She went up the front steps and rang the doorbell. If Kelvin hadn’t warned them, if they hadn’t already realized Ruth was helping Hugh, whoever had answered the door would have been a sitting duck. Knox studied where Hugh had most likely positioned himself, letting Ruth’s location point the way to him. She would have been instructed to give him a clear shot.
Nikita wouldn’t have been likely to answer the door, Knox thought; he himself would have done that. So had they planned to shoot him on sight, or try to draw both him and Nikita out of the house?
It didn’t matter. Either way, Hugh planned on killing both of them, and Ruth knew it.
He saw a slight movement of the bushes. Could be a breeze, he thought, except it seemed to be right where he’d placed Hugh, and nowhere else.
Ruth rang the doorbell again, waited, then knocked vigorously. “Knox!” she called. “Knox Davis, you answer this door! Your car is parked right here, so don’t think you can pretend you’re not in there.”
She waited and listened, growing increasingly more agitated from the sound of it. Knox risked another look at her. She was pacing back and forth on the porch, fiddling with a pair of silver bracelets. Suddenly she burst into tears—and did something incredibly stupid. Whirling to face away from the house, she shrieked, “They aren’t here! There’s no sound at all inside!”
Instantly Knox knew what Hugh would do, knew the flash of rage that would overwhelm everything else, and he stepped out from behind the tree already firing. A laser burst bored into the house just to Ruth’s left, then swung wildly to the side. Nikita launched herself from the shrubbery, firing as she ran to keep Hugh from targeting Knox. Both of them plunged through the bushes at the same time, and almost stumbled over the man lying on his side.
Knox’s lucky shot couldn’t have been any better aimed if he’d been standing not ten feet away. The bullet had entered at an angle, the entrance wound just under Hugh’s left arm, and the exit wound had taken out a chunk of his spine. If he lived he’d be paralyzed, but Knox knew immediately Hugh wasn’t going to live. The damage to his left lung, and probably part of his heart, was too great.
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. What would she do without her darling girl, her miracle baby? How could she go on without her? They didn’t even have her physical remains; according to Agent McElroy, there weren’t any. Time travel accidents didn’t leave even the smallest remnant.
She knew she wasn’t the only one who was suffering. Aidan often got up at night and wandered aimlessly through the apartment as if looking for the daughter who would never return. Fair was distraught, lost without her older sister. Even Connor seemed subdued. Only Jemi was unaware of the sorrow that hovered over his parents and grandparents, tackling each day with the headlong fervor he’d inherited from his father, because heaven knows, Connor had never slowed down for a minute.
Jemi’s very obliviousness was a balm to her, a small, busy island of surcease. He played, he jabbered, he shrieked and laughed and was forever getting into places where he shouldn’t be, and you didn’t dare take your gaze from him for a single minute or he’d find something else to get into. She kept him as often as possible, not only to give Connor and Enya a chance to relax, but also because he was good for her and Aidan. He pulled them out of themselves and their sorrow, reminded them that life did go on and here it was right in front of them, in the form of an adorable toddler.
The security chimes rang, signaling someone wished admittance. Carrying Jemi, Nicolette went over to the video console and pressed a button. The image of a deliveryman dressed in brown appeared on the screen. She pressed the audio button. “Yes?”
“Nicolette and Aidan Stover?”
“This is Nicolette Stover.”
“A package for you.” He paused. “It was discovered by accident in the construction site over on Wilshire. It—uh—is very old.”
“Who is it from?”
“It doesn’t say. We scanned it to make certain it’s safe.” He paused, then reiterated, “It’s
very
old.”
Because he seemed to want her to ask, Nicolette said, “How old is it?” expecting it to be something she had ordered several years ago that was never delivered.
“Um—about two hundred years old. The delivery charge was prepaid, so we will fulfill our contracted duty. I do wonder if you could tell me, though, how a package this old could have your address on it?”
“I don’t know.” Since Agent McElroy had told them how Nikita had died, the issue of time travel had been very much on her mind. Obviously someone was playing some sort of joke, sending a package back in time to be delivered two hundred years later. If it was a joke, she absolved the person of maliciousness because the nature of Nikita’s death wasn’t generally known, but neither did she find it funny. “Do I have to sign for it?”
“No signature required.”
She opened the old-fashioned delivery chute, and he placed the package in it, then gave the camera a two-fingered salute and rushed back to the street, continuing his daily mad rush to make all his assigned deliveries.
A soft bell signaled the arrival of the package. Still keeping a firm hold on Jemi, who was trying his best to wriggle free, she opened the delivery chute and took out the package. It was surprisingly heavy, and she dropped it; the thud made Jemi laugh.
