The Rich and the Dead (6 page)

To her surprise, Lila realized she was starving and began to greedily pile her plate full of pastries. She was just about to take a large bite of a chocolate croissant when she heard Teddy's wet footsteps
slap slap slap
on the warm concrete toward her. The sun was hot enough to evaporate his footprints the second his toes left the ground.

The early-morning light shone directly in her eyes. Using her hand to shield her gaze, she saw Teddy smirking slightly as he picked up a towel from a beach chair and wrapped it low around his waist. Lila noted, almost clinically, how young and strong his body was. The instant he caught her looking at him, she cut her gaze away.

“So, do I have your attention?” Teddy sat down at the table, pouring himself a glass of orange juice from a crystal pitcher. Lila didn't appreciate his air of self-satisfaction.

“Okay,” she conceded, “I'll bite. Getting the
Miami Herald
delivered to my door five hours before it went to press is fairly astonishing, even for someone of your means. So, let me ask you, what kind of scheme are you running?”

“It's not a scheme at all. It's the work of science.”

“The science of forgery, maybe. I just wish I'd gotten the paper in time to actually buy a lottery ticket. I could've made myself a millionaire last night.”

“Trust me,” Teddy said. “What I'm about to show you is worth a hundred times any lottery winnings.” He stood up and began walking toward a small cabana behind the pool, in the shadow of his grand estate. “Follow me,” he added, beckoning Lila over.

The inside of the cabana was covered in a kaleidoscope of Moroccan tiles and contained nothing more than a few pieces of weather-beaten wood furniture. Only a large David Hockney swimming pool painting decorated the walls.

“Have a seat,” Teddy said. “I'll be a moment.” He went into a changing room, closing the door behind him.

“Okay, what is it you're going to show me?” Lila called out.

“Something that will change your life.” Teddy emerged wearing an all-white hooded hazmat suit.

“Nice outfit,” Lila said with a laugh.

Teddy ignored her. “Please step in,” he said, waving her into the small room.

Lila crossed the floor to step inside the windowless changing room. Teddy threw her a folded hazmat suit sealed in plastic wrap.

“Put this on,” he instructed.

“Is this really necessary?”

“You can't proceed without one.”

“As you wish,” Lila shot back.

Once she'd pulled the paper-like fabric over her jeans and tank top, Teddy closed and bolted the door behind her. The moment the lock was thrown, the cabana was saturated in a bright white fluorescent light.

Teddy placed his palm on a silver screen on the wall that Lila hadn't noticed earlier. Red laser beams scanned the contours of his hand, and then the panel emitted three short, high-pitched beeps of acceptance. Without warning, a door in the floor gaped open, revealing a steep staircase that reached deep into the earth and disappeared into a cold, bluish light. The air from below was nearly arctic, raising goose bumps on Lila's arms.

Lila felt light-headed, like she'd stepped inside a science fiction movie, leaving the real world and its rules far behind. She watched in a daze as Teddy walked down a couple of the steel steps.

He paused halfway down and turned to look back up at Lila. His face appeared ghostly in the blue light. “Aren't you coming?” he asked. When she didn't answer, he tried again. “Do you trust me?”

“Not in the least,” Lila replied drily.

“But you'll follow me anyway, won't you?” Teddy looked at her curiously. “Really, I've got to say, few things delight me more than a fearless woman.” A boyish grin lit up his face. “Come on. I have a lot to show you and we don't have much time.”

A sensible person would have walked away, Lila knew that. But she wasn't one of those people. And so she grabbed the railing and began, slowly, to descend the staircase.

CHAPTER 7

A
FTER A COUPLE
minutes of fumbling her way down the stairs, Lila saw Teddy come to a stop. She squinted in the dim light as things came into focus and saw that he was standing at a gigantic door set in a thick stone wall. He placed his hand on its illuminated panel until his handprint was recognized with a series of beeps. Teddy then spun the five-pronged spindle wheel at the door's center and turned back toward Lila. “Do you promise to tell no one about what you see here today?”

Lila nodded.

Teddy pulled the heavy door open, and Lila drew in a sharp breath at what lay inside.

Every inch of the floor, walls, and ceiling was covered in thin gold foil, with the exception of a twelve-foot-high, fifteen-foot-wide jade geodesic dome in the middle of the room. An oily smell hung in the air.

“Is this real?” Lila asked, her brain struggling to absorb the strange scene.

“As real as you and me.” Teddy swept his hands close to the surface of the polished jade dome. The gold foil made everything in the room seem like it was glowing.

“As a child I always fantasized about traveling through time,” he said quietly.

“How did you do it?” Lila was a trained interrogator. She wanted to believe Teddy, but if he was lying, she'd catch him in it. “The newspaper, I mean.”

“Oh, that? Very simple. I met with you yesterday morning. You got the paper last night. This morning, the newspaper was delivered at six thirty. Then I came down here, put it in the machine, and sent it back in time.”

“So, you beamed the paper to my front door?”

“I wish. I haven't developed the technology for that level of precision yet. I had a courier pick the paper up from where it landed and deliver it to your door.”

“So when did you call the courier?”

