Page 59 of Tightrope

“That’s Futuro,” she said, “the robot that shot Pickwell. Those drawings don’t look anything like the robot out there in the workshop.”

“No, they don’t. I wonder what inspired Pickwell to change the final look so drastically.”

“Maybe he was a fan of some of the science fiction magazines, likeAstounding Stories,” Amalie suggested. “They feature robots and alien monsters on the covers all the time.”

Matthias looked around. “There’s no evidence that Pickwell read fiction of any kind.”

“Well, he could have gotten his inspiration from a cover ofPopular Mechanics, I suppose. Regardless, this version of Futuro is a lot better-looking than the original.”

“There is nothing in this workshop that indicates that Pickwell cared about design,” Matthias said. “He was not particularly creative in any way, as far as I’ve been able to determine. So what could have made him devote so much energy to a fancy new look for Futuro?”

Glass shattered somewhere in the workshop. Amalie yelped in surprise. She looked through the open doorway and saw a small, rounded object rolling across the floor.

Matthias wrapped a hand around her upper arm and hauled her out of the doorway.

“Under the desk,” he ordered. “Move.”

He shoved her into the open area under the metal desk and squeezed in beside her.

“Someone threw a rock through the window?” she asked.

“Not a rock,” Matthias said. “Fingers in ears. Do it.”

She obeyed.

The explosion boomed in the adjoining room, so loud and disorienting that Amalie knew she would have been deafened if she had not obeyed Matthias’s orders to block her ears.

The shock of the blast reverberated through the walls and floors. The entire building shuddered. More glass shattered. Some of the flying shards came from the pane set into the office door. She and Matthias would have been lacerated, quite possibly blinded, or even killed had they not been wedged into the space under the desk.

An eternity passed before an eerie silence fell. Matthias took his fingers out of his ears and reached inside his jacket for his gun.

Amalie lowered her hands and discovered that even though she had managed to partially block her ears, they still rang. Cold chills sent shiver after shiver through her.

“What just happened?” she managed.

“Grenade.”

Chapter 29

A car engine roared in the street. Tires shrieked.

Matthias got to his feet, gun in hand, and looked down at Amalie.

“Stay where you are,” he said. “He might be waiting outside to see if we survived.”

“I just heard a car,” she said. “It sounded like whoever was driving was in a very big hurry to get as far away as possible.”

“Odds are it’s the bastard who threw the grenade but I want to be sure he’s gone.”

“A mysterious tire blowout last night and a grenade blast today,” Amalie said. “The next time we go on a date I’m going to bring my own gun.”

“My social life is not usually this exciting,” he said.

“Neither is mine.”

He moved cautiously out of the doorway, watching the shattered windows for any sign of a shift in the shadows that might indicate someone was circling the workshop in search of fleeing targets.

The interior of Pickwell’s shop had looked like a junkyard before the explosion. Now it resembled one that had been struck by a tornado. Tools, chunks of metal, instruments, and equipment had been swept off the workbenches and strewn around the room. Shards of glass crunched beneath Matthias’s shoes as he made his way through the outer room to the front door.