It didn’t sound as if the package contained anything breakable. “Aidan?” she called. “Would you either take Jemi for a few minutes so I can open this package, or you do the honors and I’ll hold him?”
Aidan came out of his office. His thick hair was still dark, his eyes a warm brown that he had passed on to all of his children. After forty years of marriage, they still loved each other, and she hoped they would have at least forty or fifty more together.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I don’t know. The deliveryman said it was found at the construction site on Wilshire, and that it was shipped to us two hundred years ago.”
His face tightened. “That isn’t funny.”
“I know,” she said, and sighed. “I don’t understand it, either.”
He picked up the package, weighing it in his hand. “Several pounds, at least,” he muttered. The large, heavy-duty envelope was made of plastic, otherwise it would never have lasted so long. The delivery address had also been covered with a clear plastic film.
He tried to tear open the envelope, but it resisted his effort. He fetched the scissors to cut it open, dumping out several smaller clear packs and two single sheets that were each encased in more clear plastic.
He picked up the first sheet, read the first few words, and turned pale. He swayed, then abruptly sat down.
“Aidan!” Alarmed, Nicolette started to put Jemi down so she could check on her husband. The toddler, who had been struggling to get down, abruptly shrieked in protest at getting what he’d asked for, clinging to her like a monkey with both arms and legs.
“It’s from Nikita,” he whispered, and this time it was Nicolette whose legs wouldn’t hold her.
“She sent it before she died.” Without even knowing what was in it, this posthumous letter was like a knife through her heart. At the same time she reached eagerly for it. “What does it say?”
Even Aidan’s lips were white. “It says,
Dear Mom and Dad, I’m not dead.
”
“Oh, dear God!” Nicolette burst into tears, in her frenzy holding Jemi close to her and rocking him back and forth. “Dear God,” she said again. “Read it all!”
He moistened his lips and in a shaky voice began reading.
I suppose I am by the time you’ll get this, but if you ever get the opportunity to come back to 2005 or later, I’ll be around. I’m living in a little town in eastern Kentucky called Pekesville, with my husband, a wonderful man named Knox Davis. My links were sabotaged and I wasn’t able to get back. Agent McElroy is part of a conspiracy of murder, but whatever you do, DON’T try to confront him. If there is to be justice for what he’s done, it will have to come from the hands of others. I hate that he can’t be forced to account for what he’s done, but the main thing you must remember is, he failed—and I didn’t.
Because McElroy told everyone I’m dead—by the way, he truly thinks I am dead—no SAR was sent for me. I deeply regret not being able to come back and spare you the pain I know you must have been feeling, but in the end I couldn’t have stayed. This time is more primitive, of course, but here I’m not treated with suspicion and horror. The man I love is here, and he doesn’t care about my precarious legal status. Even more, here I don’t have to worry that I’ll be imprisoned for the rest of my life because of how I came to be.
And the most wonderful thing of all—Mom, Dad—I’m pregnant. I can have a family here. I’m free in a way I could never be in my own time. I miss both of you dreadfully, and Fair and Connor and Enya, and how I long to see Jemi. Kiss the little rascal for me and tell him how much his aunt Nikita loves him. I hope this letter eases your minds, but it isn’t safe for me to ever return. Know that I’m happy and healthy, and I’ll hold you in my heart and mind forever.
Your loving daughter,
Nikita
PS: I hope the enclosed will be of use.
Nicolette was weeping so hard she could scarcely breathe, but she was laughing, too, squeezing Jemi and trying to hug Aidan all at the same time. Jemi set up a wail of protest, and she set him down, then went into Aidan’s arms.
“She’s alive,” she wept. “She’s there—two hundred years ago. I want her here, but just knowing—” She stopped, unable to say more.
“I know. I know.” He was shaking violently. “She—we— Nic, we have another grandchild. Maybe more. We don’t know how many we have!”
She gave a watery giggle. “And all of them except Jemi are older than us! We’ll have to find our descendants. Nikita gave us the information we need. We know where to look. I don’t know how much it will cost, but we’ll manage—”
“Nic,” Aidan said, his voice hoarse. He was strangely still, staring at the floor.
“I know, I’m rushing into things without planning, but we—”
“Nic,” he said again, louder. “Look.”
She looked. She felt the room whirl around, and she grabbed Aidan’s arm for support.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “That’s—”
Paper. Packs and packs of it, vacuum-sealed and perfectly preserved. Nikita had sent them paper.