Goddess of Fate

by Alexandra Sokoloff

  And just at that moment, as if she could hear his thoughts, she looked up at him and her eyes were hungry, wanting...

  Focus, he told himself.

  “Here,” he said gruffly, and pulled out a chair in front of a computer.

  She sat, and he sat, and both of them pretended to ignore the intense magnetism vibrating between them.

  Luke punched up Google, hitting the keyboard a little harder than necessary, and typed in “Bayside Shipping.”

  Numerous links came up, including the company website.

  The address was San Francisco, and Luke felt another rush of significance. He clicked through to the website, which advertised international shipping of freight and every type of merchandise. The company shipped to and from ports all over the world, from Aarhus to Zeebrugge.

  It was basically a trucking company on the sea. Luke knew the sort very well; it was exactly the kind of company he was dealing with in his investigation, the kind that increasingly fell prey to pirates on the open sea...or sometimes indulged in a kind of piracy of their own by smuggling drugs, weapons, electronics, even people.

  Aurora moved beside him, looking at the screen. “Is it important?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer her at first. He was still trying to process the whole thing himself.

  It was a wild coincidence...if Luke had believed in coincidence, which he didn’t. One way or another, he was tracking a man who looked very suspiciously like a high school teammate that Luke was entirely sure had been headed in a criminal direction. Whose father owned a shipping company that was a direct rival of other shipping companies that were being pirated.

  No, Luke didn’t believe in coincidence. But he had no idea whatsoever how all of this could be happening. The chain of events was unlikely in the extreme.

  “Yeah, it’s important,” he answered her finally. “We need to go see these people right away.”

  * * *

  They left the library and went down the stairs in silence; she seemed to be aware that there was something on his mind.

  When they reached the long and shining main hall, instead of heading for the main entrance to the street, Luke suddenly steered her toward the back of the building, the doors that led toward the main central courtyard of the school. He could feel that Aurora was about to speak, but apparently she thought better of it and just let him lead her.

  He walked her out through the doors and Aurora looked around them at the quad. “Where are we going?” she finally asked.

  “I just thought it would be nice to sit for a minute. Reminisce.” He steered her toward the planter with the dozens of white rosebushes. The roses were as prolific and fragrant as ever. Either they were immortal or they’d been replaced over the years to keep the planter looking exactly the same. Luke maneuvered Aurora so that they sat in the same place they had sat in the dream when he kissed her. The fragrance of roses surrounded them, just as in the dream.

  She was so instantly uncomfortable—or more accurately, electrified—that he knew she remembered, too. They had shared the same dream, or they had the same memory.

  “You’re blushing,” he said, and his voice was low and rough. He could feel the same unbearable electricity he remembered from high school, an excitement so powerful it seemed he could die from it.

  “Am I?” she said, and her voice was as breathless as his was.

  “You know you are,” he said, and his arms went around her waist and he kissed her.

  The feeling of her mouth opening under his was so sweet, and so maddening, as well. His whole body was taut with wanting her, his groin an insistent ache, and if not for the fact that they would have been arrested for corrupting minors, he would have taken her right there beneath the roses.

  “Luke, Luke, we can’t...” she protested, with no power in the words whatsoever as his mouth moved over her throat, her lips.

  He finally pulled back slightly, and they were both breathing hard, their foreheads pressed together. Her hands were under his shirt, moving over the flat planes of his stomach, exciting him to mindlessness.

  “We’ve done this before. Right here,” he said. His words did not come out as harsh as he had intended them to be, given that he was kissing her throat as he said them, his hands twining in her hair, pulling her closer.

  After a moment, she nodded, just the slightest bit.

  His fingers slipped over her skin, tightened on her shoulders. He made a supreme effort and held her away from him so he could look at her. She was flushed, breathing as hard as he was. He slid his fingers between her breasts again to pull out the rune stone, and held up his own, comparing the two. They were identical.

