She was already trying to think things through. “So, if you’re here right now, and that’s a part of history,” she said, “then why weren’t you here when I got here?”
He shook his head, smiling. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m tired. I don’t want to think about it.”
“Fair enough,” she said, stepping into the street to greet him in the middle. She realized she was still wearing the sheet around her neck and laughed at herself, taking it off and stuffing it under her arm. She noticed the book in Jeff’s hand. “Doing some reading?”
“Yeah,” he said, holding it up for her to see. “Would you believe I hadn’t read it all the way through yet?”
“Unfortunately, yes, I do believe that,” she said, then fake pushed him. They hadn’t known each other enough for a big hug, but she was very happy and relieved to see him standing there. The innocent enough touch would send the message. “What’s the plan now?”
He sighed and waved her to the side of the road, where they sat on a small hill. Which was fine with her because she didn’t feel a pressing need to leave. They were in such a beautiful forest, and the specific spot had such importance in each of their lives. Hanging around for a few minutes wasn’t a bad thing.
“I don’t know what kind of day you’ve had,” he said. “We didn’t really take the time in 1849 to get to know each other. So I don’t know if you’ve been traveling and are tired, or if you’re ready to just pop back into life. Me, I’ve had a couple days to rest, so I’m feeling ready to get home to the East Coast. I want to be sensitive to how you’re feeling, though.”
She laughed. “You don’t have to worry about me. I wouldn’t be sitting here if it wasn’t for you.” He put his head down and grinned sheepishly. She didn’t know if it was because he was proud of his scientific accomplishment of figuring out how to make time travel work, or if there was more to it. “What’s waiting for you on the East Coast?”
“Well, for starters, my life,” he said. “I’m only realizing it now because everything has happened so quickly. In real time for me, I’ve only been gone for a couple weeks. But the terror that I suppressed during that time about not being able to get back to my own life, my friends and family, my work, everything... My heart is beating so fast right now. How many bullets did I dodge there?”
“Literally or figuratively?”
He paused for a moment, then laughed. “Yeah, good question.”
“So that’s it? You just integrate back into your life?” She was hoping for a more substantial response. One that involved doing away with time travel.
“No,” he said, leaning back on his hands and shaking his head. “It’s time to end this. First thing I’m going to do is get to my lab and dismantle the time device, then destroy the research. It’s way too dangerous. Especially now that I’ve seen what they intend to do with it in the future. It was one thing just doing experiments, but when time travel in the wrong hands becomes a viable weapon, it needs to be done away with.”
“Doing experiments?” she asked, laughing. “You mean going back in time and stealing money?”
“What? The Wilton heist? Remember, Erica, I didn’t do that. And even so, if it’s the only thing-”
She shook her head. “It’s not the only thing you did,” she said, remembering Jeff explaining to her what they were doing and ridiculously trying to justify it.
“Really? I had other missions?”
“A few of them that I know about, yes. You robbed a gangster in the ‘30s, and then went back to Colonial times and tried to rob a British Colonel of a chest full of jewels. But you failed, and Dexter got stuck back in the 1700s. That’s when you came to get me to help rescue him.”
Jeff’s eyes were wide. “Did we get him?”
“Yeah, we did, but then his life had changed. He was married to this historian’s daughter...”
If leaving had been a priority, it was quickly replaced in the pecking order of action items. They sat on the side of the road until the early evening, comparing time travel stories. She told him of their daring rescue in Colonial Philadelphia, his faux pas that resulted in the preservation of the records office, and their trip to the future to steal an armored car. He filled her in on his exciting mission to Russia to save the way-of-life that they all enjoyed, his first visit to this cosmically-favored spot in 1849 where Dexter had been shot in the leg, and the runaway train that was the United States Time Program.
It was an unbelievable history lesson that would have little meaning outside of their private conversation. And while he didn’t explicitly state it, her heart was warmed by the fact that, throughout everything he’d experienced, what drove him to continue was connecting – or reconnecting – with her. It was pretty incredible.
Eventually, the sun began to set and they got into their separate cars and drove to Sacramento, where he had reserved two rooms. In the morning, he’d leave for New Jersey, and presumably she’d return to her home in San Francisco. Presumably. Which would mean a lot of faith on her part that he would do the right thing.
As she lay in the hotel room unable to sleep, she plotted ways that she could ask to come with him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
October 3, 2015
The alarm on Jeff’s nightstand went off, a horrible buzzing sound, and he fumbled in the dark trying to figure out how to turn it off. It was a good thirty seconds before he randomly slapped the right button.
He hadn’t been sleeping anyway, up for the past few hours and laying on his back staring into the darkness. He didn’t know what he’d be facing when he got to New Jersey, and had spent much of the night trying to outline a timeline of events in his mind. Twice, he’d gotten up to draw a diagram on the hotel stationary, but it didn’t help. There were so many moving pieces that he couldn’t wrap his brain around all of the details. Had the FBI found his device in the forest already? Would they have made the connection by now? Would they be seeking him out despite the absence – now – of Evelyn Peters, the old Russian woman, who’d been the impetus for them finding him in the first place? He remembered Dexter saying that they’d come to him in his lab, but that it hadn’t been Agent Fisher who’d approached him. Or would they be watching his every move, planning their pursuit of him? Would he even be on their radar at this point?
