Fate (Wilton's Gold #3)

by Craig W. Turner

  So far, the duration of this new partnership had been spent hoping that Fisher’s driving wasn’t going to kill him before Bremner had the chance to. He tried to glance at the speedometer without looking obvious doing so. The digital readout said 102. He gripped the handle on the door more tightly.

  “You don’t have to go so fast,” Jeff said from the backseat. He was calm, somehow.

  Fisher shook his head without looking back. “There’s not much time.”

  “We’re fine,” Jeff said. “They have no idea what’s happened, and won’t know for a few hours.”

  “Nah, I screwed up,” he said.

  “You screwed up? How?” Now Jeff leaned forward.

  “I know better,” he said. His tone actually suggested that he was regretful for letting Jeff down. “I was being tailed. Bremner was onto me, so he was having me watched. I went into evidence and tried to find your file. I wanted to see if I could find where they’d put the things from your lab. But they followed me there. Then I got your text message and tried to rush out. I ended up losing them, but I know Bremner’s suspicions have to be on red alert.”

  Jeff sat back and Dexter turned to look at him as he thought. He also caught a glimpse of Victoria, who was terrified but not saying anything. Wondering when she’d start to rebel against being kidnapped, Dexter was amazed that she hadn’t so far. He chalked it up to a scientist’s curiosity, though from knowing her she also might have been silently plotting her way out.

  “Why would he be tailing you?” Jeff asked. “Or, having you tailed?”

  “I don’t know. But it probably dates back to me questioning him about the unauthorized use of the devices before you ran. You running was a perfect cover for Bremner. After you left, everyone assumed it was you making the unauthorized trips. I was brought in to investigate, but my nosing around must have put a permanent target on my back.”

  Jeff sat forward again. “It’s okay,” he said, gripping Fisher’s right shoulder in support for a moment. “It’s okay. But to be safe, you’re going to have to come with us.”

  “Come with you?”

  “Yes, to 1930.”

  Dexter saw a look of realization cross Victoria’s face.

  “How does that help me stay safe?” Fisher asked.

  “Same as when I jumped – or, the other version of me. Cement your existence in history somewhere other than the present. Once that happens, unless they track you to that exact time and place and kill you, we can always get you back.” After a moment, they felt the car decelerate and Fisher took on a more reasonable speed. Still well above the speed limit, but not death-defying. “As for you, my dear...” Jeff said.

  “Why am I here?” Victoria asked, seemingly without emotion. “What are you going to do with me?”

  Dexter was still turned around, watching as Jeff sighed. “I haven’t decided yet,” he said. “I honestly didn’t expect to have to think about an extra person. But since you’re here, today’s your lucky day.”

  “How so?”

  “You haven’t had the chance to travel back in time yet, have you?” She shook her head. “Well your first trip is in about four hours.”

  Fisher had merged onto the Capitol Beltway and they were now crossing the Potomac.

  “What if she gets back and tells somebody?” Dexter asked, not able to contain the nerves in his voice. “We’re cooked.”

  “She won’t,” Jeff said, shaking his head. “This is a great opportunity for her – to put her own science to work. Real-life experience.”

  “How are you so calm?” Dexter asked. He, himself, was ready to leap out of the car and into the river, just to get his mind off of what was happening.

  “What are we going to do? Get all crazy in the car here? Look, they don’t know we exist. There’s no one looking for us right now. And there probably won’t be.”

  “I appreciate that you’re so confident everything will work out,” Dexter said. “But your bedside manner needs some work, doctor.”

  “Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” Victoria asked, interrupting. Jeff and Dexter both looked at her, but neither said anything. When that wasn’t good enough for her, she jammed her hand into her pocket and pulled out her smart phone. Jeff quickly reached over and slapped it out of her hand and onto the ground. They tussled for a moment before Jeff, who had better access to the area right below her feet, emerged with the phone. He handed it up to Dexter in champion second-grade keepaway style, and Dexter tossed it in the glove compartment.

  “You done?” Fisher asked. “This is hard enough without the commotion back there.”

  “We’re done,” Jeff said. “Victoria, we can’t have you calling anyone when the plan is working so well.”

  “Tell me the plan,” she said, frustrated anger tightening her lips with resolve.

  “We’re going back to New York to fix the Kane situation,” Jeff said.

  Dexter didn’t know if Jeff was actually going to be honest with her, but apparently he was. Widening the circle of people who knew what they were doing was dangerous, though, and he was immediately more anxious about Jeff’s willingness to expand the team.

  “We’ve had enough debate about it, and I support Dexter’s belief that it’s the right thing to do,” Jeff continued. “We have the means to get it done, and we’re doing it. When we return with Kane, he’ll be arrested immediately, which is why Agent Fisher is here.”

  Dexter didn’t know how much of that Jeff had made up on the spot, but it sounded like a reasonable course of action. The part about him being arrested was something they hadn’t previously discussed, but it actually made sense. There was a way out that put everything right and didn’t allow Kane to get away with anything. He felt good about how the plan had evolved – because, honestly, up until they were hurrying out of the USTP, he hadn’t been very sure of Jeff’s intentions.

