A Twist in Time

Chapter 8

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 didn’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.”

She left feeling guilty. That girl had been in an abusive relationship and made it out. She found the courage to be generous to others. Lucy hadn’t had it tough at all. Her life had been pretty okay. So she’d traveled in time and was on the run with a man from 912 who might enjoy raping and pillaging.

But on the whole, things could be worse.

Are you crazy? Strange as it was, she had the strongest feeling she was in the right place, doing the right thing. She found herself standing in front of the newspaper box outside the Target exit. Why didn’t she feel more panicked about the whole situation?

Of course she was panicked, underneath. She was just too tired to feel it. That was all. She flicked quarters into the machine for a copy of the Chronicle. Better look for news of the time machine and any search for her and Galen. She wanted to just sit on one of the benches near the store entrance and scan the paper immediately, but she had to get back to the boat before Galen got up to anything. She loaded her bags in the Chevy’s trunk and tooled out of the parking lot. Besides, why should she panic? No one was going to come looking for them in a marina down a dirt road in this backwater. They were safe, as long as he didn’t kill anybody or something.

Tempted as she was to just go straight back to the marina, vacuum-packed meals weren’t especially attractive. If Galen was going to get his strength back, he needed to chow down. What did Vikings eat? Fish probably, and pretty simple food. No kung pao chicken. There was a Safeway a few blocks down.

The two little fridges were going to be packed. . . .

Galen waited until he heard the growl of her “car” recede before he got out of bed. The far-seer was fascinating, but there were more important things to do at the moment. He wanted his sword. She must have brought it in from the car. She would not leave so precious a thing where others could steal it.

He shoved himself up, cursing his weakness. Had they done something to him in that place of glass and steel to make him weak? But then, he had lost much blood by the time the men had pushed him onto that rolling metal cart. By all rights he should be dead. He leaned against the wood of the passageway, limping past the indoor privy. He knew full well that she had hidden the sword from him. She wanted him to remain in her power.

He opened each cupboard, each drawer in the kitchen, whether it seemed large enough to hold a sword or not. They held strange boxes or slick-feeling bottles not made of glass. He found the place where pots and pans were kept, glass tankards for drinking, and the bowls out of which he had eaten stew last night. One cupboard contained small, round canisters brightly painted with pictures of food, including round red fruit with tiny stems he did not recognize. Then he found it. A drawer with many knives. He sucked in air suddenly sweet with satisfaction. He picked the biggest knife and concealed it in the sling over his forearm. Not his sword. But good.

He pushed into the sitting area with a soft, long bench chair and another far-seer, the table and bench that he had collapsed upon when he first came down the ladder, and beyond that . . . another passageway. It must lead to the place where she slept, since she had not slept in his bed, though it was plenty large enough for two.

He opened a door in the passageway. It led down to a room filled with the smell of grease and much metal in convoluted shapes. He peered around in the dim light from the open door. He could not tell for certain the sword wasn’t there, but he could not find it. Back up in the passageway, he found another door to a shallow closet that held boxes of strange metal tools, and spare rope, boxes of soap. He pawed through everything. No sword,

Too bad. The closet would have been a likely place for her to store the sword. At the far end of the passage, he pushed into the room she had taken for her own. It was tiny, with barely room for a narrow bed on one side. A little box-table like the one beside his bed held a lamp. There was a chest under the bed. He pulled open the drawers. Bedding, but no sword. He looked around. Across from the bed was another cupboard. Inside on a hook on the door hung the shirt she had worn last night that left her legs bare. He could not resist. It seemed to draw his hand. The cloth was almost furry, soft to the touch. He could imagine it against the white skin of her arms and her breasts. He lifted the cloth to his face and inhaled. It smelled exactly the way she had smelled when she leaned over him to fix his sling last night. But now there was the added scent of soap. She had bathed just before she donned this garment. How he would like to bathe her. He imagined his palms, slippery with soap, sliding over the generous mounds of her breasts. . . .

