Boy, when she finally got around to it, she was going to have to make one heck of a confession.
59
• DAVINCI •
Florida, One Month Later
DaVinci was painting again. Dr. Littlewood had offered her the entire upstairs space of the industrial unit above his basement laboratory. “I’ve never had a use for the space above ground,” he had explained. “I needed a basement, to dampen the sound.”
She was painting eight, ten, twelve hours a day—well, night. She’d adjusted her schedule to match Quintus’s, sleeping from four or five in the morning until ten or eleven at Jillian’s apartment. She knew she should pay rent, but every time she offered, Jillian shrugged her off. “Maybe when you get a commission.”
She needed work. She knew this. She needed an actual job. But it felt great to be painting again, and she didn’t want to give up the few hours a day she got to spend alone with Quintus. So she kept painting and not getting a job until one day when Halley and Edmund showed up with a package for her.
DaVinci was sitting at dinner with Quintus, Jillian and Everett, and Halley and Edmund.
“Oh my goodness,” said Halley. “I almost forgot. I visited your parents, and they wanted me to give this to you.”
It was a package sent to DaVinci’s Montecito address, coming from a different Montecito address that DaVinci didn’t recognize.
“Go on,” said Jillian, grinning. “Open it!”
“Is this from you?”
Jillian shook her head.
DaVinci looked at Quintus.
“Don’t look at me,” he said.
“Very nice use of idiom,” said Halley to Quintus.
“Awesome, dude,” agreed Edmund.
DaVinci opened the package. Inside she found a handful of photographs, a journal, a letter, and a packet of gummy bears.
“Okay, seriously, what is with all the gummy bears?” asked DaVinci.
“You tell us,” said Jillian and Halley at the same time.
DaVinci shook her head. “I have no idea. Must be some alternate time line thing.”
“Read the letter,” suggested Everett.
“Aloud,” requested Quintus.
So she did.
Dear DaVinci,
It’s taken us over eighteen months, but my sister and I finally finished going through Geraldine’s things, and we thought you’d like to have these pictures. We read the journal, and we both agreed you should have it, too. (You might want some tissue, though.)
Again, we want to thank you for making our mother’s final months such good ones. You were all she could talk about on the phone—well, you’ll see when you read her journal.
With warmest regards,
Ernesto and Amelia
DaVinci looked up. “Who are Ernesto, Amelia, and Geraldine?”
No one had an answer.
“Read the journal, maybe?” suggested Jillian.
So she did, curling up with it on Jillian’s bed while the others ate dessert in the main room.
An hour later, with mascara streaks on both cheeks, she told Quintus, Everett and Jillian, and Halley and Edmund what she’d learned.
“According to this journal, I gave private painting lessons to a woman—to Geraldine—who was dying of lung cancer. She’d painted in college, in Italy, but then she quit when she became a mother, and, anyway, the point is, her kids Ernesto and Amelia, who are like, my parents’ ages, hired me to give her twice-a-week painting classes for four months, which apparently, she didn’t want at first, so that must have been fun, but eventually she and I really hit it off, it sounds like. Oh, and I guess I made her keep an art journal,” she said, raising the journal.
“You never said anything about this,” said Halley.
“You told me once you had an octogenarian friend,” said Jillian.
“I don’t know what to say,” said DaVinci. “Maybe it was hard for me to talk about her, with her dying. Oh, and she had a dying wish I’m guessing I never talked about with you guys, either.”
Jillian and Halley shook their heads.
“Of what nature was her wish?” asked Quintus.
DaVinci turned to Quintus. She suspected he took this sort of thing pretty seriously. “Well,” she said, “it sounds like she was obsessed with taking me to Rome, staying at the St. Regis, and visiting the Vatican Museum to see the Sistine Chapel.”
“Wait—you went to the Vatican Museum and didn’t tell us?” asked Halley.
“And stayed at the St. Regis?” asked Jillian.
“No,” said DaVinci. “We never got to do that. She was too sick. She just wanted us to, and she made me promise I would go on my own someday.”
“Well,” said Everett, “you made it to Rome at least.”
DaVinci frowned as a sudden idea occurred to her. Had she been saving money to travel to Italy and stay at the St. Regis? Was that why she’d worked so hard at the fish restaurant?
“These photos,” said Jillian. “You’re in some of them. This must be Geraldine. I don’t suppose she looks familiar?”
DaVinci shook her head. She wished she could say yes, after having read the journal. “Geraldine sounds like an amazing woman. I wish I could remember her.” Then she turned to her friends.
“I have a question. Did, um, alternate-me ever explain my obsession with working forty hours a week at the Enterprise Fish Company?”
“You just said you were saving,” said Jillian.
“For what?”
Jillian shook her head.
“Travel,” said Halley.
“You should have told me,” Jillian said to DaVinci. “I would have helped you get to Italy.”