  “I got this one when I was seven years old, from a little girl.”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  “That was you,” he said. “You gave me this.”

  “Yes.”

  He stared at her, completely bemused. “And you went to this school.”

  She looked caught in the headlights, but finally answered, “Sort of.”

  “Sort of?” he repeated harshly. “Were you here or weren’t you?”

  “Yes, I was here.”

  “And you tutored me.” Although that wasn’t really right, he realized; it was only that one day.

  Aurora’s face was drowned in that blush that made him want to kiss her again, just like...just like he had in that very spot, all those years ago.

  “I helped you with a paper...” she said, barely audible.

  “On heroes.” He finished. “How is this happening?” He was talking more to himself than to her. His brain felt like it was about to explode.

  “I told you, it’s about Time.” She faltered, seemed to be gathering her thoughts. “Time is so strange,” she said. “It’s not a straight line—it’s more of a weave of lines, or threads. And when one thread gets tangled, it can tangle the whole weave of a life. If a life gets too tangled, it...stops. But if you can just follow that one thread, the thread that got tangled to begin with, sometimes you can fix things.” She turned to him, her blue eyes desperate. “Do you see?”

  He stared at her. “Not at all. Not a word of it.”

  She looked even more anxious. “I know. I’m not being clear. What I mean is, there are moments of your—our—lives that have special significance. Where all the elements converge to move us toward our fates. And those moments come back periodically, in sort of a spiral.”

  He frowned. It was all sounding so crazy, and yet it made some kind of sense. “You’re saying that day—the day I fought Tomasson and played that winning game—that was one of those points on the spiral.”

  “Yes!” Her face was shining. “Exactly. You made decisions that day that affected the rest of your life. So if anything...”

  She suddenly seemed to be having problems talking.

  “I mean, if there was anything you regret, or that didn’t quite work out as you planned—” she shot a quick glance at his face “—that’s the moment you have to go back to...to change.”

  “To change...”

  “Your destiny.”

  Luke had grown up in California and he’d heard this kind of talk before. Sort of. He remembered the day she was talking about; hell, he’d dreamed about it just last night, in a bizarre living color. But as for the day changing his destiny? What did that even mean?

  Except that... He frowned.

  There had been a different choice, hadn’t there? At least for a few minutes that day, he’d considered something else altogether, another kind of life. And there had been another girl—no, there had been this girl, and there had been something he’d never felt before...

  He looked at Aurora and remembered that dizzy sweetness of discovery, of new love.

  Another choice...destiny...and someone who believes in me with all her heart.

  She was talking again, urgently, desperately. “Luke, we have to go. We only have until dawn.”

  “Until dawn...”

  “To solve the case. It a
ll has to do with the case.”

  “What happens at dawn?”

  She looked stricken.

  “What happens at dawn?” he repeated, and he reached for her to grasp her arms, make her tell him...when the burner phone buzzed.

  He stared down into Aurora’s face, then he reached for the phone, glanced at the caller ID.

  “Pepper,” he said, clicking on.

  “Your friend from the pier is hard to find,” his partner said on the other end.

  “I’m getting that sense myself.”

  “No rap sheet on Tomas Tomasson, and nothing on Autotrack—he’s gone to a lot of trouble to keep himself off the radar. But I think I might have found something. There’s a Nils Tomasson who’s all over the piers, owner and CEO of the Bayside Shipping Company...”

  “A major competitor of our pirated companies,” Luke interrupted. “Brother, we are on the same trail. Here’s what I need. A list of all Bayside shipments coming into the Port of San Francisco in the past six months. Piers, dates, times, anything you can find.”

  “You got it,” Pepper said, and Luke could hear the excitement in his voice, the thrill of the hunt. “You all right?”

  Luke glanced at Aurora. “I’m getting closer. I’ll be in touch.”

  He disconnected and looked at Aurora for a long moment, and then said only, “We need to move.”

