He came to the do-or-die point – an opening in the scaffold wall that presented about a five-foot jump to the truck. As he neared, given his speed, he knew the jump wouldn’t be a problem, but it occurred to him that stopping once he reached the truck might be.
He hit the gap at full speed and hurtled across the divide. As he flew through the air, he could already see that his arrival was causing a commotion, with guards pulling away from their posts toward him. Fortunately, the ones he saw were moving toward the near side of the truck, rather than the driver’s side.
Where, after a moment in the air, he realized he was going to end up.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Erica watched as Jeff went airborne.
He hit the top of the armored car hard, went immediately to his knees, and then rolled off of the opposite side of the truck, falling to the ground below where she lost sight of him. She noticed that he’d instinctively pulled his still-injured hand to his chest during the leap, and with only one hand to stabilize himself had had no chance of holding on.
Her immediate reaction was to stop and regroup, but his instructions echoed in her mind to keep going and stick with the plan. She had to engage the device no matter what. She just hoped that he was ready.
She could see that the focus of the guards was on this mysterious intruder that had somehow fallen from the sky. They scurried around the truck to the point where he’d disappeared.
Reaching the landing, she knew that if she thought about it she wouldn’t make the jump, so she kicked off and landed on her hands and knees on top of the truck. She pinched her fingers in between the metal on the top of the truck and the time device, but held on firmly. She’d have the time to feel that pain later.
Not knowing if anyone saw her follow up to Jeff, she laid the device on top of the truck, leaned her weight on it, and waited for Jeff’s instructions.
That is, as long as he wasn’t in shackles by now.
Or whatever kind of restraints they would use in the future.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
It was probably sheer adrenaline, but his topple off the top of the truck – which was essentially a two-story fall – didn’t hurt as much as Jeff would’ve thought. But even if it had, he wouldn’t have had time to dwell on it. In a split second, he was on his feet and saw two guards advancing on him, weapons drawn.
For what he was about to do, he said a quick silent prayer that Erica was where she was supposed to be.
A guard approached him from the front and Jeff readied to swing his heavy computer bag at the man’s face as ferociously as he could. But as he started his turn, he was grabbed from behind under the arms and lost his leverage. A nightstick came at his face and he winced, evading it just enough that it glanced off of his shoulder and the guard’s momentum carried him into the guard that was holding onto him. Three more guards rushed to the scene, each grabbing a part of him – his arm, his leg. One grabbed him by the back of the neck as though he was about to be ushered to his bedroom for a grounding.
As he was tossed around, his mind turned to Erica. Either she’d been caught, too, or she was sitting on top of the armored car as told. Given the guards’ approach to him, he couldn’t imagine that she was untouched.
Then, suddenly, each and every one of them let go.
He regained his footing, but was quickly swept to the side by a mass of people rushing toward him. The blue uniforms of the security guards that had surrounded him only a moment before were quickly replaced by a sea of color. A mass of humanity pushed past him and he toppled to the ground, still clutching his bag. But with the attention of the police elsewhere, he sensed opportunity.
With great effort, he stood, turned, and located the truck, which was only about five feet away. Somehow there seemed to be at least a hundred people in between, though. He started chopping his way through with the computer bag. More and more people pushed past the cash collection stations into what was quickly becoming a riot. Jeff slowly pushed forward, an inch at a time, against the flow of people. He could see people starting to climb onto the truck and determined that, if this was going to work, it’d have to be immediately.
Finally, he threw someone – it felt like an old lady – aside and made his way to the door of the truck, which he noticed had been ripped off of its hinges. He dove inside head-first and started to yell for Erica, but a heavyset bearded man appeared in the open driver’s side door and grabbed his left foot. Jeff kicked him hard in the face with his right and the man fell backwards, taking Jeff’s shoe with him.
“Erica! Now!” he yelled at the top of his voice, knowing that she would never hear him over the noise of the mob.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
It was getting increasingly difficult to stay put. Jeff’s ambush on the truck had not only aroused the attention of the security patrol, but their distraction had given reason for the crowd to surge past the cash tables and around the truck. Now, they were climbing up the side of the truck and would be on top of her in seconds.
She thought that she’d heard the two heavy doors on the back of the truck closed and locked just before the mayhem began, which would explain why people would be climbing on the armored car instead of poking around inside it where the money was. But in riots, people did tend to climb on things even if there was no purpose.
She heard splintering wood to her right and the scaffold, now alive with people, buckled. She could see the alarm on the faces of the people who were now past the point of no return – if the scaffold collapsed they were going down with it. She glanced up. The scaffold was about five stories tall. It was coming down, and it was coming down on top of her.
As the first fingers and heads poked above the top of the truck, she panicked. If anyone pulled her away from the truck, she wouldn’t be able to get her and Jeff back safely – even forgetting about the truck. If she was able to maintain her position and someone touched her, they’d be coming back with them. Past the few people getting close, a tidal wave of human beings was coming at her.
