Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (22 page)

It occurred to her that he was more even than a parfait knight. The wonderful glow of making love to him had almost erased her memory of what he’d done last night. Before the other things he’d done. He’d come into her room through a locked door. She
had
locked it. There was no question. And right before her eyes, a mist had come in under the door and then he was standing there, telling her that he was his father’s son. . . . And she accepted that. Hell, after time machines and meeting the honest-to-god Merlin and Mordred the Adapter, why not?

He could turn into mist and float through doors.

Just one more reason he was totally out of her league. So she would be his friend. If she were to write herself as a character she’d be the steadfast friend who never got the guy.

She threw back the covers. At least she had a friend. That was more than she had five days ago. She retrieved her sleep shirt from the floor and slipped it on, gathered clothes, and slipped out the door to the bathroom. He was humming to himself in the kitchen. The tune sounded terribly . . . familiar.

When she came out of the shower, dressed in black cords and a red suede jacket she’d had forever over a white long-sleeved T-shirt, she felt better than she had in a long time. She pulled a scarf scattered with red and gold leaves on a black background around her neck. Friends might not be all her heart wanted, but being friends was better than nothing.

“What’s the word?” she asked as she saw him bustling about scooping out a cantaloupe.

He looked struck. “I . . . I totally forgot to go down and get the paper from the lobby.”

She hadn’t meant that. She’d forgotten about Mordred, too, in all her thoughts about perfect knights. She blushed. Gawain was not focused on what had happened last night, of course. Men didn’t. Especially when it was just recreational sex. “Don’t worry. Let’s just turn on the tube.” She fiddled with his setup and managed to get Channel 4. She thought she’d have to wait for the local segment of the network morning news program to hear anything about Mordred, but she was wrong:

“All across the country, decapitated heads have appeared set on pikes,” a pretty woman was saying into a forest of handheld microphones. The label at the bottom of the screen said she was Angela Forten, spokesperson
for the FBI. “The only connection between the victims seems to be that they are from a minority group, or activists for various kinds of human rights.”

“What are you doing to catch these people?” someone yelled from among the forest. Gawain came up behind Diana. She looked up at him and saw her own horror reflected in his face.

“We have top teams on it in all the affected cities right now. It’s early days yet, though,” the spokeswoman said, her voice calm. “We have to be patient and let justice work.”

“Do you suspect terrorist activity?” another shouted.

“We have no idea who is responsible. It does appear to be an organized effort, though the details of the crimes vary.”

“While you investigate, how can the public be safe?”

“We’re advising people to observe a personal curfew. It’s not mandatory, but I would not go out at night alone. Only in groups of ten or more.”

“Why ten?”

“The most . . . bodies . . . we’ve seen as a result of a single incident has been six.”

There was a stunned silence.

“Actually,” she continued. “I wouldn’t go out at night at all.”

“Bars and restaurants are going to love that,” Diana murmured.

The station flipped away from Ms. Forten and back to the national desk. “This just in,” the black newscaster said. He was normally a jovial personality, but today his expression was grim. “Reports of similar events are coming in from other countries now. Germany and Austria are especially hard-hit.”

Gawain reached forward and turned the television off.

They stood there, saying nothing, for a long minute.

It was Diana who finally stirred herself. “Is . . . is this what you expected?” She turned to see him swallow convulsively

“Not on this scale.”

“The wonders of the Internet. That’s got to be how he’s doing it. From my computer.” The thought of that made her want to vomit. She was involved in this now.

“You aren’t to blame for this.”

“I am, though. I brought him back here. I changed the course of history, and look what’s happened. People are dead, Gawain. Because of what I did. Lots of people.”

He pulled her into his arms and just held her, his cheek bent to her head. She was too stunned and appalled even to cry. “If it comes to that,” he said softly into her hair, “we have to blame my father for flinging us forward, and causing you to lose the memory of your childhood. You came back because you were looking to return to what you knew, unconsciously. Else why would you pick that time?”

