by Darin Gibby
Addy pulled into a Shell station and pumped in a few gallons. She paid the attendant, then hung her head while she ambled back to her car, sorting through solutions. Where could she hide the catalyst? Not in the car; that would also be an obvious place to search. She decided it would have to be someplace easy to retrieve when she needed it, but in a location where nobody would think to look.
Addy noticed a row of hedges at the back of the gas station, separating it from an apartment complex. Cobblestones were stacked around the roots as ground cover. It was as good a place as any. Addy took out a Ziploc bag from her purse, emptied out the last of her pain-killers, swallowed them, and slipped the vial inside, and zipped it shut.
She looked around. It was a quiet evening. An elderly man was filling up his Cadillac, but otherwise nobody was around. She scurried over to the hedge, bent over, and hefted up a few of the cobblestones before gently nestling the vial in the dirt. Then she carefully replaced the rocks, taking special note of their arrangement. She studied her work. It was impossible to tell anything was hidden there.
By now, nearly blinded by her increasingly blurred vision, it was time for her to get back into her condo. Besides needing her glasses, she was thoroughly exhausted and needed some cash for a hotel room.
Her emergency stash of bills hidden in the freezer wasn’t a lot, a few hundred dollars, but it could get her a place to stay for the night.
Addy turned the key in her ignition, and stabbing pain in her hand dizzied her for a full minute. She blinked her eyes in a feeble attempt to clear her vision. As much as she hated the thought of what might happen, she must get into her condo, at least for a few minutes, to grab what she needed. To be incognito, she could park a few blocks away and sneak into her complex the back way.
As she crept closer to her residence, she peered into her mirror, trying to detect any would-be followers. She debated about how close she dared to park. She settled on five blocks, probably far enough away that anyone staking out her place wouldn’t notice her arrival.
The Crescent Condominium complex was laid out in the shape of a horseshoe, with the front office and pool at the main entrance. Addy’s condo was on the right leg, facing the parking lot. She decided not to try the main entrance, but to flank the complex on the left side, sneaking behind a four-foot brick wall.
When she was parallel to her unit, she put her hands on top of the wall, but her pain kept her from scaling the rampart. She jogged back and took a running start, leaping and pressing her foot a few feet up on the wall. The rubber on her sole gave her just enough traction that she was able to fling her left arm over the top of the wall, the cement cap digging into her armpit. She surreptitiously zipped between parked cars, crept between adjacent buildings, and made it to the inner courtyard. She looked around.
When the weather was good, teenagers tended to hang out and talk there. Luckily it was a cold night, and the courtyard was empty. Acting as casual as she could, trying not to draw attention, she ambled across the grass, inserted her key into her back door, and slipped inside.
In the mud room, the only light came from the courtyard lamps. Addy didn’t dare turn on any more lights. Feeling her way through the pantry, she entered her kitchen, mentally making a list of what she needed.
Eyeglasses were a must, so she scampered up the stairs and into her bedroom, where she took out her contact lenses, put in some eye drops, and slipped on her glasses. Then she opened several drawers and found an old ACE bandage. Downstairs she should be able to find something to use as a splint, maybe some spatula handles.
Back in the kitchen, she opened the freezer door and fished through a stack of veggie burger patties until she found the Ziploc bag containing cash. She tried to stash it in her pocket, but realized she was still wearing yoga pants. A pair of sweats would be nice, but that meant another trip upstairs, and she was worried that she was running out of time.
She needed something warmer to sleep in, though, so she shut the freezer door and went to the hall closet near the staircase where she kept her jackets.
She heard the floor creak somewhere near the front door. She looked out through the breakfast nook into the darkness, but couldn’t see anything. If the front door had opened, she would have noticed either the sound or the light coming through.
She slowly stepped back, reached out with her good hand, and opened the knife drawer. She slipped out her only butcher knife, holding it in a death grip, her heart pounding in her ears.
Heart thumping, almost panting with fear, she heard another noise coming from the front room. This time it was a rustling sound, almost like someone had rubbed up against her window blinds.
Knife in one hand, money in the other, she steadied her workout shoes on the tile and rocketed toward the pantry. The moment she did, there was a clatter behind her, like her blinds were being ripped from the wall.
She bumped into a shelf full of soup cans, which clattered across the floor. When she reached the back door, she tried to turn the knob without dropping the cash, but her fingers only slipped, and a sharp pain shot up her arm. She dropped the bag of money and, grimacing, turned the handle and pulled the door inward. As she did, a massive figure tackled her to the floor, pinning her arm beneath her. With all the weight on top of her, she couldn’t free her arm or use the knife. She could feel the cool concrete on her cheek.
She tried to buck her hips to throw off her assailant. But he was too heavy.
She opened her mouth and took a breath to scream, hoping someone would hear and come running. The moment she shrieked, a forearm smashed into her open mouth. She tried to bite down, but the man was wearing a thick leather jacket.
The fragrance. It was cologne she’d smelled before, but where?
