Page 76 of The Deeper Game
My heart hurt, thinking of how distraught and enraged they’d feel.
How helpless.
I had to find a way to survive this. To get back to them.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Drive.”
I once saw something on Reddit that you should crash a vehicle if you had somebody making you drive someplace, that the driver’s side airbag would save you.
But then again, it was on Reddit.
“If they really cared about you, they would’ve called off the job,” he said.
Okay, maybe Iwouldcrash the truck.
We drove past a lamppost with a massive, solid-looking base that would’ve been a good candidate. At the last moment, I couldn’t do it.
It turns out that crashing a vehicle isn’t the easiest thing to make yourself do.
“I heard Odin and Zeus talking about how uncomfortable they were that Sleazy Travis didn’t confess,” Manning continued. “At least their instincts are spot on. Too bad they didn’t heed them. The call of vengeance was just a little too compelling. They put their passions over their reason. And didn’t heed the warning.”
“You sent the Abe Lincoln message?” I asked.
“Yes indeed,” he said. “I gave them a chance to straighten up, but they chose not to. They chose passion and petty bullshit. Well, they’ll never make that mistake again after today, and that is my lesson for them.”
He crossed his legs, like we were having this casual and pleasant chat.
Creep.
“They discussed it a ton when you weren’t around,” he continued. “Deep down, they really weren’t sure it was Travis—I could tell. Zeus didn’t tell you this, but he felt they were missing something. Eventually, he decided it was just his enjoyment of investigation speaking. He was afederaleback in the day, but of course, you know that. Even investigators lie to themselves. Love is blind, as they say. Tell me, Isis,” Manning continued, modulating his voice a few octaves upwards for extra creepiness, “do you want them to love you?”
“They already do.”
“Do they? I’m not so sure.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said. “You’re just the A/V guy. You’re a camera and tape recorder, but you’re not really there. I feel their love.”
“I don’t know about that, considering they’d rather be sitting in heating ducts and stealing things that don’t belong to them than protecting you.”
I sniffed, like he was so beneath everything, but if both Zeus and Odin had been having serious ongoing doubts about Sleazy Travis being the feather guy, how could they have continued with the robbery?
“We both know what they really love.”
“You don’t know anything.”
He smiled.
I frowned at the road. They were willing to die for each other, and sure, they were willing to die for me, but Manning had a point. Vengeance was underneath it all. The foundation of everything. My eyes heated with tears.
“Poor Isis,” he said in his creepy tone. “Your robbers have only one true love.”
“Jealous?”
He looked smug.
Jealous?It was a sad retort. I was starting to feel like I was in third grade, desperate for a zinger but only coming up with stuff like, ‘No, YOU’RE a doofus.’
