Killing Time Read online

  At last the numbers showed that five minutes had elapsed. She buckled her seat belt, looked over the dials and controls one more time, then carefully put the gear in the “drive” position and pressed the pedal that fed gasoline to the engine. The car moved smoothly forward.

  She didn’t let herself hurry. She didn’t see any other traffic, either motorized or pedestrian, in the parking lot. There were a surprising number of vehicles parked there, but then nights were always busy in the law enforcement fields.

  She reached the parking lot entrance, and turned left. All the way to the store she checked her rearview mirrors for any cars that might be following her, but there was literally no one behind her for the entire three blocks.

  As soon as she turned in to the convenience store parking lot, she saw Knox in her rental car. He gave one brief nod, then pulled back out into the street, and she sedately followed him.

  Pekesville wasn’t a large town, but it sprawled in the valleys between a jumble of mountains, seeking all the geographical cuts and crevices like water in a lake. It was a long, narrow town, with only two main roads and a warren of secondary streets running in all directions from and across them. That meant there was a traffic light at every corner, slowing their progress, so that it took them fifteen minutes to go about four miles. At last they were outside the city limits, though, and traffic thinned considerably. Streetlights faded behind them, and only their headlights illuminated the road.

  Nikita fiercely concentrated on her driving, keeping a steady speed, not getting so close to Knox as to be unsafe, not letting him get so far ahead she might lose sight of him. That was how she had conducted her entire life: safely, staying within certain boundaries, finding expression in other things such as her work, where she not only was allowed to risk her life but in special circumstances was even expected to do so.

  Not that she wanted to risk her life, she thought in muted agony. She simply wanted to be free to make mistakes, to maybe yell in public, to lose her temper without people wondering if some glitch had made her uncontrollable. She wanted to do silly things that had no reason other than she simply felt like doing them. She didn’t want to live in fear of what might happen if she made someone uncomfortable.

  Maybe being destroyed was better than the way she’d lived her entire life. Maybe the rebellious ones had the right idea, that it was better to live a short, real life than a long one in a prison of her own making.

  By the time Knox turned off the highway onto a secondary road, she felt as if she could barely breathe, as if the air were too thick to pull into her lungs. She was drowning, had been drowning all her life, and only now had she realized it.

  Are you a robot?

  Why, yes, evidently I am. Thank you for pointing that out.

  Knox’s taillights loomed in her vision and she slammed on the brakes, shaking. He had let his speed drop, but she hadn’t been paying attention, and she had almost collided with the back of the rental car. Damn him, why had he said that? And why did he have to be so observant and curious about everything?

  He put on his brakes, slowing even more, then turned left onto a long driveway that curved up a small hill, where a one-story house sat among some tall shade trees. Several lights were on inside. Knox didn’t stop at the house, but she heard him give one tap on his horn as they went past. Behind the house was a fence, and to one side was a barn. Knox drove directly into the barn. Nikita stopped and put the gear in “park,” her headlights shining inside the barn.

  An older man approached from her right—Knox’s father, from the looks of him. They both shared that tall, broad-shouldered, slightly lanky build; even their heads were shaped the same. He turned on a light inside the barn, a single bulb that dangled from a rafter. Together he and Knox pulled a large tarp over the rental car so that even its tires were covered; then he turned out the light and they closed the double doors to the barn. Knox’s father pulled a chain through the handles and secured the chain with a padlock.

  Mr. Davis glanced at her, and though she knew he couldn’t see her with the headlights shining at him the way they were, she felt his curiosity. Impulse seized her and she turned off the engine, then fumbled until she found the switch that turned off the headlights. Getting out of the car, careful not to stumble in the darkness, she walked up to the two men.

  She didn’t need to see his face to know Knox wasn’t happy about his father meeting her, but sometime in the past half hour she’d stopped giving a damn about whether or not Knox was happy.

  “Well, hello,” Mr. Davis said. “I thought one of the deputies was driving Knox’s car.”

  “You were supposed to stay in the car,” Knox said, his tone cool.

  “You told me to stay in the car,” Nikita corrected just as coolly. “You called me a robot because I wouldn’t have sex with you, so why would I do what you tell me?”

  Knox made a choked sound, one echoed by his father. She couldn’t believe what had come out of her mouth in front of his father, but she just didn’t care. Nothing and no one had ever hurt her as much as Knox Davis had, and he hadn’t even been trying. It wasn’t even his fault; he couldn’t have known that his choice of words would slam her into a wall of reality and leave her battered. She turned to Mr. Davis and held out her hand. “Hello, I’m Nikita Stover.”

  His father took her hand. “Kelvin Davis. Pleased to meet you.” He sounded distracted, a tone that instantly vanished when he turned to his son. “Knox!”

  “I didn’t— I mean, I did ask you if you were a robot,” Knox said to her, “but it wasn’t—”

  “Why would you say something like that?” his father demanded.

  “It was a bunch of other things,” he finished raggedly.

  “Oh, yes, I remember now. I don’t get angry, I don’t laugh, and I don’t get turned on. Two out of three is really good, I suppose, but guess which one you’re wrong about!”

  Mr. Davis shoved his hand through his hair, uncomfortably shifting his weight from one foot to the other. He obviously wished he weren’t in the middle of this. “Uh—are you two dating, or something?”

  “No,” Nikita said.

  “Then how would he—?” The older man faltered to a halt.

  Borne along on the flood tide of despairing rage, Nikita finished the sentence for him. “How would he know whether or not I get turned on?”

  “Nikita, stop,” Knox said.

  “Don’t tell me to stop!” She whirled to face him. “I’ve been stopped my whole life, afraid to do this, afraid to do that, afraid someone will think I’m too much trouble.” To her horror, her voice clogged and tears welled in her eyes. “I don’t cry,” she said fiercely. “I’m afraid to even cry.”

  “I can see that.” His voice was gentle now. “You don’t need to cry. If you’re mad at me, hit me. Come on, double up your fist and plant your best shot on my chin.”

  “Knox!” Mr. Davis protested.

  “Don’t patronize me,” she said with muffled fury, her hands already curling into fists.

  “If it’ll make you feel better, go ahead and hit me.”

  It would, so she did. He didn’t know what he was asking for. Nikita didn’t telegraph her punch; she tightened the muscles in her arm and back the way she’d been taught and shot her arm straight out from her shoulder in a lightning fast, twisting motion. The punch landed solidly on Knox’s left jaw and he staggered back, then abruptly fell on his ass.

  “Holy shit,” he said, holding his jaw.

  15

  “Damn,” said Kelvin Davis, staring at his son sitting on the ground. “You pack a punch, Miss Stover. Or should I say Ms.?”

  She had read about the twentieth-century forms of address, preserved in business etiquette books that hadn’t been digitalized, so she knew what he was talking about. “Call me Nikita.” She sniffled and wiped her eyes with the heels of her palms, then said to Knox, “Are you going to get up, or just sit there all night?”

  “Depends on whether or not you’re