Killing Time (11 page)

“How did he just happen to materialize right on top of us? What are the odds against that happening?”

“It’s fairly reasonable. Why would anyone expect me to be here? The physical coordinates would still be set in the computer, unless someone went through to a different location since I came through. Change the time by twenty-four hours and there shouldn’t be any problem.”

“Except we happened to be here.”

“Because someone shot at me. Someone from your time. That’s something they couldn’t know, so therefore they wouldn’t be expecting me to return so soon.”

“My time? Here? I mean, now?” He sat back on his heels, staring at her with narrowed eyes as he mentally went over the evidence. “Yeah, I see what you mean. If it had been anyone from your time, the weapon of choice would have been laser, not rifle.”

And she would be dead, she thought. Lasers were silent, the way a sunbeam was silent. Without the sound of the rifle shot, probably neither of them would have noticed the thin stream of light until it bored into her. They had been totally focused on jockeying for position with each other.

“Speaking of weapons, what about that one?” He pointed to the one Luttrell had dropped at Nikita’s instruction.

“That’s laser, too, for use at much greater distances than this one,” she said, indicating the pen laser.

“A sniper laser.”

“Yes.” She went over to the weapon and picked it up, examined it. It was an XT37, the very latest model; only the crack antiterrorist teams had them. Someone in a position of power had to have authorized Luttrell’s transition.

Luttrell himself could have been a good guy, told only that she’d gone rogue and had to be exterminated. If she’d had time to consider all the angles, she might have been able to wound him instead of killing him, though a laser wound was so disabling it was generally considered almost worse than death. The light beam could sever a hand as fast as a human could push the button and release it, faster, because the speed of light itself outdistanced even the control of a computer.

An amputation was considered a clean laser hit; contact anywhere on the torso was occasionally survivable, but the damage was horrible, calling for multiple organ replacements, and the energy surge often left the victims with neurological problems as well. A laser tag to the head was instantly fatal.

The XT37 was a substantial weapon, about three feet long, and weighed fifteen pounds. Disposing of it, or hiding it, wasn’t going to be easy. On the other hand, they were the ones who now had control of it, which gave them an advantage.

“What else?” he asked, examining Luttrell’s boots.

She returned to kneel beside him, placing the XT37 by her leg. “He might have a chip.”

“A computer chip?”

She nodded. “As a precaution. For tracking him.”

“Do you have one?”

“No.” She had been asked to wear one, but she’d refused, and because the legal ramifications of a tracking chip were still being hashed out in court, for the time being agents still could opt out of wearing them. She had never liked the idea of her superiors being able to see every move she or any other agent made.

“If he had one, where would it be?”

“Usually it’s attached to a piece of jewelry. Originally they were designed to be embedded in the skin, but everyone was ready to resign en masse, so that was changed.” She shifted to slide her hand inside the dead man’s collar, feeling for a chain. She located one and pulled it out; it was a St. Christopher’s medal, but close examination revealed it was just that, a religious medal. No chip was attached.

“Try his belt buckle,” she instructed as she lifted Luttrell’s left hand and removed the ring he was wearing. It, too, looked clean.

Knox had unbuckled Luttrell’s belt and was looking at the buckle, both front and back. “How big is this chip?”

“Tiny.”

“Would it feel like a rough speck on the metal?”

She reached out to run her fingers over the buckle where he indicated, and her sensitive fingertips felt the minute rough spot, as if a speck of debris had been caught on the buckle during manufacturing. The light wasn’t good there under the trees, though, and she wasn’t able to see well enough to make certain that it was a chip.

“Do you have a magnifier?” she asked.

“Believe it or not, I do.” He stretched out his right leg and wormed his hand into his jeans pocket, coming out with his knife. He opened one of the attachments and revealed a small, round magnifier.

Nikita took the knife and examined the speck. The magnifier wasn’t a strong one, but it was good enough that she could make out the even edges of the “speck.”

“That’s it,” she said, folding the attachment back into the knife and returning it to him.

“How do we disable it? Smash it?”

“No.” She reached for the small laser, pulled the buckle end of the belt off to the side, and let it rest on the ground. Positioning the laser, she gave the button a quick hit and the buckle sizzled.

“That’ll do it,” Knox said wryly.

