Lucania was struggling against him. I'm suffocating her, dear God, I'm suffocating her to death— Then the boat righted itself. The puny craft rocked again as another wave poured over the side. But the next time the fishing vessel righted itself, the heat had dissipated, replaced by a rain of ash and rocks. Charlie gulped air reflexively. He coughed and choked, coughed again, while burning pain in his ribcage sent a stab of terror through him. For a split second, Charlie was convinced he'd inhaled air the temperature of a steel furnace... .
But the worst of the surge had passed, leaving them in a cloud of grit and ash. The pain in his chest was the pain of a broken rib, nothing more. He uncovered Lucania's face. She screamed and breathed against him. She's alive... .
He spent precious moments weeping.
Then, cautiously, Charlie poked his head out from under the fishing nets. They were hot to the touch, but the boat had held together. A flare of lightning showed him the mast, smoking and charred. Water pouring over the rest of the boat had saved them from death. At first he couldn't see Decius Martis. Then another flare of lightning revealed fitful movement in the stern. Under the strobe of multiple lightning flashes, the spare sail shifted, moved. Decius Martis finally emerged and gulped air.
"Phillipa?" Fear trembled in the man's voice.
She managed to poke her head into clear air. "I am all right, husband. And our son, too. The centurion pushed us under the nets. He saved us from burning to death!"
The fisherman shouted shaky thanks, then went back to fighting the tiller. The little fishing boat came about, stern-first to the waves again. Slowly Charlie uncurled his death grip on the coarse nets. He eased Lucania out from under him and made sure she'd taken no other injury. Then he wiped her tears and hushed her, rocked her in his arms and crooned a lullaby his mother had sung to him until she finally quieted. Were there mockingbirds in Europe now? He didn't think so... .
A measureless sweep of time flowed over them. Another fiery surge burst down across the town. This one barrelled farther across the heaving sea than the last. Once again, they all dove for cover under spare nets and sails. Again, water pouring into the little boat cooled them just enough to survive. By the time it was safe to emerge again, the mast was little more than a charred stump, two-thirds of it snapped off. The gunwales were a smoking ruin. But—once again—the little fishing boat had held together, saved from burning by the rough seas.
Charlie held his terrified daughter, rocking her once more into silence. While he sang of mockingbirds and looking glasses and pony carts, he eyed the ruined mast. So much for using wind power to get us out of this nightmare. Back toward shore, the time storm was breaking up. The anguish that came with just looking at the diminished lightning flashes was nearly unbearable. Sibyl, I'm sorry....
Then baseball-sized rocks and glowing volcanic debris hit the ship. "Get down!" He dragged the heavy nets over Phillipa and her child again. "Hold Lucania! I'll be back!"
The little girl screamed in terror when he left her. Charlie struggled toward the stern. Salt water poured over the charred gunwale and he was suddenly breathing the Mediterranean. Charlie coughed and spat, then a rocky missile impacted against his armor. He yelled. Another spreading bruise for already-battered ribs.... He finally fought his way back to Decius. Charlie yanked off his helmet and jammed it onto the fisherman's unprotected head.
"Get under cover!" Decius yelled. "Thanks—but don't be a fool!"
Charlie didn't argue. He rescued his daughter from Phillipa and crawled under the spare sail with her, giving Phillipa the privacy of the fishing nets. Lucania wrapped both arms tightly around his neck, in a baby version of the universal panic-stricken stranglehold. Charlie huddled beneath the sodden sail, leaving the sailing to the professional sailor, and whispered to his little girl. "Shh... Papa's got you now, honey, shh..."
Lucania quieted almost at once. He kissed her brow in the darkness and told her how wonderful she was, how brave and beautiful and fine she was, how proud of her he was. Charlie was still talking when he realized she'd fallen asleep under the protective curl of his body.
Oh, my sweet baby, that's it, just sleep the nightmares away.... He grunted when another rock smashed its way down onto him. Oww... He had no idea where Decius was heading. At this point, they were probably just running away. They could figure out a port of call later.
Couldn't they?
He wondered with sudden apprehension if Romans—and this fisherman in particular—knew anything about navigation on the open sea. Hadn't his sailing instructor in Miami said something about ancient sailors never getting out of sight of land because they didn't have the faintest idea how to navigate without landmarks?
Oh, great. Adrift at sea.
And quite apart from every other terror, Sibyl's face floated into his mind, the way she'd looked when she'd first learned he was a cop. All sparkle and laughter and delighted surprise. If he hadn't been so acutely embarrassed, he might have kissed her, then.
The sunlight and sparkle faded into hissing blackness. Another pebble struck painfully across one thigh. He yowled and tried to rub the spot, then gave it up as pointless. Sibyl was dead. Burned alive, horribly. And Tony Bartelli? Carreras' brother-in-law... Thinking about Carreras made him crazy. How far did the whole thing stretch? The time travel, the snatchings, the murders?
Tony Bartelli had not told him everything, not by a long shot. Tony himself probably hadn't been told everything. If he'd been Jésus Carreras, Charlie wouldn't have told him much, either—just enough to carry out his mission of the moment. What Tony had known, he'd spilled. Freely. Charlie wondered just how a defrocked Jesuit Latin instructor had ended up married to Carreras' sister?
The thought that Sibyl was dead over a box of mouldy, crumbling manuscripts, made him even crazier than thoughts of Carreras. He didn't give a damn about a bunch of Greek and Roman writers who'd been dead and buried for twenty, twenty-five centuries before Charlie's birth. He would gladly have set fire to the manuscripts himself, box and all, if doing so would have saved Sibyl's life.
Of course, she might never have forgiven him... .
His snort of almost-laughter was a strangled sound under the wet sail. Lucania stirred, brushed a tiny fist across his mouth. He kissed the fingers until she went back to sleep. Then Charlie Flynn took a deep, deep breath and let it out slowly. Okay. I'm the hot-shot Miami detective. It's about time I start acting like one.
Sibyl had been right on a number of points; but Charlie didn't put much credit in her idea—or Tony's claim—that museum-quality artifacts were what the family was after. A sideline, maybe, but not the whole story. Not even close. There had to be more. A lot more. The Carreras family, with its ties in Miami, New York, Chicago, LA, South America, the Continent, Asia...
If his sources were correct, the Carreras family was one of the most powerful organizations in America. They'd bought out or eliminated nearly every major competitor—
Charlie blinked.