  “How did I just see Dexter in the building and then out here? You’ve been using time travel, haven’t you?”

  “Just the once – and just to get away. Which of course you won’t approve of, but there’s a bit more to the story.” While they were talking, Fisher had turned off the Beltway and was now passing behind the Capitol Building. In the distance, Dexter could see the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. He’d seen them a thousand times in his life, but never tired of them, craning his neck even now in the middle of the conversation to watch them pass. He turned his attention back to Jeff, noticing that they’d all stopped to look. Except Fisher. He was all business. “Bremner is taking unauthorized missions.”

  “Bremner? What would make you say that?”

  “Jeff...” Fisher said from the front seat. Dexter turned toward him. He hadn’t said his name to get his attention. He was admonishing him.

  “Because I’ve seen him do it. I trailed him last night. He went to the Jefferson Memorial and jumped back in time.”

  “Dr. Jacobs...” Fisher said, with more emphasis.

  Jeff didn’t listen. “I don’t know where he went – or I don’t know when he went – but he came back a minute later. He’s up to something and he’s not acting alone.”

  This was all new to Dexter, so he jumped into the conversation. “Well, yeah, if it’s true. It takes two people to get into the secure area.”

  Jeff shook his head. “I’m pretty sure General Carr is his accomplice.”

  “And you intend to stop them?” Dexter asked.

  He didn’t answer right away, instead looking abstractly at Dexter’s face as if trying to strategize his response. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “One thing at a time.”

  “What do you think Bremner is doing?” Victoria asked.

  “Honestly, it doesn’t matter. He’s doing something that he doesn’t want anyone else to know about, and that makes me think it’s something unethical. You have to understand – I invented this thing. I feel an overwhelming sense of responsibility here if someone is doing something bad with it. Now I haven’t figured out
what to do yet, but I do know that as a first step we can stop Benjamin Kane from committing murder. So we’re starting there.”

  They rode in silence for a few moments. Dexter turned and faced front. He really wished that Jeff would have shared some of this information with him earlier. He wasn’t at all comfortable with flying by the seat of his pants while Jeff made all the decisions. Of course, it had always been that way – where Dexter always found himself in a position of having to trust him. He silently swore at him. Then at himself.

  “Did you get my satchel?” Jeff leaned forward and asked Fisher.

  “It’s in the trunk.”

  Dexter watched out the window as Fisher reconnected with I-95 headed toward Baltimore. When they’d reached cruising speed again, Victoria asked, “How did you get the time devices out of security?” She’d been contemplating during the lull in the conversation.

  Dexter turned around again. Since they were sharing... “It was brilliant. Jeff’s idea. We took two devices and used Dr. Schmidt’s hand to get out of the secure area. Once we were out, we traveled back in time – what? three hours? – to a time when no one would suspect us of doing anything other than going through Jeff’s training. We walked out the front door.”

  “What if they notice there are devices missing?”

  “That’s the same question I asked,” he said, looking at Jeff. Again, he couldn’t tell by the look on Jeff’s face if he was okay with him telling the story or not, but wanted to put a little pressure on him to not be in control of everything. Behind him, Fisher’s cell phone went off in his pocket and he answered it. “The devices aren’t missing. We haven’t taken them yet.”

  Even though she tried not to, she let a small smile escape her lips. “That is pretty clever,” she said, looking at Jeff with far too much romance in her eyes for comfort. He wondered if Jeff noticed. He often didn’t notice things like that, usually caught up in his own thoughts.

  “Dammit,” Fisher said as he clicked off his phone.

  “What’s that?” Dexter asked.

  “They’re reporting an unauthorized access to the time travel devices,” he said, tucking the phone back into his pocket. They felt the car accelerate again. “About a half hour ago. The jig’s up. They’re onto us.”

  Jeff was shaking his head. “No, they can’t be. Nothing’s happened yet.”

  “They’ve got it, Jeff,” Dexter said. “They know it was us.”

  “But it wasn’t us. Somebody else was in there.” He shut his eyes, thinking. Both Dexter and Victoria anxiously awaited his hypothesis. “The device,” he finally said. “Remember, there were only eleven devices in there when we got there. Someone had taken one.”

  “Bremner.”

  “It’s a good bet.”

  “What’s he going to do?” Dexter asked.

  “There’s a lot he can do,” Jeff said, thinking. “We’ve got to get there.”

  “We’ve got hours to go. What do we do?” Victoria asked. She was getting into it.

  A thought came to Dexter. “I’ve got it. It’s not ideal, but it could work. We stop the car now and time travel back. We’ll have to take a train or something in 1930 to get the rest of the way, but-”

  “You guys don’t have to worry,” Fisher said, cutting him off. “They’re not after you.”

  “Of course they are,” Dexter said.

  “No, he’s right,” Jeff said. “Bremner’s shown his hand. We’ve got to get you back in time.” He was looking at Fisher. “When you don’t respond to-”

  Fisher shook his head. “We’re not stopping,” he said.

  “You’re cooked if we don’t. You’re done.”

  “I’m getting you to New York.” The car lurched forward.