She felt more in control now. She wouldn’t fall apart, at least not now. Maybe later, but for now she was thinking, and functioning. Together they finished searching Luttrell’s body, and found some folded present-time currency sewn into the lining of his black jacket. He had come well-supplied, she thought, counting it. She handed the stash to Knox. They also found a credit card, which looked like any other credit card, and they left that. “It’s forged,” she told Knox.

“How do you know?”

“Do you think there are any authentic credit cards from this time left in
my
time? It’s forged the same way mine is.”

“Have you used it?”

“I had to, to rent a car and a motel room. We come prepared.”

“So you’re stealing.”

“Essentially, yes. We knew what we’d be facing here, that we’d need some means of identification.”

Knox rubbed his eyes, looking as if he didn’t want to hear any more. “It isn’t standard procedure,” she assured him. “This was an emergency measure.”

“What other laws are you breaking?”

“You know them all, now.”

“God, I hope so.” He looked around. “Let’s get all this gathered, then wipe out our footprints and leave this scene as clean as possible.”

She picked up the waterproof bag that had once contained her links, and slipped it into her purse. There was no point in covering the hole she’d dug; an empty hole told no tales. She retrieved the rest of her equipment, put it away, too, then looked around. She had everything.

Knox had everything they’d retrieved from Luttrell’s body in his pockets, and he leaned over to get the XT37. “That’s it. Now all we have to do is get to my car without being seen and recognized, and hope no one’s seen the car and called in the tag number. And that the body isn’t found for a couple of years.”

Luck was with them. The highway had a fair amount of traffic on it, but at this time of day people hadn’t yet gotten off work, and school was out for the summer. One pickup truck went by, and they heard it coming in time to crouch in the tall grass until it had passed.

Knox put the XT37 in the trunk, slammed it, and they both got into the car.

“Now what?” she asked, wondering if the day could get any worse.

He said, “I’m taking you home with me.”

11

Knox was so angry he could barely contain himself, but none of what had happened was Nikita’s fault, so it wouldn’t have been fair for him to take it out on her. He was angry at finding himself in the position of having to lie to the people he worked with, who trusted him; to Sheriff Cutler, who was just about the best boss Knox could imagine. He was angry at having to break the law that so far he’d spent his adult life upholding, but he didn’t see any way around it.

If he told the truth, not only would no one believe him and Nikita, but they would both likely be arrested for murder, not to mention that she would be charged with impersonating an FBI officer even though she really was a federal agent—just not right now.

He didn’t want to believe what he’d seen. An old joke ran through his mind: A cheating husband, caught red-handed, says, “Honey, who you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?” Almost more than anything, Knox wanted to believe his eyes were lying to him. Almost. Because he
had
seen it, and curiosity was eating him alive. Under his anger was a powerful need; he could barely contain his impatience to get Nikita home and pepper her with questions.

They were almost back to town when he glanced over at her. She’d been completely silent since getting into the car, either lost in her own thoughts or letting him stew—maybe a little bit of both. Killing that guy had shaken her, bad, but she’d held together and done what was necessary. If she hadn’t been so shaken, he’d have already been asking the questions that burned on his tongue, but he thought she needed a little more recovery time.

She was in serious danger. That made twice, in just one day, that someone had tried to kill her. He agreed with her assessment that whoever had shot at her that morning was very likely someone from his time, meaning here and now—but who could have known she was coming, and where she would be? The most likely explanation was that it was a random attempt, some crazy with a rifle taking a shot at a stranger . . . which wasn’t all that likely. Pekesville just didn’t have that many crazies and between the sheriff’s department and the Pekesville police force, pretty well all of them were known. About the only violence that wasn’t drug or alcohol related was domestic violence, and those parameters didn’t fit.

So the unknown traveler who had come through time to kill Taylor Allen had, for some reason, enlisted some local help. Great. Just what he needed.

“Do you have anything you need to get from your motel room?” he asked.

She jumped a little at the sound of his voice. “What? Oh—sorry. My thoughts were wandering. What did you say?”

“Do you have any things at the motel?”

“A small suitcase. Are we going there to get it?”

“No, I don’t want you anywhere near there in case whoever shot at you is hanging around waiting for another chance. I’ll send one of the deputies to get it. Does anything need packing?”

“I put everything in the suitcase this morning before I left, and locked it.”

“More future stuff, huh?”

“My clothing, some other things.”

“What does your clothing look like? Does everyone run around in silver metallic jumpsuits the way they do in the movies?”

She hesitated. “
Jump
suits? You have suits that jump?”

