Fate (Wilton's Gold #3) (25 page)

Dexter’s and his own existence in this situation – from their previous mission – was a danger. His first responsibility was sending them back to their present time, so he hopped out of the trail and up the incline on the north side of the road, to the spot where they’d been hiding and had watched Erica appear. But when he reached the area, there was no one there. They had been, though – he could see that the grass was flattened, and remembered how they’d been laying, unseen. He looked around the area, but neither he nor Dexter were in sight.

Then he turned his attention to the street.

There was the woman, Erica, standing in a crevasse in the rocks and wearing a hotel bed sheet around her neck like a cape. She was peering down the trail, waiting for Joe Wilton.

His heart leapt. He’d been waiting for this moment for a long time.

Quietly, Jeff stepped down the hill and out into the trail.

August 13, 1849

Erica Danforth opened her eyes, squinting into the descending sun. The trees had reappeared, familiar, but definitely smaller. The sun’s orange light was brimming the tree tops lining this narrow, secluded, vulnerable path. She could see immediately why Joe Wilton was nervous about passing through it, and how easy it would’ve been for Jeff Jacobs and his team to overtake them.

Then it struck her. She’d just time traveled to 1849 with no way of getting back to her present time. Without enough juice in the time travel device’s battery pack, it was now useless. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe, and it was only a cool gust of wind sending a shiver down her spine that brought her back to consciousness.

Her mind returned to her mission. Her first priority was to get away from her landing site. If she wasn’t successful, in exactly a half-hour Jeff and his team would be appearing in that very spot. Potentially, it was a way out for her – she could always hitch a ride back to the present with them – though the Jeff that would be showing up would have no idea who she was, or why she was standing there holding the time travel device that he’d invented. The awkwardness of such an interaction was minimized by her assumption that, if something like that happened, it would probably destroy the entire universe. Or something equally as bad. In any case, it would also defeat the purpose of her even making the trip in the first place.

With that thought in mind, she tucked the time device into her coat pocket and quickly unfurled the sheet she’d snagged from the hotel in New Jersey, which she draped around her neck like a long cape. She started east on the trail along Wilton Pass. Based upon everything she knew from years of research, she expected to intercept Wilton’s wagon within about fifteen minutes.

After walking what felt like a quarter of a mile, she noticed a small crevasse in the rocks to her right and decided it would be a perfect place to hide and wait. Springing herself out on an already nervous Wilton would add to the effect she was going for. She ducked into the cleft and crouched, listening for the clip-clop of horses’ hooves.

Waiting, she took in her surroundings. Had she not just seen these trees at full growth and pavement under her feet, there would be no way of knowing that she was in the past. As far as she could tell, she was in the Sierra Nevadas in the present time. It wouldn’t be until she saw Wilton and his team traveling by covered wagon that things would actually seem different.

Thinking about her present time caused her to remember that her phone had buzzed just before she’d activated the device. She pulled the phone from her pocket and saw that she’d received two text messages. Though she couldn’t do anything about them, she touched the screen to open the first one.

It was from Jeff. A quick one. “Call me when you land.” He’d probably realized once the alcohol had worn off from the celebration the night before that he’d never collected the time device from her. It was too late now. She slid her finger across the screen to bring up the second.

Also from Jeff: “I know what you’re doing and I understand. I hope to see you again in the future.”

Her heart leapt. He understood? What did he understand? That she was taking matters into her own hands? That she was doing it for his own good? For Dexter’s good? For the good of everyone? She found it curious that he claimed to understand, but didn’t follow up with what he planned to do about it. If anything. Or was he saying in his own subtle way that she was right?

Unfortunately, those were questions for which she could no longer get answers. If she could’ve texted back, the first message that came to her mind for him was to tell him that what she was doing didn’t require his understanding. He hadn’t earned that.

Though, she decided that, as a therapeutic exercise, she’d type it out anyway. While her phone searched for service in the satellite-free sky, she started running her fingers across the screen.

She got two words in when she heard a sturdy rustling behind her. She turned quickly, expecting to find something no bigger than a woodchuck at her feet. Instead it was a pair of boots. She looked up into the face of the last person she’d expected to see – if she’d expected to see any person at all.

Jeff Jacobs.

“What are you-”

He put a finger to his lips to cut her off, then pointed up into the trees. Wilton’s sharpshooters.

