Reckless Road (Torpedo Ink 5)

“I’ve considered that,” Player said. He slid from the bed again and walked over to where the picture was hung on the wall.

Zyah’s heart accelerated, pounding hard. She hadn’t wanted to believe her grandfather’s art had anything to do with the entity that had been in her bedroom, but now that she wasn’t certain, she didn’t want Player anywhere near it. She jumped up and quickly turned on the light, dispelling the shadows, hopefully making it impossible for the thing— or person— to sneak back.

Player glanced at her over his shoulder. “He can’t get back right now.”

“How do you know?”

She came up to him, quite close, one arm sliding around his waist, not-so-subtly hinting. He reacted exactly the way she knew he would—he put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him, her front to his ribs, tucking her close the way he so often did. She took a deep breath, inhaling him into her lungs, and then turned her head to look at the picture.

Every line, thin or thick, was so familiar to her. She knew them by heart. The frame, that beautifully rolled frame, carved with such loving detail into an intricate scroll of ancient time, complete with symbols. She’d traced every one of them a thousand times and pressed kisses onto her fingertips and then onto those etchings just to connect with her father. She moved her head from side to side, fast and then slow, to try to see if the lines in the drawing changed at all. Once or twice she thought they did, but nothing very significant, and it could have been an illusion, simply because Player had suggested it.

“What do you see when you look at the print?”

“I see the schematics for a bomb.” He delivered the news softly. Gently. That same low voice he spoke with every day. Not like he was crushing her. Or would be crushing her grandmother if what he said was the truth.

She tried to pull away from him, but his arm tightened around her.

“Don’t, Zyah. We want honesty between us. I don’t have to be right. You asked me a question, and I answered you truthfully. I didn’t want to. I could have lied to you. I know if I’m right this is really fucked up. But my brain works out puzzles. I don’t even consciously do it half the time. I stared at this drawing from the bed for hours when I first came here. It intrigued me. I couldn’t look away. Sometimes I thought it was pulling me into it.”

“Your mind automatically goes to putting together bombs when you’re upset, Player,” she pointed out, looking for a reasonable explanation. There were many. There had to be many. “You had a massive brain injury. It was natural for your brain to go to the one thing that’s your fallback when you are severely injured and traumatized.”

He didn’t just dismiss her explanation out of hand. He considered it carefully. “That’s reasonable, Zyah. I thought of that too. But it doesn’t explain the fact that this bomb is one I’d never seen before. And it’s very real. It works. Or that I studied the picture for hours from every angle while I was in this room and I could see it very differently. I’ve been here for weeks now. I know there has to be a device to read it somewhere. An object that the drawing is viewed through. Your grandfather was a genius to create this picture and have it be right out in the open and no one suspect.”

Zyah did her best to have an open mind and process what he was telling her. Was it possible? “If my grandfather actually did what you’re saying he did, that means he came up with the plans for building a new bomb, right?”

“He was a physicist, right?”

She was silent for a while, staring at the drawing that had suddenly taken on a sinister implication. She sighed. “I don’t want to sleep in this room, Player. We should put a cover over this until we figure out what really is going on. Or better yet, get it out of the house.”

“I agree. I think it’s gotten to a very dangerous stage. I need to know who that man is. He isn’t an entity from another world or another time period. That’s a flesh-and-blood man from the here and now. He knows us. He looked right at us.”

“Do you think he has anything to do with the robberies? Or the attempted kidnapping?” An icy shiver crept down her spine.

“No, I think this is entirely separate. I’d be surprised if he knows about the robberies or attempted kidnapping. He wants the bomb.”

“I just don’t understand how he got into the bedroom.” She forced herself to look at the drawing again. She didn’t want to touch it. Nothing about the entire matter made any sense to her. She knew about psychic gifts. She believed in them. She had experienced evidence of them. She’d even seen what the repercussions of talents going wrong could do just in Player with his brain injury and migraines. This was an entirely different level of psychic phenomenon, and it creeped her out.