“There’s nothing in there,” Dexter said. “I’ve read it cover to cover.”
Lionel held up a finger. “But there is...” He carefully took the diary out and flipped through the pages. “I realize I could use one of the souvenir versions, but when you have the real thing...” After a moment, he picked out a page and opened the book to Dexter. “Read there.”
Dexter delicately took the book from his hand and held it for Jeff to see with him. He read Wilton’s words aloud:
“My beautiful baby girl. The miracle of our survival in the mountains has become the miracle of new life. Virginia has swaddled her in what is truly a heavenly garment, crafted with stitching that could only have been created by angels. It is our reminder that though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we should fear no evil.”
“Ninety-first Psalm,” Lionel said.
Dexter was nodding. “Yes, I know that. What are you inferring in this passage?”
“The angels. The garment. The reminder. They wrapped the baby in some garment that they got from the angel. The diary says that the angel told him to make camp, and then disappeared. It must’ve left something behind.”
“And how does that relate to my theory?”
“The garment isn’t from an angel,” Jeff said, speaking for the first time since the introductions. “It’s from the future.” The realization was as important to him as it was to Lionel.
“The stitching,” Dexter said. “Was it a sheet? A bed sheet or something?”
“There’s not really any way of knowing,” Lionel said, replacing the diary in its case and covering it. Then he laughed. “It’s a fun conspiracy theory, but it’s pretty far-fetched. The garment could be anything. The sewing machine was invented right around that time – I bet that would seem to them like it was stitched by angels. There are plenty of explanations for it.”
“Well, regardless,” Dexter said, “I appreciate your time and your insight. It’s a big help.”
“I try.”
As a show of support, Dexter went over to the counter and picked up one of the replica Wilton diaries. He held it up for Lionel to see. “Need one for the trip,” he said, then purchased it with cash as Jeff watched the show. When he was done, they bid Lionel goodbye and headed outside to the parking lot.
“How about that? Huh?” Dexter said.
“How about what? Why would you say anything to him about the time travel?” His friend’s dialogue in the Museum was not only brash, but incredibly confusing.
Dexter laughed. “I just wanted to see if I could jog his memory. The time travel thing is so foreign a concept for people, there’s no way it’ll have any lasting impact on him. He just thinks I’m a crazy person. But what it does do is get people thinking. People can’t help themselves from wanting to solve a mystery. So I gave him one. And it worked.”
“I would define that as playing with fire,” Jeff said as they reached the car.
“No, playing with fire is going back in time to learn about how you went back in time in the future.”
“That doesn’t make any sense at all,” Jeff said. “None of this did. Let’s go find an angel.”
“I think what you’re looking for is an angel wrapped in a bed sheet.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“This should be it,” Dexter said, holding the GPS that came with the rental car in front of him. “Henness Pass.” “Park right here.” Jeff pulled the car to the side of the road and they got out.
“So this is where the ambush happened? You would think there would be a historic marker or something.”
“Well, no,” Dexter said. “Where it happened was about two miles back. This should be where the ‘angel’ approached Wilton.”
“There was no marker there, either – I was looking. Maybe not everyone thinks this event was as monumental as we do.”
“I guess not.”
The paved road was in great shape for its location in one of the snowier parts of the country, suggesting that it was not a highly-traveled area. Henness Pass was the route Joe Wilton had taken through the Sierra Nevadas to avoid Donner Pass – or, what would become Donner Pass – which was more treacherous, but for some reason more popular. Wilton had wanted to avoid attention, so he’d steered clear of the crowds only to have his isolation end up costing him when he was ambushed by an outlaw named “Bad Dan” Carmichael. That, of course, after the bed sheet-wrapped angel came to him out of the forest and told him to camp in what was ultimately an extremely vulnerable spot.
The road was indeed narrow, as Wilton had described it in his diary, and Jeff looked east and west along it. There was a canopy of thick trees that blocked out most of the sunlight, and the hillside rose up on each side of them. He thought it was intimidating even in the 21st century, and couldn’t imagine trekking through with a horse-drawn covered wagon.
“No time like the present,” Dexter said, waking Jeff from his daydreaming.
He pulled the time device out of the leg pocket on his cargo pants. He’d programmed it on the plane, so it was ready to take them back to August 13, 1849.
“You have the coordinates to get back?”
Jeff nodded.
“Battery?”
“We’re good.”
“Okay,” he said, holding up his hands. “A little planning. Remember, according to his diary Wilton’s got snipers up in the forest. So we don’t know one hundred percent what we’re walking into. As soon as we get there, you should program the return coordinates into the device so that we can leave in a hurry if we need to. Let’s make sure our own survival comes above anything else – even if we get interrupted and don’t actually get to see what happened. That make sense?”
“It makes too much sense for you to even have to have said it.”
Dexter the control freak looked at him for a second, possibly insulted, then laughed. “I’m sorry, this is my first real trip, and I’m excited and paranoid all at the same time.”
“I understand.” They were standing square in the middle of the road, but knew no one was coming. When they weren’t talking, the only sound was a light breeze rustling through the leaves above them. A chill went down Jeff’s spine, though he couldn’t determine if it was from the wind or from what they were about to do. “Grab hold,” he said.
