Reckless Road (Torpedo Ink 5)

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.