She closed her eyes and opened them. She could not believe what she was seeing. She’d left Jeff in New Jersey less than 24 hours before, assuming she’d never see him again. But he was here, though he was dressed like he was in the Depression era – a little off-the-mark as far as authenticity went, but close enough. “What are you doing here?” she whispered, with ambivalence. She was determined to end the haphazard use of time travel, but what had she officially committed to?

“There isn’t really time to explain,” he said. “What I need you to do is to throw that time device up into the trees there like you were planning to do, and then come with me.”

How did he know? “You can’t stop me, Jeff. You had your chance to fix this.”

“Erica,” he said, “your name is Erica, right?” She nodded. “Look. I don’t know you. I’ve never seen you before in my life. But history has led me right here to you and I know that’s for a reason. I didn’t come this far to lose sight of you and just turn back. You’re going to have to trust me.”

“How do you not know me? We were together yesterday.”

He was shaking his head. “I’m telling you there’s not time to explain. You have to trust me.”

Suddenly echoing through the pass came the familiar clip-clop of horses. Erica peeked around the corner of the rock that secluded them. Wilton’s wagon was a hundred yards away, led by two horses and steered by her great-great-great-great grandfather, Lucius Fitzsimmons. Even at a distance, he looked exactly as she’d expected – thin frame, baggy blue denim trousers with a gray button-down shirt, and a cravat around his neck. With his straw hat, he was the epitome of the gold rusher.

She looked back at Jeff. “Just tell me you’ve changed,” she said.

“Unfortunately, I don’t know what I was in the first place, so I can’t tell you with any certainty that I’ve changed. But I’m willing to sit down and talk.”

She looked again at the approaching wagon, now half the distance away. She’d been so determined to rectify the situation, but Jeff’s sudden appearance in the middle of her mission had now given her pause. She didn’t have the luxury of time to contemplate all of the possibilities of his arrival. If she let Wilton and his team pass by, would Jeff’s team still be waiting a short distance up the road to ambush him and take his gold? Would that thrust her right back into a situation fraught with immorality – the very one she was trying to extinguish?

“Erica, come on,” Jeff said.

She wanted to trust him. She took a deep breath, pulled the time device from her pocket, turned, and hurled it into the trees above her. Then Jeff pulled her by her makeshift cape and they ducked into the trees, out of sight of the road. Seconds later, she watched Fitzsimmons lead the wagon past them on their way down the road.

Erica rolled onto her back so she could see Jeff, leaves and twigs cracking beneath her. “This better be good,” she said.

While he felt relief that this Erica woman had acquiesced to his wishes, Jeff was well aware of the many dangers surrounding them. Wilton’s sharpshooters walking past in the trees above, and very possibly another version of himself that he hadn’t yet located and whose intentions he didn’t know. They’d never pinpointed where he’d gone when he’d run from the USTP, but Jeff’s money was on right here, right now.

“Thank you,” he said quietly to Erica, who was lying on the ground, looking skyward.

She laughed. “Now do we have time?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. I need your help. I don’t have a full understanding of the situation here and we may need to act quickly.”

She leaned her head up. “How can you not know what’s going on? Everything happening here was by your design.”

“Yes, some version of me in some reality,” he said. “The only thing I can come up with is that you went back in time with my time device and changed something that created an alternate reality from the one where you and I know each other. One where Joe Wilton gets ambushed tomorrow morning by a man named Dan Carmichael and where you don’t exist. Only you’re here, so clearly you exist somehow. And you’re not disappearing, so me pulling you out from behind that rock must have changed something else.”

“Disappearing?”

“Yes,” he said, then they heard a crackling up the hill. Jeff lay down on his side, facing her. He whispered. “Yes, I saw you. I came here and watched you stop Wilton in the middle of the path there, and then you walked east along the road for a minute and then disappeared. Just vanished into thin air. Whatever you did by intercepting Wilson must have eliminated yourself from history.”

“And here I am,” she said, thinking. “Which means that everything’s going back to normal. You and your team are down the road there, and you’re going to steal Wilton’s gold.”

“Steal Wilton’s gold?” He shook his head. “We never did that mission.”

“Yes, you did,” she said. “That’s how this whole thing started.”

“And you came to stop it. Interesting. Why would you do that?”

