Killing Time Read online

  Still, Knox kicked the weapon away from Hugh’s hand, just in case. Nikita went down on one bare knee beside the dying man. “You won’t live,” she said steadily. “It’s over. Why did you do it? What did you want?”

  Hugh’s eyes were glazing over, his internal organs shutting down. He managed to blink, though, and a ghastly smile curled his lips. “Money,” he gasped. “Patent . . . the . . . process. Always . . . money.” His eyes didn’t close, his lips didn’t stop smiling, but in the next instant he was no longer there. Nothing was emptier than a dead man’s eyes, Knox thought.

  “Money,” Nikita repeated numbly. “All of that . . . because they wanted to patent the process and get rich. Nothing about issues or standards, just . . . money.”

  A thin, unholy wail sounded behind them. They both spun, weapons raised, but Ruth wasn’t armed. She stood there staring at Hugh’s body and the anguish made her face almost inhuman. She was gasping for air as if her lungs weren’t working, as if her heart wasn’t pumping, as if her brain couldn’t comprehend what her eyes were seeing.

  “Noooo,” she moaned, her voice like the rustle of dry cornstalks.

  Nikita suddenly straightened, her body going rigid. “You’re wearing links,” she said.

  Ruth held both hands up in front of her face, staring from one wrist to the other as if she didn’t recognize the bracelets she wore. Then, slowly, she began to back away. “They’re your links,” she said rawly. “Byron found them. He gave them to me. If you were dead, he said, I could go back and save her. You’re here to find out how time travel started, and make sure it doesn’t happen.”

  “Is that what he told you?” Nikita asked, making a visible effort to keep her voice even and nonthreatening.

  Ruth’s head bobbled as she continued to back away from them. “I won’t let you stop me. I’ll save her this time, and she and Knox will get married and have beautiful babies, and I’ll never tell her he was unfaithful. It’s our secret,” she said to Knox, though her eyes were angry.

  “My links won’t take you back,” Nikita said. “They’ll only take you to my time. If he told you they’d take you back, he lied. His could be reprogrammed, but mine can’t.”

  “You’re lying. He programmed them for me. I’ll be there in plenty of time to make her have medical tests that will find the aneurysm. I’ll save my baby, and she’ll live a long time and be very happy.”

  “No, those won’t work that way—”

  “You’re lying!” Ruth abruptly screamed at her. “You want them back, but I’ll never give them to you, I’ll never—” She began fumbling with the bracelets, and with a muffled sound of alarm Nikita started forward. Remembering the blinding flash of before, Knox grabbed her and whirled her against him, hiding her face as he ducked his own down to protect his eyes.

  Instead of the silent flash there was a sharp crack; then a fine red mist seemed to float up before settling to earth. Nikita made a raw sound, jerking backward and dragging him with her. They didn’t make it quite far enough, and the fine mist turned their skin and clothes red.

  In silence they stared at where Ruth had been.

  “He killed her,” Nikita said rawly. “He tampered with the links, and he deliberately killed her.” She looked up at Knox and a tear trickled down her cheek, leaving a white trail. “I can’t go home.”

  He didn’t want her to go home, but he said, “They’ll send a SAR team after you, when you don’t show up within a month, right?”

  Slowly she shook her head. “The links—they’re literally a link. As long as they exist, the master board in my time can tell they’re still there. It’s the metal, a special metal. We can’t communicate through time, but they can always tell if something happens. They . . . they know my links were just in a catastrophic incident.”

  What she was saying began to sink in. “They think you’re dead.”

  Her lips trembled, and the sheen of tears blinded her. “Yes. They think I’m dead. No one will come for me. I’ll never see my family again.”

  Gently he took her hand and began leading her back to the house. They both needed another shower, and he needed to think what explanation he was going to make about what had happened here today. Hugh Byron would have no viable identification, and his prints wouldn’t be in the AFIS system. Ruth . . . no longer existed. He felt numb, and he knew that when the numbness wore off he would be sick, but he’d handle that when it happened.

  Right now, he had to take care of Nikita, who was in shock and hurting over suddenly finding herself permanently stranded, with no way home.

  “Maybe you can make do with me,” he said.

  One night seven months later, they cut the fence that surrounded a construction site in Miami and sneaked across to where the footprint of a high-rise was being laid. The past seven months had been eventful. In the end he had decided to let all questions go unanswered, and dumped Hugh’s body close to Luttrell’s. They still hadn’t been found.

  So far as anyone outside the family knew, Ruth Lacey had just disappeared. Knox was a cop; he knew how to make a car disappear so no one would ever find it. He spent two weeks in his father’s barn, dismantling it, destroying VIN and serial numbers, and generally reducing the car to scrap metal.

  They had also reburied the capsule under the flagpole for it to be found at the right time. Knox had simply told everyone that he’d found it in Coach Easley’s old garage.

  They’d told the truth to Kelvin and Lynnette. They had needed to explain the damage done to the house by Hugh’s laser, and Nikita’s bag of gadgets had convinced them that neither Knox nor Nikita had lost his or her mind. It was a secret the four of them would take to the grave.

  “You’re sure this is the building that will be torn down two hundred years from now?” he hissed as they stepped around a wheelbarrow that had been tipped on its side. He was carrying a thick, heavy package.

  “I’m sure,” she hissed in return. “I don’t recognize anything, but I know the name of the building. This is it.”

  He didn’t argue, just placed the package inside one of the forms that were in place to mold the huge columns. Tomorrow morning, concrete would be poured inside those forms. “I hope this works.”

  “It has to,” she said. Blindly she reached for his hand and clung to it, her grip so tight he could feel his fingers going numb.

  “Maybe one day they’ll come visit,” he said.

  “Maybe. When time travel becomes commercial, if it ever does. If they have the money.”

  “Well, you did your part in making it happen.” He raised his hand, the one she was clinging to, and kissed her knuckles. “Have I told you today that I love you?”

  A smile broke over her face, replacing the tears. “I believe you have,” she said, and hand in hand they slipped back through the fence, tugged the wire back into place, and walked away.

  Epilogue

  Nicolette Stover took her grandson’s plump little hand and steered him away from the potted geranium on the balcony, where a fat bee buzzed around the bright flower. Jemi was fascinated with both flower and bee, so it was best to remove him from temptation. He loudly protested and pulled away, toddling back toward the flower as fast as his fat little legs would take him. She scooped him up before he could reach it, swinging him high and blowing on his belly. Instantly his screech of protest changed to giggles.

  She had to stay right with the little devil; their apartment was old, without the modern safeguards that would keep him safe. She and Aidan had once been comfortably established, but they had spent every credit they had for Annora, then for Nikita. With two more children coming along, they had always hovered on the edge of poverty, but she’d never begrudged a penny spent on their babies. Things were much better now, but they still hadn’t been able to afford a newer apartment.

  Since Agent McElroy had brought the news of Nikita’s death, Jemi was the only thing that could lighten her heart. She had been through this before, and survived because she’d had Nikita.