Teddy shook his head. “I can tell you're dwelling on specifics. But I understand that this is tough to swallow, so I'll be as clear as possible. I knew I had to prove to you that I could send you back in time. That's when I thought of the newspaper idea. It seemed the easiest way. I knew I had to wait until today to send the paper back in time. But I called the courier yesterday evening to have them pick it up.”

“So, last night you called a courier to pick up an envelope that you didn't send until today?” Lila asked. Her brain felt fizzy as she tried to wrap her mind around this contorted chronology.

“I understand that it seems impossible.”

“You're right. It does.” Lila fell silent as she walked around the dome. She reached out to touch the gleaming surface.

“Stop! Don't touch it!” Teddy shouted, his voice startling her. “Please be careful,” he added in a softer tone. “This is an extremely controlled environment. Just one smudge on this surface could alter the machine in ways I can't predict.”

Lila raised her hands to the sky, feeling like a criminal caught in the act.

“Perhaps it would be better if we went somewhere else to talk.” Teddy looked around. “Conrad?”

Lila turned to see a panel of gold foil lowering, revealing a window. Conrad sat behind the glass in a long room lined in wall-to-wall computer screens. He was hunched over a formidable panel of flashing lights and switches.

“Yes, sir?” Conrad's voice came out over an invisible speaker.

“Open the control room door,” Teddy commanded, and part of the wall immediately slid open.

Lila and Teddy joined Conrad in the control room, which looked out over the jade dome. Her head still reeling, Lila sat in a black leather office chair behind a dozen computer screens. Teddy wordlessly took the seat next to her. They both stared straight ahead at the gleaming dome.

“I'm sure you have questions for me,” Teddy finally said.

“You bet your ass I do.” Lila drummed her fingers anxiously on the control panel. “First off, how does it work?”

“How familiar are you with theoretical particle physics and quantum field theory?”

“You seem to know a lot about me. What do you think the answer to that question is?”

“I'd say you don't know much.”

“You'd say right. So, in English, tell me how this thing works.”

“I'm sure you know that everything is made up of tiny atoms, right?”

Lila gave Teddy a slow, unsure nod.

“So, even though this table is solid,” Teddy knocked on the desk in front of both of them, “it's actually made up of tiny molecules that are filled with holes and wrinkles. Loads of empty space. Well, time is the exact same way. It's not as solid as you think it is. Within the quantum foam of time, there are actually little crevices that are minuscule shortcuts through space and time. We call those wormholes.”

Lila tried to give her full attention to Teddy, but her concentration was continually broken by Conrad, who was busy in the corner carefully loading stacks of hundred-dollar bills into a steel briefcase.

Teddy continued. “What I've been able to do is capture and enlarge these wormholes so that objects and people can travel through them. To put it as simply as I can, I've created a path through the fourth dimension.”

On top of the money, Conrad placed a passport, and other documents and various papers.

“Are you still listening to me, Lila?” Teddy asked.

“Yes, wormhole. Quantum whatever. Sure. Why haven't you told the world yet? You could make billions.”

Teddy shrugged. “I already have billions. Let's just say I'm not ready to share this technology with the world.”

“You'd rather use it to send me back in time to stop a murderer?”

“No,” Teddy interrupted, his voice low and urgent. “Not to stop the murders. You can't save those people, Lila.”

“Excuse me?” she demanded, incredulous. “You expect me to travel back in time to witness a mass murder and do nothing to stop it?”

“If you stopped the murders, you would be violating several major laws of the universe. And there's no way to predict the outcome. It's too risky. There are rules to traveling through time, inviolable rules.”

“Such as?” Lila asked with a slight sneer.

“Such as, you must do your utmost to avoid altering the course of time. That means you are forbidden from killing
anyone
or preventing
anyone
from being killed. You cannot and must not stop the Star Island massacre. If you did, you could be responsible for altering the present in unimaginable ways.”

“Then what's the point of any of it?”

“Justice!” he exclaimed, his eyes glowing with determination. “What could be more powerful than bringing this murderer to justice?” Lila wondered again why Teddy was so invested in catching the Star Island killer.

“Tell me,” she asked. “What's in it for you? Why are you as obsessed with this case as I am?”

“I have my reasons. That's all you need to know,” he answered quietly.

“Okay, well, why bring me into this thing? Why don't you go instead?”

“To find the killer, you'll have to become part of that world. You'll have to infiltrate the Janus Society as deeply as you can. I was already part of that world. There's no way I could go back. That's very important, Lila, that you never let your past and future selves meet. Besides, you said it yourself—no one else is as obsessed with this case as you are. Not to mention that you're the best detective Miami's ever seen.”

She disliked it when people tried to appeal to her vanity. “So you want me to time-travel to the past and then go undercover?”

“Precisely.”

“And who am I going to be, exactly?”

“Your new identity will have to be someone of extreme wealth. That's important. None of the Janus Society members will trust you if you're not as rich as, or richer than, they are. They'll suspect you're after their money. I'll be giving you unlimited access to one of my accounts.”

“I don't think I can pull off the whole high-society thing. They'll sniff me out in a minute,” Lila said.