Page 24 of Killing Time

As Devynn spoke those words, her smile faded, and Seth guessed she was thinking about his kidnapped cousin, hidden somewhere in the mountain town where they now stood.

They had to locate her prison, no matter what.

His hand reached out to take Devynn’s. “We’re going to find her.”

“Oh, I know,” she replied as her chin went up in the gesture he now knew all too well. “I guess it just sort of hit me all over again when I said her name.”

Since Seth had experienced pretty much the same reaction, he only nodded.

“All right, we’ve found Northern Lumber Holdings. Let’s see if any of these other businesses have some obvious connections to the Wilcoxes.”

As it turned out, there were two — one of them an office building that had a discreet brass plate near the entrance that proclaimed it had been constructed in 1932 through the generosity of the Wilcox family, who had donated the land and the building supplies.

Interesting. Although Seth knew he was still trying to get a handle on exactly which things had happened…and, more importantly,whenthey’d happened…in the years between 1926 and 1947, he was fairly certain that would have been right in the middle of the Depression, a time when most people would have been worried about hanging on to their houses and their businesses, and definitely didn’t have the capital to invest in a construction project.

Except the Wilcoxes had, going so far as to donate everything that might be needed so all the company in charge of the actual construction had to do was supply the necessary labor.

Well, according to Devynn, the Wilcoxes were absolutely swimming in cash, both now and in the future world where she lived. Even with her disclaimer about everything costing much more in her time, Seth couldn’t quite figure out how a person could possibly spend ten thousand dollars each and every month.

Was the rent on his bungalow very expensive? Did she drive a fancy car?

He had no idea, although she seemed so down-to-earth to him that he couldn’t really imagine her spending a lot of money on what she drove.

If they were very, very lucky, maybe one day he’d be able to find out.

The two of them found another building with the legend “Wilcox and Garnett” above the door, obviously a law office of some kind.

“That makes sense,” she said. “My family’s always been swimming with lawyers.”

“Where did they go to school?” Seth asked, genuinely curious. True, they’d passed what looked like a college on their way in, but he’d glimpsed a sign proclaiming it to be a teaching school of some kind, not the sort of place where you could earn a law degree.

She looked puzzled. “I’m not sure. I mean, in my time, Northern Pines is a place where you can get that kind of degree, but now?” Her shoulders lifted, and she went on, “I assume they probably did some sort of correspondence school to earn their certification. Besides, everyone trusted the Wilcoxes. It wasn’t as if the regular people here in town were going to think they were a bunch of shysters.”

Seth wasn’t sure exactly what a shyster was, but he had to assume it was some sort of charlatan. And yes, the nonmagical population in Flagstaff would have no idea that the Wilcoxes weren’t the upstanding, prosperous citizens they pretended to be, and instead a family of witches and warlocks who didn’t seem to have too much of a problem walking the dark side of the path if it got them what they wanted.

“I get your point,” he said. “But now what?”

“Now,” Devynn replied, linking her arm with his, “we’re going to backtrack to that five-and-dime we went by a few minutes ago. Every woman we’ve passed has hair that’s way more ‘done’ than mine, and that means I have to pick up some curlers and figure out how to style all this so I don’t stand out so much.”

Personally, Seth thought her hair looked just fine — she had it pulled back with a different scarf today, one in muted shadesof green and rust and dark brown to go with her dress — but he had to admit that the women they’d seen definitely had more structured hairstyles, with different sorts of waves and curls.

Their hair had also seemed much shorter than Devynn’s, and he couldn’t help frowning. He loved her long, softly waving locks…the way they spread across the pillow as she slept next to him.

“You’re not going to cut it, are you?”

“Oh, no,” she said, in tones of such horror that he knew she was telling the simple truth. “I’m not going to go that far to blend in. I have to believe there were some women in the ’40s who didn’t cut their hair, just as I noticed there were plenty of women in your time who put it up rather than bob it.”

Seth had to admit that was true. A few of his younger, more progressive cousins had cut their hair chin-length to follow the trendsetters in the big cities, but a larger group of them had decided to do what Devynn had done while she was in his time and merely put their hair up in a low bun at the back of their necks to conceal how long it actually was.

“That sounds fine, then,” he said, even as he wondered if he should have kept quiet on the subject. After all, it was her hair…and her decision what she wanted to do with it.

But it seemed obvious enough to him that she had no intention of drastically changing those long locks that hung more than halfway down her back, not when they weren’t planning to stay here in 1947 any longer than they absolutely had to.

“Then let’s head back to the store,” he said. “Because it’s Sunday, I have no idea how long they even plan to stay open.”

“Right.”

His instincts had proved correct, because when they approached the shop, he noticed at once that the hours postednext to the door said that they closed at four on Sundays, which only gave them about ten minutes.

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