A Twist in Time (17 page)

another passageway. It must lead to the place where she slept, since she had not slept in his bed, though it was plenty large enough for two.

He opened a door in the passageway. It led down to a room filled with the smell of grease and much metal in convoluted shapes. He peered around in the dim light from the open door. He could not tell for certain the sword wasn’t there, but he could not find it. Back up in the passageway, he found another door to a shallow closet that held boxes of strange metal tools, and spare rope, boxes of soap. He pawed through everything. No sword, Too bad. The closet would have been a likely place for her to store the sword. At the far end of the passage, he pushed into the room she had taken for her own. It was tiny, with barely room for a narrow bed on one side. A little box-table like the one beside his bed held a lamp. There was a chest under the bed. He pulled open the drawers. Bedding, but no sword. He looked around. Across from the bed was another cupboard. Inside on a hook on the door hung the shirt she had worn last night that left her legs bare. He could not resist. It seemed to draw his hand. The cloth was almost furry, soft to the touch. He could imagine it against the white skin of her arms and her breasts. He lifted the cloth to his face and inhaled. It smelled exactly the way she had smelled when she leaned over him to fix his sling last night. But now there was the added scent of soap. She had bathed just before she donned this garment. How he would like to bathe her. He imagined his palms, slippery with soap, sliding over the generous mounds of her breasts. . . .

No sword, though. Where had she hidden it?

His eyes fell on the bed. Knowing that she slept there made his loins tighten. He could imagine her, soft with sleep, her long, dark lashes brushing her cheeks. He would love to wake her, his weapon needy to bury itself in her body. . . .

Back to the bed. The mattress was about six inches thick laid over the wooden drawers.

She wouldn’t have put it in the most obvious place, would she? He leaned over and felt under the mattress.

She had.

He pulled the scabbard from under the mattress, triumph circling in his belly.

“Hail the
Camelot
.”

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Galen jerked around at the male voice coming from the dock.

“Permission to come aboard . . .”

Galen didn’t understand. But he knew danger when he heard it. Would the ones who came for him call out to announce their presence? He pulled the sling over his head and slid his arm out, gripping the eight-inch knife. With his left hand he tore the strap from around his ribs.

Footsteps thunked on the deck above. Choices. Go up to meet the danger or wait in ambush?

But the quarters were tight here. No room to for his sword to swing, biting flesh and hacking bone. He slid the blade from the scabbard with a hiss. He’d have to fight left-handed. More reason to fight in the open. He wasn’t as precise with his left hand. He gripped the knife with his right hand. It had no strength, but if it got to close quarters, he might do some damage.

There was a knock at the hatch up to the deck.

A knock?

That changed things. He stood under the hatchway, deciding.

“Anybody home? I saw your lights last night.”

“
G d mergan
,” Galen called up. But he didn’t put his weapons down.

“Oh, you must be German. . . . Sorry. I don’t speak the language.”

Galen didn’t understand the man, but the voice was not threatening. He stepped up onto the ladder, shifted his sword to his bad hand along with the knife, and unlatched the hatch. He pushed it up. One set of legs was visible on the forward edge of the square trough through which you entered the cabin. He hadn’t heard more than one set of footsteps. He shifted the sword back to his good hand, letting it drop to his side where it was less conspicuous, and put down his knife. Hacking up innocent visitors would only draw attention.

Galen stepped up the ladder cautiously into the square trough in a brisk wind. A doughy man with sparse, pale hair was outlined against a blue sky edged with fast-moving dark clouds. It would rain soon. The man stepped back in surprise as Galen emerged. His pale eyes widened.

Galen watched as they roved over Galen’s hair and beard, settled for a moment on his bandaged shoulder, darted to the other bandage on his thigh, registered the fact that he was naked.

The man started to turn his head away, then saw the sword. He raised his hands, palms out.

“Wow, didn’t mean to . . . to interrupt anything here.” He backed across the small deck.

Galen smiled and shrugged, all the while examining the pudgy man for signs of deceit. “
Ic ne
understand Englisc
.” Not their kind of Englisc anyway. He stepped toward the ladder up to the main deck. He did not want to be at a disadvantage, even with this pudgy man.

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The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed under his fleshy neck as he watched Galen climb the ladder.

“Your neighbors . . . well, one of your neighbors, just wanted to know who was here. This boat

. . . well, no one’s ever taken it out. And no one has ever stayed aboard, either.”

Galen raised his brows politely at this torrent of anxious words. Sweat had broken out on the man’s forehead. Now that they were on the same level, Galen towered over him.

“Well . . . well, if there’s anything you need, just let me know. I’m almost always at the Quik Stop up on the highway.”

Galen watched the man back awkwardly over the line railing. He raised his right hand as far as he could in what he hoped the man would interpret as a friendly salute, ignoring the stabs of pain that shot through his shoulder. The man turned and walked down the dock, glancing back over his shoulder often. Galen registered another figure, tall and angular, browned by the sun, coiling rope down at the far end of the dock near one of the boats lighted last night when Galen was up on deck. As the pudgy one hurried to the gate, the brown man glanced up, then stared down at Galen before calmly going back to his work. He was a man who would not back down from trouble. Galen had known such men all his life and he recognized one of them instantly now. Galen watched the pudgy man until he got into a cart that was not cared for as well as Lucy’s and drove away up the dirt road. Galen retreated below decks. He got the hatch secured and collapsed onto one of the soft benches across from the table, breathing raggedly. Curse his weakness! If that small excuse for a man had been the lean and brown one down at the other end of the dock—or even if he had meant harm and had a weapon—

Galen would have been in dire straits. He’d better get his strength back fast, before Lucy’s lover and his friends came calling. . . .

