Chapter 46.
Ant Tipton’s cottage sits higher than most of the others. Whoever assigned them knew exactly what he’d prefer.
Distance. Sightlines. Control.
He stands at the second-floor window and looks down at the front steps of Alek Andrich’s cottage.
Drummond is there, big and steady, like the world can’t move him unless he agrees. The rich kid from New York—Jordan—is there too, all long limbs and nervous loyalty. Alek sits between them with her phone in her hands, no longer shaking.
Alek’s crisis is over. For now.
Not that Tipton cares about her feelings in this moment, one way or the other.
He’s not worried about her, and he’s certainly not worried about some kid from a fancy private school who he knows could be taken down by a strong breeze.
Alek’s crisis did one thing he knew would make things harder: It solidified them as a unit. Cemented a bond. A visible bond. People who would bleed for each other without being asked.
That’s the real threat in these games. Not strength. Not brains. Not even courage.
Alliance.
Drummond is the anchor of it.
Reg Drummond is a threat, as big a threat as anybody still left in the competition, in Tipton’s view, anyway.
And Tipton had always been good at evaluating a situation.
Of almost any kind.
Tipton has spent his whole life assessing threats, first in uniform, then in the private world—where everyone smiles while they price out your death. Identify the threat and then deal with it. If necessary? Eliminate it first chance you got.
Tipton’s already marked two people as problems.
Jack McHenry, who has that quiet Ranger readiness even when he’s pretending he doesn’t.
Reg Drummond, who looks like he’s still carrying a whistle inside his head—still captaining a team.
And Tipton has never been afraid of problems.
He’s afraid of one thing only.
Being controlled.
It isn’t anything in particular Drummond has said, or even the way he’d saved Alek back in Antarctica—something Tipton obviously didn’t witness but heard, as it is already legend with the other competitors.
It isn’t the fact that well past his Olympic prime, the guy is obviously in tremendous shape.
There’s this confidence about him, as if he’s still on his way to another gold medal.
He knows he’s better than you without having to say that.
He doesn’t need Drummond to announce himself. It’s in the posture, the calm, the way he takes up space without trying.
Tipton has long since identified Jack McHenry as a threat, of course.
Done it even before they’d been swimming through sharks to that forsaken island off the coast of Chile.
It was why Tipton had done everything to eliminate McHenry in the water that day, trying to send the shark his way, as risky a maneuver as that was.
Extremely risky, in fact, because the shark could have come for him instead.
In that case he’d evaluated the risk of his action against its possible reward.
It hadn’t worked. Tipton still thinks it was worth it. Only McHenry is still here, and in his way. So is Reg Drummond.
He thinks of Luca Tommasi for half a second, the way you think of a headline you’ve already read. The cop had been on the trail, pale, sweating through his shirt, eyes not quite focused.
“Aiutami,” Tommasi had said.
Help me.
Tipton understood the word. He understood the moment even better.
If he stopped, he’d be the one on the ground next. If he carried the man, he’d slow, and slow meant vulnerable. If he pressed his own red button to summon help, he’d be out of the competition.
So he’d done what he always did when the world asked him to choose between mercy and survival.
He’d chosen survival.
Not to mention he knew they were watching. He couldn’t risk it. He couldn’t risk . . .
Don’t think about that.
He’d told himself the medics would reach Tommasi fast. He’d told himself it wasn’t his job. He’d told himself a dozen things.
Then Tommasi died.
And that death has been following Tipton ever since, not as guilt—as leverage.
“Others may want this,” Tommasi had said to Tipton in English. “I need this.”
“Why you more than the rest of us?” Tipton had asked.
“Because I am needing it to save my life,” Tommasi said.
But Tipton knew just listening to this man, who said he was willing to do whatever it took to win, that he wouldn’t be willing to kill if it came to that.
He is about to go outside and take a walk by himself before lunch when he feels his phone buzzing.
He looks at the screen and smiles like he’s been invited to a private club.
THE HOST.
Tipton answers without hesitation.
“Hello,” Tipton says.
The Host’s voice is soft, almost conversational.
“Mr. Tipton. How’s your nose?”
Tipton touches it, still sore, still swollen.
“I’ve had worse,” he says.
“I’m sure you have,” The Host replies. “I didn’t call about your nose.”
“No,” Tipton says. “You didn’t.”
A small pause.
Then The Host says, “I saw you on the trail in Chile.”
Tipton doesn’t react. Not visibly. Not even alone.
“I’m flattered you were watching me,” Tipton says.
“I watch everyone,” The Host replies. “But you are . . . useful.”
Tipton keeps his voice light. “What do you want?”
“I want truth,” The Host replies, and somehow makes the word a threat. “I want to see what you do when you’re not protected by rank, or reputation, or deniability.”
Then: “And I’m reminding you what happens when you disappoint the people in charge.”
Tipton’s stomach tightens.
The leash he never talks about.
The Host lets the silence work.
“Tomorrow, you climb,” The Host says. “And you’ll be in a pod with someone you’ve been watching.”
Tipton’s eyes flick back down to Alek’s cottage. To Drummond.
“Lucky me,” Tipton says.
“Don’t do anything foolish,” he says. “I need you here. For now.”
The call ends.
Tipton stands at the window a moment longer.
Then he watches Drummond laugh at something Alek said, and he makes a decision he doesn’t like.
He will deal with Drummond.
Not because he wants to.
Because he’s being told to.
In that moment, he’s afraid.
Steven Noble