A Twist in Time (38 page)

The feeling that this was just impossible was getting stronger. Two people sailing in weather through the treacherous currents of the Golden Gate with night coming on?

But there was no choice. No choice at all.

It was barely twenty minutes later when she put her hands on her hips and scanned their work for anything she’d missed. They’d made good time getting her rigged in view of the fact that one of them was inexperienced at modern sailboats. Both the mainsail and the jib were luffing, making a soft, ruffling sound as they flapped, head into the wind. Tiny storm sails were stacked where she and Galen could get at them in the cockpit next to the hatch below. Jake had, of
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course, outfitted the
Camelot
with foul-weather gear. Lucy stood at the wheel. Galen had accepted that without complaint. Points for him.

“Okay,” she said. “Back the jib.” She motioned to the forward sail and pointed to the left. He trimmed the sail with the line that would pull the jib over to the left. As the wind filled it, the muscles in his shoulders and arms bunched under his Henley shirt where he held the line. She turned the wheel. The bow moved to starboard on the port tack, out of the no-sail zone. Things must happen quickly now. “Trim the mainsail,” she called, and pointed right. He nodded, a smile lighting his face. He winched the mainsail just taut enough as the wind came full on the jib.

He was already on the move to the jib line when she called for him to trim it. He slacked the line that held it in the backed position, switched lines, winched it tight until it caught the wind in the new position. That was one perfectly trimmed sail, just off luffing to maximize the use of the wind. Guess he did know wind and water. The boat began to pick up momentum. She’d keep it on a wide reach for maximum speed.
Damn Jake for keeping the boat up in this backwater.
It was a long way down and around the point to the Gate. Full out, how fast could this size boat go? Maybe nine knots? And that only until they started having to tack against wind and current in the Gate. The Gate was tough in the best of times.

She wouldn’t think about that. Because they had to get out of here and they had many hours of sailing ahead of them. Just because they were on a boat didn’t mean they were safe. She wouldn’t win a chase with Coast Guard powerboats. She wouldn’t feel safe even after they were out in the open ocean.

But if they made it—if they escaped Casey’s clutches—then what? She wasn’t sailing across the open Pacific to Hawaii, probably not ever, but
definitely
not in March with Pacific storms still slamming Northern California. Mexico maybe, or South America, where they could keep close enough to land to assuage her nerves. Galen would get a chance to learn Spanish.

That didn’t feel right.

Of course it didn’t. Even though she had Galen, it was her responsibility to sail this thing out into open water in heavy weather. She knew better than anybody that she probably wasn’t up to that.

They were sailing south down what was technically called San Pablo Bay toward the narrows between Richmond and San Rafael that separated it from San Francisco Bay proper. They were practically on a run, with the wind filling their sails from just off their rear. Clouds rolled up over the hills behind her. She had Galen pull both the jib and the mainsail out almost like wings to catch that rising wind.

Galen was grinning like he’d just seen a Valkyrie as he looked up to survey his handiwork. “This boat is fast, Lucy. She sails sweet.”

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Lucy just hoped it was fast enough.

Damn pussy scientist,
Casey thought.
He goes off on his own without telling anybody when,
wonder of wonders, they finally got a real tip. He tries to play the hero. And he doesn’t even
take a gun. So the Viking beats him to shit and sends him packing. How stupid can you be?

Now he’d spooked the quarry. Right when they had been about to close in.

Not that it hadn’t already been a frustrating day. That bastard Lowell had a heart condition. He knew he could sneak out of the interrogation session by fucking dying. “Sorry, Colonel, gotta go,” he’d said when the chest pain hit him. His little smile as his eyes rolled up in his head made Casey want to stab someone again and again. They’d tried like hell to revive Lowell. But it was no good. Still, assuming he had spirited the fugitives away, Casey figured they’d need false documents. There were only a few guys around whom someone like Lowell would trust. It had taken all day, but they’d found the forger. They were just about to sweat him.

And Steadman screws it all up.