She heard someone yelling, which got her attention. It could’ve been Jeff, but it might not have been. If she hit the button at the wrong time, she’d leave him behind. She hesitated.
Then she heard it again. Her name.
She looked behind her and a skinny Hispanic man with a skullcap on had made it to the top of the truck and was coming toward her.
Another splintering of wood, and then screams. The scaffold was giving. Metal girders and shards of plywood descended on her.
If that wasn’t Jeff, it was too late. The time was now.
Her thumb twitched on the trigger reticently as if focusing a camera. Then she pushed the button.
The world blurred around her and suddenly she was back. On top of the truck. In the middle of the street, the lights of Times Square illuminating the darkness from behind her. The climbers were gone.
As her focus restored, to her left a yellow NYC taxi was flung to the side and crashed heavily against the building that only a moment before had been covered by the scaffold. To her right, a black SUV pushed sideways several feet against the curb and tipped onto its side, sending a small group of people erupting like bowling pins, toppling over one another across the sidewalk.
To her surprise, the armored car started and jerked forward. She lay flat on top to brace herself. The truck made its way down 43rd – what had to be present day 43rd – until it hit 8th Avenue, where it pulled to the curb and stopped.
Erica pushed herself up to stabilize herself before the truck moved again, but as she started to scramble toward the side, Jeff’s head popped up over the edge on the driver’s side.
“Did you miss me?” he asked.
Erica rolled over and laid on her back. The early morning air was cool and a shiver went down her spine. Her heart was still pounding. But the respite was short-lived, as they’d just left a mess down the street.
She looked over at Jeff, who was still hanging on the side of the truck, grinning.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
October 1, 2015
With what they’d just been through, driving an armored car through Manhattan should’ve been easy, especially in the wee hours of the morning. But Jeff was extremely cautious about not arousing any attention beyond what would likely be coming to the scene of the accident. He navigated the streets carefully and chose the George Washington Bridge over the Lincoln Tunnel to get back to New Jersey.
After helping Erica down from the roof of the armored car, they’d taken a roundabout way to get away from 43rd. Even at 2 a.m., there was a decent amount of traffic, and an armored car would stand out. They were intent on getting back to Jersey and planting the truck in the garage that stood behind Jeff’s lab.
Erica’s first question had been what had happened to him once he fell off of the side of the truck. He gave her all the details, including showing her a bright purple bruise on his shoulder from the nightstick strike, emphasizing how glad he was it hadn’t hit him in the face. He told her how the throng had advanced at exactly the right time, and had simply pulled the security guards off of him, as well as how he’d kicked the guy in the face to keep him from getting into the truck. She laughed when she saw he was wearing only one shoe.
Then she told her side of the story, how she felt like a sitting duck on top of the truck with the crowd advancing on her. How if she’d waited three seconds longer she probably would’ve been impaled by one of the falling metal poles from the scaffold. How she did exactly as she’d been told, meticulously holding the time travel device against the roof of the truck, waiting for the right moment.
As they talked, even though it was over, neither of them wanted to address the idea that a lot of split-second decisions had been made, and that if any of them had been made incorrectly, one of them would still be seven years in the future being manhandled by either an angry crowd or merciless security guards. They avoided that concept altogether.
“I still can’t believe we started a riot,” he said as they took the entrance ramp to I-95. “Had I thought about that in the first place, I might’ve added it to the strategy. That mob saved my life. I have a feeling those guards were about to beat me to a bloody pulp.”
“They were probably just waiting for someone to screw around so they could make an example.”
“I wonder why you didn’t see anything in the news about the riot.”
“Maybe we did something that ‘future you’ hadn’t planned.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I think the story was written for future me. Maybe they suppressed the riot in the news – just like the video.”
“Seems kind of far-fetched. Jeff, you have to remember, there’s nothing stopping us from changing things – even if we think we know how things will turn out. I think the plan was for us to do things one way and we went a different direction. We’re lucky things worked out.”
“I guess it doesn’t matter,” he said. “It is what it is.”
“It is what it is... Now,” she said.
Within a few minutes they were crossing the George Washington Bridge. Jeff took advantage of the minimal traffic to peek over his shoulder at the present-day skyline.
“How about that?” he asked.
She was looking, too. “So different.”
“Well, it gives us something to look forward to.”
“Yeah, we’ll see,” she said.
He looked over at her. She’d turned back around and was looking straight ahead at the road. That was another one of those answers that perplexed him. But he didn’t want to say anything right then. She’d stuck with him as she’d said he would, and it wasn’t the moment for pressing questions.
They were off the bridge and into New Jersey, so Jeff made his way to the Turnpike. So far, they were just an armored car on the highway en route to an early morning delivery. He’d been more worried about Manhattan, particularly since they’d put a cab through the front window of a first-floor business. In Jersey, he felt comfortable, as though they’d left the trouble behind them.
