Shadow Boxer: NA Fantasy/Time Travel (Tesla Time Travelers Book 2) (31 page)

He pulls into Papi’s driveway and shifts into park, then rests his hands on the steering wheel, slowly gathering his thoughts with the same methodical approach he uses to get out of his recliner. I unlatch my seat belt, but don’t reach for the handle.

“I may be old.” He taps his temple. “But this thing still works.”

I pinch the crease of my pants.

He stares at me. “You need anything—anything—you come ask me. I still know people who can get you out of whatever you’re involved with. You’re a good girl, Evy. Don’t let one wrong decision screw up your entire life.”

I nod. There are no words to comfort either of us.

He pats my hand. “Because you can’t outsmart the FBI.”

I lean across the expanse of front seat and give him a huge hug. “Thanks, Mr. Steinaman. But it’s nothing. I promise.”

The look he gives me as I get out of the car lets me know he doesn’t believe a word of it.

Me either.

I push through the back door and expect noise and people, but no one’s in the back room. Or the kitchen. Or the front room. Finally, I find Tiana at her desk, bent over a calculator, scribbling notes on a loose sheet of paper. My heart aches at the similarity of her writing to Nikola’s. These math geniuses are all the same; too much stuff going on in their heads to take time for legible.

I knock on the doorjamb, and she doesn’t look up. I knock again, but get the same response, and I spot her iPod. I cross to her desk and tap her on the shoulder, making her jump.

She tugs an earbud out and smiles. “Hey.”

“Where is everybody?”

She shrugs and leans back in her chair, stretching. “Papi’s probably on his way home. Mami’s most likely picking up Des and Soph from dance.”

I nod and twist her paper so I can see it. “What’s this?”

She sags. “AP Calc. It’s fun.”

I stare at the paper, wishing math translated like Latin. Then I snatch the paper.

“Hey!” She grabs for the paper. “I have to turn that in.”

I palm her forehead and hold her at arm’s length. Her problems are lined up like Nikola’s, but she only has two. I set it back on her desk. “Do you get this stuff?”

She flattens it out, smoothing the creases I made. “Mostly.”

“After dinner, I need you to come look at something.”

She perks up. “Lightning-something?”

The front door slams and my little sisters run through the house, all loud and squeaky. I look up from the paper into her eager face. “Yeah.”

After dinner, we make the excuse of grabbing Ike, and escape back to my place.

As we roll past the first police car at the end of my street, the icy grip of dread tightens its hold. Red and blue flashes make the tree limbs dance in a fiercely wild tango. Two more are parked just past the entrance to my building, but still not a single officer anywhere. I scan the other cars for something ominously FBI-ish. There’s a single dark sedan, but I’ve seen it before and I think it belongs to one of Mr. Steinaman’s golf buddies who lives in the building behind us. Otherwise, there are the normal gawkers and onlookers bored enough to check out empty cop cars.

Tiana presses her face against the window. “What’s going on?”

I put the truck in park. “Not sure, but no screwing around.”

“Okay,” she whispers, hopping out and following me up the sidewalk to my place. I search the windows of the Steinaman’s and wonder if I should knock, but I’m not sure I want to call Mr. Steinaman’s attention to what’s going on if he hasn’t noticed.

But as I push my front door open, the mirrored echo of another turns my head. Mr. Steinaman stands in our small courtyard, bathed in a pool of light from his living room.

“You’re back early.” Wariness and suspicion belies his old-man aloofness.

“We’re not staying. Let me know if you see anything funny headed my way.”

He straightens and salutes then closes his door and whips his front curtains open. I nod and push Tiana through my door, shutting it behind us. “Upstairs.”

We race up the three flights to the spare bedroom, ditching my heels halfway. I’m not sure about staying here while she does the math. I frantically try to think of somewhere else we could go. Back to Papi’s, I suppose, but if there really are people here trailing me, I don’t want to lead them back to the rest of the family… Even though they probably already know everything about me…
 

My stomach clenches. At the door, I wrap a hand around Tiana’s forearm. “Hold on.”

I drop her arm and step to the right. I don’t want to pull her in there with me on accident. I take a deep breath and surround myself with lightning and arc inside the room, pulsing my lightning until it fills the room.

