She pushed the wistfulness away and stepped into the shower. Hot water had never felt so good. The muscles in her shoulders unwound as she washed her body, twice. She was quick about it, though. Hot water was precious on a boat. Stepping out, she dried and donned the soft flannel shirt. Then she rinsed out her knits and her underwear with liquid soap until the water was no longer pink and rolled them in her towel to squeeze out the water. When she emerged from the head, she draped them over the little table in the galley to dry. At least she wouldn’t smell like blood tomorrow.
This whole situation seemed unreal. She was hiding out on a boat with a Viking from A.D. 912 because someone might want to kill them because they knew the secret of a time machine. It sounded like a bad sci-fi movie. And Brad? Brad the ultrapractical, driven scientific geek, was part of all of this? How could she believe that?
As well as she could believe that a Viking was asleep in the aft cabin.
And she was going to teach him English.
But first, in the morning, she would head into Novato and buy him some boxer shorts.
Galen watched her through the lighted passageway from the dark of the bedroom, moving about putting dishes away, getting things from cupboards. Did the woman always have bare legs? Even when she was wearing her skirt he could see her knees, and now that she wore only a brightly colored man’s shirt, even her thighs were visible. It was amazing she wasn’t raped half a dozen times before she could make it to the daily market. All men were not like him, who had no need to force a woman. The men of her time must be eunuchs. The only time one saw a woman’s body was when one swived her, and sometimes not even then, if she only pulled up her skirts. Perhaps this Brad who was Lucy’s lover protected her from attack. But then why had he let her go back to Galen’s time alone? If Galen weren’t so cursed weak, he would show her the result of tempting a red-blooded man in this way. He would make her want to bed him, and then he would show her such pleasure that she would want it many times before she broke her fast each day.
But now he was tired. All day he had lain in pain, unable to find any position to give him relief. Now . . . now the pain wasn’t so bad. And that was good. He breathed softly. In. Out. In. Out. Yes. It was definitely better. . . .
“Bring those rollers over here!” Brad yelled at the team from the Army Corps of Engineers unloading them from the flatbed truck that later would carry the machine back to the collider lab down the peninsula. Brad had gotten no sleep, not just because he’d been reporting in to Jensen, who was not a happy camper and facing the fact that his project was still in the toilet. He hadn’t slept because he couldn’t get out of his mind the fact that he really hadn’t known Lucy at all. She’d betrayed him by taking the machine and hooking up with this medieval guy. Brad had wanted to marry her for God’s sake, even though he could probably have gotten women better looking, or who at least pretended to share his interest in scientific method and pursuit. He’d almost been ready to overlook Lucy’s shortcomings. She was kind of a project, just like the machine. He wanted to make her into all she could be. And the ungrateful bitch threw him over for some dumb-ass Neanderthal? Unbelievable. How she’d strung him along, taking advantage of his love for her. . . .
“Dr. Steadman.” The big guy with the florid face held out his hand. “Captain Fred Erli. I’m the supervisor on this job.” The man’s handshake was as bluff and hearty as he was.
“Just get it out safely and quickly.”
“Gonna have to take that tarp off.”
“Absolutely not.”
The man raised his brows. “Look. That tarp’ll get caught in the rollers. And we’ve got to see the structure clearly to know where to hook the cables so as not to damage it.”
Brad looked both right and left, disgusted, before he snapped, “Do what you have to do.”
Erli gestured to the workmen putting the rollers in place. “Tarp,” he called. They ambled over to pull off the heavy canvas.
“Steadman.” Brad turned. Casey’s eyes were bloodshot. His suit was wrinkled.
“Have you found them?”