It was dark and raining hard when Casey’s little convoy pulled into the parking lot of the Quik Stop. No way the fugitives would still be here. Sunday traffic on the 101 had been pretty bad. It had taken Brad almost two hours to make it back into the city and Casey’s team an hour to make it back out.
The guy couldn’t just call in? Too embarrassed. Probably only his anger at the
girl and the Viking made him finally fess up. So he notches up another stupid move.
Brad wanted to tag along for the confrontation, but Casey exiled him to the lab to watch over the machine.

He should never have let the lab rat out of his cage.

One of the SUVs flipped on a searchlight. It illuminated the little marina down at the end of the dirt road, maybe three-quarters of a mile. The light caught the white of boats and rocking masts through the pelting rain. Two cars were still in the parking lot. Casey couldn’t make out if one was an old blue Chevy.

“Get down there and secure the area,” he ordered Pollington. “Evans, see if the clerk on duty is the one that saw the altercation. I want to know whether they left by car or by boat.”

He stayed in the car, thinking. Either way it was bad. If they had left by car, the marina manager might have done a better job than Lowell at keeping track of occupants’ license plates. If they had gone by boat, Casey needed to know what kind.

The wipers squeaked back and forth across the windshield. The rain was almost horizontal. He was betting they had left in the blue Chevy. No one would sail in this weather.

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Pollington, in his hooded slicker, waved at Casey from the marina parking lot and he rolled the Escalade down the dirt road. As he got closer, he saw the Chevy in the parking lot. The fools had taken the boat out. With his luck the weather would scuttle the boat and the diamond and the book would be somewhere out in the bay under one lot of water.

Jesus.

He climbed out of the car and stalked through to the marina. Two slips empty. Only one boat with lights on. Pollington was already hailing the occupant. Casey strode down the dock.

A head poked out of the hatch to the rear deck.

“Yeah?” The guy had a crew cut and looked like he ate nails for breakfast.

“We’d like to ask you a few questions.” Pollington had a hard time sounding menacing with water dripping down his face.

“I’m not in the mood for questions.”

Casey pushed by Pollington. “Look, we don’t care who you are or what you’ve done. We just want to know where the big blond guy and the red-haired girl made off to. If you talk to us, we just leave. If you don’t, then we start digging. Your choice.”

The guy thought about it, though you’d never know it from his flat eyes.

“Did you see them go or not?”

The guy said nothing, but he opened the short doorway wider, and Pollington climbed down inside, dripping. Casey followed. The guy shut the hatch on the weather.

“They left about five,” the guy said, not inviting them to sit down.

“Bad time to go for a sail,” Casey said noncommittally.

“They’ll be okay. They headed for the Carquinez Strait. Probably wanted to do a little river cruising where it’s a little more protected.”

“Still, stupid to go out with only an hour of light.”

The guy shrugged. “She was the one at the helm. Didn’t look real experienced. Maybe she misjudged the weather.”

Casey looked at the wet floor. “Got anything else?”

The guy shrugged. “They kept to themselves, all lovey-dovey like. Maybe Wally up at the store knows something. He usually knows everything.”

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Bet he doesn’t know who you really are, buddy,
Casey thought. “Name of the boat?”

The guy shook his head. “Never noticed.”

“Okay. Thanks, man. We’ll leave you to your meal.” How could the guy eat with the boat rocking like this? They pushed out into the rain and climbed up to the dock.

“Shall I get the Coast Guard to go up the Carquinez?” Pollington asked.

“Yeah. Get the name and make of the boat from this guy Wally at the Quik Stop. But I want the Coast Guard on the lookout by the Gate, too. The Carquinez dead-ends in the Sacramento delta. That’s a trap for a sailboat with a keel.”

“That guy didn’t have any reason to lie to us,” Pollington protested, maybe hoping the fugitives would be cornered as the river went shallow.

“That guy lies every day of his life,” Casey said. “Get on the horn and pull some rank.”

Rain spattered Galen’s face as the wind changed and he ducked to avoid the swing of the boom. He surged up to the winch and wound the handle with both hands as fast as he could.