He chuckled. “I think the term originally meant the one-piece suits parachutists wore to jump out of planes, but it basically means a one-piece outfit.”

“I see. That makes sense. But, no, we don’t.”

“So what do you wear?” Despite his best intentions he was already doing it, he realized, throwing question after question at her.

“Normal clothing. When you think about it, there are only two basic types of clothing: skirted, and nonskirted. The skirt lengths go up and down, the pants may have wide legs or narrow legs, but that’s all just variations on the basic themes.”

“Zippers?”

Now she chuckled. “Zippers are still around, as are buttons. Think about it. How many hundreds of years have buttons existed in this time? Why would they completely disappear in just two hundred years? Zippers and buttons
work.
They’re efficient.”

“Are cars still the same?”

“No, internal combustion engines exist now only in a few museums and one or two antiques collections.”

“No cars,” he said, scandalized. He couldn’t imagine a world without NASCAR. “Were they done away with because of global warming?”

“Um, no. Something better came along. But that wasn’t until about a hundred years ago.”

“Something better than cars?” He’d like to see that.

“I didn’t say there were no cars; I said there were no internal combustion engines.”

Okay, he’d pursue this at length later on; reluctantly he turned to a more immediately important subject. He glanced over at her. Some of the strain had faded from her face, so maybe what she needed was to be distracted. “How many changes of clothing do you have? Will you need to do some shopping?”

“I have what I wore here, what I have on now, and one other change of clothing. I do have currency for buying clothing, though; my mission allowed for that contingency.”

“Is the money real?” he asked wryly. “Or is it forged like everything else?”

“No, it’s real. By the late twenty-first century all developed nations had completely switched over to credit and debit cards, so the majority of currency was put in a secure underground vault.”

“Why not just burn it?” In his mind’s eye he saw billions of dollars of bills going up in smoke and felt his whole body tighten in rejection. That just wasn’t right, but it was still a logical solution.

“For one thing, it has great historical value. For another, even in my time, there are still undeveloped nations that don’t have the computer capability for a totally digitalized economy. They use cash, barter, any means available.”

Two hundred years, he thought, and some things still hadn’t changed much. He was relieved to know cash hadn’t been completely done away with, though. He was something of a dinosaur when it came to banking: he preferred to write checks. He did use his bank’s ATM to withdraw cash when he needed it, but something retro in him was horrified at the idea of paying his bills by computer.

Nikita would probably get a big laugh out of that, but no matter how much she needed cheering up, he didn’t think he’d tell her. He didn’t want her thinking of him as just a few steps out of the cave.

Five minutes later he pulled into his driveway. His house was on the smallish side, a two-bedroom Craftsman style, with a front porch that went all the way across the front of the house and a small enclosed porch on the back. He parked in back, pulling around next to the door. Tall, mature hedges separated his backyard from those of his neighbors, while giant oak trees grew close enough together to cloak almost the entire yard and half the house in cool shade.

His house was over sixty years old but well maintained, and had been modernized several times over the years, so it was very livable. He’d bought it when he and Rebecca got engaged, thinking it would do for a starter house until the second baby came along and they would need more space. Rebecca had even picked out the kitchen appliances. But then she died, and there weren’t any babies and he’d never needed more space. His life hadn’t stopped when Rebecca died, but it had stagnated.

As he got out of the car he realized he was worried now not about any stagnation but whether there was any dirty underwear lying on the floor in the one bathroom. The time for a woman to see his dirty socks and shorts was after they’d made love, not before.

What felt like a small electrical shock ran up his spine and exploded in his brain. For the first time in seven years, he wanted a woman: not just sex, but the woman herself. He wanted Nikita in particular. He wanted to spend time with her, get to know her, find out what she liked and didn’t like, if she was afraid of mice and spiders and snakes, if a little bug could make her squeal like a girl. He wanted to know if she slept on her stomach, back, or side, if she snored, if she liked showers or baths.

He wanted
her.

It was a revelation. He’d forgotten how energizing that kick of chemistry was, like downing a pot of coffee, forgotten how it was to be so intensely focused on one person. The shape of her hand as she shut the car door, the way she absently pushed a strand of hair away from her eyes, the quick, questioning glance she threw at him—he noticed all of that, with a clarity that engraved those little things in his memory.

The big question was whether she’d be willing to indulge in what wasn’t quite casual sex but was far from ever being a long-term relationship. Assuming she was interested, any affair was limited by the duration of her stay in this time. She might be here two weeks, or two days. They had no way of knowing what was going on in her time, whether anyone there would figure out someone on the team was playing dirty and send reinforcements or a SAR team.

