Three men in masks had appeared from thin air in the corner of the room. Small, medium, gigantic. All of them armed. All were wearing ski masks that covered their faces but I knew who I was looking at.
Tommy the Tank couldn’t blend in anywhere outside of a professional wrestler convention. Magic Max was just as squinty with a mask on. The third guy was wearing the same Tampa Bay Lightning jersey he’d been wearing the night he died. Foster Phillips. They’d used Isla’s laptop as their anchor.
I hated being right. I was now looking at the last few hours of Foster’s life, displaced by nearly six months.
Tommy the Tank let loose a burst of rifle fire from the weapon he was holding.
More screams. Patrons hit the deck.
I ducked too. One arm around Isla, shielding her. Her face was bloodless.
“Nobody moves and nobody gets hurt,” Max shouted. They swept through the room, fanning out and performing a search. Max was carrying something big in a case. Some kind of machine roughly the size of a suitcase. It looked familiar.
Tommy the Tank locked the main doors and stood guard. Foster was the one who spotted me and Isla. Her eyes widened as he approached. She must have recognized the jersey too. It would be memorable. I felt her tense in my grip.
Foster’s eyes showed a hint of recognition when he noticed me.
“Hands off her.”
He pointed a gun at my face. I put my hands up.
Foster pulled Isla to her feet with his free hand and she nearly fell into him. “Come on. Take us to the safe.”
The shock was evident on Isla’s face. His voice. Foster alive. Her mind had to be reeling. Her mouth moved but no sound came out.
Foster glanced back at me once but then dragged Isla toward the wall nearest us.
Tommy the Tank and his semi-automatic rifle kept the rest of the patrons in place while Magic Max joined Foster and Isla at the safe in the wall.
“Get that open!” Max shouted.
She entered the combination with a shaking hand. A key code and a fingerprint scan. The safe opened with a hiss of pressurized air. Then she sank to the floor, eyes locked on Foster.
I didn’t have a clear view of the contents of the box, but I saw what Max was up to. He opened the suitcase sized contraption on the floor and I recognized what it was. It was a relocation machine. Part gravitizer, part time machine. The same technology I used to jump the Boss forward and backward in time to avoid parking tickets. Only they weren’t going to relocate a car.
Foster passed stacks of cash and other documents out of the safe, only pausing occasionally to check on Isla. She stayed frozen against the wall.
Max set to work running the gravitizer machine, imbuing the cash with the particles necessary to travel in time. Then he shifted them to the second half of the machine, into which he loaded a foldable storage box. He loaded the box with cash till it was full, closed the lid, entered a time sequence and hit the button. The box hummed. A moment later he opened the box again. It was empty, its contents relocated in time.
They repeated the process again and again, shoveling the money into the box. It kept vanishing.
I had to give it to them. They were going to move a mountain of cash and all they had to do was jump out of here, take the relocation machine to a safe place at the time they designated, and the money would all show back up in manageable intervals.
I considered what to do. I was close to the action but I couldn’t stop them. This was their past. It had already happened. Interrupting it would only create a paradox that would do nothing but complicate this already messy situation. Max and Tommy showed no signs of recognizing me. A clue to the timeline. This was a version of them from before I met them in the SUV.
When the safe was empty, Isla snuck away from the wall, toward me.
Max closed up the relocation machine, gravitizing the storage box so it would travel again as well, but left the whole contraption on the floor. He rose and lifted his gun. “All done but the loose ends.” He pointed the gun at Foster.
Well shit. That’s not supposed to happen.
“No!” Isla screamed.
I was already moving. I sprung forward, launching myself toward Max. His head turned toward me, eyes wide, but he couldn’t get the gun around in time. I tackled him to the floor, knocking chairs away from the nearest poker table in the process.
That was as far as my plan took me.
I was significantly bigger than Max and the tackle had knocked the wind out of him. I was hoping Foster would have the decency not to shoot me after just saving his life, but that left Tommy the Tank and his semi-automatic rifle to deal with.
I took Max’s pistol away from him and peeked over the edge of the poker table. I was rewarded with a barrage of gunfire that flattened me to the floor again. Bullets shredded the top of the table and shattered the window behind me. People screamed and glass rained from the windowpane.
I covered my head. When I looked up, it was because of a shout from Tommy the Tank.
“Hey! Get away from that!”
I saw why he was yelling. Foster. He had his sleeve rolled up and the Temprovibe on his forearm was exposed. His eyes were frantic and he had his other hand on the relocation machine.
Max shouted too. If I hadn’t taken his gun, I was sure he would be shooting at Foster.
As it was he had to shout to Tommy. “Kill that sonofabitch!”
But before Tommy could get his gun around to point at him, Foster activated his Temprovibe and vanished. The relocation machine went with him.
“No!” Max shouted again. He scrambled to his feet and rushed to the spot Foster had been standing.
I got to my feet as well. When Tommy the Tank turned back my way, he found me pointing Max’s gun at him. His eyes widened. Would I shoot him? No. I couldn’t. But he didn’t know that. He dropped the rifle. But the next second his hand went to the Temprovibe on his arm. He vanished.
When I turned to where Max was standing, he had disappeared too.
The room erupted into a cacophony of shouts and screams, everyone scrambling for the exits.
I breathed a sigh of relief. But this wasn’t over.
I tossed Max’s gun to the top of the poker table and went to Isla. She was shaking. I took her in my arms. “It’s going to be okay.”
“Foster,” she whispered. “That was Foster. He’s alive.”
“No.” I replied. “Not anymore.”
Sirens were sounding in the street, audible out the shattered window. I didn’t want to be here when they arrived. But Isla deserved an explanation.
“When the police interview you, you can’t say anything about Foster. They won’t understand.”
“But it was him. He was alive. The way he vanished . . .”
“Foster traveled here through time. He jumped forward to this day from a time before he died. They planned this robbery using the access he had to your laptop. It was a way in. But these guys were just using him. When he jumped back and went home, they must have found him. Killed him.”
“Time travel? So he’s not alive?”
“He’s wearing the same clothes today. The clothes you found him in. For him this is all the same day. And it’s going to end badly.”
“He was right there.” Isla slumped into me. I helped her to a chair, held her steady.
“I have to go. There’s a chance these guys are going to come back around. Don’t go home tonight. Stay with a friend. I’ll call when I know more. Don’t tell the police about the time travel. I promise I’ll explain soon.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to find these guys. It’s time to end this.”