There was no way of answering these questions. Too many things had been changed and then corrected. He was even trying to figure out how he’d left the present time, robbed Wilton of his gold and come back – and then have had himself come back from a completely different history. Which one was the accurate chain of events? Throughout the night he’d come to a new theory that was at the same time comforting and disturbing. “Reality” only existed in the mind of a person. His reality might have been different from Erica’s or Fisher’s or Dexter’s, but it was the reality he knew. So it existed. Any other version of himself that had experienced a different reality was out there somewhere, in some other universe, living his life and believing that his reality was the real one. So it didn’t matter where he came from. It only mattered what was in his memory and what he was facing.
That was deep stuff, and good fodder for another internal debate at another time. His first and foremost priority was getting back to his lab and undoing his work. If he was able to accomplish that, he would have the luxury of time to contend with the mysteries of time travel.
There was also an uncertainty about Erica, and he was a bit fearful that she was the thing that was actually keeping him from getting sleep. If he left for the East Coast not knowing what to expect, he was severely jeopardizing the likelihood that he’d ever see her again. While he always preferred to stay rooted in science, it was hard to deny that he and Erica were somehow connected by fate. Six months ago, he wouldn’t have given “fate” the time of day. No, though, with everything he’d been through, it weighed on him. Trusting that cosmic connection, however, was not his mindset, and as the dawn had drawn near he’d begun to conjure up a plan to get
her to come to Jersey with him.
What she’d do there, or how she could be of assistance, he didn’t know. In truth, he likely would be walking her into an exceptionally volatile situation, which wasn’t fair to her. But allowing her to realign with the life she had, that didn’t include him, seemed like it would be short-sighted on his part. She’d told him that they’d only really known each other for a few days, and that might have been enough for her with what she’d said they’d been through. And he knew that if things went to plan he could always reconnect with her now that he was more certain she was going to be around for a while. But if they didn’t go to plan – that’s where he was worried. If the last few weeks had shown him anything, there was an awful lot that could go wrong.
He’d booked his flight to leave around 8 a.m., which would put him at Teterboro Airport in North Jersey in the late afternoon. His intent was to go immediately to the lab and begin his work. The trick was that he was still obliged to the U.S. government from the grant he’d received, and he needed to ensure that the work on those experiments was maintained until the FBI called on him. While he’d kept everything separate, because the two technologies were connected, there was some overlap. He hoped he would have time to wade through everything first, but he didn’t know, in the absence of Evelyn Peters, when they’d be coming for him. He did know they were coming, though.
Forcing himself out of bed, he showered, the shower taking a little bit longer than normal as he tried to wake himself up. He knew he’d have time to sleep on the plane (whether he would be successful or not, he didn’t know), but the previous few weeks of intensity and the sleepless night had caught up with him. After packing his things and checking out using the hotel phone, he slung the tablet over his shoulder, stuffed the two time devices in the pockets of his cargo pants, took the handle of the small suitcase he’d bought for his traveling clothes, and opened the door.
Erica was standing in the hallway, about to rap on his door.
She was dressed and ready to go, coming to say goodbye.
Jeff braced for the severity of the goodbye. Was it going to be of the I’ve-had-enough-of-this-and-I-wish-you-good-luck-with-your-life variety, or the good-luck-in-Jersey-and-I’ll-see-you-soon kind?
“I want to come with you,” she said, throwing him for a loop.
“You do? Why’s that?” He tried to keep his sigh of relief from echoing down the long hallway.
“I don’t know,” she said, looking him in the eyes. “I just feel like I should be there with you. At least as you get things sorted out.”
He held up his hands. “That’s very generous of you, but you really don’t need to-” He cut himself off. Why was he giving her an out?
“Look, Jeff,” she said, leaning against the far wall. “I know what’s waiting for me in San Francisco. I’m back in the reality I know. I have continuity. You don’t. You’re facing a reality that’s probably going to be pretty different from the one that you experienced. While I haven’t been around you very long, I did spend the last several days with you in events that I would imagine are pretty pivotal in your life story. You can use my experience.” She paused. “And if that’s overstating it, you can probably just use a friend who has some idea what you’ve been through. Because you don’t. You start telling people about Russia and the United States Time Program, they’re going to put you in the loony bin.”
She was offering what he wanted most. He didn’t know why, since he’d only known her less than 24 hours, but she was comforting to him. He couldn’t help but think it was the words that the other version of himself had texted to her before she went back to stop Wilton – “I know what you’re doing and I understand. I hope to see you again in the future.” It didn’t sound like him. Which meant this woman made him talk like that. And the way that he’d taken to her immediately let him know that making this more than strictly a professional relationship was a priority to him.
