Reckless Road

by Feehan, Christine

  “Every time the two of you connect, the etchings change to that position,” Czar said. “I’ve watched it do so over and over. When you move apart, it fades back to the original frame.”

  Zyah suddenly surged to her feet, pulling away from Player. “Remember when I said the stars would give a wide view for the portal? Well, if somehow it took both Mama Anat and Grandfather Horus to open the portal together, like we did, not that I know how we did it, and the portal gave the wide view of where the target was located, through her connection with the earth, Mama Anat would have been able to pinpoint the exact location.” She looked at Player with pain-filled eyes. “You and I could do the same thing together. We have that same connection.”

  “She would never do it,” Player said. “I’m telling you, baby, she wouldn’t. You know she wouldn’t. I don’t care what the evidence says. She wouldn’t do it.”

  Czar looked down at his cell phone. “Destroyer said Anat insisted on coming here. It’s taken a while to get one of the vehicles for her to ride in that can transport her comfortably here. She’ll be here soon.”

  Player went to Zyah, ignoring the way she tried to push him away. He wrapped her up in his arms. “Baby, I’m telling you, it’s all going to be fine.”

  “I just hate this so much.”

  Savage took the monocle to the bench where the little box and wrapping paper were. Carefully wrapping it back the way Zyah had it, he put the device in the box. “I’m going to put this in your purse, Zyah, so nothing happens to it. I know it means a lot to Anat. If we have to destroy the drawing, I want her to have something she loves of her husband’s.”

  “Thanks, Savage.” Zyah sounded close to tears.

  Czar stood in front of the drawing. “Kiss her, Player. Kiss Zyah.”

  Player frowned. Zyah ducked her head against his chest. “What are you thinking?”

  “I think the portal is ready to be opened, and kissing her will open it. I mean really kissing her. Turn her around so he can’t see her. You face this way. We’ll spread out. Let him face us. He wants a confrontation.”

  “No,” Zyah protested. “Wait for Mama Anat. She might know who he is. If she does, she can tell us how to handle him. If we say or do the wrong thing, it might put more people in jeopardy. All of you are so used to handling things on your own that you don’t consider that it might be prudent to wait. You don’t even know who this man is. We need information.”

  Player liked that she had included herself with them.

  Czar nodded. “You’re right, Zyah. I wanted to see the portal work, and I’d like to see this man, but without real information, a name, a place, I can’t put Code on tracking him. Once we know who he is, we can find him and eliminate any threat to Anat and you, but until we have that information, we’re dead in the water. My curiosity got the better of me for once. Thanks for reining me in.”

  Player glanced at him. That was so unlike Czar, Player didn’t believe a word of it. He’d deliberately forced Zyah to stop him. She had been the voice of reason for all of them. In doing so, she’d put faith in her grandmother’s ability to sort everything out.

  Savage handed Zyah her purse. “Put that somewhere safe. I have a feeling Anat’s going to want to destroy this thing.”

  “If you wouldn’t mind, Zyah, I’d like to take photos of the drawing,” Player said. “It really is a masterpiece. It would be a shame to have it completely disappear. I’d get rid of the photographs eventually.” He glanced at Ink.

  Zyah frowned. “What would you do with them?”

  “I thought I’d have the drawing tattooed on me. I think it would go pretty nicely over the loom scars on my chest. If it would freak you out, I wouldn’t do it, but you love the drawing. I know your grandmother’s explanation is going to vindicate your family. She will ask to destroy the drawing, and it will most likely be safer to do so.”

  “Take the photos, but if this all goes wrong, get rid of them immediately.” She tucked the purse up on a shelf out of the way, just in case things got out of hand when they opened the portal after her grandmother got there.

