Reckless Road

by Christine Feehan

  He went on through to the bathroom, and she heard the water begin to fill the tub. He’d stopped by the Floating Hat? She couldn’t imagine him walking into the shop, let alone talking to the proprietor and specifically asking her what would be helpful to someone standing and working long hours. That melted her heart. She had no idea what he’d come home with, and it really didn’t matter, because it was the fact that he’d thought about her and wanted to do something for her. She was surprised that he’d even noticed or thought about it, especially with his head hurting so much all the time.

  “I put this in the bathwater,” Player said when she walked in, her robe wrapped securely around her. He handed her a tall, beautiful bottle of sparkling purple and blue crystals. “They dissolved and turned the water a pretty color. I hope they don’t turn your skin that color.”

  It took willpower to force her gaze from his face to the water. Steam rose, but the water shimmered, a soft, inviting, almost magical pool of deep blue with a purple beneath it. Suddenly, she couldn’t wait to sink into it. That water called to her, when she felt so exhausted and worn. When her heart was so filled with dread and unease.

  “I recorded some music for you.” This time there was less confidence in his voice. He sounded almost as if he half expected to be rejected, as if his offering couldn’t be nearly as good as what he’d found at the Floating Hat. Her heart gave a funny little lurch. “Just something to relax to when you’re tired.” He handed her an iPod. “I’ll be in the other room. When you get out, I’ll massage your feet for you. Hannah gave me this killer lotion and cream and showed me a couple of techniques.”

  She lay in the hot water, wondering at what was in the crystals he had put into the bath, because her sore muscles had never felt so good. Even the dread was dissipating a little bit, the deep blue of the water rippling, carrying her worries away with every little wave. The music was Player’s guitar layered sound over sound and it was beautiful. Intricate. And oh so perfect. The sound blended seamlessly with the blues and purples of the water that surrounded her. She felt transported and let herself be carried away for just a little while.

  She needed this. Her mind actually hurt after the long day, fighting her growing certainty that a dark shadow was looming over them and yet she couldn’t find it. The long day after no sleep. Francine with her drunken jealousy and Perry with his entitlement. Player had gifted her with something unexpected and special. She closed her eyes and soaked in the music and blue water until the heat finally began to dissipate.

  Player was waiting for Zyah on the bed in her room. Already, the hot bath had made her muscles feel loose and so relaxed she was almost a noodle. He indicated for her to lie back with her head on a low pillow of lavender and, to her shock, jasmine. The pillow had a place for her neck to fit, so she was completely surrounded by warmth.

  “Another thing from the Floating Hat?”

  “Yes. It’s a combination of lavender and jasmine. I asked for both scents specifically because your grandmother always smells like them and I know they comfort you. I thought if you had a headache, the scents might help.”

  She could barely bring herself to look at him, veiling her eyes with her lashes, afraid she might burst into tears. Was he really that thoughtful? Had he been all along and she’d been so busy wrapped up in hurt she hadn’t noticed?

  He picked up her foot and began to pour lotion into his hands and then rubbed it into her left foot in a slow, circular massage. Her eyes nearly rolled back in her head. The lotion sank into the soles of her feet, where she’d thought nothing could ever take away the ache. Not only did his hands feel good, but the pressure was perfect. The lotion was heating up just right, somehow reacting with the crystals in the bathwater.

  Zyah moaned. “I’m going to have an orgasm if you keep that up.”

  Player laughed. “Prepare to have several, then. I just learned how to do this, and I have to practice to get good. This is only my first time. She showed me on my arm for all of five minutes. You’re always doing things for me, so it’s my turn.”

  She was prepared to let him have his way. Definitely. She watched the concentration on his face as he massaged his way up and over her foot to her ankle and then her calf before picking up her right leg. He took his time, his movements unhurried.

  “Lizz Johnson is extremely wealthy, Player. Really wealthy. Francine talked her into taking part of her jewelry collection out of the vault at the bank and bringing it to their home so it could be worn to a charity event later next month. In light of the fact that these robberies are taking place, it’s so absolutely ridiculous and foolhardy, I can scarcely believe Lizz would do it, but Francine could always talk her into anything.”