After the tendrils dissolve, I open the door for Tiana and wave her in. I debate about closing the door, but leave it open so I can hear any strange noises.

I slide the closet door and Tiana peers closer. “Wow.”

I pop the latches and pull out the envelope. She digs out her calculator and drops to the floor, cross-legged and expectant. I pause. Where else?

“I don’t want to do it here.… ”

“Because of the cop cars?”

I wince. “Kind of.”

She shrugs and slides the paper out and studies the equations. “Interesting.”

While I think about where else we could go, she starts in on the equations, scribbling on a notepad she pulled from her back pocket. Where I am chaos, she is preparation.

“I thought they were already solved?” I ask.

“I wanted to double-check the math, to see if there’s anything hidden in the equation or solution. Just because there’s an answer doesn’t mean it’s the correct one.”

I pace the room. Anywhere we go is findable. Except… I look back at her, head bent over the papers, hands flying over the calculator and paper.

I shake my head. I can’t take her to Constantine. If she’s a rider and traveling via lightning, it will initiate her own alteration, and I need her to help me finish this one.

Blue and red lights ricochet off the ceiling, and I peek out the window at the end of the landing. The cop cars are moving. The two down the street stop next to each other, and I can see the drivers talking to each other. After a few minutes, they flip their lights off and leave. From here, I can’t see the one who was at the end of the street, but I assume he’s gone as well.

“Hmm,” Tiana mumbles.

“What’s up?”

“This is odd.” She scribbles on the paper. “Look at this.”

I check the window one last time, but don’t see anything out of the ordinary, so I cross the room and stand over her shoulder.

“Okay, this first one is simple algebra. Nothing crazy, but then the second is a physics formula, the third is a geometric equation, and by the fourth one, we’re into seriously advanced calculus. The last two are insane. I don’t understand why they’re together, let alone in this order. Unless whoever wrote this was trying to make a point.”

Or leave a clue.

I crouch next to her. “Tell me again.”

This time, as she tells me, I let my mind blur at the edges and hunt for the connection, for whatever Nikola was trying to tell me. To punctuate her sentences, she draws a dark square around the mathematical answers. On the sixth one, she doodles a scalloped line connecting all the answers.

“Maybe it’s about the answers, not the kind of equations,“ she says.

“What do you mean?” I rock back on my heels.

She cocks her head and studies the paper. “In math, it’s
always
about the answer. It never matters how you solve the problem, only that it’s solvable. I mean,
and
that you follow the rules to solve it.”

I stand and twirl a fat curl, drawing it to my mouth and feathering the end against my lips. One conversation would have saved all this confusion. Why didn’t he tell me what these were, or how to use them when he sent me for them?

Unless other people were listening.

“Okay, so assume for now it’s about the answers. Where does that take us?”

She taps the paper. “I think they’re connected. We could plug the digits into a search engine and see what comes up.”

I spin from the room. “Worth a shot.”

She follows, but I pause at the second landing before stepping into the kitchen, and glance at the open door of the spare bedroom.

“Come on.” Tiana pushes me forward.

“Don’t let me forget to close that door.”

“Sure,” she says absentmindedly as she opens my laptop.

I stare through the wall toward the spare bedroom while she clicks away. “I’ll be right back.”

She doesn’t answer, just peers closer at the screen.

I jog up the stairs and trigger the trap for the spare room and pull the door shut and return to the kitchen.

At the computer, Tiana’s twirling her pen and staring across the room.

“Find anything?”

“Could they be coordinates—like a latitude and longitude?”

More patents and papers? “Maybe.”

I swing around the counter and see what she’s pulled up. It looks like an abandoned lot near a river. “Zoom out.”

She clicks the map until a few names start appearing.

I shake my head. “Further.”

The map expands and I squint, leaning closer. “Kyrgyzstan? Okay, not coordinates.”

“Wait.” She pulls the paper between us and stabs Nikola’s name. “Whose name is this? Someone important?”

I nod. “These are his equations.”

“And this?” She touches Westinghouse’s name.

“The money behind Nikola’s work in the beginning.”

