Fate (Wilton's Gold #3) Read Online Free PDF Page B

Dexter covered the room for him. Jeff hopped in a ten-minute shower while Dexter ran to the gift shop and bought him an Air Force golf shirt and some bathroom necessities. When Jeff finished showering and dressed, they headed down to the restaurant and grabbed a table.
    Once they’d each ordered a beer, Dexter set his menu down and started over again. “Tell me about this trip back to 1849.”
    Jeff looked at him strangely from across the table. “Not you, too,” he said.
    “Jeff, I never went to 1849.”
    He shook his head subtly. “Why did you show them the journal? You all but handed me over to them by doing that.”
    He shook his head. “Well, I didn’t show it to them. They confiscated it. Everything. Everything in your lab. Everything in your house. My house. They didn’t leave many stones unturned.”
    “So, how did we get to where we are right now? In the car you told me I can be straight with you. I am being straight with you.”
    “Look, Jeff,” Dexter said. “I know where you went when you ran. I know you went back to find out what happened in 1849. I’m not going to tell them that, but I know you well enough. And, believe me. I understand why.”
    Jeff was shaking his head as Dexter spoke. The server returned and set their drinks in front of them. “You’re not getting it,” he said. They stopped for a moment to order, each selecting the restaurant’s signature burger and curly fries. Then Jeff looked up at him again. “Whoever you worked with to set up the Time Program – it wasn’t me. I don’t know if it’s some filthy trick of time travel or what, how things could have gotten screwed up like this, but it wasn’t me.”
    “Alright, well tell me what happened to you, then.”
    “Yes, let’s do that,” Jeff said with a sigh. “I left you in the airport and you limped away. I got on a plane with Ekaterina.”
    “That’s the Russian girl?”
    “Yes – the younger version of the older woman. You remember?”
    “Tell me about the older woman,” Dexter said.
    He could see Jeff processing, then he pointed at him. “Yes, you’re right. The old woman doesn’t exist in this reality.” Dexter grimaced, but let him continue. “Anyway, we were supposed to go back to 1983, and Ekaterina was going to assassinate the man that the other version of herself had already assassinated. But she balked, and tricked me into jumping to the future. Three years beyond my own present time. This time… right now. Only without the assassination having actually taken place, the world was very different. The Soviet Union had not fallen and was a world military power with time travel capabilities. I was able to jump back to 1983 where Ekaterina – the original Ekaterina, I know this is confusing – then completed the job of assassinating the general. I was under attack, so in haste I jumped back to this present time where the original reality had been restored, without having time to set the device to put me back where I’d started, which was 2015. So, now I’m three years in the future of my original present time. And I’m apparently a fugitive of the law.” He paused, shaking his head. “I admit, I knew that a lot of things could change in three years, but I didn’t expect this.”
    He stopped talking, but Dexter remained silent for some time. The history that Jeff had just given him was incredible, but other than the end, it was nothing he hadn’t heard. Except for one specifically interesting piece of the story: “You said I got shot?”
    “Yes. In the leg. In 1849.”
    “I think I’d remember that.”
    Jeff threw his hands in the air. “Well, clearly some change that I made along the way has affected everything else. I know a history that you don’t, and you know a history that I don’t. Why don’t you tell me your version?”
    Dexter laughed. “Not sure where to start.” He had no way of knowing what Jeff knew and didn’t.
    “Start with the government tracking me down and