entire body covered in talc. He carried a bonus-sized container of baby powder and was laughing with pure joy until he caught sight of his father glaring narrowly at him.
    Luke turned petrified and began to back away, waving his hands at Knight as if he were some apparition he could erase. ‘No, Daddy!’
    ‘Luke!’ Knight said.
    Nancy, the nanny, appeared in the doorway behind his son, blocking his way, powder all over her, holding her wrist tight, her face screwed up in pain before she spotted Knight.
    ‘I quit,’ she said, spitting out the words like venom. ‘They’re bloody lunatics.’ She pointed at Luke, her whole arm shaking. ‘And that one’s a pant-shitting, biting little pagan! When I tried to get him on the loo, he bit me. He broke skin. I quit, and you’re paying for the doctor’s bill.’

Chapter 30
    ‘YOU CAN’T QUIT,’ Knight protested as the nanny dodged around Luke.
    ‘Watch me,’ Nancy hissed as she barged right by him and down the stairs. ‘They’ve been fed, but not bathed, and Luke’s crapped his nappy for the third time this afternoon. Good luck, Peter.’
    She grabbed her things and left, slamming the door behind her.
    Isabel started to sob again. ‘Nancy leaves and Lukey did it.’
    Feeling overwhelmed, Knight looked at his son and shouted in anger and frustration: ‘That’s four this year, Luke! Four! And she only lasted three weeks!’
    Luke’s face wrinkled. He cried: ‘Lukey sorry, Daddy. Lukey sorry.’
    In seconds his son had been transformed from this force of nature capable of creating a