Killing Time Read online

  No, she was most definitely not opening that door.

  Instead she got on her hands and knees, grabbed her cell phone off the coffee table in front of the couch, and crawled into her dark bedroom. If anyone shot through the window, she would be below the bullet’s trajectory.

  Her purse was on the bed. She hooked it by the strap and pulled it to her, taking her laser pen out of it and slipping the slender weapon into her pocket. Her automatic weapon, inside its holster, was lying on the bedside table—and right behind the table was a window that looked out on the front porch.

  Cautiously, she eased up to the table and retrieved that weapon, too. She looked around; not much light was coming through the open bedroom door, since the only light in the house came from the lamp in the living room and the television, but if she moved the curtain aside, that was certainly enough light to betray her.

  She closed her eyes so they could begin adjusting, feeling her way as she crawled back to the door and silently shut it, plunging the room into total darkness. When she opened her eyes, she still couldn’t see anything, but after a moment she was able to make out the paler rectangles of the windows, and the sliver of streetlight coming through a tiny part in the curtains.

  There were footsteps on the porch, and abruptly that sliver of light vanished.

  Nikita froze in place. With the bedroom in complete darkness and the streetlight shining outside, she could make out the faint outline of someone standing on the porch in front of the window, with a darker blotch where a face was pressed to the glass as that someone tried to look inside.

  She knew she wasn’t visible, not with the bedroom darker than the porch. The human eye wasn’t made to operate best when it was trying to see from lightness into darkness. So long as she didn’t move, no one could see her. Even knowing that, though, her heartbeat was fast and heavy as adrenaline pumped through her. She was trained to act, but at the same time, the key was to choose the best course of action. Don’t just act, one of her instructors had drilled into them, act smart.

  In this case, the smart action was total avoidance. There could be no good outcome if she confronted Ruth Lacey.

  The situation had abruptly gone from being nothing more than a nuisance to having the potential for violence. More accurately, she thought, the potential for violence had been there from the beginning and she was just now recognizing it.

  The shadow moved away from the window, and she heard the footsteps retreating, then going down the front steps. There was a woman’s voice, but it was too faint for her to understand the words. Who was she talking to?

  Nikita crawled to the window, taking care not to bump into anything or let her knees thump on the floor. When she reached the window, she didn’t touch the curtains, because any movement of the fabric could betray her presence. Instead she maneuvered so she could see through the same tiny crack where the edges of the fabric didn’t quite meet, and slowly raised her head.

  A car was parked at the curb, and Mrs. Lacey was talking to someone inside it. The tiny slice of vision Nikita had didn’t allow her to see anything other than half of Mrs. Lacy’s back and her right arm. The woman was gesturing back toward the house. Then, evidently having decided it was wasted effort to bang on Knox’s door, she got into the car and it pulled slowly away from the curb.

  Nikita shifted her position, trying to get a better look at whoever was with Mrs. Lacy, but her field of vision was too limited.

  She remained where she was, crouched on the floor and watching the street in case Mrs. Lacey was wily enough to drive by again, perhaps hoping Nikita would turn on another light and thus verify someone was in the house. Nikita couldn’t swear that the car hadn’t parked just up the street and the occupants were not waiting to see if there was any sign of activity.

  Nikita sank to the floor and opened the flip top of her cell phone; the little screen and the numbers immediately lit up, and automatically she shielded the glow with her hand as she punched in Knox’s cell phone number.

  “Yeah, Davis,” he said after the second ring. He would have recognized her number, but the way he answered told her he wasn’t alone and was probably still at the murder scene.

  She kept her voice low, barely above a whisper. “This is just to let you know what has been happening; you don’t need to do anything. Ruth Lacey started calling incessantly this afternoon. I didn’t count the calls, but I estimate between forty and fifty times. Then she came here and began banging on your door, calling me by name—“Tina,” that is—and saying she knew I was in here.”

  “That doesn’t sound right,” he said.

  “I think she’s having emotional problems. I didn’t answer the phone or the door.”

  “Good. Don’t.”

  “Any estimate on how much longer you’ll be at the scene?”

  “Probably another couple of hours.”

  “Any problems?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll see you in a couple of hours, then.”

  She closed the phone and ended the call, then got up on her knees to once more peer out the window.

  The car, headlights off, was parked at the curb again.

  Nikita’s heart gave a hard thump, and she forced herself to remain in place. She reminded herself that she could see them but they couldn’t see her. All she had to do was remain quiet and still, and they’d never know she was watching them. They had turned around, so the driver’s side was closest to the house. The shadows in the car were deep and she couldn’t make out anything other than that two people were in the car, and she thought the driver was a man. Mr. Lacey, perhaps?

  She wondered what they had hoped to accomplish. To tell her to get out of town and leave Knox alone, perhaps? Or maybe Mrs. Lacey was so far lost to reason that she would have simply attacked, in which case Nikita would have had to defend herself, and she had absolutely no doubt who would be the victor in any sort of physical confrontation with the other woman.

  Jealous people did foolish things all the time; the two hundred years between her time and now hadn’t changed that at all. But Mrs. Lacey wasn’t jealous in the classic sense; rather, she must be desperate for everything to remain the same, for Knox to remain in love with her dead daughter, and in that way she could still cling to a little part of life as it had been before.

  Nikita wondered what they would do if Knox drove up. She knew he wouldn’t, not for a while yet, but they didn’t know that. Had they thought what they would say, or were they simply operating without any plan?

  Common sense had to prevail at some point, and they would go home. She hoped.

  “There wasn’t another car here,” Byron said. “He came home this afternoon, let her out, and he left again. She unlocked the door and went inside the house.”

  “I don’t think she’s in there,” Ruth said doubtfully. “I listened, and there wasn’t any sound other than the television. No one was moving around. And only that one light is on; there should be a light on in the kitchen, too, if anyone is there.”

  “Why?” he asked, his tone betraying nothing but curiosity.

  “Because people who watch television will go to the kitchen during commercials, to get something to drink or eat. So they leave a light on, usually the one over the sink, or maybe the stove light. Just a small one, enough that they can see. That’s just what people do.”

  “But how could she have left? She doesn’t have a car.”

  “I suppose she could have called someone to pick her up. You came to get me, and I tried getting her on the phone for at least two hours, maybe longer. There was plenty of time for her to do that. She might even have called a cab.”

  “I really need to get a better look at her,” Byron said regretfully, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as he stared at the house. He’d watched carefully, and there hadn’t been so much as the twitch of a curtain. Even if this Tina was really Nikita Stover, she would have no reason to be suspicious of Ruth and surely human curiosity would have led her to at