It had been a while since any woman had turned him on. Wanting sex wasn’t the same as being turned on, and, yeah, he’d wanted sex. He was a normal, thirty-five-year-old man, and he hadn’t died with Rebecca. But wanting a particular woman—no, that hadn’t happened, until now, until Nikita Stover, with her big brown eyes and friendly smile. He had to be careful not to let the sexual attraction between them blind him to any guilt on her part.
His car was waiting for them, and she got into the front seat beside him, then leaned over so her head was almost in his lap and she wasn’t visible through the windows. He glanced down at her; her head was almost touching his thigh. God, she had to know what that suggested. His hands tightened on the steering wheel as he imagined her head bobbing up and down in his lap. His johnson sprang to attention.
Shit.
“Where are we going?” he asked, his voice level and cool. He’d keep this situation under control if it killed him.
“Take county road 73,” she instructed. “And let me know when it’s safe for me to sit up.”
They were well away from the courthouse before he said, “Okay, you can sit up now.” She did so immediately, tossing her hair out of her face. He breathed easier once she was safely buckled on her side of the car.
County road 73 led in the general direction of Jesse Bingham’s place. There were no coincidences, he reminded himself. Whatever was going on with her was directly related to the flashes Jesse had seen three nights before. Jesse would probably say she’d killed his chickens, but somehow Knox couldn’t see Nikita as a chicken murderer.
Nikita flipped open a mirrored compact, released the mirror by pressing on a tiny latch, and exposed a GPS unit. “Another two miles, approximately,” she said.
Knox eyed the GPS with interest. The military GPS was far more accurate than the ones in cars and boats, and from what he’d seen, this was at least military grade. He wondered where she’d gotten it, if it had been stolen from a military base somewhere.
She carefully watched the GPS, and just before they reached the turn to Jesse’s place, she suddenly said, “Here. Pull over here.”
Obediently, he steered the car completely off the road, tucking it behind some bushes. She was already out of the car, walking swiftly toward a thick stretch of forest.
Knox followed her, watching her, watching the way she moved and the way her shiny dark hair swung with every stride. Then they were in the forest and the sounds of the occasional traffic faded, to be replaced by the sounds of nature: birds calling, insects rustling, leaves gently sighing in a light breeze. She stepped over fallen limbs, went around bushes, but didn’t hesitate or veer from her chosen direction.
Then she stopped and pointed to the ground. “There.”
He examined the earth. If she’d buried something there, she’d covered her tracks well. “Guess I should have brought a shovel.”
“No need. I have this.” She took another slender tube from her purse, this one black in color, and pressed the end of it. He’d thought it was a pen, or a laser pointer. He’d been half right. A thin beam of green light shot out of the tube and began to bore into the earth. She moved the light in gentle, ever increasing circles, digging as it went.
Then she turned it off, got down on her knees, laid the GPS unit to the side; he could see a series of concentric circles growing out of the center of its screen, expanding and disappearing, only to begin again.
Ground zero,
he thought. Nikita began scooping up loose dirt with her hands and tossing it aside.
Knox moved to stand in front of her so he could keep an eye on both her and anything she might uncover, but not so close that she could grab an ankle and topple him, or throw dirt in his eyes.
“That’s strange,” she muttered. “I didn’t think I’d dug this deep before.”
“Sure this is the right place?”
“I marked the coordinates on the GPS. I’m certain.” A moment later she made a soft sound of satisfaction and gripped the edge of a clear plastic bag, pulling it free from the dirt.
There was nothing in the bag.
Knox looked sharply at her. She remained on her knees, her face abruptly paper white as she stared at the empty bag.
“They’re gone,” she said in a tight, strained voice. “My links are gone. I can’t get home. I’m stranded here.”
10
Nikita remained on her knees in the dirt, barely able to speak. She felt numb with combined horror and shock. Who could have taken her links? Who could have known where they were? She had thought she was alone when she transited, but someone must have been nearby and watched her bury the links.