Lucy pulled into the parking lot in the strip mall on the edge of Novato, now dressed, courtesy of the bathrooms at the Safeway, in jeans and layered T-shirts, a pink elbow-length-sleeved one with lace at the neckline over a white long-sleeved one, a windbreaker, and tennies. She didn’t smell like blood at all. Things were looking up. The clerk two registers over at the Safeway had heard Lucy asking about pepper spray and recommended a store called Surveillance Unlimited, right on her way to the freeway. This wouldn’t take but a minute, just to check and see if they had it. The store lurked in the corner. She swallowed. The guys who hung out in places like this were mostly semi-loons. But then that included Jake, and she liked Jake just fine. She screwed up her courage and got out of the car.

The store had the kind of windows where you can see out but not see in, which made it look a lot like Darth Vader. She pushed open the door. A buzzer sounded. The place was filled with fancy binoculars and telescopes, cameras with long lenses, tape recorders, and electronic equipment she didn’t recognize. A skinny guy behind the counter wore a T-shirt that advertised some long-completed 10 K run. He looked surprised to see her. Probably didn’t get many women in here who didn’t wear fatigues or camo cargo pants and Doc Martens.

“Uh . . . can I help you?”

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“I’m looking for pepper spray.” God, she hated that her voice sounded small.

The guy, who was only marginally creepy looking, gave her a big grin. “Sure.” He rummaged around in a drawer behind the counter. “You know this is serious stuff.”

“Good. I’ll feel safer just knowing I have it.”

He drew out several tiny spray cans. “I recommend the ‘Halt’ brand myself.”

“That’ll be fine.”

“Pepper spray is no substitute for a weapon, of course.”

This guy sounded like Galen. But he wouldn’t be able to even hold up the sword Galen swung to such deadly effect on the battlefield. “I have a gun.”

The guy gave her a patronizing smile. “Twenty-two pistol?”

“Glock nine millimeter.” She enjoyed the look on his face, but it only lasted a second.

“So, why do you need pepper spray?”

“I . . . I don’t feel comfortable using a gun when pepper spray would do the job.”

“Well . . . I can see how you wouldn’t feel comfortable with a Glock.” He didn’t think she could handle a gun like that. That made her mad. But there was nothing she could say. She’d already told him she wasn’t comfortable with it. “You ought to put in some time at a range.”

“I just might do that.” Like hell she would.

“You live around here? I could take you over to Home on the Range for a little practice.”

Uh-oh. A come-on
. “How much is the spray?”

“Thirty-five. Sorry. The good stuff is hard to get these days.”

“No problem.” She laid two twenties on the counter and wandered away to the bookshelves in the back to avoid further conversation. Like he was going to be deterred.

“Take a look around,” he called. “We got all the standards.
The Anarchist Cookbook, Revenge
Unlimited
. Mostly stuff about how to use the system against itself.”

Lucy scanned the shelves. “Isn’t that
Cookbook
one about how to make bombs?”

“No big deal. Everybody knows how to do it these days.”

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That
was a comforting thought. Wait. Lucy spied a big orange book about three inches thick, right next to a book about emergency war surgery.
Medical Surgical Nursing
. Now this might be useful. She pulled it down. It was some kind of textbook. She flipped to the index.
W. Wounds.

Dressings, debriding infection, stitches, removal of
—She flipped to page 360 and scanned.
Yup
.

Just what she needed. She turned back to the counter. “Can I get this, too?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Sure. That’s sixty bucks.”

“Sounds about right.”

He rang it up. She waved away a bag, gave him a salute, and ducked out to the Chevy.

The sky behind her in the west had grown dark and threatening. They were in for some rain.

This whole thing had taken longer than Lucy thought. Galen had been alone for hours. What if he overdosed on Vicodin or something? She pushed her speed up to seventy all the way to the turnoff from Highway 37. Past the Quik Stop, she took the dirt road at more like twenty but still faster than was probably safe and parked in the gravel lot. She gathered an armload of bags and let herself in through the gate. Down at the other end of the dock from the
Camelot
, a very suntanned, older, sailor-looking guy worked on his boat. He looked up but didn’t greet her. Just as well. She and Galen weren’t supposed to fraternize. A kid maybe sixteen came up on deck from a boat about halfway down, followed by a huge black wolf-looking dog. Who kept a dog that big on a boat? She hurried past as they played tug with a piece of old rope.

At slip eighteen she stepped aboard and climbed down into the cockpit. The hatch to below decks wasn’t locked. Had she forgotten to lock it? She groped for the ladder juggling her bags.

No sound of the television. At least Galen had learned to use the remote. Unless he just threw the television against the wall when he got annoyed with it.

At the bottom of the ladder one very naked Viking brandished the very naked blade of Jake’s sword in one hand and a carving knife in the other. She gasped and froze. Where was her pepper spray? Somewhere in the bags . . . But his glower turned to obvious relief.

“You return,” he said in Latin, laying the knife on the table.

She breathed again. For a minute there . . . “Well, yeah,” she muttered, trying to still her thumping heart while she stacked her bags on the table. Maybe the mattress wasn’t an entirely original hiding place for the sword. Now it looked glued to his hand. Not a chance she’d be able to pry it away. She glanced at the sling, its buckle torn from the strap, lying on the floor. “Why are you not in bed?” she managed in Latin.

“A man came here.” Galen sat on the sofa.

A Twist In Time – Da Vince Time Travel 01