  “Why would she do such a thing? Do you think Francine is involved?”

  “No, she’s just always been selfish and thoughtless. She likes to show off, and Lizz has always felt guilty because Moria, Francine’s mother, was mentally ill, and Lizz’s son refused to do anything to help her. He was like Perry. An entitled spoiled brat. He drank with Moria instead of trying to get her sober. Neither one of them seemed to care about Francine.”

  His hands on her foot were more than magic, making her feel boneless. Even discussing a difficult subject was easier because she was floating.

  “I’ve reached out to her over and over as often as I could at various times, but she always seemed to resent me. Tonight, when she came to the store, she was driving Lizz’s Cadillac. The thing is, I know her license was suspended because she’s had multiple DUIs. I also know Lizz prizes that Cadillac. It’s her baby she takes out of the garage, drives around the block to show off and then puts back to bed, so to speak. Francine shouldn’t have been driving it, and she was already on her way to being drunk. I was fairly certain she took it without permission.”

  Player put her leg down, reached lazily behind him and pulled a jar of cream to him. He once again picked up her feet and put them across his thighs. He didn’t say anything but looked at her with his eyes, twin blue flames, silently telling her to keep going. The next thing she knew, he was using the cream and pressing deep into the soles of the feet with his fingers in a deep tissue massage. The entire time he watched her expression for her reaction to see if it was too hard or not hard enough. As far as she was concerned, he knew her intimately, because he applied the exact amount of pressure she needed.

  “She was wearing the necklace and earrings to an extremely valuable set of jewels Lizz has. They’re worth millions, more than just about anyone here would have in their homes, and like an idiot, Francine just walks out of the house unattended with them on. Then she goes out with Perry. That’s how drunk she is, Player. I tried to stop her, but by that time she was so angry with me and she’d turned on me. I should have just called the cops and turned her in instead of thinking how Lizz would feel.”

  “What made her angry with you?” His voice was quiet. Washing over her so gently.

  Instead of answering, she asked a question of her own. “How did you get the name Player?” Zyah hadn’t known she was going to ask—the question just came out. In the darkness, between the two of them, for some reason, her inquiry sounded soft. Quiet. Intimate.

  His gaze flicked to hers. Those blue eyes of his, so like ice at times. So like flames other times. Right now, alive with pain. With memories. She felt them moving through his mind. He could have locked them away, the way he did when his past escaped, but he kept massaging the cream into her feet, ankles and calves, creating a miracle of relief.

  “Sometimes Alena or Lana would come back to the dungeon and they were so bad. So torn up.”

  His eyes met hers again and her heart nearly convulsed, there was so much pain there. Zyah swore she caught the sheen of tears in all that blue before he looked down at her leg. His hands remained absolutely gentle, never wavering once. Never stopping. A part of her wanted to stop him, but it was so huge that he was going to shar
e something voluntarily with her. She wasn’t seeing it, snatching it like some peeping Tom from his mind. He was giving it to her, and she wanted that from him. She would treasure it.

  “When they were little, they would call out for the ‘Player.’ I could make music out of just about anything. Turn the silliest things into instruments. My name, Gedeon, was sometimes hard for them when they were so hurt, so they called me Player.”

  Zyah swore he was shredding her heart in a whole new way. The raw pain in his voice was so real, it filled the room to capacity and was impossible to contain. The walls expanded and contracted and wept for him along with her.

  “There was a time I couldn’t bear to hear that name because it brought so many memories back, none of them good, but then I realized that Player had saved them, Lana and Alena, so many times during their childhood. When the worst of the pedophiles came, pretending to be instructors, the ones we knew would hurt them or possibly even kill them, I could cover their bodies in the illusion of sores so they wouldn’t take them. And when I was too ill myself to protect them that way, when they came back battered, I could be their Player and transport them from the dungeon on the wings of music for a short time.”

