A Twist in Time

Chapter 17

Brad watched the cranes move into place on the asphalt between the parking structure and the hospital, anxiety churning in his breast. The army engineers had determined just where at the base of the machine to hook in and winch it up onto the flatbed truck over the rollers set in front of it. But that didn’t mean the torque might not still damage the machine further. They’d waited until dark to attract as few eyes as possible. But still gang members, old people, and the local prostitutes were way too interested in the goings-on. Arc lights nearly eclipsed the light of the full moon rising over the bay.

Brad turned to where giant I-beams formed a new entrance to the parking structure. The rollers clattered, signaling the movement of the machine out into the glare of the arc lights.

Now if only he was sure he could fix it. They might never find Lucy and the diamond and the book. She was probably busy fucking that Viking hunk’s brains out. The thought made Brad sick and strangely excited. If he ever caught up with them, he’d do what they did in Viking times with women like her. He’d have her stripped naked and whipped through the streets with crowds yelling, “Whore!” and pelting her with stones and refuse.

Or maybe he was just imagining that’s what they did back then. It didn’t make a less attractive prospect. And as for the Viking . . .

“Watch out there!” he yelled as a workman who was pushing the machine across the rollers stumbled and went down. “You damage that, you’re . . . you’re toast.”

The guy in overalls picked himself up, glaring.

“Bet he’s frightened of that threat. I sure am.”

Brad whirled to find Casey standing, haggard and hard-eyed, behind him.

“Well, at least I’m holding up my end of the bargain. I’m getting the machine back to the lab. I don’t see you finding my little whore of a girlfriend and her tenth-century boy toy.” He wasn’t quite sure how he had the courage to talk like that to Casey. But then Brad had changed a lot since he found out Lucy had betrayed him and ruined his career into the bargain.

“I know who knows where they are,” Casey said. “That’s something.”

“The manager?” It seemed impossible that an old guy wearing huaraches and a serape had made them disappear into thin air. “That old coot?”

“He’s more than that.” Casey stared at the machine as it was pushed up to the base of the ramp that led to the flatbed.

“What is he?”

“Not quite sure. But he’s not working for any government agency. Had to call in some favors to find that out. Some coincidence that he happened to be the girl’s landlord. But since he’s not official, I can ask him directly where the girl is.”

“I want to be there.” Brad was already breathing hard at the possibility of finding Lucy.

“Might be kind of messy. Better take a pass.”

Brad swallowed. “Well . . . I should supervise the machine getting back to the lab anyway. Call me when you find out where she is. I want to see her face when the marines come over the hill.”

“Will do,” Casey said. Then he turned and walked to a waiting black Escalade beyond the army barriers.

Brad shivered. Casey wouldn’t call him. He knew that. Damn it! He had a right to be in on this whole thing. He wanted to see Lucy squirm. And the Viking? Whipping wasn’t enough. But Casey would know how to make him suffer.

“Well, Mr. Lowell, this interview is going to be a little different than the last one.”

Lowell was tied to a chair bolted to the old boards of a ramshackle building down by the industrial side of the docks, not the tourist side. It was being redeveloped, but the permits were hung up in red tape. Permanently. Made a convenient interview site.

“Yeah. I figured.”

Lowell didn’t look scared. He should.

“You disappeared that girl and her Viking, Lowell. I want to know where they are.”

“How would a broken-down old apartment manager who likes jazz know anything about disappearing people, Colonel?” He made the title sound like an epithet.

“Like that’s what you are.” Casey paced around the chair. Pollington stood in his shirtsleeves in the shadows. He had a billy club dangling down the seam of pants that broke perfectly over his tasseled loafers. Too bad that nice white shirt was going to get ruined tonight. “I don’t want to spar with you, Lowell. I just want some answers.”

“If wishes were horses . . .”

Casey nodded to Pollington, who hit Lowell in the belly and left him retching all over his knees. “Now this can be easy or hard, Lowell. Easy or hard.”

