Killing Time Read online

  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 si