A Twist in Time (10 page)

“Eliminate, as in . . . kill?” She laughed. She had to remember it was Jake she was talking to here. “Jake, no one wants to kill me. I’m a bookseller, for God’s sake.”

But Jake didn’t laugh.

“They’ll want to find me, but not to kill me, just to get these,” she continued. “I’ve got the book.” She reached around to her bag and hauled out the book and set it carefully on the table.

“And this.” She fished out the diamond slightly bigger than her fist.

“Shit, howdy.” Jake stared at the diamond. Lucy realized that for him, it was this impossibly big diamond that made the whole thing resonate in his gut as real.

“From the lever. Machine doesn’t work without it. They could get another one—”

“Those don’t grow on trees.” He glanced out the windows. The sky was lightening. You could see the stream of headlights from early commuters coming over the Golden Gate. Lucy could just make out the rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts far off to the left. “They’ll find you, take what they want, and then they’ll kill you both. Or maybe they keep him, while they question him about his time. Captivity isn’t much better than death. Take it from me. Nothing for it, babe. You got to take your Viking and disappear.”

“Brad would never let anyone hurt me.” Why didn’t her voice sound surer?

“Look.” Jake reached across and took her two hands in his. “I know you think I’m the crank down the hall. But it takes an ex-spook to know a spook, and I worked on enough conspiracies in Southeast Asia to know conspiracies are real. The world is filled with bad people, Lucy.

Humor me on this one. Drop out of sight for a little while longer. Better safe than sorry.”

Lucy felt an actual pain in her stomach. If once you started seeing evil everywhere, pretty soon you’d be wearing huaraches and a serape and collecting guns. And yet she herself had already had doubts about turning Galen over to Casey. She started to shake her head.

“Okay, let’s do it this way,” Jake interrupted. “You said you felt it was your destiny to use the machine. You wanted to go to a time where magic was possible. So you travel through time and some wounded guy leans up against you and comes back with you. Sounds like magic to me. Or maybe destiny. Then again maybe not. But you land in the one place that can save him, then
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you come to the one guy in fifty miles who knows how to go off the map, which, believe it or not, you need to do. If that isn’t destiny, it sure is something. Ask your gut. Your gut knows.”

Lucy was about to protest or maybe just get up and go to the phone she saw hanging on the cupboard to call Brad. But she didn’t. Her gut, as Jake called it, was doing flip-flops. She looked around wildly for something to hang on to.

Galen raised his head, sensing her distress. He stared at her, frowning. Oh, those blue eyes.

Even she was not immune. She steadied, searching his face.

Jake receded. The kitchen seemed far away. And she felt something . . . emanating from Galen, like he was his own vortex of true and right. Her stomach eased. A feeling of . . . she could only describe it as . . . as wholeness flashed through her and was gone. And its loss was the most devastating thing she’d ever experienced. Her eyes filled.

The room came flashing back. She blinked at Galen as a breath shuddered through her. It felt like the first breath she’d ever taken, that screaming first breath of a newborn babe, howling at the loss of sanctuary, the harshness of a new reality dawning.

Slowly she turned to Jake. She had no idea what she would say. But the words came anyway.

“He needs to heal. Then things will be all right.”

“You agreeing or not?” Jake demanded, examining her.

“I’m agreeing.”

“Good.” Jake rubbed his hands together and stood. “I’ve been preparing for this day for a lotta years. I’ve got a car registered under a false name and a forty-four-footer in a slip up north on the bay registered to another one. Not traceable. You can stay there. No phone calls, no letters, and for God’s sake no credit cards.”

“Won’t they look for me here?”

“You’ll be gone in ten minutes. If they come looking, everyone in the building will say the same thing I do. Ain’t seen you. Their part’ll be true.”

Ten minutes? He went to the pantry, scooped away some containers of flour and beans to reveal a safe, and twirled the knob. He pulled out a gym bag and tossed it on the table, zipped it open, and fished out a key ring. “Car’s in the basement. Blue Chevy, nothing special. Runs like a dream, though. Here’s fifty thousand in twenties and a nine-millimeter Glock with no registration number.”

“I can’t take money from you, Jake. And I wouldn’t know what to do with a gun.”

“The money’s a loan. I’ll charge you some usurious rate of return.” She didn’t believe that, and he could see it. “Look, girl. You saved my life once. You probably don’t even know that.” His
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smile was rueful. “No. You didn’t pull me out of a swamp, or get me out of a bamboo cage. You did it with casseroles. Even though I didn’t want to be saved. I was about ready to call it a day what with my daughter dying a day after that last surgery, knowing there would be other surgeries, that I’d never be the man I was again. You didn’t know that.”

He’d never said a word about his daughter dying only two days before Lucy had barged in with her first casserole. “That’s what friends are for,” she said softly.

“Exactly.” He cleared his throat and moved back to the table. He raised a tiny camera and held it up. “Smile.” He clicked a picture of her and one of Galen. “Two passports will be delivered to the Quik Stop up where the dirt road turns off Highway 37 day after tomorrow. That’s where the mail comes for the marina. Now give me your cell phone.”

She dug in her bag. “Jake, this is the latest iPhone,” she pleaded.

“Not anymore. You been gone four months. There’s a new version out. And from now on, cell phones are out, along with all Internet. The minute you hook into the Net to do a Google map, they’ve got you.” He took the phone, laid it on the table, and went to one of his kitchen drawers. He came back with the kind of wooden mallet you used to make paillards. Lucy sucked in a breath. She glanced to Galen. He seemed unfazed by the impending violence. He just looked gray. Jake brought the mallet down on the phone. Again and again, until little circuits shot out over the tile floor. “I’ll dispose of the pieces.”

Jake scratched on a grocery list pad with a stubby pencil, tore it off, and stuck it in the bag.”

