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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 ru
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 Fly
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.
Power. Of course.
Financial. Political. Even military...
Especially military. Change the course of wars, elections, anything. It would be just the thing to interest old man Carreras, too, Jésus' father—something to entice him back into an active role in family affairs. Charlie narrowed his eyes. Come to think of it, that retirement story had rung a little hollow all along. Carreras men retired when someone dumped dirt over them. The more Charlie thought about it, the more he knew was he was right.
Julio Carreras had always been more subtle, more given to complex setups than Jésus, although Jésus was good. This whole setup was so convoluted and carefully hidden, it fairly screamed of Julio Carreras' touch. Charlie wasn't certain Jésus would have been able to pull it off single-handedly. Why the devil hadn't he considered any of this earlier?
Charlie called himself several kinds of fool. He refused to accept any excuses, even the fact he'd been trying to stay alive in a world as alien as anything he'd ever seen on Star Trek. For four entire years, he hadn't been thinking, let alone thinking like a cop.
It had taken Sibyl to jar him back on track.
Sibyl...
Charlie closed his eyes. He wished for just the tiniest, selfish moment he could cradle her close and hold onto her until the aching emptiness in him disappeared. How long he lay on his side, curled up in a ball around his daughter and trying not to cry, Charlie had no idea. Eventually, the combined stresses and physical abuse he'd endured took their toll. While arguing with himself about whether or not he ought to confront Decius Martis with a request to know where they were headed, Charlie fell asleep.
He woke slowly. His first response was surprise. He hadn't slept so soundly—or, he suspected, so long at one stretch—in four years. He started to sit up—
"N
Moving involved a whole series of agonies. They began in his neck and ended in the soles of his feet. Breathing hurt. Saddle-galled thighs burned so badly he hissed between clenched teeth. Welts in his back had glued themselves to his stolen tunic. His back felt as stiff as his armor. Dull pain in his ribcage shuddered and stabbed like bright lightning when he shifted position. Above it all, he was so hungry, he could've gnawed on the woolen sail which draped across him in wet sags and folds. And when he tried to move again, he discovered he'd been efficiently tied up.
The sea still heaved and bucked, reminding him of the ground the previous day. The boat tilted sharply every few moments, giving him an unobstructed view of Herculaneum. Vesuvius still belched destruction. The whole coastline looked like a madman's vision of hell. The crazed movement of the fishing boat as it slid and tossed across the wave crests caused the whole landscape to shift crazily. What little he could see was a glowing sea of lava and gas stretching right down the mountainside into the sea itself.
Of beautiful, idyllic Herculaneum, there was no trace.
The air was thick and heavy. It smelled of rotten eggs. Rocks and ash continued to pelt them. A lamp hung forlornly from the charred stump of the mast, casting dim light into the volcanic gloom. Everything was coated with a dull grey film. Blurred movement in the bow showed him Phillipa, her breasts bare as she nursed her child.
Lucania, fast asleep, lay across her lap. Charlie sagged in relief. She's all right. Whether or not she stayed that way very likely depended on him. Again, he thought of old movies he'd watched. Hollywood had certainly got that part right. Nobody pitied the child of a disobedient slave.
The fisherman still ma
The fisherman had, by his own standards, shown astonishing leniency. Nonetheless, Charlie felt nothing but utter defeat. It was worse, almost, than the day he'd lost the use of his leg in the arena. Then, he'd had only himself to think of, only his own freedom to somehow win. The ropes Decius Martis had tightened around his wrists and ankles were more than symbols of imprisonment. They represented loss of all hope. The best that could happen now was a return to slavery—not only for him, but for little Lucania.
He said in a low, hard voice, "You hold our lives in your hands. Denounce me... they'll kill me without pity. Then they'll take my daughter and sell her to some stinking brothel to be raised a whore... ."
Decius' brow furrowed thoughtfully. "You have courage. I will grant that. And a good mind. I would have you know, slave, I see a great difference between quietly killing a man in his sleep and turning him over to an Imperial garrison to be tortured to death."