“Do your worst,” Lowell spit when he could get his breath. Then he smiled. Like he knew something more that Casey didn’t than the whereabouts of the girl.

Monday

Galen watched Lucy sleeping beside him, on her belly, the swell of her breasts clearly visible as they pressed into the bed, her frfeaxen hair spread out over the crumpled white linen. Light leaked in through the windows around the cabin, and sun lit her hair with shiny copper threads. The dog lay sleeping in one corner. Galen got up and fed him last night after he and Lucy made love again, and let him out to relieve himself. He was a good dog. When Galen brought Lucy bread and cheese and beer, the dog had begged, of course, in spite of his full belly. But when Galen had seen Lucy’s eyes light yet again, one word and the dog retreated beyond the cabin door while Galen swived her well and thoroughly until she screamed her climax. She was a generous lover, a generous person. She had tried to comfort him by telling him he was enough for her.

Not true. He did not deserve her. But somehow he had been granted a time with her, the Norns only knew how long. He would take it and be grateful to the gods. And he would protect her, in his poor way, as well as he could.

He lay on his good side, his elbow propping up his head, and watched her breathe. He felt good. Whole. Perhaps for the first time in a long time. Maybe ever. Lucy did that for him. He closed his eyes. He felt Lucy’s breathing, his breathing. His shoulder didn’t ache as much now. He could almost feel it sealing itself together with each breath. The boat seemed to breathe, too. No, it was just rocking. It was the water that breathed. He could not help the smile that curved his lips. How right that felt, that the earth breathed. Water breathed into the air; the plants breathed; the land warmed and cooled with the passing of the sun. He felt the bay stretch beyond the boat, out under the marvelous bridge they called the Gate of Gold and away to other lands stranger than he could imagine, teeming with life. Down into deep trenches darker than night went the water and up shallow estuaries to meet the rivers. And below the water was the earth itself, the muck of all existence, fertile and quick, and below that was a seething core of molten glass, fiery, like Lucy’s hair. He felt the ice that crept over the earth in places, colder even than the lands north of the Volga, and hot barren sands blowing in fury. They were all connected. They all breathed as one. . . .

But there was a sickness in the earth. The cities, like cankers, breathed out smoke. He felt a shelf of precious ice fall into the sea somewhere. The earth shuddered beneath it. He felt the fishes suck for air and gasp and die where rivers ran, yellow and noxious, into the pure blue-green of the sea. . . . Something was wrong, terribly wrong. . . .

“Well, sleepyhead, are you going back to sleep?”

His eyes snapped open, his feeling of connection gone. “Lucy.” He smiled, blinking. Had that been a dream? It was a strange one.

She sat up, clutching the sheet to her breasts. The dog rose and stretched and wandered over. Galen gathered Lucy into his chest and fondled the dog’s ears. “Yful hund,” he said.

“He’s not a bad dog.”

“You must name him, Lucy, if he is to be your friend.”

“You could name him,” she said, snuggling into Galen. She was so soft, so absolutely female. He held her more tightly to his body. He couldn’t imagine how she could not know she was beautiful. Had the men in her life never showed her what her beauty, inside and out, must do to them? He had thought to bind her to him by bedding her. But it was he who was bound. He only hoped that if and when this Brad came to claim her, she would not choose the man who could provide for her better than he could. That struck him to his heart. How selfish he was, to think to take her from a better life than he could give her.

He left off stroking the dog and stroked Lucy instead.

“I’m not sure what happened last night,” she murmured, sleep still slurring in her voice. “But I liked it.”

“You love my wpn,” he chided, smiling.

“Weapon?” She looked up at him. “You’re kidding.” She lifted the sheet. “Tell me that’s not what you call your . . .” She nodded to his pintel.

“Ja. We call it wpn. Like sword or spear. Same.”

“Technically it’s called a penis.”

“Pintel is my word.”

“But we call it cock, or shaft. I guess that’s like a spear.”

“Cock, like the bird, cock?”