“Or
N
for north and
W
for west, right?” Before I can answer, she changes the search, adding the letters between the numbers. The map shifts, and now the nearby names are ones I recognize—Chester, East Hampton, Norwich. The arrow is back at an abandoned lot along the water’s edge, but at least we’re back on familiar ground.

“Get directions from there to Wardenclyffe Tower,” I say, playing a hunch.

The map shifts, starting the directions at Wardenclyffe, a green line splits the screen, guiding us to the mystery location in thirty point two miles.

Someone pounds on the door, startling us both. “Evy!” Mr. Steinaman yells. “Time to go!”

He eases the front door open and I spin Tiana on the chair. “Go with him. I’m going to arc to find out what’s there.”

“But—”

“Go.”

“Tiana’s coming with you,” I shout and disappear to the coordinates.

C
HAPTER
32

D
UST
MOTES
FLOAT
through the sunbeams drenching me. I squint through the bright light to figure out where I landed. Thirty feet above, steel beams span at least sixty feet across the warehouse. Every ten feet, they’re dotted with large spotlights, two of which are pointed straight at my location, not sunbeams. Large air movers whir in the corners, preserving the contents of the warehouse. I step out of the blinding light and let my eyes adjust and step on a rock and wince. I close my eyes and sigh—my shoes are on my stairs. The floor is clean, if dusty. Situated in neat rows, tall racks of boxes stretch in every direction. I walk down three rows, accompanied by only my breathing and slap of my bare feet on the concrete. But it’s a peaceful quiet, and the sense of ominousness is gone.

From here I can’t tell when I am. No clock, no way to get a paper slid under the door. Inside this warehouse is its own little time bubble. Maybe before I go, I can slip outside and figure it out.

At the end of the row, the contents of the racks change to mechanical devices, and most are ones I’ve seen during my trips to visit Nikola. I turn a giant circle and laugh.
I’d say
that piece of paper was more important than any other.

His entire life is here, stashed away for me to use as needed to see his legacy outlive him. Tears sting my eyes. So smart. So giving.

So unappreciated.

I wander up and down the rows, stunned at the sheer volume of brilliance.
 

Returning to the first row where I arrived, I slide a dusty box off the lower stack and lift the lid. The overly organized contents make my guts twist, and I pick up a handful. His handwriting looks off, and when I tilt the page I can tell it’s a copy.

I lift my head and stare at the boxes. Photocopies? I didn’t even think those were invented during his time. George must have helped him with a lot of it. I smack my hand to my forehead. I never did figure out if George knew anything about Nikola’s last days.

I put the pages back and close the lid. Standing, I survey the giant expanse of warehouse again.
 

If Ilif finds this…
 

A crackle of lightning erupts behind me and I spin.

“Crap nuggets!” Tiana stumbles into the warehouse.

“What the—Tiana!” I lunge for her. “How did you get here?”

Trembling, she clings to me and says, “After–after you left, there was a tiny silvery thing. I thought it was just lightning, so I touched it.”

I scrunch my face. “That’s residue. Shit.
And
your first alteration. You might not be able to go straight home now—you’ll have to complete the first part.”

She straightens. “I don’t understand any of what you just said.”

I shake my head. “We need Penya. I don’t know how to lead you through an alteration, and this one of mine isn’t done yet. You got here using my lightning. The residue brought you to me. But you can’t use it to get home.”

The beam from the spotlight to our left grows and lengthens vertically. Tiana jumps behind me, and I shield her with my arm even though I’m mostly positive it’s Penya.

When her features solidify, I sigh. “Where have you been?”

“It has been… most interesting around here.”

“Yeah well, I’ve needed you. I’ve got problems—”

She holds up her hand. “Where
are
you?”

“A warehouse of Nikola’s. I don’t know when I am or if it’s still intact in my birthtime, but… ” I sweep my hand across my body. “I think it’s everything.”

“This,” Penya says breathlessly as she turns back to me. “This is what I have—what Ilif’s been searching for. Everything is here. Oh, Evy. Now you
must
lie to Ilif. Tell him the men who arrived upon Nikola’s death took everything.”