  Player knew, no matter what, Czar was going to have them open it. All of them were curious. He couldn’t blame them. He would have been. They had no idea how very creepy it was. His main concern was the bomb. Did anyone else have the schematics for that bomb that could slip through the portal? If so, were there more portals and bombs? Could this man suddenly appear and slide a bomb into the shed where they were? It was difficult to believe someone else had the plans for the bomb because in all the years Anat had been in the United States, it would have shown up somewhere. At least, that was Player’s hope.

  “They’re here,” Czar announced.

  Zyah dragged in air and reached for Player’s hand, her eyes meeting his. Maestro hastily opened the door and waved to the others to move aside to give Destroyer plenty of room to roll Anat’s chair into the shed.

  TWENTY

  “Mama Anat,” Zyah greeted, sounding as if she might burst into tears.

  Anat looked around at all of them and then at the drawing under the powerful lights. “I was afraid of this.” She gave a little sigh and looked at Player. “You have gifts, don’t you? Who would have ever thought this could happen? I never even considered it. I thought my secret was safe.”

  She rolled her chair straight to the drawing and stared up at it. “Horus and Ken were both so brilliant, and their minds refused to rest. They were always dreaming up whatifs. Could this be done? Nothing to them was impossible. They would talk about things until all hours of the night. I loved to hear them talk. So did your mother, Zyah. We’d sit around together and just imagine the improbable, the impossible, and how it could be done.”

  Her voice had taken on a dreamy quality. Loving. Sad. “I miss those times so much. They really were so far ahead of their time. So beyond brilliant. We laughed so much together. Dreamt up so many crazy ideas. This one”—she gestured toward the drawing—“was in response to several things. The ban on belly dancing. Horus and Ken loved us belly dancing for them. Of course, in the privacy of our home, we continued to dance for them, but they were still very upset that something they considered beautiful was thought to be dirty. And the officials were always coming around with veiled threats. If Horus didn’t go back to work for them building the bombs they wanted, there would be dire consequences. He had quit years earlier and they never let him rest.”

  “What did Horus do after he quit?” Czar prompted.

  “He was independently wealthy,” Anat said. “Which was a good thing. He was extremely interested in the force of gravity and properties of atom formation. He developed various theories and models to help explain it. He continually studied the very fundamental properties of atoms and molecules. He had so many interests, but he always came back to the evolution of the universe and atoms, molecules and gravity. He did present at the universities at times, but mostly, he experimented in his own laboratories. When Ken came along, they were so like-minded.”

  Player frowned, shaking his head, trying to understand what she was saying. “This wasn’t a project for the government? Or for some splinter faction protesting the government?”

  “No, Horus didn’t work for anyone. At times he presented his papers to the university. He lectured. But no, he refused to take money from anyone. He didn’t need to. He didn’t want anyone telling him what he should be working on. He wasn’t . . . structured. He was a dreamer.”

  Anat indicated the drawing. “I shouldn’t have kept it. We were going to destroy it, of course. We always destroyed anything that was dangerous.” She stretched her arm up and touched the drawing with trembling fingertips. “I didn’t think anyone would ever discover what it was. How could they? It took Horus and me to open it. Even Amara, my daughter, and Ken couldn’t do it. So I thought it would be safe to keep it. I loved it so much, and I didn’t have many things I could bring with me.”

  She dropped her arm and clasped her hands in her lap before looking
up at her granddaughter. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t think there was any reason to tell you. Clearly, there was. How did you find out?”

  “I did,” Player said. “I was in her bedroom all those weeks and I could see the drawing. I didn’t need the device to see the plans for the bomb. I have this weird thing I do when I’m upset. Some people count; my brain puts together bombs.”

  Anat gasped, her eyes going wide. “Horus did that. He had . . . problems stemming from things that happened to him when he was a child. He said when he focused on building intricate bombs, new ones, different ones, he would have to concentrate completely; nothing would penetrate, and he wouldn’t feel or hear anything going on around him. He learned to do that from an early age, so it was what he always did.”