Halley gave Jillian a sad half smile. “That’s why she didn’t tell you. DaVinci told me her travel was something she had to do on her own.”
“That sounds like me,” said DaVinci. And then she smiled. Because, for once, this crazy, alternate-time line DaVinci did sound like her. She felt a sudden swell of gratitude inside, for this other DaVinci who hadn’t given up entirely on art. Who had taken a job with an (apparently) irascible old woman and taught her to fall in love with painting again. Who had quit school to work forty hours a week, even though it made her smell like clam chowder, so that she could study art in Italy because of a promise she’d made to a dying woman.
“Wow,” said Halley, who had flipped to a random page in the journal and started reading. “One thing comes across loud and clear—you made this woman so happy. She loved her lessons with you.”
“I’m so sorry for . . . for what her loss must have meant to you,” said Jillian.
Everett murmured in agreement.
“The journal entries ended on Valentine’s Day 2017,” said DaVinci. “I guess that’s when she died.”
Jillian’s hand flew to her mouth.
“What?”
“DaVinci, that’s the day you quit school.”
“I quit school on Valentine’s Day?”
Jillian nodded. “In 2017. Midterm. You didn’t even try to get your tuition back or anything.”
“I guess she meant a lot to me.”
“Wow,” said Halley.
“Oh,” said DaVinci. “And there’s something else. I think I understand now about the gummy bears. Why I liked them and . . .” She paused. “And why it was too hard for me to talk about them.”
“Really?” asked Halley.
“Can you tell us now?” asked Jillian.
DaVinci picked up the packet of gummy bears from the box and looked at it wistfully, wishing she had the memories that went with it.
“I guess Geraldine didn’t have much appetite on her chemo days. Her kids worried about that, and I, um, got her to eat. Sort of. She liked sour candy. Which isn’t known for its health benefits, unless you’re talking gummy bears, which are gelatin-based. And come in sour flavors, like lemon and lime. And I guess I was the one who picked the lemon and lime ones out for her, and I ate the rest, to keep her company and, like, make
sure she got some calories down.”
“Oh wow,” said Jillian, covering her mouth with her hand. “That is so sweet.”
“You know what?” said DaVinci. “I just figured out what I’m going to do.”
“About traveling to Italy?” asked Halley.
“Oh. No, actually. Although I guess I’ll have to work on that, too,” she said. “Here’s my idea. Florida is full of retired people, right? What if I advertised painting classes for the retired?”
“Like a geriatrics class?” asked Halley doubtfully.
“Yes,” replied DaVinci. “Apparently I am skilled in working with the more challenging elements of that population. It says so right here.” She lifted the journal.
“I think it’s a great idea,” said Jillian, clapping her hands together. “So who wants to make a business plan?”
Much later that night, DaVinci sat with Quintus, putting the finishing touches on a proposal she planned to take to all the senior centers within a forty-mile radius of Wellesley, Florida.
“It is a most noble idea,” said Quintus, speaking softly, his chin resting on her shoulder.
“Thank you,” said DaVinci.
“In general, your culture holds not the elderly with the respect that is their due. I am pleased to know it is not so with you, personally.”
DaVinci blushed. “Okay. You give the weirdest, best compliments.”
“I have several more. I would speak in praise of the freckles upon your bosom.”
“Wait. What? Oh my gosh. Is that why you’re resting your chin on my shoulder?”
“The view is most praiseworthy.”
DaVinci, laughing, shoved his head off her shoulder.
“I would speak in praise of your eyes,” said Quintus.
“I’ve been told they’re luminous,” she said softly.
“Indeed? Whose report is this?”
She smiled. “Just some guy I met up with, who wouldn’t mind his own business.”
Quintus frowned. “I shall have words with him.”
DaVinci laughed. “Yeah, good luck with that.”
“This is an idiom?”
DaVinci nodded. “Generally used for sarcasm.”
“Nevertheless, I shall have words with the man.”
She leaned in until her head was resting against his. “Not advisable.”
“I shall—”
“It was you, you over-testosteroned dweeb.”
“I do not know . . . dweeb.”
“It means . . . dork. Sort of. Or idiot, but in a nice way.”
Quintus frowned. “You give the strangest praise.”
“Oh, quit with the praise and just kiss me, already.”
And so he did. For a long time. And for a couple who had already traveled over two thousand years together, that was saying something.
THE END
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Acknowledgments
I owe a lot of people a lot of thank yous, so here goes. Huge thanks to Dr. Science for the formulae (a good Latin word) and answers to “What does that mean?” I also owe you for tromping around the Forum Romanum and its environs with me, even though I was running a fever and doubtless very grumpy at the time. Special thanks to Elizabeth and Jacob, who drove me all over rural central Florida in search of a perfectly dilapidated dock, and also general thanks for educating me about the area. Big thanks to Kimberley of KimrLu Studios for answering my art-related questions. Thank you Nathalia Suellen for giving Quintus the hunktastic cover he deserves. Thanks to Mariette and the whole team at Kindle Press for all your hard work! And finally, for those readers who have been waiting for this book for rather a long while, thanks for your patience. There is so much to research! All errors regarding life in ancient Rome are my own, but now at least now you know, should you ever rent an apartment there (and then), not to expect a room with a view.