Logically, it couldn’t be the person who had shot at her, because what better opportunity to kill her than when she was alone in this isolated spot?
Even more logically, if some unknown enemy had known she was coming through, why
hadn’t
he been waiting here for her, to kill her the way he’d killed Houseman? Only one solution occurred to her that fit both parameters.
Still holding the waterproof bag by two fingers, she reached for the DNA scanner but couldn’t manage to open it with just one hand. She held it up to Knox. “Would you open that for me, please?” she asked. Her voice still sounded strained, even to her, but it was level.
Silently, he took the scanner and flipped it open, then gave it back to her.
She aimed it at the bag and pressed the button. Any samples would have been contaminated by the soil, but the newest scanners were better at filtering out the contamination than the earlier models had been. With any luck, she’d get a reading.
The lights flickered, showing the locations of DNA on the bag. She pressed the scanner to one of the locations and the reading popped on the screen:
Stover, Nikita
—“Okay, the samples are clean enough to read,” she murmured to herself as she cleared the entry. She glanced up at Knox. “The first reading was on me. Let’s see what it says about these other samples.”
The next sample was also hers. And the third. On the fourth, though, the screen flashed different information. She read it aloud: ” ‘Subject unknown. Genetic structure compatible with that of the northern European areas, specifically the ancient Celtic tribes’—Good God, Knox, it was you!”
“Ha ha,” he replied. “I guess I don’t have to tell you most people in this area will have a common genetic heritage. Don’t tell me there’s Cherokee in there, too?”
“No, you’re clear. The rest of it is ‘and to a lesser extent the southern Mediterranean area. Subject has green eyes and brown hair. Require additional data for information.’
“That description narrows things down to a few thousand people in the immediate area.”
Nikita sat down in the dirt, staring at the little screen. How could this situation get any worse? But she’d been right in her supposition, cold comfort that it was. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“That you don’t have any way to demonstrate to me that you can really travel back and forth in time?” he supplied with smooth irony.
“That this isn’t anyone from my time,” she explained patiently.
He hunkered down in front of her, blue eyes intent. “How do you figure that?”
“
Subject unknown.
If anyone from my time stole my links, the odds are he would be in the database.”
“You have almost the entire world’s population in this database?” he asked incredulously.
“Not everyone, not even close. But everyone in the FBI is in the database, as well as all Council members and all the personnel at the Transit Laboratory. Everyone ever convicted of a crime is entered. And since most people who belong to protest groups have committed at least misdemeanors such as disturbing the peace, they’re in the database.”
She rubbed her forehead, leaving smears of dirt across her skin. “No, the links were taken by someone from your time. I don’t know if that’s a relief, or not. An innocent civilian—well, maybe not so innocent, but a civilian—has those links and doesn’t have a clue what can happen if he puts them on and accidentally activates them.”
Glancing up, she caught an expression of patience and skepticism on his face, and she sighed. “You don’t believe me. Not even the DNA scanner has convinced you, or the Reskin.”
“Reskin comes close,” he admitted, rising to a standing position and holding his hand down for her. “But get real; how can I swallow this, hook, line, and sinker?”
“I haven’t asked you to swallow any hooks,” she muttered resentfully, but she put her hand in his and let him pull her to her feet.
The light under the canopy of trees seemed suddenly brighter, and a low, almost inaudible buzzing filled the air. Frowning, Knox released her hand and pressed a finger to his ear. “What’s that sound? Can you hear it?”
Nikita held up a hand to silence him, turning in a circle as she tried to locate the direction the buzzing was coming from. “Get down,” she said urgently as she grabbed her laser pen. She dropped to the ground, flat on her stomach. “Get down!” she yelled at him, when he was slow to obey. She grabbed the boot nearest her and jerked it backward, toppling him; he would have landed on his face if he hadn’t twisted, catlike, to take the fall on his shoulder.