No sword, though. Where had she hidden it?

His eyes fell on the bed. Knowing that she slept there made his loins tighten. He could imagine her, soft with sleep, her long, dark lashes brushing her cheeks. He would love to wake her, his weapon needy to bury itself in her body. . . .

Back to the bed. The mattress was about six inches thick laid over the wooden drawers.

She wouldn’t have put it in the most obvious place, would she? He leaned over and felt under the mattress.

She had.

He pulled the scabbard from under the mattress, triumph circling in his belly.

“Hail the Camelot.”

Galen jerked around at the male voice coming from the dock.

“Permission to come aboard . . .”

Galen didn’t understand. But he knew danger when he heard it. Would the ones who came for him call out to announce their presence? He pulled the sling over his head and slid his arm out, gripping the eight-inch knife. With his left hand he tore the strap from around his ribs.

Footsteps thunked on the deck above. Choices. Go up to meet the danger or wait in ambush? But the quarters were tight here. No room to for his sword to swing, biting flesh and hacking bone. He slid the blade from the scabbard with a hiss. He’d have to fight left-handed. More reason to fight in the open. He wasn’t as precise with his left hand. He gripped the knife with his right hand. It had no strength, but if it got to close quarters, he might do some damage.

There was a knock at the hatch up to the deck.

A knock?

That changed things. He stood under the hatchway, deciding.

“Anybody home? I saw your lights last night.”

“Gd mergan,” Galen called up. But he didn’t put his weapons down.

“Oh, you must be German. . . . Sorry. I don’t speak the language.”

Galen didn’t understand the man, but the voice was not threatening. He stepped up onto the ladder, shifted his sword to his bad hand along with the knife, and unlatched the hatch. He pushed it up. One set of legs was visible on the forward edge of the square trough through which you entered the cabin. He hadn’t heard more than one set of footsteps. He shifted the sword back to his good hand, letting it drop to his side where it was less conspicuous, and put down his knife. Hacking up innocent visitors would only draw attention.

Galen stepped up the ladder cautiously into the square trough in a brisk wind. A doughy man with sparse, pale hair was outlined against a blue sky edged with fast-moving dark clouds. It would rain soon. The man stepped back in surprise as Galen emerged. His pale eyes widened. Galen watched as they roved over Galen’s hair and beard, settled for a moment on his bandaged shoulder, darted to the other bandage on his thigh, registered the fact that he was naked.

The man started to turn his head away, then saw the sword. He raised his hands, palms out. “Wow, didn’t mean to . . . to interrupt anything here.” He backed across the small deck.

Galen smiled and shrugged, all the while examining the pudgy man for signs of deceit. “Ic ne understand Englisc.” Not their kind of Englisc anyway. He stepped toward the ladder up to the main deck. He did not want to be at a disadvantage, even with this pudgy man.

The man’s Adam’s apple bobbed under his fleshy neck as he watched Galen climb the ladder. “Your neighbors . . . well, one of your neighbors, just wanted to know who was here. This boat . . . well, no one’s ever taken it out. And no one has ever stayed aboard, either.”

Galen raised his brows politely at this torrent of anxious words. Sweat had broken out on the man’s forehead. Now that they were on the same level, Galen towered over him.

“Well . . . well, if there’s anything you need, just let me know. I’m almost always at the Quik Stop up on the highway.”

Galen watched the man back awkwardly over the line railing. He raised his right hand as far as he could in what he hoped the man would interpret as a friendly salute, ignoring the stabs of pain that shot through his shoulder. The man turned and walked down the dock, glancing back over his shoulder often. Galen registered another figure, tall and angular, browned by the sun, coiling rope down at the far end of the dock near one of the boats lighted last night when Galen was up on deck. As the pudgy one hurried to the gate, the brown man glanced up, then stared down at Galen before calmly going back to his work. He was a man who would not back down from trouble. Galen had known such men all his life and he recognized one of them instantly now. Galen watched the pudgy man until he got into a cart that was not cared for as well as Lucy’s and drove away up the dirt road. Galen retreated below decks. He got the hatch secured and collapsed onto one of the soft benches across from the table, breathing raggedly. Curse his weakness! If that small excuse for a man had been the lean and brown one down at the other end of the dock—or even if he had meant harm and had a weapon—

Galen would have been in dire straits. He’d better get his strength back fast, before Lucy’s lover and his friends came calling. . . .

