Page 67 of The Most Dangerous Games

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.”