A Twist in Time (34 page)

A Twist In Time – Da Vince Time Travel 01

Page 157 of 219

“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
w pns.
”

“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.”

“
M

h. Tunge.
” When she touched his tongue, it made him shiver in places that had nothing to do with his mouth. “
Hype, th oh,
” 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. Th of.
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
A Twist In Time – Da Vince Time Travel 01

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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?”

A Twist In Time – Da Vince Time Travel 01

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“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.

A Twist In Time – Da Vince Time Travel 01

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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. . . .”

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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.