That was true. She must have been unconsciously looking for her childhood with Leonardo’s machine. “But I took him back here with me. I should never have interfered.”

“You said he was about to be killed. You were kindhearted. There is no crime in that.” He took a breath. “It was natural. Now we just have to concentrate on stopping him.”

Reluctantly she extricated herself from Gawain’s embrace. It
was
her fault. And there seemed to be nothing she could do to stop the awful course of events from unfolding. “The police can track these people through their computer use, can’t they?”

“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “These guys are smart. They change IP addresses all the time. They take down sites and put up others. I think it can be tough to track them. At the very least, it can take a long time.”

“Mordred can’t be that sophisticated with computers, Adapter or no.”

“He’s not alone anymore, Diana. He’s got an army.”

“We’ve got to go to the police,” she practically wailed. There had to be a way to stop the carnage. And whatever Gawain said, that carnage could be laid at her door. She wondered that she hadn’t thought of that when the first head appeared on a pike in Union Square.

“And tell them what?” he asked, running his hands through his hair and looking around the apartment with unseeing eyes. “It’s the same old problem. Can’t tell them he’s a guy from the past. We can’t tell them where he is because we don’t know.”

“We’ll tell them the guy who was staying with me illegally from Canada is the killer.”

“All that does is embroil you in this mess and it doesn’t get them any farther toward finding him and stopping him.” He stopped. “Uh-oh. We didn’t report your computer stolen. If they do find him, and they find it with him, they might think you were aiding and abetting.”

She sighed. “Okay. We’ll report it. That doesn’t seem like enough when people are going to get killed again tonight.”

His look said he agreed with her and felt more ashamed than she did that he couldn’t make a difference.

The local precinct was a zoo. Everyone was hysterical, it seemed. Gawain had to shield Diana with his body to keep her from getting shoved around. Women were shrieking about needing police protection. Everybody and his brother had seen the killers and wanted to make a full report. Behind the front desk men in shirtsleeves and women in slacks and sweaters mixed in with uniformed police manning phones and all talking at once. When Diana and Gawain at last reached the front, the desk sergeant, the
potbellied and balding man who’d lectured them yesterday before he gave back Diana’s car, was back on duty. He looked like he should have a cigar hanging out of his mouth and talk with a Brooklyn accent. Right now he’d lost what patience he was born with.

“You back? What is it?” he growled. His accent was pure California.

“We’d like to report that Diana’s computer was stolen,” Gawain said calmly as an old woman started berating the government in general for incompetence in a loud voice behind him. He kept his eyes down, though in this melee he wasn’t sure anyone would notice them changing.

The sergeant looked up and raised his brows. “You want to report a computer stolen . . . today.”

“Yes, please, sir,” Diana said. “Don’t say we’ve waited in this long line for nothing.”

Gawain could see the sergeant melt. Who wouldn’t melt under that soft, earnest stare? He always had. “Yeah. I see your point, lady,” the sergeant said, his tone now only mock gruff to maintain face. “Let me get you a form to fill out. Just drop it back by the window when you’re done.”

He reached under the counter and fumbled around, then bent to look. “Where the hell are they? We can’t be out.” He turned to the recruit. “Go back in the storeroom and get me some stolen-property forms, kid. And put a rush on it.”

The recruit made a face. Probably didn’t like being called kid. But he left at a jog.

Gawain and Diana stepped aside to let the woman in a pillbox hat with a veil and a ratty fur coat demand extra police patrols on her street. It didn’t go over well with the sergeant.

The recruit finally poked his head back in from a doorway. “We must be out, Sarge.”

Diana started to fidget. She seemed torn about something. Gawain was about to ask her what was wrong when she called out, “Have you looked back by the mail room? They could have been delivered and just not put away yet.”

The sergeant and the recruit both looked a little stunned. “Sarge?”

The sergeant waved a hand. “It’s worth a try.” He went back to remonstrating with the old woman. The uniformed kid was back in less than no time hauling a box in his arms.