“Uh-huh. Cockerel. Rooster.”

He tried to keep his mouth serious. “That is a very stupid name.”

“I think it’s because cockerels are so proud of themselves, just like men are of their. . . .”

“Their wpns.”

“Weapons.” She pretended to capitulate. But he knew her better than that now. “Okay, so tell me what you call other parts of your body.” She touched his chest.

“Breast, bosom.” He’d play this game all day if she would touch him.

She touched his eye.

“Eye.” Then other parts. “Chin. Shoulder. Elnborga.”

“That’s sort of like elbow.”

“Mh. Tunge.” When she touched his tongue, it made him shiver in places that had nothing to do with his mouth. “Hype, thoh,” He cleared his throat. Touching those was like to have consequences. “Hearthan.”

“Those are testicles. We call them balls.”

“I will remember that.” He kissed her hair.

Suddenly the dog came up beside them and shook one of Galen’s stockings fiercely to get their attention. Lucy laughed. “He still likes socks.” She turned to Galen in surprise. “I know. I’ll call him Vandal.”

“What means this word?”

“They were a people from around Germany, I think. It has come to mean ‘thief.’ You understand that?”

“Ja. Thof. Word is same. And we call those men Wendalls.” He turned it over in his mind. “Ja, Vandal is a good name for this dog.”

“I think this dog needs to go out.”

“Nay, Lucy. Vandal can wait.” Galen pulled her closer.

She put both palms on his chest. “We can wait. We have all day.”

He liked that. He wanted to spend the day making love to Lucy. It felt so right. They might not have very long. But they could make it a time that scalds would sing down the ages. He let her get out of bed, enjoying the sight of her rounded bottom and narrow waist, just touched by the ends of her long hair. She went to the little locker where she had her clothing and pulled on jeans and those tight shirts she called T-shirts.

“I’ll take him out. You did doggie duty last night.”

“I will shower, Lucy, to prepare for swiving you all day.”

Damn it! Casey was nowhere to be found. The goons fielding calls this morning at Casey’s lair downtown hadn’t seen him all night and professed not to know where he was. Brad slumped in a folding chair. The industrial green of the bullpen made his stomach turn. There were only a couple of guys there so early in the morning. The calls hadn’t picked up yet.

Brad had nowhere else to go. The machine was ensconced back in the lab down on the peninsula. He’d spent the night replacing parts in the power source. But without the diamond, he couldn’t even test the thing. Who knew whether they’d ever get a substitute diamond or whether that diamond would work in the same way as the one Lucy had stolen?

He picked up one of the handbills with the artist’s renderings of Lucy and the Viking guy on it. This is all Lucy’s fault. The anger coiled in his gut, hemmed in by impotence until he thought he might explode. He crumpled up the handbill and tossed it overhand toward the wastebasket. It bounced out and across the floor. He didn’t like to think what Casey might do to that landlord, but whatever it was, it damned well better work.

The telephone in front of him rang. He glanced up to see the guy in shirtsleeves point to him. The other two were busy murmuring encouraging noises into the microphones on their headpieces and taking notes.

What the hell? He might as well take some crank calls. What else did he have to do? He picked up the receiver, fitted it over his ear, and hit the button.

“Special Investigations Unit,” he answered. That’s what the other guys had been saying. He pulled over a note pad and removed his number two mechanical pencil from his shirt pocket.

“Hello? Is this the place where I report if I saw those two people you’re looking for?”

The guy sounded gay. The one bad thing about living around San Francisco. “Yeah.”

“They aren’t in any trouble, are they? She was so nice . . . and he . . . well, it would be a shame if they were missing or something.”

“Well, with your help, they won’t be missing long.” What bullshit. How many calls had Casey said they’d fielded already? Hundreds. Everybody had seen Lucy and her Neanderthal. They were in Oakland disguised in Afros and in Santa Cruz smoking pot. All at the same time. “Where exactly did you see them last?”

