Killing Time (9 page)

9

“I gather this isn’t good news to you,” he said, sharply watching her.

Nikita shook her head. “Someone came through whom I don’t know about,” she said, feeling a little numb. “Could be good news, could be bad news. I have no way of knowing if that was an authorized traveler or reinforcements for the killer.” She pointed at the screen. “That hole in the ground . . . what was it?” She thought she knew, and wondered how she, how all of them, could have been so smart that they’d outsmarted themselves.

“Twenty years ago, the town buried a time capsule there,” Knox said. “Monday morning, someone dug it up and stole it. You’re saying one of your time travelers did it? First, why doesn’t digging it up show on the film? Second—why in hell would anyone want a time capsule?”

“First, when someone comes through, it sort of—
freezes
time for a little while, as if everything has been shocked and can’t move. That’s one of the arguments the anti-time-transit groups use to prove that we shouldn’t be doing it. The physicists haven’t been able to explain it yet, but they have a theory that the traveler has to completely mesh with the new time on a molecular level before everything returns to normal.”

“But while everything else is ‘frozen,’ is the time traveler? Shouldn’t this last only a few seconds, instead of the time it would have taken someone to dig up the capsule?”

“Theoretically, the pause is very brief, a fraction of a second. It’s so brief that I don’t think anyone has ever thought about whether or not the traveler is also immobilized.”

“You can’t move a granite marker and dig up a capsule in a fraction of a second.”

“No,” she said hesitantly. “Unless there’s technology that I don’t know about, but the FBI makes a real effort to stay abreast of new technological developments.”

“So that still doesn’t explain how the time capsule went missing.” He looked disappointed. “Unless the pause is much longer than anyone thought. I would say that’s the only logical explanation, but the word
logic
doesn’t really fit this conversation, does it? But how about the second part of my question: Why?”

“There was a paper buried in this particular time capsule that contained the theory and some of the process for successfully traversing time,” she said. “If that paper isn’t in the time capsule when it’s opened in 2085, or if the time capsule itself is stolen, then the technology won’t be developed.”

“In
our
little time capsule?” he asked skeptically. “Who wrote something like that? I don’t know of any quantum physics genius around here.”

“No one knows who wrote the paper. Maybe it was known at one time, but the information didn’t survive. A lot of digital information was lost or corrupted before people realized discs weren’t a good way to archive anything.”

“I was there,” he said in an abstracted undertone.

“What? When?”

“When the capsule was buried. January first, 1985. The newspaper said twelve items were going into the capsule, but I counted thirteen. A research paper wasn’t among the items mentioned. I never did find out what the thirteenth item was.”

“Then it must have been that paper.” She sighed and stared out the window at the gorgeous blue sky, with the occasional fat white cloud drifting by. “Have you ever seen a bunch of really smart people overlook the perfectly obvious?”

“Happens every day.”

“Well, we did. In our defense, this is the first time we’ve had this kind of situation. When we were alerted that an unauthorized traveler had gone through all we thought about was sending agents to apprehend him. None of us thought of the obvious: go in ahead of him.”

“Somebody did.”

“I hope,” she said with a wan smile. “That’s the best-case scenario. The other possibility is that he isn’t the only one. I was shot at, remember? So the bad buys could have the time capsule—or the good guys might. I simply don’t know.”

Knox checked his wristwatch, then yawned and rubbed his eyes. “There’s a lot that isn’t making sense, but enough of what you’re telling me
is
that I’m going to cut you some slack for the time being. Those gizmos you have, and the card, have bought you some time. That doesn’t mean I’m going to just let you go before I know for certain, one way or another, if you’re crazy, pulling a con, or if you really did come through time. So I have to decide what I’m going to do with you.”

“Instead of locking me in a cell, I suggest we work together. We’re both looking for the same killer.”

“Uh, yeah—just how does the time capsule, the unauthorized time traveler, and all of that tie in with my homicide case?”

