“You tell me. Brad seemed pretty mad about something. I have a feeling it’s about this guy you got here who you speak to in Latin but who swears in what I think is Old Norse, not Danish. He’s wearing breeches hand-stitched with gut and cut with a laced-in crotch piece like they used to wear about a thousand years ago, except for that stupid bow, which I expect I can lay to your account since he’s only got one good hand. His boots are deer hide. Don’t see that much these days except on those nuts up in the Utah mountains waiting for Armageddon. And he didn’t get those muscles in a gym. Looks more like he got them on battlefields over years, along with the scars. That fits with the callused right hand. And he’s been cut up bad, all those bruises . . . looks like he met up with an axe or a sword real recently. So what do a spook and your wussy scientist friend want with you and Mr. Anachronism here so bad that they’re willing to get the FBI help to tear up your life?”
Lucy felt like she’d been slapped. Galen started to heave himself up, glaring at Jake. She turned and pointed. “Sit,” she commanded in Latin. She sighed as Galen set his jaw rebelliously. “Please. Please sit.” She shot Jake a rueful smile. “He thinks he can take you even in his condition. He doesn’t know what a rugged old coot you are.”
“He’s got a protective streak.” Jake softened. “If you’re in trouble, Lucy, you came to the right place. But you’ve got to tell me what’s going on.” He folded his hands over his chest, waiting. When the only result was her chewing her lip, he said, “What you need is breakfast.”
“I couldn’t eat.” Lucy pressed her palm against her forehead. She had an awful headache.
“Well then, I’m going to make him breakfast, because I’ve got a feeling he doesn’t chew Vicodin real regular and on an empty stomach he’s likely to throw it up all over my rug.” Jake turned and went through to his kitchen.
Lucy glanced to Galen and shrugged. “He will give us food.”
Galen pushed himself up. “I will watch. He could use a knife as a weapon.”
Galen didn’t recognize the many guns, antique and modern, mounted between the bookcases in the living room as weapons. Jake had a license for every one of them. He wasn’t really a whacko, just a guy with definite opinions, mostly involving the government.
“You are wounded. You should rest. He’s a friend.”
“I am Danir. I fight whole battles wounded. I will rest later.” He stood, a little shaky.
Lucy was too tired to argue. She trailed into the kitchen, Galen stomping after her.
Jake’s corner unit had views out to the bay on two sides. After he’d recovered from his hip replacement and could get around, he’d remodeled two units into one larger living space. Instead of bare walls and linoleum, his apartment was filled with things he loved. In his kitchen he’d put up open-fronted cabinets to display his handmade pottery collection. It was a cozy place of earth-tone tile and wood, except for the stainless-steel restaurant-grade appliances. Jake liked to cook. A big butcher-block dining table doubled as a cutting board. Lucy slung her bag over one of the spindle-back chairs at the table and sat. Galen took another. He was wavering. The fool. Trying to prove something. Food was probably a good idea.
“So tell me the story, while I whip up a couple of omelets.”
Lucy ran her hands through her hair. What did it mean that Brad and Casey had removed the contents of her apartment and her store? Could they think she’d stolen the machine by bringing it back to some other location? Like she could hide it in her apartment. Maybe he was looking for the book, or a clue to where she took the machine.
Jake retrieved an armload of eggs, cheese, and vegetables from the Sub-Zero. Lucy followed his glance to Galen and saw a watchful furrow in the Viking’s brow. “Begin at the beginning.”
“Well, it began with a gigantic coincidence,” she started.
“No such thing as coincidence,” Jake growled as he cleaned scallions at the sink.
“It sure seemed that way to me. I had a book, my most prized possession. It was by Leonardo da Vinci, and it showed diagrams of a machine he wanted to build.” She swallowed. Here was the tough part. “A machine that could travel through time.”
Jake pushed his lower lip up and nodded his head. “Maybe that’s what they were looking for—book must be worth a pile.”
That wasn’t the part that was hardest to believe. “Yeah. It’s worth a pile. I never told anyone about the book. It was too precious to me. Until one day we were out at the Palace of Fine Arts, and . . . and I had the strangest urge to show it to Brad.”
“And the coincidence was . . .”
“He was working at the lab on getting power to a medieval machine in partnership with the Italian government. None of them knew what the machine was supposed to do. I knew right away, in my gut, that it was the machine from my book. Leonardo had actually built it.”
Jake grinned as he chopped scallions at the table with a huge knife. Galen tensed beside her. She put a hand surreptitiously on his good thigh under the table and gave it a pat. “Bet it frosted that ole spook’s ass that you knew what it was and he didn’t,” Jake said.
“Maybe it did. Well, anyway, we went down to the Super Collider Lab and there it was, all gears and jewels. It’s a beautiful thing. Colonel Casey—”
“Got to be CIA or NSA or some damn thing. I recognized him as special ops right off.” Jake straightened, hands on his hips. “So you tried it and it worked, right? That’s where you got your friend.” He looked like the cat who’d swallowed the canary. Leave it to Jake to accept the unbelievable. Galen never took his eyes off that big knife.
“I thought I was going to have to show you the book.”
“Hell, if you got the book, I’d love to see it. But let’s eat first. Wouldn’t want to get egg all over it.” He put down the knife, right within Galen’s reach, and cracked eggs into a bowl. He swung round and got out a small Calphalon pan and turned on a burner of his Viking range. Viking. That was rich. “So, was it you who went back?”
“Yeah. Boy, was I stupid. But it felt . . . I don’t know. It felt like my destiny or something.”
“Those two are real heroes. They get plausible deniability and you take the risk.” He swung back suddenly. Galen flinched and grabbed for the knife on the table.
“Whoa!” Lucy held up her hands. “I told you. Jake is a friend,” she continued in Latin.
Jake had gone still. “That’s right. A friend. Maybe you want to sharpen that for me?” he asked slowly, nodding to the knife.
Galen narrowed his eyes in suspicion. But he said, “Freond?” It sounded like “friend.” Maybe that was a Norse word that had been absorbed into English. In graduate school she’d learned that English took on words from all England’s conquerors, first Vikings, then the Normans. The structure had grown simple and strong with the invasion of the Danes, able to collect words of all kinds. Maybe she was understanding the words they had in common.
Jake turned carefully to a drawer and got out a sharpening stone. He held it up, and Lucy saw recognition in Galen’s eyes. Jake held out the stone. “A man needs to feel like he’s got a weapon when he’s in a bad place, and I expect that’s just what this seems to you.”
Galen nodded once. “Wpn,” he said clearly, though with an accent.
Jake set the stone on the table and slid it across. Galen began to sharpen the knife, holding it with his bad hand and smoothing the stone along the blade with long, slithery strokes. The muscles in his shoulders bunched and relaxed with the rhythm. He seemed to relax as well.
“You’re a kind man, Jake. Let’s just hope he doesn’t use it.”
Jake ignored her. “So, looks like you landed in some trouble.”
“Right in the middle of a battle. I’m not sure who was fighting whom.”
“That where you were aiming the machine?”
“This is going to sound so crazy. Leonardo says you just think about the place and time you want to be in and the machine takes you there. I . . . I thought about going to a time when magic was still possible.”