“Face down!” She put her left hand on the back of his head and ground his face into the dirt, half covering him with her body as she ducked her own head down and put her arm over her eyes.
She saw the white brilliance of the flash against her closed eyelids, even with her head tucked down, felt every cell in her body prickle as the energy washed over her. Static electricity danced over her skin, played in her hair. She felt what seemed like the briefest moment of immobility; then as the effect began to fade she forced herself to raise her head, which felt as if it weighed three times as much as normal. Everything seemed to be in slow motion, every movement took enormous effort. Beneath her, Knox was stirring, trying to rise, his head coming up.
Shimmering before them, solidifying, was the figure of a man.
As luck would have it, he had landed with his back to them. Nikita had a split second to recognize the weaponry in his hand. “FBI!” she rapped out. “Drop your weapon.”
Slowly he raised both hands, then just as slowly turned his head to look over his shoulder at her. “Agent Stover,” he said. “I’m Agent Luttrell.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Drop your weapon, turn half a revolution to your left, and use your left hand to remove your ID card.” She didn’t recognize him, which by itself didn’t mean anything, but after everything that had gone wrong with this mission, she wasn’t about to take any chances.
Knox lifted slightly beneath her, his right arm moving, and she realized he had drawn his own weapon, but with her lying half on his right side, he couldn’t maneuver properly. If he moved much at one time, or too fast, he would throw her off balance, and from the tight control he employed, she knew he’d realized that. He shifted again, and when he dragged his left arm out, she saw he’d switched his weapon to his off hand.
“Easy,” the man said, slowly stooping to rest his weapon on the ground. He began turning, his balance shifting to his left foot. His powerful thigh muscles tensed . . . there was a second when she couldn’t see his right arm . . . then he was a blur of movement as he whipped around, a thin line of green light shooting out from his right hand.
She fired an instant before he did. The laser hit him at navel level and ripped upward, the stench of burning flesh filling the air. His shot burned into the ground inches from Knox’s outstretched hand. The man dropped where he stood, his legs jerking spasmodically for a moment before they relaxed forever.
In the thick silence that fell, Nikita felt the quick lift and fall of Knox’s breathing, felt her own heartbeat pounding, her pulse throbbing in her throat and wrists.
“Holy shit,” Knox said, moving her aside and getting to his feet in one lithe action. He approached the dead man cautiously, holding his weapon two-handed and keeping it trained on the body, easing forward until he could kick the laser away from the man’s outstretched hand.
“What other weapons is he likely to have?” he asked Nikita without looking at her.
“I don’t know,” she said dully. Nausea roiled in her stomach, hot and greasy. She felt herself break into a cold sweat. She’d never killed anyone before, never even discharged any of her weapons except in training or practice. She stared at the man stretched out on his back, his head turned slightly to the side and his eyes open as if he were staring at her.
He couldn’t see her. She knew that, knew he was dead. He’d have killed her—and Knox—if she hadn’t been faster, if she hadn’t been forewarned. She knew that, too. But knowing and feeling were two different things, and she felt sick at what she’d had to do.
Knox went down on one knee beside the body and touched two fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse. He then began swiftly and efficiently searching the man’s pockets.
“You want to give me a hand?” he called to Nikita.
Which one?
she wondered, shaken by the request.
“C’mon, don’t just sit there—” He looked over his shoulder at her as he spoke, and he broke off. “You’re as green as a frog,” he observed. “Is this your first body?”
Slowly she shook her head. “It’s the first one that’s my fault, though.”
“It was his fault, not yours. I won’t say you’ll get over it, but put it aside for now if you can. I need everything off him that can’t be explained.”
Shakily she stood. Approaching that body was one of the hardest things she’d ever done, but she made herself put one foot in front of the other until she could drop to her knees beside Knox. “How do you intend to explain the wound?” she asked. She was shaking in every muscle, a very fine tremor from head to foot.
“I’m not,” he said. “We’re leaving him here. Someone will eventually find him.”
