Killing Time Read online

  Knox had a good sense of direction, leading them on an upward slant without pausing to take his bearings. His head was constantly moving back and forth as he searched his surroundings in all directions. Nikita was a city girl, more at home on pavement than dirt, but she enjoyed the difference between this and her more usual surroundings. She herself had a good sense of direction, but since she had no idea where they were going, her internal compass was of no use. She simply followed him, though she mentally marked their path.

  “Here,” he said. He pointed at a patch of earth where the leaves looked as if they had been disturbed.

  “Someone could have buried his links here,” she said, trying not to sound as excited as she felt. All she needed was a full set of links, and she’d be able to go home. She had three of Luttrell’s, but she needed a fourth.

  Her personal concerns would come after the DNA scans, though, because she didn’t want to disturb any samples. She took out the scanner and flipped it open, and took a reading. Numerous locations of DNA glowed faintly on the screen.

  “Mine will probably be here,” Knox said. “And Jesse’s. If your analysis says the subject is a short, nasty-tempered little bastard, that’s Jesse.”

  “The scanner doesn’t indicate temperament,” she said with a straight face.

  “I know. That was a joke.”

  “I know,” she returned, and gave him a sweet smile. “Gotcha.”

  He grinned, not at all perturbed that she’d turned the tables on him for once. She settled down to work, carefully locating the various samples and securing them for analysis. Some of the samples were duplicates, of course; humans scattered DNA like seed. She recognized Knox’s description four times, and another unknown subject had twice that many samples; she assumed that was the “nasty-tempered little bastard.” McElroy’s DNA was present, which she would have expected, and a large amount of Houseman’s. Houseman must have died here, she thought sadly. This was definitely the point of initial transition. She couldn’t see any signs of blood, but laser weapons produced bloodless wounds. The disturbed patch of leaves might be where Houseman had fallen.

  She knelt in the humus to scan another sample, and remained there on her knees, staring at the little screen.

  Knox crouched beside her. “What is it?”

  “Another agent. Hugh Byron. He’s McElroy’s best friend.”

  21

  Knox hunkered beside her, read the information off the screen. “Could he have come through since Luttrell did?”

  “I don’t think so. This was the faintest sample the scanner has been able to read, meaning it’s probably the oldest.”

  He made a noise deep in his throat. “If it’s the oldest, then he was the first one through. He’s your UT.”

  She stared across the small clearing, not seeing anything except the scenario unfolding in her mind. “That’s why McElroy didn’t make any progress: he knew it was Hugh Byron, and he wasn’t trying.”

  “Or they’re in it together.”

  She nodded, depressed by the likelihood. “Or they’re in it together,” she said in agreement. She shuddered in horror. This meant Hugh was the one who had killed Houseman, one of his fellow agents, and McElroy was likely a coconspirator. The betrayal was staggering. If agents couldn’t depend on each other, then the integrity of every mission was at stake, because if you didn’t trust the agent who had your back, you couldn’t do your job.

  Identifying Hugh as the UT also explained why the security at the Transit Laboratory had been so easily breached, why McElroy, who was more than competent, hadn’t been able to make any progress in the case. That must have been the plan, for him to return so he could keep an eye on things from that end. And heaven only knew what information and aid he had given Hugh when he was here.

  Their only advantage, that Nikita could see, was that McElroy couldn’t be in contact with Hugh unless he physically transited here himself. So if a superior had sent someone in to move the time capsule for safekeeping, McElroy had no way to let Hugh know it was no longer there. Hugh would still be searching for it, and for the person who had placed the critical item in the time capsule.

  This also tilted her perception of other occurrences. “He couldn’t have known, when he was here, that I’d be the next agent sent,” she murmured. “McElroy, that is. Or what the coordinates would be. So he couldn’t have warned Hugh, but Hugh would have known that another agent would be coming through and he must have been watching Taylor Allen’s house. That’s the most logical place I would go, that any agent would go, even though your people had already essentially sanitized it so thoroughly I likely wouldn’t be able to get any information from the scene. I had to try, at least. He knows me,” she added. “He would recognize anyone in the Transit Investigative Unit, because there aren’t that many of us. But why use a rifle? Why not the laser?”

  “What’s the effective distance on the laser? Might have been too far.”

  “A laser is light,” she said drily. “It goes until something stops it or the earth curves away from it, whichever comes first.”

  “Holy shit, you mean if you miss, it just keeps going and burns whatever gets in its path?”

  “Okay, so I exaggerated, but in tests it’s been proven effective at over a mile. That’s earthbound tests, because obviously you wouldn’t want a handheld weapon that had no distance limitations. In space—”

  “Wait, don’t start telling me that stuff now. I have a bunch of questions I want to ask, and I don’t want to get sidetracked. Let’s go back to something you said. What do you mean, my people had ‘sanitized’ the scene?”

  “I mean your forensics people had gone through it, chemicals had been used, plus so many other people had been there that—”

  “It wasn’t sanitized—it was contaminated.”

  “Let’s say it was a combination of both.” She frowned. “But McElroy could have gone in when he first discovered the body and used his DNA scanner to learn the identity of the UT. He must have made some excuse for why he didn’t, maybe that he could already hear the sirens of the emergency vehicles.”

  “Tell me something else: why didn’t you come in two or three days earlier, wait for the killer, and prevent him from killing Taylor Allen?”

  “Because he had already killed Mr. Allen when we learned of it. Mr. Allen was dead. That’s one of the laws: you don’t interfere and bring people back to life. I explained that. You don’t know what will happen. We’ve learned that the small things, the peripheral things, don’t seem to be that important, but something like life and death can completely change history.”

  “Theoretically.”

  She gave him a long look. “Do you want to be the one to find out for certain?”

  “No, thanks.” He scratched his jaw. “I see what you mean. Your Council erred on the side of caution.”

  “And even then the decision to begin time travel was so controversial there were riots in almost every developed country. A lot of people think no one should be doing this, that we’re courting disaster.”

  “And you may well be.”

  “I know. That’s why we’re so careful. What we’re doing now is the equivalent of dipping our toes in the water.”

  “In a big way. By my count, six of you have come through. You’re bound to be making huge cosmic ripples, or something.”

  “Or something. Two are dead: Houseman and Luttrell.” Luttrell’s body wasn’t very far away, either, she remembered with a shiver. “McElroy went back. I’m here, and Hugh Byron is here. I think we should probably expect McElroy to transit here again, if he can think of a reasonable excuse for doing so. But he doesn’t know I’ve lost my links, so he must assume I haven’t accomplished my mission or made any progress, or I would already have returned.”

  “He knows you have a DNA scanner with you, though, so shouldn’t he allow for the possibility that you picked up something? Shouldn’t he expect it?”

  “For all he knows, I’m dead. That was the pla