“Is it possible he wrote the research paper? All I’ve ever read on the subject indicated that the author was unknown, but archivists recover bits of old books, recordings, newspapers—things like that—every day. Some new information could have been discovered.”

Knox shook his head. “Taylor sure as hell wasn’t a physicist. He was a small-town lawyer, through and through. And what makes you so certain your time traveler killed him?”

“He was killed with a spear, wasn’t he?”

“Well now,” Knox said softly, leaning back in his chair and lacing his hands behind his head. “Just how did you know that? That little detail wasn’t released to the press.”

It was amazing, she thought, how eyes that blue could turn so cold. “McElroy was tracking the UT—unauthorized traveler—and found the body. He knew the UT had done it because of the spear, which you’ll have an impossible time tracing because it was manufactured in China in the year 2023.”

He flipped open a notebook and began making notes. “China stopped making nuclear bombs and reverted to spears?”

“I said it was manufactured there, not that it was used there. Do you think you should do that?” she asked, indicating his notebook. “Put this in writing?”

“If we’re talking about one of my cases, I’m writing it down.” His tone of voice said there was no room for discussion. “Why in hell would anyone start manufacturing spears? That’s not exactly cutting-edge technology.”

“For a while, spears were the terrorists’ low-tech weapon of choice; they’re cheap, is the main reason. When funds started running low, alternative means of murder were sought and spears were selected. There’s something symbolic about a spear, especially when it’s all of a sudden sticking through someone’s neck. It’s silent, which makes it a very effective weapon at night.”

“So is there something especially symbolic about this particular spear, or was it just lying around and this guy saw it and thought, Hey, it’ll be neat to kill someone with a spear?”

“This particular spear was in a museum, and it does have a special symbolism to certain people. That spear killed a heavily protected American general in 2025, so to them it represents human spirit over technology, or something like that.”

“A victory for the Luddites.”

“Exactly. To these groups that’s exactly what they’re trying to do, save mankind from their own technology.”

“I really hate people who try to save me from myself,” he muttered.

Despite the worry gnawing at her, she had to grin. “Yeah. Good-doers.”

He chuckled, and she said, “What?”

“Nothing. What’s first on your agenda?”

She wanted to pursue the “nothing,” because in her experience when someone said that, there was damn well something. But he was right, in that there was something more urgent that she needed to do, and she didn’t know if he would go along with it. He might have uncuffed her, but at the moment he was still very much in charge unless she was willing to hurt a lot of people, him included, and matters hadn’t progressed to that point.

“I need to go to my home time,” she said. “I need to notify people that there’s a mole, and if it wasn’t one of us who went in early and stole the time capsule to protect it, then that’s what we need to do, too, except we’ll go in a day earlier.”

“You’re talking about zigzagging back and forth, until you’re overlapping like fish scales.”

“Yes, exactly,” she said, pleased that he’d gotten the concept. “Like I said, this is new to us, but all we have to do is protect the time capsule and catch the killer. We know when he came over; one of us needs to transit in ahead of him. I can’t believe we were so shortsighted.”

“But if you come in ahead of him and catch him, he hasn’t yet committed a murder and he’s innocent of everything except unauthorized travel.”

She gave him a helpless look. “We can’t change life and death. We can’t bring Taylor Allen back. But I can’t think of anything else to do. I need to go back. When I make my report, it’ll be out of my hands, but at least I’ll have tried for the best outcome.”

“Okay,” he said mildly. “I’ll go along with this—as long as I get to watch.”

“You like watching, huh?” Damn it! Nikita had known she shouldn’t say that, but it came out anyway. She had been doing so well, too, at keeping everything completely impersonal and focused on the matter at hand, because it wasn’t fair to let this become anything more when she had no intention of staying in this time. But she liked his blue eyes and his lean features, and he had nice, strong hands, try as she might not to notice all that.

“I’m better at doing,” he drawled, his eyelids drooping in a sleepy expression that made her heart pound.

Her stomach tightened, the sensation of physical response so strong she was disconcerted. She swallowed hard, then grimly got herself back under control. No, this could
not
happen. “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I shouldn’t have said that, it was unprofessional.”