“Macy’s in Novato. She came in to buy him clothes. He’d lost his luggage in a car fire.”

“Novato. Check.” Nobody hid out in Novato. Suburbia. Small-time suburbia. Brad looked at the top handbill on the pile. Lucy and the Viking stared back. “Are you sure it was them?”

“Well . . .” Now we’ll get to it. It kinda looked like them. Brad could practically hear the guy’s certainty waning. “Well, the picture shows her with her hair back, so you can’t see how long it is. But it fell to her waist.” Brad glanced to the picture. You actually couldn’t tell she had long hair, but this guy knew she did. “And it’s not in color of course, so even though it says ‘red hair,’ you might miss that it’s really, really red hair.”

Shit. This could be it.

“How about the guy?”

“Well, he didn’t have a beard when I saw him, or those braids. But he did have long hair. And you don’t mention that he didn’t speak the language very well. He was Danish or something. Really well built. You can’t see that from the picture at all.”

Double shit. Novato. Now what to ask?

“Did . . . did they have what they bought delivered? We’re . . . we’re looking for the place where they might have been abducted.”

“Abducted? Oh, that’s just terrible. Well, let’s see. They took everything with them. Paid cash.” There was a long pause. This was going to be a dead end, like everything else. Just a dead end in Novato. “She did say they were living on a boat.”

A boat? He’d been right!

“Thank you, that’s helpful,” he said as calmly as he could. “Did she say exactly where?”

“No.” The guy’s voice fell. “No, she didn’t.”

“Well, that’s more than we had yesterday.” Brad glanced around. No one was paying any attention to him. That was good. A little plan was hatching in his mind. “Let me get your name and address. Be sure to contact us if you think of anything else.”

He clicked off his headphones. They were living on a boat in a marina. Casey’s people probably hadn’t worked their way up to Novato yet. They might never get there. It didn’t spring to mind when you thought about marinas. Not like Oakland or Sausalito. How many marinas could there be near a suburb like Novato?

Let Casey get what he could from the landlord. Casey always dismissed Brad like he was nothing. Maybe Brad would be the one to find them. He glanced around. Everyone was busy. He had the whole day to himself. Time for a trip to Novato.

Watching Galen come out of the shower was like watching Triton rise from the sea. Droplets clung to his body. His hair was damp around the edges and that wonderful cock of his was half-swollen as though remembering last night.

She’d taken Vandal out to race around the parking lot and the marshy area just to the northeast. The weather looked iffy, but just now, though damp, it wasn’t actually raining. The dog was a bundle of energy this morning. Unlike herself.

What a night. She’d thought the direct approach she and Galen had taken the first time would be a Viking’s only repertoire. Wrong. He knew women all right. Including how to use his mouth. She hiked in a breath and closed her eyes as her body shuddered in memory. He said he got it from the women in Gaul when he’d gone vikingr up the Seine. She’d begun to think more kindly of the women he’d had in his life if they were the root of her current pleasure.

It was more than pleasure.

She had never felt so right, so calm and sure of herself. That stuff about a full moon on the vernal equinox was ridiculous, of course. Moonlight had been luring lovers into each other’s arms since time immemorial. It didn’t mean there was any magic to it, even though she’d told him that the night had wanted them together. That was just to comfort him, because he so wanted magic in his life. And also for her comfort, maybe, because she’d been looking for magic, too, to take her away from a life she didn’t care about. Everyone craved magic. They wanted to believe you could eat all the calories in the world but not gain weight, that you could exercise while you slept, that God paid attention to your prayer for a Mercedes-Benz. Easy results without any effort from you.

But so what if she’d lied to him? There might be no magic, but she had gotten closer to Galen last night than she’d ever been to a man. That was miracle enough. Of course it wasn’t love. Not in six days. But it was . . . something.

With a Viking, no less. Who knew?

Galen dried himself with a towel, but his eyes never left hers. When he was done, he didn’t feel the need to wrap it around his hips. He let it fall to the floor. That didn’t annoy her now. She wasn’t afraid of the effect his nude body had on her anymore.