Here’s the slip number and directions. Don’t fraternize with anyone on the boats around you, or the nosey little gossip up at the Quik Stop. Only the diehards will be up there in March, and they’re a suspicious lot. The boat’s got everything you’ll need except perishable food. If push comes to shove, take it out the Gate and sail west. You’re a good sailor.”

“I only crewed for Dad.” She couldn’t just head to Hawaii in a forty-four-foot sailboat. “And I can’t do it alone.”

“Two can crew her.” Jake nodded toward Galen. “Bet he knows how to sail.”

Lucy made a face.

“Ask him.” Jake pushed past her.

“He wants to know if you can sail a boat,” she said in Latin to Galen.

Galen looked at her as though she was . . . what did he call it? Feebleminded. “I have been
vikingr
on the whale road. I know water and wind.”

Okay, so he sailed. That didn’t mean he’d know anything about a modern sailboat. He was in no shape to haul sails anyway. And she couldn’t let Jake give her fifty thousand dollars. She’d have no way to get it back to him if they did go “off the map.” Which they were
not
going to do. But

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Lucy had caught Jake’s urgency. She gnawed at her lips. Jake seemed so sure of himself. And he was not going to take no for an answer. Jesus! Was she really going to try to hide out just because Brad and Casey had come looking for her when she didn’t return?

And brought the FBI? And confiscated everything she owned?

Jake came back in with an armload of clothes and a gym bag. “I had some overshirts that might fit him, but no jeans even close. There’s a Target in Novato and a Macy’s.” As the last of the clothes were being stuffed into the bag, a long samurai sword was revealed. “And this . . .” He hefted the curved black scabbard inlaid with intricate gold work. He held it out to Galen. “This is for you. My pa brought it back from Okinawa.”

Galen pushed himself up. His eyes slid along the scabbard. He knew what it was. He looked up once at Jake to make sure he wanted to give such a precious gift. Jake nodded. Galen took the scabbard reverently and pulled on the gold-worked hilt with his good left hand. The blade emerged, very slightly curved and lethal. It was much lighter than his sword. But that didn’t seem to dismay him. A small smile played over his lips as his eyes caressed the blade.

“It’s a killer all right.” Jake said. “At least in some men’s hands.”

Galen nodded, that curt acknowledgment he always seemed to give, and shoved the blade back in. “
Es g d . .
.” And then he said in Latin, “The steel is fine.” He switched back to his own language. “
Thonc to thu
.”

“Just don’t let anything happen to her.” Jake jerked a thumb to Lucy.

Galen glanced to Lucy and nodded again, just once.

As if he knew what Jake was saying or as if he could protect her in his condition. “Well, if you two are done with this testosterone fest, I think we’ll get going.” She put Leonardo’s book back in her bag along with the massive diamond. “I will pay back every cent of that money.”

“I have no doubt.” Jake zipped the bag and went to the door.

Lucy stopped. “He’s going to need a doctor, you know.”

“Not unless he gets infected. Did they give you antibiotics at the hospital?”

She nodded. “Yeah, Keflex, but—”

“You can change bandages and take out the stitches yourself.”

“Jake, I don’t know who you think I am, but I am not that person.”

Jake smiled at her. “Yes, you are, Lucy Rossano. You definitely are.” He swung around.

“Wait,” Lucy said as he threw the bolt lock. “How will I know it’s safe to come back?”

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“If nobody’s been around in a month, I’ll send you word. You won’t hear from me until then. If they do come around, they’ll be waiting for me to try to contact you. If you haven’t heard from me in a month, then something’s happened. If anybody shows up at the marina asking questions, the same. Just take the boat and sail west.”

She was about to protest, but he put a finger to her lips. He smiled again, but this time his eyes were sad. “No questions. No doubts. You go off the map and you don’t ever come back on it.

Sail around Borneo. Visit Sri Lanka. These buggers never forget. They’ll never quit looking. And there’s nothing you can do about whatever they decide to do with the machine. You’re a bookseller and he’s a tenth-century Viking. You are no match for them. You understand?”

This speech frightened Lucy as nothing else had. “Jake . . .”

He swung the bag off his shoulder and pulled it up onto hers. “Now you go. I’ve got to clean up.

There can be no trace of you here.” He took a handkerchief out from somewhere under his serape and pushed her out the door. Galen grunted and followed. The door shut. She heard the bolts snap into place.

“Okay, now we can make some time,” Lucy muttered as they cruised onto the Golden Gate. The traffic was backed up at the tollbooths coming south into the city, not heading north to Marin County. Car lights made a broad white ribbon snaking away onto the bridge itself. She glanced over to the half-naked man in the passenger’s seat of Jake’s Chevy. As she accelerated, he gripped the center armrest with his good left hand. His lips thinned into a grim line.

“Drive this cart more slowly,” he commanded.

Any slower and she’d probably get arrested. But any faster and Galen would probably lose Jake’s omelet. “It’s okay,” she said as she turned her gaze back to the road. Stupid. Like he would understand that. What was “okay” in Latin? “Es good,” she finally said, in what she hoped was whatever language he’d been using. It occurred to her that he didn’t know why fast was a good thing. She kept the car at fifty and eased over to the right-hand lane. She was probably the only person on the bridge actually going the speed limit.

“We must go fast.” Her lack of fluency in Latin was really annoying. And her accent was definitely different from his. He seemed to have trouble understanding her. “Jake—my friend Jake? Jake thinks men will come to . . . take you.” How was that so bad to him? “They would take you to a prison.” Sort of true. They’d hear about Galen from the hospital staff. And they wouldn’t let a treasure like an actual man from the past run around loose on the streets. They might be right about that. This whole thing was really bad. “We must go.” The word for escape escaped her. “Fast. Before they . . . find us.”