“She and the guy took a taxi from the hospital to her apartment. Her fingerprints were on the doorknob. Took a while to talk to everybody in the building. They were at work or whatever. Nobody saw her. Nobody found anything missing.” Casey shoved his hands in his pant pockets. “No sign of her at the shop. She’d have seen that it’s vacant, so she might not have tried to get in. No taxi with a fare pickup at either the apartment or the shop. We confiscated her car months ago. He couldn’t have walked far. Maybe she called someone to pick them up. But her cell phone contract was cut for non-payment, and the only all-night drugstore around there didn’t sell any disposables. We checked with her assistant. She says she didn’t get a call. Phone records confirm that, but we’ll sweat her a little more anyway.”
They’d lost her. “Great.” He’d thought Casey was invincible. Looked like he was wrong.
“What’s even better is that is that I had to spend time cleaning up the trail she did leave.” Casey spit onto the concrete. “The hospital called the police because it looked like the guy was a victim of an attack. They confiscated a nasty-looking sword with blood all over it. She told them he was taking part in some battle reenactment and the blood was fake. Of course an event like that would have to get a permit, so it didn’t take long to find out she was lying on all fronts. That got everybody excited.” Casey shook his head. “I had to call Felton over at the FBI again to get the sword back and take over the case. Don’t want the thin blue line tangling things up.”
“You got a drawing of him circulating? Someone’s got to recognize a half-naked medieval guy.”
Casey glared at Brad’s questioning his competence. “Not sure what he is. We sent the clothes and the sword down to Stanford for analysis.”
The tarp sighed to the concrete floor in big folds. The men gasped at the great golden gears studded with jewels. “I thought you said the clothes were from the Middle Ages.”
“The professor down at Stanford said on first glance he thought they were Dark Age.”
“When was that?”
Casey frowned at him. “Education a little narrow there, Steadman? You should have gone to the Point. Dark Ages were roughly a.d. 500 to 1000. Rough times. Coupled with the Nordic or Germanic language witnesses report he spoke, looks to me like we have a Saxon or a Viking on our hands.” The workers dragged the rollers into place and hooked a cable to the base of the machine.
Brad flushed. Lucy had fallen for a primitive Viking, the kind who pillaged all of Europe? The original terrorists. Saxons weren’t much better. They just got there earlier. Brad lost it. “Great. He’s probably the one who sabotaged the machine just to get the diamond and you can’t find them even though he sticks out like a sore thumb in modern San Francisco.”
“We’ll find them,” Casey said through gritted teeth.
“And you think that, why?”
Without another word the colonel whirled away and strode to the elevator.
Thursday
“Rise and shine,” Lucy said, bringing a bowl of oatmeal into the Viking’s cabin, along with another dose of Vicodin and Keflex. She’d found an alarm and set it to get up and dose him with Vicodin in the middle of the night. The alarm meant he’d been crouched on the bed ready to attack or defend by the time she opened the cabin door. But at least he’d been awake enough to recognize her and relax into a disgusted grunt instead of taking a swing at her.
“Gd mergan,” he muttered now, pushing himself up. She’d heard him giving small, unconscious groans as he tried to get comfortable in the middle of the night. She was afraid the Vicodin wasn’t getting all the pain. But she was already giving him two seven-fifties. She couldn’t give him more. And this bottle was going to have to last. It said no refills and Jake had said no doctor. If Galen had still been in his own time, he’d have had to live in terrible pain for weeks and weeks, or until he died from infection. How did people live with such
hardship? She didn’t like seeing him in pain at all.
She set the oatmeal on the nightstand. First things first. “You need to pee? Urinate?” she asked in English because she didn’t know the Latin for it. Not happening. He looked blank. She gestured at the door to the head in the corner of the master cabin. “Privy? Bathroom?”
“Baeth?”
“Not exactly.” But close. Another word that seemed the same in both the English he spoke and her own version. He must have gotten the connection between bath and toilet, though. He got out of bed carefully and made it to the door to the head, giving her an X-rated full frontal view and then a long look at the muscles moving in his back and those round and totally lovely buttocks. He disappeared inside the head. Thank goodness. After a while she heard the toilet flush. He was a quick learner. There was a shower in there, but he probably shouldn’t get his bandages wet. She’d give him soap and a wet cloth and let him wash himself. What to do about his hair? The sink in the galley, maybe.