  Chapter 13

  They’d missed the noon traffic and it was fairly smooth sailing back to downtown. This time Luke was driving; there was a dull throb in his thigh, but not unbearable, and now that they were headed onto enemy turf—potentially—he wasn’t comfortable giving up any control of the situation. Including giving in to thoughts of Norns and destiny. One thing at a time.

  In the seat beside him, Aurora was reading the web information on Bayside Shipping that they’d printed out in the library.

  “Founded in 1940 in San Francisco and restructured in 1984 as a tramp steamship agency.” She looked over at him. “Tramp steamship?”

  “Meaning a cargo ship with no established schedule of ports of call. Meaning it’s opportunistic— easier to smuggle goods,” he added.

  “Oh.” She nodded, and then said, “Luke...” and he was shocked at how his body responded just to the sound of her saying his name. “What do you think they’re smuggling?” she asked, and her voice sounded troubled.

  Luke had had a lot of time to think about this. Whatever the cargo was, these men were willing to kill for it.

  “People, drugs or arms,” he said grimly. “And I don’t think it’s people. And there are too many containers they’re moving for it to be drugs. That would be really exceptional.”

  “Arms,” she said, and shivered. “That’s not good.”

  “No. Not good at all.” Luke nodded to the papers in her hand. “What else?”

  Aurora swallowed, continued reading from the pages. “‘Welcome to Bayside Steamship Agents, specialists in tanker and dry cargo operations. Our network encompasses the USA, plus locations in Canada, Mexico, Scandinavia and Singapore...’”

  “Skip to the management roster,” Luke interrupted.

  “CEO—Nils Tomasson...”

  “That’s the father,” Luke said. “Do you see a Tomas Nils Tomasson?”

  Aurora turned a page. “San Francisco Operations, Regional Manager, Operations Manager... I don’t see him.”

  Luke frowned. He was sure that Tomas would be working for the company; he remembered from high school that the father was old school and would most likely want his son close to him and as far up in the hierarchy as he could put him. So the very fact that Tomas’s name wasn’t front and center implied the possibility of a shadow operation that Tomas would be at the center of. And that would explain why someone would have kept him out of the public records.

  Luke doubted that he could get any information on the piracy from the corporate offices. An operation that large, three floors of the Transamerica building, was a legitimate business. No, the person they—he—needed to find was Tomas. But there might be a way...

  Aurora shifted uncomfortably in the seat beside him. “Are you just going to go straight to the office?”

  He glanced at her. “Do you have a better idea?”

  “No, but...these are the people who tried to kill you. What if they try again? Do you have a plan?”

  Despite everything, he grinned. She sounded like Nona. “You think I need a plan?”

  She looked stricken, and he relented. “Actually, I do have a plan. We’re going to go to the corporate offices and check out the layout—see if we can run into anyone we might be able to get to talk about Tomas.” He’d use his badge if he had to but was loath to let anyone at the company know he was still alive. But maybe he could use the school connection. It might just work.

  * * *

  The Transamerica Pyramid, in the heart of downtown, was the second most recognizable landmark of San Francisco, eclipsed only by the Golden Gate Bridge. They rode the elevator up to the fortieth floor, and if there hadn’t been other people in the lift, Luke would have taken full advantage of the ride; he found elevators one of the most erotically stimulating places on the planet. He couldn’t help stepping behind Aurora and putting his hands lightly on her hips, pulling her back against him so she could feel him hard against her. He could hear her draw a quick breath and he was stirred all the more by how much she wanted him.

  As the elevator arrived at their floor Luke released her and thought about being submerged in icy water, a trick that had worked for him since high school. By the time he stepped out of the elevator he was perfectly decent.

  Outside the entry of the Bayside Shipping offices, the company directory was set behind glass. They stopped in front of it to scan it. Again, no sign of Tomas Tomasson.

  Luke shot a look toward the interior lobby.