“Do you like to go around naked?” she whispered as she took the few steps across the salon toward him.

“Ja. Naked is good. You be naked, Lucy.” He reached for her.

It was only then that she noticed his shoulder. The wound was entirely sealed. Yesterday she’d thought it would be days yet before she could remove the stitches. This morning it looked like she might be late.

“Galen, look. . . .”

He peered down at his shoulder, then stared back at her, questioning. She had no answers. “I . . . I heal good.”

“That couldn’t happen overnight. . . .” Was she talking to herself or him?

“Mayhaps last night, it could.”

She pulled away to look at his thigh. It was the same. Really almost healed entirely. “Well, we’d better get those stitches out.” The moment she’d dreaded was on her. And now those stitches were in there tight. She retrieved her supplies and the little nail scissors. She could do this. She could.

He sat on the sofa. She got the disinfectants from the head that opened on his cabin. Chewing her lip, she bore down on him.

“Lucy, I will do this thing.”

Had she looked that uncertain? Well, she wasn’t uncertain. He needed her help, and she could do this for him. “You will not. I took care of these wounds, and I will see this through.”

He raised his brows and held up his hands, palms out, in surrender. “Ja. You will do this thing.”

She’d start on the thigh. That one was the most healed. Pulling out the stitches would probably make him bleed. But it had to be done. She made her mind small as she knelt in front of him, steadied his thigh with her left hand, and cut each stitch with the little scissors. That was the easy part. She let out a breath and grabbed the knot end of the first stitch between the nail of her thumb and fore-finger. She pulled. God, she could feel the stitch pulling through the flesh. Blood seeped out in two bright dots. She let go as though burned and glanced up to Galen. He hadn’t flinched, but this must hurt.

He smiled. “Is okay, Lucy. Swift. Like this.” He made a plucking motion in the air.

Taking her lip between her teeth, she grabbed the knot again and just . . . jerked. Oh, dear. Oh, dear, dear, dear. She realized she’d been holding her breath. Okay. She’d done it. She patted away the drops of blood with a cotton ball soaked in Betadine.

One down and about a zillion to go.

She was so afraid to hurt him. It took all she had to keep at it. Galen wanted to protect her from that. He could have pulled the stitches out faster. But she needed to do something she was a little afraid of, to make her sure of who she was. He knew she was strong. But he wasn’t sure she knew it of herself. He sat, watching her concentrate, murmuring apologies he only half-understood. The bond he shared with this woman made him wonder at himself. Had he changed so much that she could capture and hold him so securely, without even trying?

Perhaps. Or maybe he had always had it in him to bond with a woman. He had just never met the woman with whom he was destined to bond.

He had finished healing, nearly. If he listened, he could feel the knitting of the muscle and sinew inside his shoulder, slow, inexorable. And if he listened to that, then other sensations crept in. Wind, whirling across land and sea. Far away the rumble of an angry earth as the hot liquid iron pushed up through a mountain. An island, its strange trees tossed in a mighty wind like green hair, as a storm battered it. All . . . all wove together into a kind of singing, bass and high, like men and women sang together. A song of the earth.

Something had changed last night. Perhaps many things. Maybe he himself had changed.

“That’s it,” Lucy said, jerking Galen from his reverie. The song subsided.

He glanced down at the scars, now accompanied by a line of dots on either side. Lucy swabbed them with the yellow-orange of her acetum.

“You do good, Lucy,” he said. She tried not to smile. She was proud of herself.

“Now I’m going to feed us some steak for breakfast,” she pronounced, rising. “Or, uh, lunch as the case may be. Then I have something I want to do to you.”

He raised his brows. “Ja? What is this something?”

“You’ll see. Can’t let that shower go to waste.” And with a smug look he found most appealing, she turned into the tiny galley, Vandal sniffing at her heels and poking her, to remind her that his bowl was empty.

Galen could hardly wait to find out what she had in mind.