  “I think that all of you, growing up the way you had to, were lucky to find each other.”

  His fingers never stopped moving. “I never thought of it that way. I suppose we were. I always thought I was lucky that I didn’t have siblings to be held over my head like some of the others did. Reaper and Savage. Preacher and Lana. Ice, Storm and Alena. Transporter and Mechanic. Sorbacov knew how to force them to do his bidding. Czar had six younger siblings. If he didn’t toe the line, Sorbacov threatened them all the time.” He ducked his head. “I think Czar took a lot of hits for me.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “When I was younger and we had to go to the dinners and bring the bombs I built, I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to engage with the other children at the parties. Czar spent most of the time trying to cover for me so Sorbacov wouldn’t punish me after. He was afraid Sorbacov would kill me himself, or worse, give me to the kinds of men who enjoyed killing a kid for the pleasure of it.”

  His blue eyes had gone from heat to ice. “Babe, this was supposed to be a good night. We’re not talking about this kind of shit. Let’s talk about your grandmother and how great she did today. She’s sick of being cooped up. I told her about the Floating Hat and said you and I could take her there for tea one afternoon and we’d go to Crow 287 for her birthday dinner. She really needs to get out of the house. We could invite some of her friends. Alena has a back room big enough, I think. If not, we can hold it at the clubhouse. She’d like that.”

  Zyah burst out laughing, because her grandmother would lord it over everyone that she’d had her birthday party at a biker clubhouse or in the back room of Alena’s restaurant.

  FIFTEEN

  Gedeon loved the silence in his mind when he built things, especially bombs. Everyone left him alone. He could sit quietly outside in a little corner of the garden where it was mostly overgrown with tall heather grasses surrounding the bench and table where Sorbacov would place all the pieces for him to put together. Next to the equipment would be a cold cup of water. The water was always clean, from the spring. It tasted good, and he’d learned to sip at it and make it last. He’d tried to save it and bring it back with him for the others, but Sorbacov never allowed that, so he didn’t waste it.

  On the other side of the table, lying across it, was the dreaded flogger. He hated that instrument. Sometimes, when he worked, Sorbacov would brush the leather strands over his back, up and down, almost as if he wanted to distract him. Gedeon would go deeper into his mind, hide himself there with the complicated calculations, with the way things clicked into place for him, the trajectories and patterns that made sense to his brain.

  Nothing about Sorbacov made sense. There was no logic to him and his depravities. As a child, Gedeon had tried to find ways to please him, but there was no real way to do so. Pleasing Sorbacov didn’t earn rewards. Sorbacov liked to cause pain. He rewarded himself. Gedeon learned to read his moods, but that didn’t always mean anything either. It was better to just disappear into his own mind and build as fast as he could, making each object more and more complex. Building each faster than the one he had before.

  The air felt fresh and clean on his naked body. Sorbacov didn’t give him clothes because he said he didn’t have use for clothes unless he wanted him to have them. He didn’t even notice he was shivering. He never minded the cold outside. The fresh air felt too much like freedom. He looked over the parts strewn on the table. The parts were completely different. He straightened, his heartbeat quickening. Something new. Something for his mind to work on.

  Gedeon sat down on the cold slab, not even wincing. He didn’t look around to see if Sorbacov or anyone else was in the gardens as he normally would have done. At seven, he knew better. Czar would have given him a lecture for that, and if Reaper was watching him, that would be reported back, but he doubted if any of the others could have gotten out in time to watch his back. It was rare. Sorbacov kept a pretty tight watch on them all now, especially Player. He didn’t want to lose his prize bomb builder.

  Gedeon surveyed the parts, automatically sorting through them in his mind. He laid them out swiftly, moving them almost without touching them, his hands a blur, fingers directing them where he needed them to go. There was satisfaction in watching them do his bidding, watching them come together.