He came out, X-rated all over again, seeming unconcerned about his nudity. She wished she could be. “You have a fine mirror. It is glass and not polished metal?” He was back to Latin.
“Yes. Glass.”
“Everything here is glass, even the grand halls.” He sat heavily on the bed and maneuvered his way to sit against the pillows as she pulled the covers up to his hips. She was probably fifteen shades of red.
“I must go to buy food and clothes. Stay here.” It made her a little nervous to leave him. A horrible thought occurred. What if he got bored sitting here with nothing to do and went outside? He was weak, but he’d made it outside to pee last night. She looked around. Okay, well, there was the flat-screen television on the wall. What did parents call it? The electronic babysitter.
She found the remote as he wolfed down his oatmeal. This might be a shock. She stopped his spoon in midair and took his bowl. “Wait. Look at this.” She motioned with her head to the screen on the wall and pointed the remote at it. The television flickered to life. He stiffened, his eyes wide as the images settled into a morning newscast. The good-looking guy and the perfectly coiffed girl were talking about the traffic. “It’s okay,” Lucy murmured. He didn’t look soothed.
“What is this magic? Are these the things that are, or that will be?”
“This is like . . . like a mirror. But it shows what . . . happens far away.” Drat her Latin.
He seemed to get it, though. He nodded thoughtfully. “You are wicce.”
Even she knew that Old English word. “I am not a wicce. All people here have these. They are called ‘televisions.’ ”
“I will call it ‘far-seer.’ ”
That kind of said it. And it was poetic, too. Way better than “television.” “This,” she held out the remote, “changes the . . . the painting.” “Painting” was as close as she could get. She showed him volume and the channel control. Fear in his expression was replaced by curiosity. He took the remote and waved it as he pushed one of the buttons. An old western movie appeared. Indians chased a wagon train that had begun to form a defensive circle.
“Hors,” he said approvingly. “Waegen.” He raised his brows at her. He was testing to see whether she understood the words in Old English.
She nodded, smiling. “Horses and wagons, yes.”
“Deathcwealm?”
Whoa. She shook her head. “Sorry.”
He shrugged, looking past her at the television. Well, she didn’t need to be nervous about leaving him. She was definitely of secondary interest. “Keep the door . . . locked.”
He didn’t answer but nodded, never taking his eyes from the screen.
“Don’t bother to see me to the door,” she muttered, and headed for the hatch.
Chapter Eight
Lucy drove the Chevy slowly up the dirt road to Highway 37 past the little convenience store Jake had told her about. She’d brought about a thousand dollars of Jake’s cash, but she resolved to spend as little as she could and get back to the boat as fast as she could, before her Viking could get into trouble.
She hit the Target in Novato with a long wish list. Conditioner. Jake’s provisioning was pretty basic when it came to hair care. Some hair dye to get rid of the too-conspicuous red. Scissors to cut hair and bandages. There were razors in the bathroom, so she didn’t need those. Boxers. She guessed at a size 34 or maybe 36. He was a big guy. Better too big than too small and gaping open, God forbid. She picked up a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt, because you didn’t have to know sizes. Extra large was close enough.
For herself she found some Nikes for traction on wet decks, some jeans, and four or five long-sleeve and elbow-length-sleeve stretchy tops she could layer. A jacket and some socks, undies, and some bras and that would pretty much do her. She also got a sleep shirt—she wasn’t big on pajamas or flannel nightgowns, and the little camisoles with short-shorts looked way too skimpy to wear around a Viking who was probably used to raping and pillaging.
She rolled her lips between her teeth. She wouldn’t think about that. But she did. The thought of cutting his flesh or shooting him made her ill.
Pepper spray! That would take his mind off any raping and pillaging he might have in mind but not cause permanent damage. Not something they sold at Target, though. No Internet research on her missing iPhone, either. She’d have to ask.