She was waiting for him at the porch, a questioning look in her eyes, as if she was wondering why he was just standing there by the car instead of unlocking the door so they could go inside. Thinking about how long she’d be here made him look at her presence from another angle, and he asked, “How long do you have here before they’ll come looking for you? There has to be a time limit, or they’d never know if someone was dead, injured, their links fried, or even in jail. There has to be a rescue procedure in place.”

“We didn’t know the exact parameters of this case,” she said, “so a really long time limit was set.”

“How long is ‘really long’?”

“A month.”

That
was
long, longer than he’d expected. Most murder cases either were closed within a week or eventually became cold cases; either the leads were there or they weren’t. Maybe something else was going on that he didn’t know about. He didn’t like that thought; what she’d sprung on him already would probably give him nightmares.

He opened the screen door, and they went up on the back porch; then he unlocked the door to the house and let them into the kitchen. Nikita stopped and looked around and Knox did, too, trying to see it through her eyes.

To the left was his tiny laundry cubicle, just large enough for a washer and dryer. The kitchen was an eat-in, with old cabinets that he’d stripped down to the original wood and stained. The tile on the floor looked like golden stone, and he’d splurged on the countertops, putting in solid surfacing because that was what Rebecca wanted. She had never cooked a meal here, never slept a night here. Whenever they’d spent the night together, he’d been at her place because it was just easier, he didn’t have to cart around all the paraphernalia women needed to get ready for work in the mornings, all the hair and face stuff. A lot of what he’d done in the house had been for Rebecca, but in her absence the house had become completely his.

Nikita walked slowly to the big gas stove and ever so lightly trailed her fingertips over it, much as she had done with the things in his office. To her, he realized, everything in here, in his office, was a priceless antique. Some she had probably read about but never seen before.

“What does this do?” she asked, pointing at the electric can opener.

“It opens cans.”

She actually leaned down and studied the way the can opener worked, pulling the little lever down and frowning in disappointment when nothing happened.

“Like this.” He grabbed a can of chicken noodle soup from his pantry, showed her how the little magnet held the can in place, and let her press down on the lever. The can whirled around, and her face lit like a child’s.

“There are so many details of everyday life we’ve lost,” she murmured.

He leaned against the cabinet and crossed one ankle over the other. “How do
you
open cans?”

“We don’t have cans.”

“What does food come in, then?”

“Most food comes in clear containers that are edible themselves, and melt when heated. They’re very nutritious.”

He made a face at the idea of eating the packaging. “Yeah, but how do they taste?”

“Like whatever food they contain, of course.”

“What if it’s a food that isn’t supposed to be heated, like ice cream?”

She looked amused. “There are other things, such as plastic cartons. Fresh produce is still fresh produce. I don’t suppose the food itself is very different, just the containers and maybe preparation have changed.” She took the can of chicken noodle soup and sniffed. “What do we do with this now?”

He pulled a small saucepan out of the cabinet and set it on one of the stove eyes, turned it on, and dumped the soup into it. “We eat it.”

She played with the knobs, turning a burner on and off and watching the blue flame jump. Since she’d obviously never seen a gas stove before, he asked, “How do you heat your food?”

“Molecular agitation.”

He laughed, thinking of his own molecules that were currently agitated. “Sounds like a microwave oven to me.”

“A variation. So much of what we have was invented during this era,” she said with an undertone of pure bliss, and abruptly he realized how much she was enjoying this part of her trip. Parts of it so far sucked, but this, the technology part, delighted her.

“Like what?”

“Oh, space travel, computers, lasers, things like that.”

“Space travel” caught his attention, and he realized he could stand here talking to her until they collapsed from exhaustion. They had things to do—or he did, rather—but he didn’t want to do any of them.

“That’s really why I’m here,” she said ruefully. “This time fascinates me, and I’ve studied it in great depth. I
begged
for this assignment.”

“Be careful what you ask for,” he said wryly.

She laughed, her brown eyes sparkling. “Exactly.” Then she sobered as her thoughts turned to the people who had died, and all the complications that had arisen. Reading her mind, Knox touched her briefly on the arm in sympathy.

“Come on, I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.” Which wasn’t in his bed, unfortunately—at least not yet. He turned the heat down under the soup and led her through the house.