  A shadow fell across him, and he felt the brush of leather on his back, drawing him out of the tunnel, the place so deep no one could usually reach him. He wanted to scream at Sorbacov, and he turned quickly, a scowl of pure annoyance on his face. He needed to build the bomb. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t real; he had to figure it out. Why couldn’t Sorbacov understand that?

  Sorbacov yanked him off the bench, his face that mask of sheer brutal glee, the one all the children feared the most. That was the one he wore when he wanted to show his friends his absolute rule over everyone. He flung Player into the grass on his hands and knees and began to whip him mercilessly with the flogger, hard, brutal strokes, driving him forward, all the while laughing as Gedeon crawled like a wounded animal until he bumped into legs. A fist caught his hair and yanked his head up. He found himself staring into mean, ugly eyes.

  Meet my friend, Gedeon. Open your mouth wide. He’s rather big. But then, you’re going to be taking good care of me, and he’ll have to keep you from screaming while you do it.

  Harsh laughter rang in his ears for what seemed an eternity. He remembered pain. Terrible pain. So much of it. Then he was on the ground, unable to move. Curled in the fetal position. The flogger hitting him over and over until he got up and crawled back onto the bench, bleeding, unable to sit, so he knelt up at Sorbacov’s insistence. Tears ran down his face, his throat swollen until he couldn’t breathe, and his hands shaking so hard he couldn’t pick up the cup of water.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the White Rabbit. The animal was life-sized. As big as Sorbacov. Just standing right beside him, in a three-piece suit, pocket watch in hand, frowning down at it. Why wouldn’t they all go away? He needed them gone. He wasn’t going to make it this time if they didn’t. He couldn’t take another round with Sorbacov and his friends. He just couldn’t, no matter what Czar said. He wasn’t that strong. Nothing was worth it.

  He tried rocking back and forth, looking at his bomb parts, ignoring the White Rabbit. Ignoring Sorbacov. Ignoring everyone. Tick-tock. The watch kept ticking. Did Sorbacov think he could concentrate when he hurt so bad? When he couldn’t breathe? He made an effort to focus on the parts and began to put them together.

  Sweat poured off his body, making his palms and fingers slippery. The White Rabbit took a sudden leap, and Sorbacov was there in the shadows instead . . . Behind him was something else. Something shadowy. Sinister. Another m
an. His breath caught in his throat and he began to fight. Not again. It wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t.

  * * *

  Zyah shifted to her knees, rising above Player, calling to him softly, tears pouring down her face. Sharing his nightmares was pure hell. She didn’t want to see those vignettes of his childhood. At the same time, she wondered how he could be the man he was—the kind, gentle one who had gone into a bath shop to get her lotion so he could massage her feet for her—after what he’d suffered as a child.

  “Honey, open your eyes. Right now, open your eyes and look at me.”

  She could see the bench now, the one that little naked boy with all that wild hair sat at. He had already gone from a boy to a man. His back was to her, but she would know that broad back with those scars and that Torpedo Ink tattoo anywhere. That was her man. That was Player sitting at that bench.

  The rabbit had morphed into a man right in front of her. At first Zyah thought she was looking at the devil. A handsome man wearing a suit, with a graying neatly trimmed beard and mustache to match his thick head of gray-streaked black hair. It was the black eyebrows and piercing eyes as he stared at the pieces of bomb material laid out on the table in front of Player that made her think of the devil. The man didn’t speak, but he held a pocket watch in his palm. It was gold, a vintage Russian pocket watch, quite unique.

  She could see his features, although they were in the shadows. Murky. Player had told her that was because he was dead. He still gave her the creeps. He was so evil, she could almost believe that he could return to life.

  A frisson of fear slid down Zyah’s spine. It wasn’t the first time she’d observed this scenario in Player’s mind, and it wasn’t the first time she felt as if someone else were actually in the room watching them. She looked around carefully. Every corner. The ceiling. Looking into the shadows. She remembered the way Player, as a child, that first time when he was creating the illusion of the Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland characters for the other children, had looked so alertly and suspiciously around the basement, as if he knew something or someone was watching them.