“I don’t mind unprofessional, every now and then.”

“
I
do.” Her cheeks burned with embarrassment. “It won’t happen again.”

“Guess you’re right,” he said with apparent regret. “If you really leave, it literally
can’t
happen.”

“Which is why I shouldn’t have said anything out of line. I’m sorry.”

“So you’ve already said.” He waited a moment, then rose to his feet. “We don’t have to wait until dark or anything like that, do we? For you to leave, or transit, or whatever.”

“No.” She was relieved by the change of subject. “I can go any time.”

He grinned and shook his head at the double meaning. “All right, I’ll drive you there, since your rental car is obviously known to whoever took a shot at you this morning. Wait here, and I’ll get one of the deputies to pull my car into the secure area we use for special prisoners; that way no one can see you.”

She might be crazy as hell, she might be pulling a con, she might be the actual murderer—Knox couldn’t forget that she’d known about the spear—but whatever she was, she told a good tale. And just when he was ready to lock her up, he would think about those gadgets of hers and keep listening.

No matter what, he couldn’t deny that her ID card, the DNA scanner, and that little tube of Reskin were things he’d never seen or heard of before. The cut on his thumb was completely healed over. That, more than anything, was what forced him to concede that there might, just
might,
be a kernel of truth in the yarns she told. The other stuff he might not have heard of, but something that healed a cut on contact—yeah, he and everyone else in the country would have heard about that. Wall Street and the company that had developed Reskin would have had commercials touting it running every fifteen minutes on every television station. The military would be buying the stuff by the shipload. So the fact that he hadn’t heard about Reskin was a big point in her favor.

But he was a cop, and cops by nature had a hard time believing just about anything they were told until they had hard proof it was true.

He stopped a deputy and handed over his keys with a request to move his car into the secure prisoner loading area; then he knocked on Sheriff Cutler’s door and stuck his head inside.

“What’s up with our FBI agent?” Calvin asked, a mischievous glint in his eyes. “You’ve been in your office with her a long time.”

“I have my doubts anything she told us was on the level,” Knox said. “And she knew about the spear, which makes me twitchy. Either we have a leak, or she has prior information.”

“Like from the killer? Well, now.” Calvin leaned back in his chair. “Are you saying Ms. Stover is involved with the killer, or maybe is our spear-chucker herself?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so, but she may know who it is, and that person may be who shot at her this morning. For whatever reason, she was definitely the target this morning. I’m going to do some digging. Whoever shot at her obviously knew her rental car and followed her this morning. There are some things I want to check out and I’m taking her with me.”

The sheriff nodded. “Okay, but watch your back.”

Knox felt uneasy about keeping things from the sheriff, but if he’d told the whole story, Calvin would have insisted on locking up Ms. Fake FBI Agent for impersonating a federal agent, at least. Knox held that option open, but first he wanted some answers that made sense. He couldn’t accept that she had come from two hundred years in the future; that was too much to swallow. But something weird was going on, and he wanted to know what it was.

She was waiting patiently in his office, just as she had while he tried out the DNA scanner. He didn’t know what to think of that; any guilty person would have taken advantage of the situa-tion and tried to run, but she hadn’t. Not that she would have succeeded, because he’d been ready for any move she might make, and it could be she was smart enough to realize that.

If she intended to run, her best chance would be when she was alone with him. He would see she got that chance.

“Come on,” he said, and she got to her feet, stuffing things back into her purse. He still had possession of her weapon, and he meant to keep it. He’d have to be crazy to hand over a powerful weapon to her. She glanced at it, raised her eyebrows in a silent question, and he grinned as he shook his head. “No way.”

She accepted the situation without argument. He stood back and let her precede him out the door. She angled herself to step past him, but he was still close enough that he could feel the heat of her body, smell the faint, sweet scent of a woman’s skin. She didn’t even glance at him, but he knew she was as aware of him on a physical basis as he was of her.