“Hey, you were right, lady!” he called to Diana. “Mailroom! How’d you know?”

“I lose things a lot, so I’m a good finder. You just think where things would logically be.”

The kid pulled open the box and handed her a form. “Here you go.”

“Thanks,” she said hastily.

She and Gawain pushed their way back to a counter. Diana filled out the form while he watched her. His keys. Her boss’ clipboard. There was no way she could have known he left it in the men’s room on the shelf above the second sink. And then this. Gawain knew now. He just had to get her to admit it to him.

And if it was true, then there was a way to find Mordred.

Gawain opened the door for her on his black Range Rover and handed her in like it was some kind of carriage, just like always, and loped around to the driver’s side.

“Okay, so we filled out a police report on my silly computer,” she said, unaccountably peeved. It felt so bad not to be able to
do
anything about the terrible things that were happening. “Now what?”

Gawain made no move to start the SUV. “I’ve been thinking,” he said slowly. “We have to get Mordred today if we’re going to get him. Tomorrow it’s all out of our hands.”

“Well, that would be nice,” she said with a certain amount of sarcasm. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Wait. What had he said?
“Why is today different than tomorrow?”

He looked at her with gray-green swirling eyes. “Because Mordred will have called his army to him. He’s from the fifth century. He doesn’t go with the concept of ‘virtual army.’ They’ll be congregating wherever he is, the closer ones first, and then the ones from farther away. They’ll bring weapons. Don’t know what kind. But after today, he’ll have protection. I won’t be able to take him out hand to hand.”

A series of really horrible scenes flashed before her mind’s eye. “So you’re thinking this is going to be a pitched-battle kind of war, not a stealthy-acts-of-terrorism kind of war?”

“It’s what he knows. He may look to kill the president or the governor to make a point. He might try to take over some kind of military arsenal and threaten a city. I don’t know. I know he wants power and he can bend men to his will to get it.” Gawain’s eyes were gray and hard.

“Maybe he’ll just start rallying in public with his fanatic followers and making speeches so he can get elected and secede from the union or something. I mean, he has a right to do that.”

“After what he’s done so far? I think these murders are an initiation rite of sorts, a proof you’re worth a position in his army. Either way, he’s generating hatred that will fester and linger in society until it rots from within or is torn apart. If we stop it now, before they can get organized, by taking out the center, it will die out. He’s got to be stopped.”

It began to drizzle. A really depressing drizzle.

“I . . . I agree with that.” Even if he had to be killed. She swallowed. She wondered if she would ever have imagined herself saying something like that when her father was alive. But if Mordred was truly behind inciting people to all these murders . . .

“Then maybe you’ll agree to find him for me.”

“
Me?
I have no idea where he is.” What made him think she would be of any use?

“Use your power.”

She had to laugh. “Like I have power. That’s the world you come from, guy, not my world. We don’t have ‘powers.’ ”

“I think you do.” He was so sincere. His eyes went blue even as she looked at him.

Her grin faded. “What makes you think that?”

“You can find things.”

She blinked.
Oh. He’d noticed.
“Yeah. I know where things are. That’s not a ‘power.’ ”

“Sure it is. Just like I can turn into mist and go through locked doors. I should have realized you weren’t what you seemed. I’m an idiot.”

“Knowing where things are is
not
a power. It’s a stupid little quirk I’ve always had.”

“Are there other quirks?”

She swallowed. Should she tell him? But a longing to tell him came over her. He understood her in ways no one else ever would. He knew who she was. He was the keeper of her childhood.
Truth time.
“Sometimes I know what people will say a few seconds before they say it. Exact words. Strangers even. Everybody except you. And Mordred. I couldn’t get anything off him, either.”

“That makes sense,” he said thoughtfully.

“I can’t read thoughts. I only know what people will actually say, even if it’s not what they’re thinking. It doesn’t get me anything except about three or four seconds’ head start on reacting. I can finish people’s sentences for them, but that’s just annoying. And I can always find my keys. Big deal.”