SNEAK PEAK INSIDE THE NEXT THIEF IN TIME BOOK
ONE
• NEVIS •
Florida, The Present
Nevis, driving north out of Florida on the I75, wasn’t thinking about terrorists taking down the power grid. He was having trouble with coherent thought. What on God’s green earth had he just witnessed? Three hours ago, he had watched as two people appeared between equipment that had been spitting blue fire in Arthur Littlewood’s clandestine laboratory. Two people who had not been there a moment earlier. He saw them appear out of nowhere and slump to the ground. What had he seen? One thing was for sure, he was glad no one in that room knew he’d seen it.
Gripping the wheel of his rental car, Nevis made a mental shortlist of possibilities.
Secret deep-cover government agency technology.
Terrorist activity.
Alien technology.
Honestly? He had no idea what he’d just stumbled across. But he was pretty sure that whatever it was, Jules Khan’s death was mixed up in it. A shiver ran down Nevis’s spine. Littlewood hadn’t seemed like a killer. Neither had the young woman from Santa Barbara. Everett, the young man who’d opened the door—was he some high-level assassin sent to eliminate Khan when Khan had demanded hush money? But Everett could hardly even defend himself in a fist fight.
Unless . . .
What if his assailant had pretended to be unable to defend himself? They had all been intent on keeping Nevis from seeing anything, that was for sure. He shuddered, remembering the flashes of light. The two people who had appeared out of nowhere.
Nevis had FBI clearance for another two days. Less, maybe. He’d blocked calls from his SAC after passing the county sheriff back at the complex where Littlewood’s secret lab had been located. He tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. He wanted answers. What had he witnessed? Something big, that much was clear. Littlewood had said his work was government funded. Okay. That was a place to start. Find out more about Littlewood’s government funding. What branch was it from? How long had he been getting it? These were things that would be a lot trickier to research two days from now. That decided it.
Exiting the freeway, Nevis pulled into the parking lot of the Valdosta Walmart Supercenter. He needed to figure out his next move. If Littlewood’s funding was governmental, then maybe the reason Nevis had been ordered to back off was because the FBI had been told to back off. The forces behind a secret of this magnitude must be powerful. And deadly.
Nevis swallowed and then reached up to loosen his tie. He shifted his seat, tipping it back to a more comfortable angle. As he did so, his keys shifted in his pants pocket, jabbing his thigh. Except . . . his keys were in the ignition. He reached into his pocket.
Huh.
It was the thumb drive he’d picked up in front of Littlewood’s clandestine operation.
Nevis’s heart began to beat double-time. Handing the thumb drive over to his SAC wasn’t even a remote temptation. He fired up his laptop, inserted the drive, and examined the contents.
Five hours later, Nevis had a name and an address. He’d located the possible whereabouts of someone calling himself Ken Julius, a name he’d found on the thumb drive in a list of aliases once under consideration by none other than Jules Khan. Whoever this Ken Julius living above a bakery in Kansas City was, he knew something. Nevis swallowed. He should maybe consider adopting an alias himself.
Nevis would never know the complicated path by which the thumb drive had slipped from Khan’s pants pocket to land between the Honda seat cushions. How it had been discovered, pocketed, and forgotten by Arthur Littlewood. How an unrepaired hole in Littlewood’s jacket allowed t
he drive to slip out of his pocket and onto the gravel, unnoticed, where it lay until Nevis retrieved it. No, Nevis knew none of these things.
But he did know one thing: he’d seen two people appear out of thin air and this thumb drive contained scientific papers and schematics and blueprints that referenced time travel as though it was an actual thing. Benjamin Nevis had questions. Lots of questions. And he knew someone who might, with the right persuasion, be willing to answer his questions.
And so, thirty-one hours later, on a hot, sticky morning outside a hot, sticky bakery in Kansas City, Nevis waited until a compact man in need of a haircut stepped out with a cup of coffee and a day-old doughnut.
“Hello, Jules Khan,” said Nevis.
The man dropped his doughnut, but not, fortunately, his coffee, and glared at Nevis.
“Who the hell are you?”
Nevis flashed his badge without a verbal response, allowing the question to hang unanswered for a moment before offering his most genial smile. “I’m the man you’re going to have an extended conversation with regarding the contents of this thumb drive.”
Khan’s face, already pale, turned a shade paler. “That’s mine.”
“It was yours. It’s mine now. But if you tell me everything about the time machine you invented, it could be yours again.”
Khan swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “What do you want to know?”
TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK FOUR
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