She wound her way over to the pharmacy part of the store. She scooped boxes of gauze bandage and rolls of tape into her cart. The shelves had about fifty kinds of disinfectant. When it came down to it, she didn’t know anything about caring for wounds. His were still draining. Her fresh bandages were wetly pink and yellow this morning. That couldn’t be good. She needed some help. But she couldn’t go to a doctor.
Pharmacist! She couldn’t ask too many questions without arousing suspicion. But she might be able to get some help. She went up to the counter that said Pickup over the window.
A young Asian woman with long hair and a name tag that said “Pharmacist” looked up from her computer screen. “Can I help you?”
“Uh, sorry. What would you recommend for cleaning wounds? My . . . my husband . . .” Conjugal images rose in her head and had to be thrust forcibly down. “My husband has some stitches in a cut, and I was wondering what to use to keep the area clean.” She wouldn’t mention just how many stitches. Or the drain.
“I like hydrogen peroxide at half strength. Just mix it with water. Finish with Betadine.”
“Thank you.” Lucy smiled in relief. Too bad she couldn’t ask when to take the stitches out. She’d just get told that his doctor should decide that. But there was one thing a pharmacist would absolutely know. “The doctor gave him Vicodin seven-fifties, but he still seems to be in pain.”
“Add some ibuprofen. The combination is really effective.” She continued to stick labels to pill bottles. “I can’t believe doctors don’t routinely prescribe a cocktail. It’s really accepted therapy at this point. But no worries. Give him four over-the-counter strength at a time along with the Vicodin. Have him take it with food. That stuff does eat away at your stomach lining.”
“If I can get him to take it at all. I had to threaten him last night.”
“Men!” The pharmacist rolled her eyes. “So macho.”
“Oh yeah.” Who was more macho than a Viking?
“He’s probably afraid of getting addicted. Tell him from me,” she said with a wicked smile, “that as long as the drugs have something to do, like relieve pain, he won’t get addicted. He’ll stop taking them naturally when he doesn’t need them anymore. Their whole purpose is to let him sleep so he can heal. And don’t let him chase the pain. Steady doses, that’s the trick. Doctor’s orders.” She winked. “He won’t know we’re talking Doctor of Pharmacy.”
Lucy had to chuckle. “Thanks.” She waved and returned to aisle three to scoop up extralarge bottles of hydrogen peroxide and Betadine, a huge bottle of ibuprofen gel caps for fast action, and a big bag of cotton balls. This Target di
dn’t have perishables, so she’d hit a grocery store on the way out of town. So much for one stop.
She moved to the registers. The girl who rang her up was hefty, with a blotchy complexion and too many earrings. “Know where I can get some pepper spray?” Lucy asked as casually as she could. Now she’d be up to three stops.
“Gee, no,” the girl said. “What do you need that for?”
“I live alone in a kind of out-of-the-way place. You just feel better with some protection.”
The girl glanced to the boxer shorts Lucy was putting into the bag. Oops, the living-alone thing was maybe not the most believable choice of lies. “He gets out of line, does he? I had one like that. Pepper spray’s good. But I’ve got no idea where to get it. Why don’t you go online?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I will,” Lucy muttered. Over Jake’s dead body. And maybe hers.
“That’ll be four hundred and sixty-six dollars. Debit or credit?”
“Cash, actually.” She counted out twenty-four twenties from her roll.
The girl’s eyes were big. Oops again. “Don’t see cash for anything over twenty bucks anymore,” she murmured.
“My mom had a fetish for paying cash. Got it from her mom, who lived through the Depression. I guess for me it’s kind of a genetic aversion to credit cards.”
The girl made change. “You know.” She cleared her throat. “You can leave him. There’s a hotline that will find you a place to stay where he can’t get you. Just call information and ask for the Family Violence Center.”
Lucy smiled, sad as that made her feel inside. “You’re very kind. Maybe I’ll call.”
A Twist in Time Page 11