Her hands were now free, and she swooped them across the floor, searching until she clutched the handle of the butcher’s knife. Then she heaved upward with all her might, ready to stab the man in his side. He sensed the movement and deflected the blow, crushing her arm to the floor with his knee. He reached out and dislodged the knife from her hand.
The next thing she felt was the cool steel blade pressed against her throat.
“Don’t do anything stupid,” the man said, easing his forearm from her mouth.
Now she remembered where she’d smelled the cologne. “Quinn.”
“Just hand over the catalyst, and I’ll be gone. I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Funny, then why have you got a knife to my throat? Quinn, why are you doing this to me?”
“It’s for your own good. If you give me the catalyst, they’ll leave you alone.”
What did he know that she didn’t? And why was he threatening her?
“That’s not true. I know too much. I know the formula. All because of you.”
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with. You should be thanking me. Now tell me where you have the catalyst.”
“You son of a bitch.”
“We don’t have much time for name calling, Addy. Just give me the catalyst, go back to your old job, and nobody will get hurt. Don’t make this any harder than it needs to be.”
“I don’t have my old job, or did you forget that little detail?”
“Wyckoff will take you back.”
“I’m not going back, and I’m not giving you the catalyst.”
She felt the blade sink into her skin. He wouldn’t.
“You can’t beat the forces against you. Just give me the catalyst and this will all go away.”
“Do you really think that’s possible? Johnston is dead, and for all I know, you killed him. Am I going to be next?”
Addy began crying. “I trusted you,” she said between hiccupping sobs. “I can’t do this anymore. You win. The catalyst is in my car. Just get off me and you can have it.”
“You’re telling me the truth?”
“What, do you want me to take a lie detector test? Where else would I have it?”
“It’s not in here?” he said.
&nb
sp; “It was so nice of you to invite yourself in. Now get your bony ass off me and maybe we can walk to my car like civilized people.”
She could feel the pressure on her throat relax and Quinn sat up straight, still pinning her to the ground with his legs. “Well, nobody has ever accused me of that before,” he said, lifting his left leg to unsaddle himself.
The moment he was in an unstable position, Addy bolted upright, slamming her forehead into his face and shoving him back. She heard the crack when the cartilage in his nose crushed. Dazed, he dropped the knife and grabbed his face.
Addy threw him onto his back with such force that his head crashed on the floor. She grabbed his thick black hair and pounded the back of his head repeatedly onto the hard tile, cringing every time his head hit the floor. When he stopped struggling, she fumbled for the knife, and brought it to his throat, making sure to nick him.
“If you ever treat me that way again, I’ll kill you. Understand?”
The fight drained out of her when Quinn started making strangled, gurgling noises. Oh, no! Was he dying? But then he coughed, and a thick plug of blood and mucus shot out from his mouth, some spraying onto her yoga shirt.
“Are you crazy?” he croaked, his pupils visibly dilated, even in the dim light. Then he coughed again.
“Now you know how it feels.”
“I’m sorry,” he muttered.
Suddenly shaky, she tried to suppress her tears. “You were the one person I thought I could trust. I even thought I liked you.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’m desperate. If I don’t get the catalyst and ensure my investors will be paid, they are going to make mincemeat of me.”
“Just like with Johnston? Are they going to gouge your eyes out, too?”
“The examiner?” he said through bloodstained teeth. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t know. But it couldn’t have been my people. Somebody else got to him, and they’ll get to us if we don’t leave right now.”
“Not until you tell me the truth about what you did to me.”
“Reader’s Digest version, then,” he said. “We’ve got to disappear.”
“I’m all ears.”
He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them slowly.
“All right, I admit we used you to help spy on the US government. We suspected the US was taking our ideas and suppressing our applications, and we had been baiting them to find out for sure. I was ready to introduce our technology, but the Board wouldn’t let me do it until we had patents in place to protect us. We all wanted to know if the US was taking our ideas and putting them into applications with earlier filing dates. We used you to confirm this. It was wrong of us, but at least now we know. I’m truly sorry.”
Addy gritted her teeth. As much as she was furious with Quinn, the thought of a branch of the US government tampering with patent applications in order to steal foreign technology totally set her off. It was unconscionable.
“Wait, did you say that the patent applications I filed ended up in another inventor’s application, with a filing date that predated ours?”
Quinn nodded.
“I can’t believe it,” she muttered. The Patent Office had stolen their ideas, put them in another application, and given that application a forged earlier date stamp. Tampering with filing dates was nothing new with the Patent Office, but the last instance Addy knew of was over a century ago in a debate over whether Alexander Graham Bell’s patent application for the telephone was moved to the front of the line.
“I’m sorry,” Quinn repeated. “I wish is wasn’t true.”
Addy tried to process her predicament. WTG was stealing from the Department of Energy, and vice-versa. But if the DOE got the earlier filing date, they would be able to control the patents. And with her arrest, they could cover it all up rather neatly.
“At this point, an apology is not going to help,” she said.
“I understand, but at least I wanted to come clean.”