Dexter grasped the other end of the device and Jeff pushed the button. Everything was blurry for a moment, then the thick canopy over their heads was gone, replaced with a much sparser array of younger trees. Still, there wasn’t much light coming through, though the tops of the trees lining the now pavement-less pass were golden with a late afternoon sun shining on them.
“We’re here,” Jeff said, but his friend was already lost in the past. He was staring with amazement in every direction. Jeff let him admire his surroundings for a few moments, then said, “Other than the road, it hardly looks any different.”
“Oh, it’s different. You can just tell.”
“Well, let’s get out of the road before we get shot.”
They walked briskly to the side of the road and up the hill on the north side about fifteen feet until they were in the trees. They sat behind some low vegetation, trying to keep out of view of the road.
“Can you see alright to program the device?” It was Dexter’s subtle way of reminding him without being a nag.
“Yes, I’m good.” He pulled a slip of paper from his pocket that he’d also written out on the plane with the coordinates to get them back to the time from which they’d just come. Knowing there was already a futuristic time device and cell phone here in 1849 somewhere, he didn’t want to complicate things further so he’d left Abby’s tablet in the car. He quickly entered the numbers into the device, then double-checked them against the paper. Satisfied, he slipped the device back into his leg pocket. “How long do we wait?”
“Until they get here,” Dexter said. “The diary said late afternoon, and it’s late afternoon. So it shouldn’t be long.”
Jeff inspec
ted their surroundings from their new vantage point. After the shock of the world changing around them, there really wasn’t too much to see other than depth into the forest. Across the trail there was an enormous rocky crevasse that probably would’ve provided a better hiding spot. To the west, narrow path disappeared into a turn around the mountain. To the east, the road was empty – just a rocky dirt clearing leading into the forest. Anywhere along this route was a perfect place for an ambush.
He thought about the plans they’d tossed around while talking about the possibility of doing the Wilton mission. They’d be all decked out like Western bandits, with the bandanas around their necks and Colt six-shooters in their holsters. They hadn’t gotten too much into it due to Dexter’s reticence, but even the hypothetical costume design had gotten Jeff excited. But instead he was sitting there in 1849 in a pair of cargo pants from JCPenney, an American Eagle t-shirt, and a jacket he’d bought off of a website called outdoorsman.com. Very authentic.
“I’m thinking about how cool it actually would be to pull off this heist,” Dexter said, looking down at the ground and playing with a stick near his feet. “Maybe if we can solve this mystery of the angel, we do come back.”
“Well, there’s also a lot of uncertainty I have to deal with when we get back. I still have to go to Russia.”
He nodded. “Yes, of course. As soon as that’s done.”
Jeff laughed. “I hope it’s as easily pulled off as you’re making it out to be. I don’t share your optimism.”
“At least you don’t have to do the dirty work.”
“As the plan is laid out, yes,” Jeff said, and Dexter finally looked up at him. “But if we get in the thick of it and something goes wrong... I might be the only one who has a chance to make things right.”
His friend looked at him, grinning. “You think you could do that? You really think you could assassinate someone?” He tossed his stick into the brush a few feet in front of him.
“If you’re asking whether I believe I have the guts to do it, under the circumstances the answer is yes. If you’re asking whether I have the skills, well, who knows?”
They paused for a moment. It was uncannily silent – a kind of peaceful silence that was unachievable in the present. Even when Jeff shifted his weight and a tiny twig cracked underneath him, the noise amplified through the forest around them.
Finally, Dexter spoke, announcing the obvious. “It’s quiet.”
Jeff nodded. “Yes, it is.”
“So, I was also thinking that it’s very possible there’s another version of each of us somewhere around here.”
He laughed. “Yes, I guess there could be.”
“Have you thought about what you’d do if you ran into another version of you?”
“Not really.”
“It’d make a great kung fu movie.”
Jeff laughed again. “Yes, I guess it would. Or we could sing a show tune together.”
“I could picture that.”
They peered down the path. No one was coming yet.
“What if you killed your other self?” Dexter asked, breaking the silence again.
An ear-shattering cracking noise echoed through the forest. Jeff instinctively put his hands to his ears. “What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know,” Dexter said. “Came from that way.” He pointed to the west. “Was it a gunshot?”
“Didn’t sound like any gunshot I’ve ever heard. You know what kinds of guns they’d be using in 1849 better than I would.”
Dexter was shaking his head. “No, it wasn’t a gunshot. We need to be super careful. Keep a sharp eye in every direction.”
“Like I wasn’t already?” His heart was pounding, but it was from the shock of the broken silence. Not from anticipation of danger. “Keep going. You said something about me killing myself.”
Dexter was still peering to the west. “What?”
“You said, what if I killed my other self?”
“Oh yeah? What if you walked down the path, found yourself standing there and, instead of offering to sing a show tune, shot yourself to death. What would happen?”
“That’s kind of grim, isn’t it?”
