“Okay. Give me the book. I’ll take a look. You wait in the lobby, Miss Rossano.”

Like hell. She wasn’t giving up her book. She leaned forward and stuck out her hand. “That’s Dr. Rossano. Nice to meet someone else who reads sixteenth-century Italian.”

Casey stared at her. Boy, if reptiles had blue eyes . . . He didn’t take her offered hand. He shot a disgusted glance to Brad. Then he gestured down the hall.

She saw Brad swallow as he led the way. Casey fell in behind them.

Brad opened a door at the end of a long hall. Lucy had memorized each detail of the diagram in Leonardo’s book. But that didn’t prepare her for the sheer size and weight of the machine standing on a platform across the lab. It gleamed faintly in the tiny work lights that still left shadows in the cavernous lab. The whole experience was like the first time she’d seen Rodin’s The Thinker in the sculpture garden at the Norton Simon Museum. Everybody knew what it looked like from pictures in countless art books. But that never prepared you. It was that dense occupation of space that gave it emotional resonance.

The giant, brass gears towering above her, immensely heavy, made her catch her breath and struggle for air. The gems that studded the wheels coruscated with emerald green, ruby red, and the blue of sapphires as big as your fist. Where had Leonardo gotten such jewels? A fortune winked from among the interlocking wheels, none bigger than the huge diamond that formed the knob of a control stick. Everything looked just as it was in the book, except for the lunch box–sized metal box bolted to the frame just under the largest wheel.

Could this medieval machine really send someone to another time? On the face of it, it was ridiculous. Yet if anyone could build a time machine surely it would be Leonardo da Vinci. Half scientist, half artist, in some ways he was more than either—a magician, perhaps. Was it that possibility that had fueled her obsession?