  Whenever traveling between Washington and New York, Jeff had always found it faster to cut right through Baltimore rather than take the bypass on I-695. That was the route he’d just taken, driving his rented SUV across the city, and now he was pulling back onto I-95 toward Philadelphia. In general, he also liked to stop in Baltimore for she-crab soup, but that wasn’t in the cards this trip.

  Jeff would rather not have been driving, so he could prep, but when Victoria had surprised them by joining their crew, Dexter had assumed guard duty, leaving him behind the wheel. He checked the time and then looked back from the driver’s seat at Dexter, sitting next to her. They’d taken away her cell phone to make sure she didn’t try to contact anyone, but that had been an hour ago. She seemed to have resigned herself to going on this mission with the two of them, which made her unanticipated involvement a little bit easier.

  Jeff pushed on the gas pedal and reached his cruising speed again. Only another few hours to New York.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Jeff pulled the rental car off of the street on 33rd Avenue and into a parking ramp. His immediate reaction to the posted rates was to wretch, but then he laughed quietly to himself, knowing he’d never be submitting the payment for the ticket he took from the machine. Still, since the last time he’d been in New York, they must have really put a push on to keep personal vehicles out of Manhattan to relieve congestion. It started with a $30 fee to pass through the Lincoln Tunnel, and now over $100 to park the car for the day. Something he’d have to look forward to.

  It had only been three years that he’d skipped, but he didn’t know what to expect when their trip started to creep into familiar territory. He’d spent enough time on the New Jersey Turnpike to be well-familiar with the sights and landmarks, and not much was terribly different. Some of the digital signs and billboards on the side of the highway had been replaced with high definition screens, which were impressive. When the Manhattan skyline came into sight, he’d noticed a handful of cranes in the air with new skyscrapers rising up beneath them. But other than that, there was still lots of traffic – cars driving on wheels on the ground (as opposed to flying) – and the shipping areas along the river were lively. Giants Stadium was still the home of the best football team on the planet.

  About fifteen minutes after crossing underneath the Hudson they’d navigated their way close enough to the site where Kane had shot George Mellen almost 90 years before. They’d planned in the car that they would find a different alley to jump back in time instead of using the one that Dexter had used previously, as they wanted to avoid running into him. It would then be Dexter’s responsibility, with Jeff’s assistance, to find Kane corral him, or at least delay him long enough to keep him from reaching his target, and then they’d bring him back to the present for arrest. Victoria was there to observe, take notes, and add to her research on the psychology of time travel.

  That was the plan that Jeff had put together for them. It was no harm done if it worked. Or, if it didn’t work. And if they were successful in detaining Kane before he shot Mellen, they’d eliminate their earlier concern of making a murderer out of a decent human.

  He pulled the car into a spot a few levels beneath the street and they all got out. At one point, they’d worried about Victoria’s flight risk, but she’d become too engaged in the conversation to back out. She was part of this mission, and the promise of time travel had captivated her. She wasn’t going anywhere.

  Jeff had one of the two devices they’d taken from security in his pocket; Dexter had the other. He opened the lift gate and took out the computer case that he’d carried around Russia with him, containing Abby’s tablet and the other time device, slinging it over his shoulder. When Dexter joined him at the trunk, he asked, “Do you have the battery?” Dexter pulled it from his pocket and handed it to him. He took a moment to inspect it. It amazed him that he was being handed his own invention, it having been stolen from a government museum hours earlier.

  “Don’t know if it works. I hope so.”

  “It’ll do,” Jeff said. He pulled the old device from the satchel and inserted the battery, looking up to see Dexter watching him. “Sorry, buddy. I trust me more than I trust the other Jeff. We’re using this one.”

 
Dexter nodded, seemingly okay with relinquishing control, then also pulled out of his pocket a stack of silver certificate $20 bills and thumbed through them. “I don’t know what you need this for, but here it is,” he said, handing the money to Jeff.

  “It’s just a precaution,” he said. “I’ve been in too many of these situations with no supplies, and no one to help. In Russia, I was trapped, and the only thing I had with me was this tablet and a phone number. If I hadn’t had someone up above watching over me and a stroke of luck, I wouldn’t be standing here right now. I don’t want to make that mistake again.”

  “But what would you buy?”

  Jeff tried to look at him as though the question was ridiculous. “Whatever we need. Look, we have a hostile person there in 1930 that we’re trying to apprehend. If something goes wrong, and we end up there for any length of time, we’ll have a distinct advantage over him in that we can operate incognito and in a way that won’t arouse suspicion. He can’t. Which is probably why he got shot an hour after he murdered Mellen.”

  “He’s got a gun,” Dexter said.

  “Well, we’ve all got training on how to take it from him,” Jeff said. “He’s an old man. Overpowering him – even if it takes both of us – shouldn’t be difficult. We just need to have the device ready to go.”

  “It will be.”

  “Why don’t you program it now? Set it for five minutes from now.”

  Dexter nodded again. Jeff was pleased that he was understanding and agreeing with his logic. He watched him set the coordinates.

  “What do I do?” Victoria asked, listening in on the conversation.

  “You just make sure that you’re as close to Dexter or me as possible. C’mon, let’s go.”