“Maybe, but you’re the scientist. You’ve already proven you can travel through time. Now you need to be looking at the repercussions.”
He nodded. Even if he obviously wasn’t going to be shooting himself as an experiment in time travel, Dexter had a point. They were there to do research, but hadn’t actually established what their focus was going to be. “I’m not sure,” he said. “It seems to me that we’d need to know when our other selves went back in time. Or – let me think this through – more precisely, how old we are. Because if the other version of me is younger, you would assume that killing him would somehow affect me. This me. Right?”
“Why’s that?”
“Because for a younger version of yourself, you are still a possible outcome of the future.” He was thinking as he spoke, because he hadn’t considered Dexter’s question before. “Yeah. I think that if the younger version dies, that’s it. So it must be an older version of me that brought the device here because I don’t have the memory of doing it.”
“Unless, of course, that younger version of you is coming from a different reality,” Dexter said. Jeff nodded, despite not necessarily feeling like he agreed, but Dexter moved on. “Well, let’s hope the younger version of you lives a good long time.” He paused for a moment while they both contemplated, then said, “What about an older version? He could die and it wouldn’t matter?”
“Alright, wait,” Jeff said. He knew he was smiling as he enjoyed a good challenge, but this conversation was ultimately going to have to be sketched out on paper. “Give me a second. Yes, I suppose that would be the case. Because the younger version could always go back to the present and choose not to take that trip that would lead to the older version’s death. Right?”
Dexter smiled back. “That was a trick question. The oldest version of a person always is the one who…” He paused, staring down toward the path, the smile gone from his face. “Who is that?”
“Who is who?”
Dexter was staring across the road. “That, right there,” he said, pointing. “Where’d that person come from?”
“That’s gotta be the angel. Quiet!”
Quickly, both of them hunched down to be as close to the ground as possible, watching a human figure across the path – only about a hundred feet away from them. It appeared to be a woman, dressed in fairly normal clothes, but, yes, carrying a white sheet.
“What do we do? Do we talk to her?” Dexter asked, confirming his agreement with Jeff’s thinking that it was, indeed, a woman.
“This may be our only chance,” he said.
They looked at each other wide-eyed for a moment, then Jeff started to stand. But the woman stopped, looked around, and then ducked into the crevasse where Jeff had wished they were hiding. Silently, they hunched further down onto the forest floor. Dexter grabbed him by the arm and pointed past the woman, down the path to the east.
Wilton.
He could see it now – Wilton’s covered wagon coming slowly toward them. They were the length of a football field away, so he shifted his focus back to the woman, who was peering around the corner of the rock herself. Jeff wanted to anticipate her next move, but she was taking her time. Finally, with the wagon approaching, she turned and threw something into the forest above her head. Dexter grabbed his arm excitedly and pointed. It was the time device. A moment later, she threw something else in the same direction, which he assumed was the cell phone. A big part of the story had come together.
She has no way home, Jeff thought, watching the scene unfold.
Having now most likely trapped herself in the past, the woman swung the sheet over her shoulders and stepped slowly out from behind the rock just as Wilton’s wagon was reaching her position. She walked brazenly up to the driver, who halted the wagon. From their spot in the trees, they c
ould hear voices, but not what they were saying. A moment later, a man Jeff took to be Wilton popped his head out of the front of the wagon and had his own conversation with the woman – exactly like he’d written in his diary. They spoke for three or four minutes at most, and then the woman started to walk past the wagon to the east. Wilton’s driver didn’t move immediately, but after a moment took the reins again. The wagon lurched forward and was shortly out-of-sight around the bend.
Shifting their attention back to the woman, they realized she’d vanished. Where she’d stood only a moment before, the white sheet she’d been wearing as her cape was falling softly to the ground, gently tossed by the breeze.
“Did you see that?” Dexter asked, astonished.
“Alright, I’m a believer,” he said, staring at the sheet as it nestled onto the ground. “Now I feel bad calling him a crazy person. That’s why he was so certain it was an angel that talked to him. She just disappeared. How could that have happened?”
“She had your device, Jeff. This absolutely has something to do with you. Seems to me like whatever she just did must’ve changed something in history.”
“But what did she change?”
“My guess would be something in her own history. Which would be why she disappeared.”
“Did she disappear, or did she take off? I wasn’t looking.”
“I don’t know where she could’ve gone.”
He nodded, though he knew Dexter wasn’t looking at him, then he peered across the road. “We have to get over there and get that device before it gets dark.”
They didn’t want to attract attention crossing the road and were well aware of Wilton’s sharpshooters. They needed to be cautious. There wasn’t much reason in the Old West for someone to hesitate in taking a shot at anyone or anything moving through the forest.
As stealthily as possible, Jeff darted across the open area with Dexter right behind him. A moment later they were in the trees on the other side of the trail. They walked swiftly through the forest, evading branches, until they reached the vicinity of where the woman appeared to have tossed the device and what was likely her cell phone. There was a ground cover of low brush that made it difficult to see anything resting on the forest floor, but after about ninety seconds Dexter quietly snapped his fingers at him.
Fulfillment (Wilton's Gold #2) Page 11
