Casey raised his brows at this outburst. “You didn’t have the guts the first time, Steadman. As I recall.”
Brad’s face was mobile with emotion.
“Not our Viking, either. I have some . . . questions for him.”
“Me, too.” Brad’s eyes were a little wild. “And I’d like to beat the answers out of him, twice a day, for a long time.”
“Steadman, you surprise me. You’re getting a backbone. A little late, maybe.”
Brad wheeled on Lucy. “And you, you slut—”
“Will you use the machine or nay?” Galen rumbled, cutting off Brad’s tirade.
“Okay, you.” Casey gestured to one of the assistants, a slight Hispanic guy. “You’re our lab rat.” The guy looked like a rat. A cornered rat. Panic surged into his eyes. He didn’t move.
“Casey, it’s got to be me. I want to go.” Brad looked to Lucy in triumph, as if that proved he was a better man than she was worth.
Casey looked disgusted. “You we need in case it doesn’t work. You’re the expert, the one who can fix it, remember?”
Brad stood, his chest heaving. His glance darted around the lab. Then he stilled. “Okay. Yeah.” He seemed to get some control back. “Get over here, Rodriguez.” Brad turned to face the machine. When the assistant didn’t move, Casey gestured to the military guys. Two moved up and pushed Rodriguez forward with the butts of their machine guns.
“This is going to change the world,” Brad said. “And I provided the power.” He knelt and flipped switches on the lunch box– sized power source. He didn’t seem to recall that it was Leonardo who built it. “Jensen never gave me credit for the quality of my research,” Brad muttered. “Fuck him. I’ll have his job.”
Brad stood in front of the machine. “Christ. I won’t need his job. I’ll have my own institute. ‘Multiphasic Research.’ That’s catchy.” He pulled the lever down. The machine began to whir. He grabbed Rodriguez. “Now where shall we send him?”
“You could see Alfred the Great change the world,” Galen suggested. The gems began to throw colored beams around the ceiling. Behind Lucy the military guys gasped.
Brad’s eyes lighted up. “The event that made us what we are today . . . the fall of the Danelaw to Alfred . . .” The machine seemed to pause. “Yeah, Rodriguez. Think about that.”
Casey tossed a gun he took from a holster under his jacket. “Just in case.”
Rodriguez didn’t catch it; Brad did. The assistant looked paralyzed with fright.
“Think of the twelfth day, fifth month of a.d. 912,” Galen called above the hum of power in the room. “The hill to the south of the plains outside Whitby.”
“Yeah,” Brad murmured. “Bet those cretins have never seen one of these.” The sound of his voice was almost lost in the hum. Whether he meant a time machine or a gun Lucy didn’t know. Galen took her hand. His calluses grounded her against what was about to happen here. Didn’t Casey see it? Brad was going back. Maybe he’d take Rodriguez with him, or maybe he’d shove the assistant out of the way at the last minute. But apparently everyone in the room was too ignorant of history to know that Alfred was already dead in 912. The battle between Alfred and the first King Guthrum was long won, and it had not eliminated the Danelaw, just controlled its spread. Brad was going back to the battle where Galen had fought Egil.
Suddenly the machine snapped into action. The gears all whirred into a blur. Casey darted forward, realizing Brad’s intent too late. Brad shoved Rodriguez, who stumbled back.
Brad and the machine both disappeared.
There was a long moment when the only sound in the room was the gasping of lungs and the click of weapons being readied against a foe that wasn’t corporeal but time itself.
Galen put his arm around Lucy’s shoulder. Casey looked around wildly. Rodriguez lay on the lab floor, gasping in relief.
“God damn it!” Casey yelled. “The fucking idiot.”
“What . . . what happens now, Colonel?” The lead military guy was lost.
“We wait,” Casey snapped.
They waited. If Brad was successful, he would be back within minutes, and even if—
The lights went out in the lab. What sounded like thunder boomed all around them, as if lightning had struck the building.
And then the machine was sitting on the platform once again.
Alone.
The lights blinked on. No Brad. But the machine’s bright surface was splashed in several places with red-brown. Lucy put her hand over her mouth.
Casey strode to the machine and examined it. “Looks like Steadman bought the farm.” Casey didn’t seem concerned.
Lucy’s imagination was working overtime. Brad set down in the middle of Galen’s battle. Slashing swords and swinging axes, the smell of blood and smoke—all as she remembered it. Brad would start shooting wildly. He’d kill people, but the clip would run out sooner or later. Then those left standing from both sides would fall on him. . . .
“At least it works,” Casey said, turning to them. “And Steadman was really no longer useful.” Casey’s pale blue eyes still roved over the glinting brass and jewels of the machine, possessively. “He was unreliable.”
Brad had just been a little insane. Casey was major insane, the cold kind, not the hot kind. He’d made a mistake, letting his chief scientist and bottle washer get killed, and now he was justifying it, making it seem as though it weren’t a mistake at all.
“So that’s the second man who died for this machine. The first one you killed.”
“Honey, I’ve killed more men than I can count.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Oh, you mean Lowell. Yeah.” He shrugged. “Guy had a bad heart. He sneaked out on our little party early. Knew it, too, the bastard. But we got the guy who did your IDs. He would have told us where he delivered them. Now we don’t need him, of course.”
Why did she think that meant the forger was a dead man, too? She glanced to Galen. He was tight, about to burst it seemed, maybe . . . waiting for something.
“And anyone can run the machine at this point. So,” Casey said, as if deciding. “Time for a little cleanup.” He picked up Lucy’s bag and rummaged around until he found the gun. He held it up. “Thought Lowell would make sure you had something like this. Glock nine. Bet you don’t even know how to use it.”
Casey snapped it up and put bullets in the foreheads of Rodriguez and the other lab assistant. Lucy gasped in shock. Galen jumped back, dragging her with him. The military guys behind them took a step forward, brandishing their guns as if to hold Galen and Lucy in place.
“What weapon spits fire and kills from a distance?” Galen muttered.
“A gun,” Lucy answered. “You saw them in the western and just didn’t know what they were.” She’d begun to tremble as she stared at the lab assistants, collapsed on the floor, gaping holes in their heads. Funny. There wasn’t much blood.
“Jake gave you this weapon?” Galen sounded outraged. “You had it always?”
“Sure beats a sword, doesn’t it?” Casey had turned the gun on them. Galen pulled Lucy behind his body.
“Come on out, honey. No use putting this off.” Casey motioned with the gun.
“Kill me,” Galen growled. “You let Lucy free.”
“No, no, no, no. You I want to keep for a while. I want to know how you can talk to animals like that. You might even know where some Viking hoards of silver are buried. She’s the expendable one.” He motioned to the guys wearing camo. Two came up and grabbed her while three tried to seize Galen. He twisted a gun out of the hands of the nearest soldier and used it as a club. The stock part of it came up and caught the guy under the jaw, dropping him in his tracks. Galen was already swinging for one of the guys who held her. She twisted away, but the soldier had her arm. For a minute, and then he went down, too.