“You haven’t yet. How did you come up with the idea for a water-powered car? You never told me.”
“We’ve got better things to talk about right now.”
“Oh, really? What can you tell me about Jerry Wilcox?”
Addy watched as Quinn’s jaw dropped.
“Not now. We really, really need to get out of here.”
“We’re not going anywhere until I get an explanation. I want to know how you invented the catalyst.”
Quinn swallowed hard. “Okay, I did work for a company called HydroGen just after I wrapped up my dissertation. It was founded by Jerry Wilcox, but he didn’t invent the catalyst. Wilcox is crazy. He thinks I stole his idea, which I didn’t. Yes, I did get the idea of a water car from him, but his catalyst wouldn’t work, and he wouldn’t listen to me when I tried to explain why. I got fed up with him and left. I’m the one who found a better catalyst, but it was after I was already in Korea. I think his real problem is that the Energy Department owns the rights to all of his inventions, and he’s mad that I have my own company. That’s why he sicced the Justice Department on me. This bit about stealing trade secrets is nonsense. The reason they haven’t arrested me is because they can’t find any evidence that I stole anything.”
Quinn always had an answer for everything, but Addy wasn’t convinced, remembering the charges against her for stealing US technology. “There’s also this bit about hacking into the PTO database using my ID to lift a few ideas from the Department of Energy while you were at it.”
“Is that what you think? No, they were stealing my ideas.”
“So you never stole any intellectual property from Jerry Wilcox?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then please explain this bit about Sung-soo illegally accessing his patent applications, which, need I remind you, is what got me into this mess.”
Quinn rolled his eyes. “We don’t have time for this.”
Addy raised her fist. “You do that again, and I’ll pop you in the mouth. Out with it.”
“Okay. WTG knew Wilcox was crazy and would stoop to anything in order to stop me, including stealing my ideas. So they had Sung-soo watching every application with Wilcox’s name on it. None of his patents ever issued, probably because he didn’t invent anything. He couldn’t get his idea to work. I did, and he’s jealous.”
Addy shook her head. “But that’s not who took down my blimp. I know the guy. He’s Middle Eastern.”
“I’ve had more threats on my life than you care to know about. There are all kinds of people who don’t want this to come to market.”
“But what you were doing was wrong. Admit it.”
Quinn coughed again. “It was.”
“And Sung-soo was probably stealing technology, not just monitoring Wilcox’s applications.”
“I’m afraid so, but it was without my knowledge,” Quinn insisted. “In fact, I knew nothing about it until later. It was Sung-soo, under orders from Jeyhu. I’m so sorry. I never intended for any of this to happen. If I’d known WTG’s true intentions, I would never have involved you. Now I can never face my father. My whole family is going to be dishonored if this ever gets out. I need to find the catalyst.”
“Your family! You really want to talk about your father at a time like this?” Addy practically shrieked. “What about my father? At least yours is alive.”
Addy watched him struggle to swallow. Looking into his bleeding face, she felt a small niggling of compassion. There was a reason she’d had feelings for him.
“Did you really like me?” he muttered.
It sounded so pathetic, yet somehow sincere.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Addy said. “We’ve got more important things to discuss.”
“I feel terrible about Johnston. My dream to change the world has turned out to be a horrific nightmare that keeps getting worse.”
“That pretty much describes how I feel, too.”
“You’ve got to believe me. When I met you in Vietnam, I really believed you could h
elp me, not just as a patent attorney, but in seeing my vision and helping to bring it to the world. I loved your enthusiasm, your drive. I really was going to use Hindy to make the announcement.”
Addy nibbled on her lower lip. She wanted to trust him, but every time she had, it had brought an unbelievable avalanche of disaster, guilt, and heartache.
“This is my baby,” he continued. “Everything I’ve ever dreamed of accomplishing. I’ve put every emotion, every cent, every bit of energy into changing the world. And now I’m going to lose everything.”
“Unless you get the catalyst,” Addy reminded him.
“I’m not going to lie. I’ve got to get it back for there to be any chance to put this right.”
“I thought you could make some more; that’s what you told me.”
“Yes and no. I know how to make more, but the refining process is very expensive and WTG is out of money. I need the catalyst so WTG can show proof of concept to the investors, just like we did with Johnston. That’s why they didn’t want me to take it. WTG needs a massive influx of cash to finish the production facility. Without the catalyst, it’s really hard to drum up that kind of investment. And if I fail, my investors are going to come after me. It will be ugly.”
“Well, you can forget about the catalyst, because I’m not giving it back. And I think you’d rather deal with me right now than with them.”
“Then I’m a dead man,” he groaned. “You’ve made your point,” he said looking down at the knife. “Would you let me up? My head is killing me.”
“You know what I think?” Addy said ignoring his request. “I think getting the catalyst is the least of your problems. You’ve got to secure the patents, or your investors are going to get skittish. Why would they be willing to cough up that much money when it’s just going to be copied?”
Addy searched Quinn’s eyes. They were flashing back and forth like he was trying to process her logic.