Lucy pulled into the parking lot in the strip mall on the edge of Novato, now dressed, courtesy of the bathrooms at the Safeway, in jeans and layered T-shirts, a pink elbow-length-sleeved one with lace at the neckline over a white long-sleeved one, a windbreaker, and tennies. She didn’t smell like blood at all. Things were looking up. The clerk two registers over at the Safeway had heard Lucy asking about pepper spray and recommended a store called Surveillance Unlimited, right on her way to the freeway. This wouldn’t take but a minute, just to check and see if they had it. The store lurked in the corner. She swallowed. The guys who hung out in places like this were mostly semi-loons. But then that included Jake, and she liked Jake just fine. She screwed up her courage and got out of the car.

The store had the kind of windows where you can see out but not see in, which made it look a lot like Darth Vader. She pushed open the door. A buzzer sounded. The place was filled with fancy binoculars and telescopes, cameras with long lenses, tape recorders, and electronic equipment she didn’t recognize. A skinny guy behind the counter wore a T-shirt that advertised some long-completed 10 K run. He looked surprised to see her. Probably didn’t get many women in here who didn’t wear fatigues or camo cargo pants and Doc Martens.

“Uh . . . can I help you?”

“I’m looking for pepper spray.” God, she hated that her voice sounded small.

The guy, who was only marginally creepy looking, gave her a big grin. “Sure.” He rummaged around in a drawer behind the counter. “You know this is serious stuff.”

“Good. I’ll feel safer just knowing I have it.”

He drew out several tiny spray cans. “I recommend the ‘Halt’ brand myself.”

“That’ll be fine.”

“Pepper spray is no substitute for a weapon, of course.”

This guy sounded like Galen. But he wouldn’t be able to even hold up the sword Galen swung to such deadly effect on the battlefield. “I have a gun.”

The guy gave her a patronizing smile. “Twenty-two pistol?”

“Glock nine millimeter.” She enjoyed the look on his face, but it only lasted a second.

“So, why do you need pepper spray?”

“I . . . I don’t feel comfortable using a gun when pepper spray would do the job.”

“Well . . . I can see how you wouldn’t feel comfortable with a Glock.” He didn’t think she could handle a gun like that. That made her mad. But there was nothing she could say. She’d already told him she wasn’t comfortable with it. “You ought to put in some time at a range.”

“I just might do that.” Like hell she would.

“You live around here? I could take you over to Home on the Range for a little practice.”

Uh-oh. A come-on. “How much is the spray?”

“Thirty-five. Sorry. The good stuff is hard to get these days.”

“No problem.” She laid two twenties on the counter and wandered away to the bookshelves in the back to avoid further conversation. Like he was going to be deterred.

“Take a look around,” he called. “We got all the standards. The Anarchist Cookbook, Revenge Unlimited. Mostly stuff about how to use the system against itself.”

Lucy scanned the shelves. “Isn’t that Cookbook one about how to make bombs?”

“No big deal. Everybody knows how to do it these days.”

That was a comforting thought. Wait. Lucy spied a big orange book about three inches thick, right next to a book about emergency war surgery. Medical Surgical Nursing. Now this might be useful. She pulled it down. It was some kind of textbook. She flipped to the index. W. Wounds. Dressings, debriding infection, stitches, removal of—She flipped to page 360 and scanned. Yup. Just what she needed. She turned back to the counter. “Can I get this, too?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Sure. That’s sixty bucks.”

“Sounds about right.”

He rang it up. She waved away a bag, gave him a salute, and ducked out to the Chevy.