“I think we proved my diamond theory is accurate,” he said, bringing the conversation back to something a little less mysterious.
She nodded. “Oh, yeah. I really hope we didn’t hurt anyone, though.”
“I glanced over before getting the hell out of there. There were people that had fallen down, but I didn’t see anyone that appeared to be injured badly.”
“Well, we’re not exactly good Samaritans,” she said with a sarcastic laugh. “If you checked on those people, you checked on them for about two seconds.”
“Yeah.” He felt a quick sting of guilt. But if he didn’t feel terrible about upending Dexter’s life, he wasn’t going to get bent out-of-shape about a bunch of strangers lying on a sidewalk. Science had its repercussions. “At least as many people fell off the truck when it disappeared, too.”
“And the scaffold. Man, that was dangerous.”
“Hard to imagine something like that wouldn’t have happened anyway,” he said, thinking. “All that crazy energy in the crowd, people pushing from behind, and then the interruptions to change trucks... I think they’ll be lucky if that’s the only riot that starts.” Jeff shook his head at the awful planning. If the government thought something like that was a good idea, what kind of trouble would they cause with time travel?
They drove for a little while longer until finally he pulled the truck off of the highway and through a series of neighborhood streets. They could see the Meadowlands and the Giants’ Stadium not too far away.
“What now?” she asked as he settled into a less hectic pace.
“I think we need some rest,” he said. “I’m going to drop you off at your hotel and then I’m going to head home. I know you realized we were coming back at a time when you would miss your flight, and I appreciate your seeing this through with me. If you still want to, we can book you for this morning back to California, but since you’re still here, I want to get the team together for a little party tonight to celebrate, if you’re up for it. I’m going to call Emeka to help me get into the back of the truck and then around 5 o’clock or so tonight, we’ll open up a couple bottles of champagne, get some food and toast ourselves for a job well done.”
“What about Dexter?”
“He’s on my invite list. Don’t worry. Remember, he’s supposed to come later today to talk about his new life, anyway.”
“How could you possibly remember that? I don’t even know what day it is.”
After a short stretch of office parks, Jeff veered into the large parking lot of the office building that held his lab. He drove to the back of the lot where there was a cement garage. He parked quickly, jumping out of the truck, then opened the garage and pulled his own car out of it, putting it off to the side. Then he returned and plugged the armored car into the garage. In a moment, the door was locked and they were in Jeff’s car headed to Erica’s hotel.
A short five minutes later, they reached Erica’s hotel and she laughed. “When did I check in here? Three months ago.”
“Might as well have been,” he said.
She got out of the car and leaned her head back inside. She rubbed her eyes. “I’m exhausted,” she said. “I feel like a zombie.”
He smiled, again, trying to keep it as warm a smile as possible. “Rest. Take a bath. Take a nap. Get a massage. Whatever it takes. We’ll have a good time tonight. We have some good stories to tell.”
“I have to get my flight booked,” she said.
He sighed. She was sticking to it. “I can help you get that taken care of.”
“To be honest with you, Jeff, I don’t know if I’m up for the whole security check, take-your-shoes-off thing, and then being cramped between two snoring fat guys all the way across the country. I’d really like to take a private flight back.”
It was an expensive request, but he knew she was well aware the cost wouldn’t put a dent in what
they’d just collected in the armored car, and it was reasonable for her to look for her own considerations for the effort. It would be easy enough for him to set up through his carrier, and he could cover it through his grant temporarily. Determined not to let her see her heavy-duty request faze him, he tried the smile again. It wasn’t having the right effect, though she probably really was exhausted and just wanted to be home. He knew that’s how he felt. “I think you’ve earned that,” he said calmly. “I’ll set it up for you for tomorrow morning.”
“Thank you,” she said, then closed the door and walked into the hotel lobby.
He watched her walk away as the entire trip they’d just gone on passed through his mind. From the hurricane to him catching her looking at Dexter’s future, to the wonderful dinner and on to their little stunt show at the end. He found it incredible that she’d be able to just hop on a plane and fly back to California. He, himself, wanted so much more time together.
He drove away from the hotel and pulled his phone from his pocket. Though it was early, very early, he dialed Emeka. The phone rang four times before a groggy voice mumbled something like a hello.
“Emeka, it’s Jeff. We’re back.”
“Oh man,” his friend said. “Thank goodness. Where the hell were you? I thought you were coming back at the same time. Like, thirty seconds later you’d be standing there.”
“No. Didn’t work that way. Look, I’ll tell you the whole story – Oh, damn...
“What’s up?”
“I forgot to get the time device back from Erica. Remind me later today.”
“What’s later today?”
“Well, two things. First, I have an armored car filled with cash that I need to figure out how to get into.”
Fortune Page 33