  The main lobby had a striking nautical theme, with a reception desk of burnished steel jutting out in a triangular shape like the prow of a ship, huge aquariums set into the wall instead of paintings and, in the place of sculptures, large pieces of antique ships’ instrumentation: a ship’s wheel, a gyroscope, wind indicators, sextants, a giant set of ship’s observation binoculars, a star globe.

  The receptionist seated behind that ship’s prow of a desk was a stunning black-haired beauty, which decided Luke on the next part of his plan.

  “Stay out here,” he said to Aurora in a low voice. She glanced at him, a quizzical look, then when she looked toward the receptionist, her face fell.

  She nodded silently, and Luke stepped inside.

  He sauntered over to the desk, catching the receptionist’s attention right away. Most women responded to cops, but women like this especially were pushovers; with looks like that, the “take care of me” gene was strong.

  He appreciated the appreciative look she gave him.

  “May I help you?” she asked in a throaty voice.

  Luke gave her his best killer smile, just the right touch of checking her out and reflecting absolute satisfaction with what he saw. “I’m having lunch with Tomasson,” he told her. “Unless you’re free...”

  She gave him a look that was halfway between a smile and a frown. “Mr. Tomasson is not in the office today, Mr....?”

  “Valdmarsson,” Luke said smoothly. “Lars.” He was counting on the Scandinavian name to register with her, to make him sound like part of some inner circle. And it did; she looked much more interested and also slightly concerned.

  “Are you sure your lunch was for today?”

  Luke made a show of checking his iPhone. “Definitely today, but maybe I have the place wrong. I know Tomas said he was going to be at work...”

  “Tomas?” she repeated, and looked conflicted.

  “Don’t tell me,” Luke said helpfully, and took a calculated guess. “He’s down at the docks.”

  “Yes,” she said, obviously relieved not to have to offer the information herself.

  “Idiot.” Luke tapped his head, and made
a show of looking at his phone, as if he were going to make a call. Then he looked back up at the receptionist. “While I’ve got this thing out, might as well get your number.”

  “Sorry—taken,” she said, smiling.

  Not very taken, though, he thought, and before yesterday he would have pushed it. Instead, he smiled back. “Thanks for your help.” And he started for the hall, then paused and turned. “Pier 80, right?”

  And automatically she said, “Ninety-four.”

  Luke did an imaginary cheer in his head, and then reached into his pocket and stepped back to the desk. “Oh, I almost forgot. Do you validate?” He held up the parking ticket.

  “As if you need validation,” she purred, and leaned forward to put stickers on the ticket...giving him a perfect view of perfect cleavage.

  * * *

  In the outside lobby, Aurora watched the exchange with a heavy heart. She knew the receptionist meant nothing to Luke, she knew it, and yet his casual flirting hurt as much as it would seeing him make love to the other woman.

  “And that’s why this whole thing is absurd.” Aurora jumped at the voice beside her, turned to see Val standing inside the mirror in front of the elevators, dressed sleekly as a businesswoman, in a navy blue suit with a cinched waist and stiletto heels, her arms folded across her chest. She shook her head. “He’s a mortal. You can’t survive without constancy. How long do you think it’s going to take before some mortal woman does more than turn his head? You’re only going to get hurt. Again. And again. And again. And...”

  “You’ve made your point.” Aurora shot a quick look toward the interior lobby. “I’m hopeless, it’s hopeless, there’s no hope.”

  “I don’t know,” Val said maddeningly, and glanced at her own reflection in the lobby mirror, adjusting her skirt. “Maybe I should stick around.”

  “The Eternals gave me this day, not you,” Aurora said with such fire that Val stepped back, to Aurora’s satisfaction.

  “Oh, all right,” Val said, recovering smoothly. “Knock yourself out. But remember—his favorite movie is Gladiator. He was born to be a warrior, Aurora, it’s in his blood. His destiny is to serve Odin in Valhalla. Where every day is like Gladiator—in the flesh.”