She didn’t answer, pushing her own inquiries to the forefront. “If you don’t know me, how did you know I’d be here?”

He was onto his next thought as well, but he tried to stay with her. “Time device in the woods. The FBI found it and then found me.” It came to him. “The angel. We never went forward with the Wilton mission because he’d written in his diary that an angel had approached him and told him where to camp. That was the only piece of information that scared us off. Without that, we would’ve done the mission.” He reached over and touched the sheet between his fingers. “You were the angel. Why?”

“Because you were being haphazard with time travel,” she said. “You were using it for personal gain.”

“How were you involved?”

Now, she sat up with a grin on her face. “You really don’t know, do you? This is fascinating. In your original reality, Wilton was ambushed by Dan Carmichael tomorrow morning – where a number of members of his team were killed, including my great-great-great-great grandfather, Lucius Fitzsimmons. When you went back in time and stole the gold, it changed tomorrow’s event, and no shots were fired. Thus you have me, the direct descendant of Lucius. When I came back with my fancy angel costume, I must have stopped you from stealing the gold, but not Carmichael’s attack tomorrow morning. Which is probably why you saw me disappear. It must have eliminated my whole family line from existence.”

“It was a suicide mission,” Jeff said.

She laughed. “Well, not specifically. I didn’t really know the outcome. Granted, there’s no battery left in that time device, so I wasn’t going home, but I guess I didn’t realize victory would be so short-lived.” He was trying to place her laugh. Was she actually relieved that he’d shown up and changed her plans?

“You’re very calm about this,” Jeff said.

“Well, it sounds like I dodged a bullet of sorts, right? That’s something to be happy about.”

“So, I’m down the road there? Ready to jump on Wilton when he arrives?”

Erica shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t know how all of this works. You said you didn’t do the mission, so I would assume not. Right?”

“No, I think I am,” he said. He was still hypothesizing out loud. “Just like in your case, in some reality you made the jump. So I’m probably sitting down there waiting for Wilton so I can take his gold. You said I was successful?”

“Yes. Sixty bars of it.”

“And you disapprove.”

“I do,” she said. She was serious.

He sighed deeply. “Well, you see the conundrum here. We still have time to stop Wilton and the ambush. Which would lead to a rough morning for them tomorrow and the end of you. Which you seemed to be okay with a little bit ago, but now reading your facial expressions, I’m guessing it’s not your first choice.”

That got her to laugh. This one was genuine – and it was a pretty laugh. He could see immediately why the other version of himself might have taken to her. Plus, she was pragmatic. A good match for him.

“Or, we could interrupt Wilton in a way that would keep your great-great-great-great grandfather alive, but even if we were to ensure his survival, a slight change could completely change the course of history. Strangely, that’s probably the worst choice. In order for you to survive, Fitzsimmons has to experience the situation exactly as he did in that reality. I’m sorting this out in my head as I speak, but do you agree?”

She nodded. “I think so.”

“So we’re gonna let it happen?”

She nodded. “But you have to promise me you’re done with time travel.”

“Let me tell you something,” he said. “What I’ve been through – which I will share with you at some point when we’re in less precarious of a situation – would be enough to stop anyone from even watching a time travel movie.”

“Alright,” she said, nodding. She believed him. Though he probably wouldn’t have believed himself. The whole situation was pretty crazy. “Okay.”

“Good,” he said. “When I saw that text, I figured you were someone important in the other me’s life.”

“The text?”

“Oh yeah, you threw your phone into the forest with the time device. The FBI found both and gave me an old rusted one. When I came back and watched you disappear, I grabbed your phone and took it back to the future with me.”

“Then you went through my texts?”

He laughed. “Well, you didn’t exist, so I figured I wasn’t invading anyone’s privacy.”

“Where’s the phone now?”

“Oh, I lost it. In Russia.”

“You lost this phone? In Russia?” she asked, pulling her phone from her pocket and examining it despite herself, as if it might show signs of its extra journey without her. “Do I even want to know?”

He laughed again. “Like I said, I’ll tell you at some point. There’s one more thing I need to do here, though.”

“What’s that?”

They heard the unmistakable click of a pistol behind them, and turned to see Jeff Jacobs standing ten feet away with a gun trained on them.

“What the hell are you doing?” the other Jeff said.