He thought of Victoria, and the relationship that the other version of himself had had with her. He hadn’t felt it when he’d met her. Not anything like this. The thought made him stifle a laugh for a moment.
“What’s so funny?” she asked, smiling.
He shook his head. “Nothing. While I don’t want to put you out, I actually would like it if you came with me.”
“Well, I’m coming,” she said, nodding. “Whether you’re putting me out or not.”
Five-and-a-half hours later, their plane pulled to a halt on the tarmac at Teterboro Airport.
He had slept on the plane.
CHAPTER FORTY
While Erica wasn’t feeling particularly fatigued, she would admit that her mind was affected by being in the same spot on the other side of the country that she’d left just the day before. She remembered a talk show host that had done both the morning show on the east coast and the late show on the west coast for a full week for one of the channels as a gimmick, and she suddenly appreciated the work that went into it. And perhaps the psychoses that made him agree to do it.
She sat next to Jeff in the backseat of the car he’d reserved while at the airport in Sacramento that would take them from the airport straight to Jeff’s lab, a plan he’d unveiled to her before he’d fallen into a deep sleep on the plane. He emphasized the amount of work that would need to be done in order to neutralize the work he’d already done. She’d actually made a checklist in her mind from the items he’d laid out for her, all the while not knowing exactly where she’d fit in. There were the electronic records that needed to be destroyed, and then the documentation of his findings and the actual time devices themselves. Interestingly, he’d told her the most onerous things to take care of would be the batteries for the time devices, which would have to delivered back to the manufacturer to be dismantled. His hope was that they’d accept them back without question.
Once on the ground, Jeff had activated his cell phone and was now engaged in conversation with his friend, Emeka. She’d met Emeka a few days before when they’d made their mission to rescue Jeff’s friend Dexter from a hanging in Colonial America. She knew he was an ex-Marine or something, but, like herself, she wasn’t sure exactly why Jeff wanted him there. Maybe just for an extra set of hands. She wondered if he’d call Dexter, as well, and the mathematician, Abby, who she knew wasn’t a big fan of hers. Many hands made light work, though.
He hung up the phone. “Okay, Emeka’s all set,” he said. “He’s meeting us there.”
“And that’s important why?”
“Let’s call it a safeguard.”
“What are you expecting when you get there?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. But I have an apprehension.”
“But how could anyone know that you’re on your way there right now?”
“Exactly,” he said.
She looked at him and laughed. She could see the skyline of New York City through the window behind him, and flashed back to the expanded skyline she’d seen when they’d gone to the future. “I have no idea what that means,” she said.
“Good. I’d rather you didn’t have to know.”
“Are you going to call Dexter, too?”
He shook his head again. “No. It’s not a good idea.”
Noticing that he was either being evasive in his answers or was simply deep in thought, she ended the conversation, turning and facing front. However, her tension level had now risen, and she began to go over the possibilities in her mind. Did he expect some kind of confrontation when they arrived? Were there aspects of his time travel experiments that he hadn’t shared with her? Like, did he have partners? He’d never mentioned any. But they’d probably only scratched the surface of each other’s lives in the limited time they’d spent together. It was more than possible that there was much more to the story. And based on the seriousness of the look on his face, it was a good bet that some obstacle would present itself at the lab.
They didn’t speak again before the driver pulled into the parking lot surrounding the
building that housed Jeff’s lab. Based on the number of cars in the lot, there didn’t appear to be much happening. They got out of the back seat and Jeff settled with the driver, then they stood side-by-side looking up at the building.
Jeff let out a sigh, and she looked over at him. Whatever he’d been imagining as waiting for them was nowhere in sight. She allowed herself a slight reprieve of her own tension, as well.
Until she heard the unmistakable click of a gun behind them.
“Dr. Jacobs?” a man’s voice asked. They both turned to see a suited man facing them, his weapon trained on them. Erica got the immediate impression he was a federal agent.
“Oh man,” Jeff said, groaning.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Jeff wasn’t sure if the moniker “blast from the past” was accurate, given the back-and-forth nature of their time travel, but standing facing him was Agent Fisher.
He tried to place the last time he’d seen him. It had been standing in front of the Jefferson Memorial, watching Dr. Bremner go back in time and return. They’d engaged in a brotherly hug to throw off anyone trailing them, masquerading as two old friends reuniting. He didn’t know where he’d gone from there, but had assumed he was supposed to go ahead with his mission once Fisher had tipped him off.
“I haven’t seen you in a while,” he said, “but I’m glad you’re here.”
“Dr. Jacobs, if you would accompany me inside...”
It was a curt greeting from someone with whom he thought he’d developed a pretty good relationship. But as Fisher approached him without dropping his gun down to his side, he reminded himself that this version of his agent friend was the same one that had approached him after the FBI had found his device lying in the forest in California. There was no relationship at this point. Just a mystery – and probably a crime – to be solved. He wasn’t going to get any inside scoop this time. Fisher was here to bring him in.
Fate (Wilton's Gold #3) Page 28