Verwandte Artikel zu Buzz: A Thriller (Volume 3) (The Game, Band 2)

Buzz: A Thriller (Volume 3) (The Game, Band 2) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 3: The Game Trilogy

De La Motte, Anders

 
9781476712918: Buzz: A Thriller (Volume 3) (The Game, Band 2)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1476712913 ISBN 13: 9781476712918
Verlag: Atria/Emily Bestler Books, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

In the second installment in a new international thriller trilogy, a young man is on the run to escape a “game” that blurs the lines between reality and fiction.

Murder is such a buzz kill. . . .

It’s been four months since HP Pettersson was dragged into a ruthless Alternate Reality Game that nearly cost him his life. Although he now has everything he ever wished for—freedom, money, and no responsibilities—he isn’t satisfied. He’s plagued by insomnia and paranoia, and misses the adrenaline rush of the Game. He misses the attention. At times, he even hopes the Game Master will find him. And when HP catches the eye of a rich and powerful CEO for all the wrong reasons, he may get his wish. But he quickly learns that sometimes, you have to be careful what you wish for . . .

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Anders de la Motte, a former police officer, made his debut in 2010 with the award-winning thriller Game and has since then been one of Sweden’s most beloved and popular crime writers. He is the author of several acclaimed and bestselling crime fiction series, among them the suspenseful Skåne Quartet. Published in 2022, The Mountain King is the first bestselling installment in his new Leo Asker series.

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Buzz
1

NEVERLANDS

HE WAS ON her in two quick strides.

She didn’t even have time to react before he had dragged her out of her chair. Her back against the wall, one of his hands in an unshakeable stranglehold around her throat—so hard that the tips of her toes began to lift from the soft carpet.

There was a clatter of porcelain and gasps of horror from the other diners—but he didn’t care. The lounge was on the sixth floor and it would be at least three minutes before the security staff got there. And three minutes were more than enough for him to do what he had to.

She was gurgling, desperately trying to ease his grip, but he tightened it instead and felt her resistance draining away. The color of her immaculately made-up face dropped from bright red to chalk white in a matter of seconds, suddenly matching her little pale suit.

Blond businesswoman—my ass!

He released his grip enough to let a small amount of blood reach her brain, while he fumbled for the object on the table with his free hand. A sudden badly aimed kick at his crotch made him jerk, but she’d lost one of her shoes and without Jimmy Choo’s help the kick wasn’t hard enough to make him loosen his grip. He tightened it again and pressed his face right next to hers. The terror in her eyes was oddly satisfying.

“How the fuck did you find me?” he hissed, holding the cell up in front of her eyes. A shiny silvery object with a glass touch screen.

Suddenly the phone burst into life. Out of reflex he held it farther away from him, and to his surprise saw his own face reflected in the screen. Staring, bulging eyes, sweaty, bright-red face. The cell must have a camera on the other side because when he moved his hand her terrified, pale face moved into the shot. Beauty and the blasted beast, in podcast!

Totally fucking mad!

What the hell was he actually doing?

He was supposed to be a superhero, a savior of worlds—but this? Attacking a woman? Had he really sunk so low?

He met her gaze again, but this time the fear in her eyes merely made him feel empty.

He wasn’t himself.

He wasn’t . . .

? ? ?

“Mr. Andersen?”

“Hmm?!” HP muttered with a start.

A little man in a uniform was standing next to his table, his soft voice just loud enough to drown out the soporific background noise of the lounge.

“Sorry to disturb you, sir, but your new room is ready.”

The man held out a small envelope containing a key card.

“Room number 931, Mr. Andersen, we’ve upgraded you to a junior suite. Your luggage is on its way up. I hope you continue to have a pleasant stay with us, and I can only apologize for the confusion regarding the change of room.”

The man bowed lightly and gently placed the envelope on the table.

“Can I get you a refill, sir?”

“No, thanks,” HP muttered, casting a red-eyed glance at the window table. Yep, the woman was still there, and beside her cup he could still see the little silvery rectangle that had made his imagination go mad.

He closed his eyes again, pinched the bridge of his nose, and took several deep breaths.

Apart from the fact that the phone looked familiar, what evidence was there to suggest that they might have caught up with him?

He was on his umpteenth false passport, and none of them had the slightest connection with the previous ones. And he had put on a few kilos, had a deep suntan, and had grown a long, fair hippie beard to match his even longer hair. He hadn’t spoken Swedish for at least a year, not since he left Thailand. In other words, the risk of anyone being able to identify him was pretty damned small, not to say microscopic. Apart from him, there wasn’t a single soul in the whole world who knew where he was.

So your conclusion, Sherlock?

The phone had to be a coincidence. Almost all smartphones on the market looked fairly similar; most of them were probably made in the same Chinese sweatshops. Besides, this was hardly the first time he had imagined he had been found . . .

He’d lost count of the number of times he had panicked and escaped through rear exits and down fire escapes to get away from imaginary pursuers.

Even if it had been a couple of months since his last dope trip, his overheated little brain still played tricks on him on a fairly regular basis. Serving up ghosts in broad daylight, courtesy of the little gray men in the withdrawal department.

His lack of sleep was hardly making things any better.

He had just managed to nag his way to a more comfortable room, farther away from the lifts.

But he already knew that wasn’t going to help . . .

The woman whose phone it was showed no sign of picking it up.

Instead, she was calmly sipping her coffee, glancing out at the sea, and didn’t even seem to have noticed him. She was pretty, forty-something, with her hair cut in a tight little bob. Jacket, trousers, and low pumps. Now that he was looking more closely, he could see that she had her ankles crossed and had slipped her heel out of one of her presumably extremely expensive shoes, and was dangling it rather absentmindedly from her toes.

For some reason this casual act made him feel a bit calmer.

He took a deep breath through his nose and slowly let the air out through his mouth.

? ? ?

The whole of his dreamlike existence had almost imperceptibly changed to become something completely different.

Fourteen damned months in exile, four more than he had spent locked up, and obviously in many ways a hell of a lot nicer. Even so, the sense of restlessness was, weirdly enough, almost the same now.

The nights were worst. Grass huts, youth hostels, airport hotels, or platinum palaces like this—it didn’t really make much difference. His insomnia didn’t seem to care about the weave density of the sheets.

At the start of his tour he made sure he always had company. He had picked up giggling backpack girls at various campfire parties who were willing to party the night away.

Then, later on, when he was sick of the meaningless pillow talk and beach-busker versions of “Oooh, baby, it’s a wild world,” he had restricted himself to the pickings in the hotel bars.

But by now it was a long time since he had felt any real human intimacy.

Instead he was left having a doped-up jack-off to one of the stupid porn films that his increasingly desensitized sex drive demanded. Then a bit of lukewarm room service grub while he surfed through the Thai knockoffs of blockbuster films until he slid into a state that was at least reminiscent of sleep. A gray fug where his imagination ran riot, exploring places he’d sooner forget.

He just had to accept that his dream life was slowly going to . . .

? ? ?

Hell!

Even though she had seen the automatic weapons before the cortège stopped, the smell that hit her was so overpowering that Rebecca almost forgot about them for a couple of seconds.

It was a sweet, sickly pressure wave from tightly packed bodies, rubbish, sewage, and decay. She may have noticed the stench the day before when they checked the route, but it was considerably hotter today and the heat seemed to have made the smell exponentially stronger.

The crowd quickly circled their drop-off point, as hundreds of agitated people pressed against the...

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Verlag
Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1476712913
ISBN 13 
9781476712918
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
496
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Verantwortliche Person
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