It was different at night. She came in every night and took away the things that tried to spill out of his head. So many terrible memories haunting him, and with each one, he moved farther away from her. She detested that. She had become aware that part of the reason he distanced himself from her was that he detested her ability to see what had been done to him as a child. No man wanted a woman knowing he’d been repeatedly raped and abused, subjected to the worst kinds of torture. He might want her to think they were nightmares, but they both knew she was looking into his real childhood memories.
She told herself a million times that she didn’t want him to think that the terrible things done to him made him unworthy of a relationship, but she knew it was so much more than what he considered the humiliation of her knowing about his childhood. There was much more to his past than that. More that she had caught glimpses of and he had tried to hide from her.
The stark truth was, he had killed people. A lot of people. If the images in his head were anything to go by, he had done some pretty terrible things to them first. When the men had been waiting in her garage to kidnap her, he had gotten to her fast in spite of being wounded twice. And he’d hurt at least two of them pretty severely. One was very bad, and he’d done it with his bare hands.
She’d been fighting off the two trying to drag her out of the garage. She had skills, and they weren’t trying to really hurt her—or kill her. That gave her an advantage Player didn’t have. She’d tried to warn him, but she hadn’t known there were so many in the garage lying in wait to try to kidnap her. For what? She had no idea what they were after. She had discussed it with her grandmother. The jewelry they’d had in the house was gone. The thieves had already taken it. What were they after?
Zyah forced her mind back to the pertinent facts, the ones she hadn’t confided to her grandmother—or to anyone else. Player had already been shot, suffered a terrible brain injury, but even with that, even unable to see, he’d shot two men, just going off the sound of their voices. She saw them fall. They’d been dragged off by their friends, but they both were hurt, she could tell by the trail of blood left behind. Strangely, the garage, yard, sidewalk and asphalt didn’t show one speck of blood an hour later, when she went outside. How had that happened?
Torpedo Ink had shown up. Player’s family. His brothers and sisters. They’d come to ensure he was safe. Steele had performed a miracle on him, and then stitched that deep groove that went nearly halfway around Player’s head before she had insisted he had to stay right there, that he couldn’t leave. Because she had that strange premonition she sometimes got that told her she needed to be somewhere or something had to be done. She had good instincts, and in this case, she knew had she not acted on them, Player wouldn’t have survived.
She sank down onto the bed, gripping the wooden post, facing the window that overlooked the sea. It looked out over the grassy field and the bluffs, with the view of the ocean crashing over the rocks, throwing white foam into the air. Her life felt like it was spiraling out of control, when she’d always been completely in control. She’d thought that was her problem. Never once had she let loose. She hadn’t known how—until that first night with Player.
Zyah had seen Anat working hard to get them out of debt and to provide a home for them. She had wanted to help her grandmother. From a very young age, she had begun to do whatever she could to contribute. That had given her a serious view on life. She had become disciplined and very focused on becoming financially sound for her grandmother and for her own future. She planned everything. Her job had allowed her to put her money in stocks and bonds. To put most of it toward retirement. She was even careful with her investments, not risking too much.
There had been so many nights she’d dreamt of letting loose. Of having friends and a partner. She could be that person she knew was inside her, waiting to break loose. “Player.” She whispered his name aloud.
This agony had to end soon for both of them. He wasn’t hurting because his heart ached for hers. Or his soul cried out for hers. He couldn’t take her knowing what had been done to him as a child. She didn’t blame him for that. But it still hurt when he stayed so distant from her. Since that night he’d initiated sex with her—and she wasn’t putting that responsibility on him, because she’d been all in—he’d grown even more distant. That really hurt.
She knew that every minute spent with him at night, getting into his mind, connecting them together, made it that much more difficult for her to let go of him, and she was determined to see him through this. His injury was completely healed, yet his migraines had worsened, as had his nightmares. Steele couldn’t explain it. They’d discussed the problem at length.
Every night, Player would have terrible relapses. The nightmares were so bad this last week that he’d gotten very little sleep. The illusions deepened until the reality they provoked grew stronger. She knew she would have to go back to the original Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland moment when he first brought out the characters for his Torpedo Ink brethren to amuse them. She needed to study that scene again.
Zyah had known she’d been close to discovering something sinister, something only Player had been aware of in that room. She found it odd that even Czar, who seemed so sensitive to all of the other children and everything going on around him, wouldn’t notice that Player detested Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or that something wasn’t right in that horrible basement. But then, every one of those naked, brutalized children was freezing and starved.
She hadn’t really looked at Czar’s face. Had he known? She’d mostly looked at Player and listened to the other children. She hadn’t wanted to see those little bodies with their ribs showing and sores everywhere. She hadn’t wanted to see the skin torn from their backs. The conditions had been so horrific, Zyah hadn’t wanted to look too closely. Did that make her a coward? She pressed her fingers tighter against her throbbing temples, hating to think she might be. She was still being a coward, trying to save herself by not looking deeper into Player’s mind. It wasn’t just the terrible things done to him and the others she would find there. She didn’t want to see what he and the others had done to anyone else.
She lifted her chin. If she really was going to help Player, she had to stop being a baby and just do everything necessary. If that meant discovering criminal activity— which she already knew had occurred, though she thought it was honestly warranted—then too bad, she’d have to live with it.
“Zyah.” Maestro stuck his head in the bedroom. “Need you downstairs. The cops are here. They want to see you, your grandmother and Player.” His eyes met hers, and her heart fluttered at the warning there. “Be cautious, and think before you speak.”
“I don’t know what that means.” But she did. She knew he didn’t want her talking about the kidnapping attempt. Player had been shot aiding her. He’d shot two men to keep her from being taken. He wore a bandana wrapped around his head, hiding the raw evidence of the wound.
Maestro’s eyes went liquid silver. Intense. “Zyah.”
The Torpedo Ink members had a way of just saying her name that was a reprimand. Or an invitation to join them in laughter. The latter was extremely rare and only happened with a couple of them. Maestro was one of them.