He felt Lucy adjust the rudder with her wheel. Through the boat he felt, too, that she was tiring, and fighting the mighty current here at the mouth of the bay took strength. She feared the weather and the night. She was not used to sailing so. He was. Weather on the North Sea was treacherous, and one could not avoid the night when one was far from land. He tried to reassure her, if not in words, then with his own assurance. Her voice was raw, but she no longer had to shout instructions. He knew this small ship now and what she needed. The rigging had more sails than he was used to, but he understood their purposes. She could run fast, this boat, and steer precisely. She was a fine vessel, if very different from his shallow-draft, dragon-prowed craft. The giant bridge loomed ahead, dimly orange in the dark and the slanting rain. It looked like a sea monster arched between the spits of land. To be able to construct such an enormous thing, men must surely command magic. The lighted towers of the huge city were off to the left, winking through the weather. Magic. Magic, all of it.

He was cold and wet and his shoulder ached from winding the winches, but he would last. He had to last. Lucy was counting on him.

He glanced back at Lucy, leaning into the wheel, her braided crown of hair dark with water, its fire quenched. She had thrown back the hood of her coat. Her face was pale and bruised; her eyes squinted against the slashing rain. Lucy would not last.

As he turned back to scan the sails, he saw lights ahead. Directly ahead, under the bridge and high in the air.

“Jesus!” Lucy shouted as the lights resolved themselves into the largest ship he had ever seen.

No sails, all black iron, it drove straight across their path out of the storm.

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“Starboard!” he yelled, and sprang into action. They’d never make it past the boat on their current course. They’d have to turn about almost into the wind to skirt disaster.

He felt Lucy pull on the wheel. The current fought them, pushing them toward the huge ship that now towered above them. The boat tilted wildly. The sails flapped as he loosened the sheets so they could swing to the other side. The boom came across and he ducked, then spun and hauled in the mainsail tight to the other side and cleared the line. He scrambled up to do the same for the jib sail.

A growling whistle rent the night. The ship came on. They weren’t going to make it. The boat needed to come around even more.

He slithered aft to Lucy and braced against the side of the cockpit, leaning into the wheel beside her, putting his back and shoulders and thighs into the spokes. The mast bent.
Let not
the jib sail tear, dear gods.
His muscles strained to breaking.

“Njord!” he shouted into the wind. “Spare your seafaring children!”

The bow wave of the mighty ship caught them almost across their flank, just where it should not, rose under them, and for a long moment Galen thought they would go over. The boat teetered, half out of the water. But the wave pushed them out of the way of the ship and they were off, skimming almost northwest just on the edge of the wind. Galen jumped to the mainsail and hauled it tighter.

The huge ship powered on, seeming unaffected by the storm. Giant white words spelled
HANJIN
on its side. High above, tiny figures lined the deck and shouted.

Galen breathed. Lucy might be crying. He couldn’t tell in the rain. They passed under the span of the giant bridge. The unstill open sea stretched before them into the night. But there were still the stern waves of the giant ship. Galen was ready. Lucy turned the bow slightly into the stern waves. The sea was a mass of roiling currents as the stern waves countered the rolling seas of the storm. The turmoil waited to capsize them. He raced back to help Lucy pull on the wheel, both of them leaning back and heaving. Waves slapped their stern quarter. Water rolled over the boat. But they held to the wheel.

The boat came around and headed out to sea. He trimmed the sails again. Weariness had seeped into his bones along with the cold salt water. He felt apart from himself. The bridge and the city and the other ship faded behind them. It was only wind and sea out here, and through his weariness, or because of it, he could feel the swell of powerful water surging under him and the breath of the gods in their sails. It filled him with peace in the middle of the choppy midnight ocean. He sipped from the strength of wind and water until it filled his chest. And there, underneath, he felt a scraping deep down in the earth, the pressure building under the seabed.
Tomorrow,
it whispered.
Tomorrow will the world right itself and become true again.