“This is against the law,” she felt obliged to point out. She swallowed twice, hard, to keep from throwing up.
“Damn it, do you think I don’t know that?” he snapped. “I’m risking a prison sentence, but you tell me what you think will happen if I call this in? How do we explain being up here in the woods and just stumbling over a body that, oh, yeah, happened to have become a body at exactly the same time we found it? Even without a pinpointed time of death, it’s close enough that a lot of people will be suspicious, starting with the sheriff.”
She fell silent, trying to think through all the possibilities. They couldn’t call it in later, because the same question would still arise: what were they doing in the woods? “Maybe an anonymous call, later,” she said.
“It’s damn hard to make an anonymous call without all sorts of rerouting, or a secured phone. I don’t have the last one and don’t have a clue how to do the first one.”
He was angry, and not without cause. She had put him in an untenable position, and though she couldn’t have known someone would transit through almost on top of them, she was still the reason Luttrell was dead, and now they had to conceal their part in it. They were both law officers, and now they were breaking the very laws they had sworn to uphold. At least this was her doing, while Knox must feel as if he’d been caught in a trap.
“I’m sorry,” she said as evenly as possible. “The only way to make this right is to arrest me. I’m the one who killed him, not you. You shouldn’t be in this position.”
“No, damn it, I shouldn’t be, but I am.” His tone was savage, his blue gaze hard. “I can arrest you, yeah, but how did you kill him? Neither of our weapons has been discharged. Maybe you blurt out that you zapped him with a pen when he materialized in front of you, that he’s a bad guy from the future, and all this other real believable stuff you’ve been telling me? You’ll be in a psych ward before you know it. Or maybe you could demonstrate that little laser, which would bring up a lot of questions I sure as hell don’t want to answer. What about you?—No, I didn’t think so. This is my time and my county, so just do what I tell you. Now, what can’t be explained and needs to come off?”
“His links,” she said softly. Forcing herself to touch the dead man, she rolled back the cuffs of his sleeves and removed the thin metal bands clamped around his wrists, then pulled up his pants legs and did the same to the ones around his ankles.
“You have a set of links now,” Knox pointed out.
She had already realized that and began inspecting them for damage. A laser hit could damage the connections and circuitry. She turned each link around and around, looking for scorch marks. She was beginning to feel optimistic until she picked up the one that had been on his left wrist. The outer edge at the hinge was darkened, which meant it had absorbed some of the laser’s power. Time and light were interwoven like a braid, and they’d found that while bright white light didn’t damage the links, other spectrums could, if strong enough. A laser was definitely strong enough.
“One of them is damaged.” She tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice. She was an utter failure at it, but at least she tried.
“Three of them work, don’t they? What could happen?”
“I’d fail to materialize in my own time. I’d still exist, I guess, but I’d just be a mitochondrial cloud somewhere.”
“Bummer. Don’t go that route, then.” He was swiftly patting down the body; he found the shield card and slipped it into his front pocket, along with the laser, then picked up the other weapon and began examining it. “Was he really FBI? He has a card just like yours.”
“Then he probably was,” she said softly. “The cards are impossible to forge.” Standing, she retrieved her DNA scanner and pressed it to the dead man’s hand.
“Luttrell, Jon Carl,” she read, skipping over the physical description. “Subject has been employed by the United States Department of Justice, investigative branch—yes, he really was FBI.”
“Then it isn’t safe for you to go back, even if all four of the links were in good working order. Someone in your office sent him gunning for you. How about the wristwatch?”
“Leave it. They still work and look basically the same.”
“Obviously someone doesn’t want you coming back,” he pointed out. “Is the clothing made out of ordinary stuff, or is it some indestructible cloth?”
“It’s synthetic. Unless it’s given to a chemist to break down the molecular structure, no one will know the difference.” She didn’t need him to tell her she didn’t dare go back now. She was all too sharply aware that she’d been virtually abandoned here.