Game: A Thriller by Anders de La Motte Page A

mat.
    Rebecca glanced up at the glass passageway. Vahtola was still watching, and it looked like the head of the unit was focusing particularly on her trio.
    “Ungh!!!” Dejan was free again, this time even more easily.
    Shit, she’d lost her concentration and Pain wasn’t the sort to let it pass.
    “Get a grip, Normén! If you want to belong to the elite you need to step it up!”
    The third attempt, and now she knew pretty much how his tactics worked. Dejan took a quick step to the side before twisting free, so what would happen if she kneed him at the back of his knee in the middle of the step?
    The answer proved to be that he fell backward into her arms, and that she and Stefan could easily spin him around and lay him out on the mat.
    “Good, Normén, that’s how it’s supposed to look!” Pain clapped his hands and Rebecca couldn’t help throwing a smug glance up at the glass passageway. Vahtola’s expression hadn’t changed.
    “Let’s switch!” Dejan said tersely. He was red in the face and clearly not happy about being bundled over in front of their new boss.
    “I’ll take the back.”
    Before Rebecca had time to react, he’d taken up a position behind her and got her in some sort of headlock. Both arms around her neck, his right arm over her throat locked onto the other arm, his left hand clasping the back of her neck.
    It felt like she was in a vise.
    She quickly tried to get at the arm across her throat, but Wikström, standing in front of her, caught her wrists and held her arms tight. She struggled and jerked, trying to get free, but Dejan evidently wasn’t about to let that happen.
    It was payback time, and instead of loosening his grip to give her a chance, he tightened his grasp. Her feet were almost off the ground now.
    “Come on, Normén,” he snarled in her ear. “Show us what you can do!”
    Rebecca could feel her eyes starting to flutter. His grip was so tight that both her airway and blood supply were being cut off. She tried to get free again, this time more frenetically, but Wikström didn’t appear to have noticed that everything was on the point of spiraling out of control, and was still holding her wrists tight.
    Her field of vision was shrinking and she could feel herself on the verge of panic. She was stuck, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Immobile and in another person’s power, someone who wished her harm. Exposed. Helpless. And all of a sudden she was no longer in a gym in Kronoberg but in a flat in one of the southern suburbs and the man holding her was no longer a colleague whose pride had been wounded.
    “I’m going to kill you, you little bitch,” he snarled in her ear, and she could tell from the tone of voice, the one that terrified her so, that he meant every word. This time she would die for sure!
    The panic she usually kept such a firm grip on welled up and filled her head, pumping adrenaline into her fading muscles and taking command of her body. And suddenly she felt a new burst of life.
    She let herself fall toward the floor like a sack, and when the grip on her neck relaxed a couple of millimeters she launched up with both feet and thrust backward and upward with such force that they almost toppled over.
    Rebecca felt the back of her head hit something hard, felt something break, and when she raised her feet and kicked out in front to strike a different target, the force of the kick altered their center of gravity and they collapsed onto the mat.
    For a moment everything went black, then her sight gradually came back.
    She was sitting on the floor with her back against the flattened Dejan, with his legs on either side of her. A few meters in front of her Stefan was curled up, clutching his stomach. In a flash she was up on her feet, turning toward Dejan, who was still lying down. His hands were over his face, but to judge by the trickles running between his fingers, that wasn’t enough to stem the flow of blood.
    “What the fuck, you crazy or