  Player exchanged a long look with Zyah and then with Czar. “My mind must work along the same lines as your husband’s did. In any case, I began building that bomb in my mind over and over. When Zyah and I were together, we accidentally opened the portal. Someone was on the other side watching us, and he was very unhappy with us.”

  “Amir.” Anat whispered the name so softly, Player almost didn’t catch it. “He would be furious. And scared. Confused.” She looked at Zyah. “Amir was twenty when the explosion killed everyone aboard the yacht. You must remember him. You called him Uncle Amir. Everyone thought him dead. We wanted it that way. He barely survived. A fisherman found his body floating miles away and took him home. Amir convinced the fisherman someone had tried to kill him, so the man never told anyone he had found Amir.”

  “It wasn’t an accident, then,” Zyah said.

  Anat shook her head. “Horus had enemies. He was too outspoken against the government at the time, and he refused to do the things they asked of him. I tried to talk to him. We all did. He was writing articles for the newspapers and stirring up the younger people. Horus had a brother twenty years younger than him. His brother and his wife were killed in an accident. His wife had no family, so we took their infant son, Amir.”

  “The man in the portal was Amir?” Player asked.

  “It had to have been,” Anat said. “There was only one other portal set up. Horus had a small estate in France. If we had to flee our country, we were to go there. He had property, money, identities for us if we needed them. The other portal was there. I sent Amir there. It was the only way I knew he would be safe. He would have a home, money and a life. I knew I could make a life for Zyah and me here in the States. No one would come after us. We were women and had nothing. If anything went wrong, I could contact Amir and send for money, but it was safer not to. I knew that there would be eyes on me for a long while. Not because of this project.” She indicated the drawing. “No one knew about this but the five of us. But Horus’s family was considered a threat, and that included Amir.”

  “You turned over all of Horus’s money and properties to Amir and came to the United States on borrowed money?” Czar asked.

  “Most of Horus’s money and property were confiscated— only what he had in France was left, and that was very little in comparison to what his wealth had been. I love Amir as a son. I raised him from infancy for twenty years. As a woman, I wasn’t a threat to anyone, but he was. In France, with a new identity, he could marry, have a life. As long as we stayed away from each other, and there was no connection between us, there would be no threat to him.”

  “You sacrificed so much, Mama Anat,” Zyah said.

  Anat shook her head and indicated the drawing. “I should have destroyed this. It was the last I had of Horus and Ken. I loved them both so much, but I should have been able to part with it. Horus would have been so angry with me.”

  “Can Amir open the portal from his side?” Mechanic asked.

  “No,” Anat said. “The portal took two of us to open it, and it was always one-sided. Horus could talk to Amir through it, but Horus and I had to be together to open it. Player and Zyah must be together to open it. Amir must have been shocked when the portal opened and he started seeing through it. Probably shocked and rather horrified.”

  “The other portal has to be like this one is—portable,” Savage ventured.

  Anat nodded. “Yes. The other is very small. I don’t know how it got to be in France.”

  “Clearly, it meant enough to Amir to risk getting it from your home before he left and taking it with him when he was fleeing to France. How did he get to France?” Czar asked.

  “We had friends,” Anat said. “I had him smuggled out of the country, although I never revealed his identity to anyone.”

  “He took the portal, just as you took the drawing, because it was what Horus and Ken created,” Savage said, his voice gentle. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Anat. It’s human to want to keep something because it holds memories for you.”

  Player exchanged a long look with Zyah. She knew things about the others that most people would never know, but she also saw moments like this one. Savage had so much good in him. Player, like all the members of Torpedo Ink, was terrified of losing him. Terrified he would ride over a cliff one day. Savage thought of himself as a monster, but seeing him with Anat, it was impossible to view him that way.

  “Amir was so upset and didn’t want to give up me or Zyah,” Anat said. “He felt guilty at taking the money. And he was alone without us. He felt like, as the only man left in the family, it was his duty and right to protect us. It was a hard time for us both. I insisted he couldn’t contact me and that I couldn’t contact him. I would do anything to keep him safe. As the years went by, he contacted me via email, and we were still careful, setting up a formal way to make certain we knew the other one was safe. He had a Facebook with pictures of his family. I did the same so I could share pictures of Zyah.”

  “Perhaps it’s time to open the portal and talk with him,” Player said. “We need to make certain he’s on the same page.” He had felt the absolute malevolence directed at Zyah and him. It was possible Amir hadn’t recognized Zyah in the murkiness of the portal. Player had been the one facing him. There was no mistaking the waves of black anger pouring off the man in that portal. Player had known the stranger intended to find them and either kill them or use them for his own dark purposes.

  “Yes.” Anat couldn’t suppress the eagerness in her voice. “Please do.”

  Czar waved the others back out of sight of the frame. “Leave Anat, Player and Zyah there for the moment. I want to be certain this man is going to cooperate with whatever Anat wants. Anat, can he pass anything through the portal to you?”

  Anat frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Clearly, the bomb can be passed through the portal. Can Amir pass a bomb to us?”

  “No, nothing can go from his side to our side. It’s merely a means to communicate. The only thing that can go from our side out is the bomb. And the bomb is made to go through the portal. It was an experiment, like in the Jules Verne novels. The impossible that is improbable that becomes illusion and then reality.”

  Player looked over Anat’s head to Czar. “Anat, did Horus have psychic talents? Was he able to build illusions and hold them?”

  She nodded slowly. “Yes. He was very good at them, but if he held them too long, he would get terrible headaches and his illusions could become an alternate reality. That was very dangerous. He had to be careful. I know that sounds crazy, but it was our world. I could help him when that happened.”

  Zyah slipped her hand into Player’s. “We understand, Mama Anat. We’re going to open the portal now.” She turned into Player’s body, sliding her arms up his chest and winding them around his neck. “He was like you,” she whispered. “That’s why we can open it. He had a lot of your talents. And I have many of Mama Anat’s.”

  Her mouth brushed over his lips. Little strokes of desire sending fiery darts through Player’s bloodstream. It was difficult to keep his eyes open and focused on the frame, observing the way the etchings deepened into a full-blown scroll and then began to roll. He heard someone make a sound of sho
ck, and then there was silence again.

  Zyah’s mouth moved on his. Her tongue traced the seam of his lips, and he opened, unable to do anything else. The tip of her tongue felt like a flame. The moment she kissed him, he was kissing her. The fire raced between them, hot and wild. No holding back. They always tried, but it seemed like a wildfire that just roared out of control.

  Player tightened his arms around her but forced his eyes to stay open when he only wanted to keep his focus on his woman. The frame spun, moving faster and faster. The drawing itself receded into utter darkness, a black hole. The tension in the shed rose, stretched out until it felt as if any moment a hole could be torn in the atmosphere itself.

  “Don’t let go of each other,” Anat counseled.

  At first, it seemed, no one was on the other side.

  “Be patient. If he isn’t right there, the portal will summon him with a sound. If he’s anywhere near, he’ll come. He’s most likely got it in his private den or somewhere the rest of his family won’t see it,” Anat said. “Please stay connected.” There was eagerness in her voice she clearly tried to suppress. She hadn’t seen Amir in seventeen years, other than in pictures on the Internet. This would be the closest she would come to him in person. “He goes by François Marcellus Sanchez. It’s his legal name now.”

  A figure slowly began to take shape, the eyes first. He was a distance away, clearly guarding his identity.

  “François,” Anat called out to him. Her voice dripped with tears. “My son.”

  “Maman?” There was a wealth of emotion in the voice. The figure crept closer until a face with dark brown eyes was centered in the middle of the picture frame. He had dark hair, and as he got closer, they could see the web of scarring that ran along his face and neck, cutting along the dark shadow of his jaw.

  Anat reached up with trembling fingers as if she could smooth those scars away. “François. I didn’t think I would ever be able to talk to you. To see you.”