Off The Grid

by Dan Kolbet

  Rachel was still shaken by Amir’s death. Although it was she who alerted Luke to Amir’s dishonesty back in Portland. His insistence on trying to pin Luke’s car accident on Beckman was questionable, given his story about switching out the town car for two rental cars. Something was off, she was certain of it. Nonetheless, she never imagined that it would come down to her ending the man’s life. The smell of burning flesh seemed to be trapped in her nostrils and burned into her hair. She couldn’t shake it.

  She was strong enough to realize that by ending one life, she’d saved two others and possibly her own at the same time. But she’d still had trouble sleeping the last two nights and it wasn’t just because they were in a car driving 75 to 80 miles an hour. Every time she closed her eyes she saw the body hunched over the bank of wires. She couldn’t shake the smell.

  “You saved my life,” Luke said when they were finally alone on a deserted stretch of Nevada highway. “I can’t thank you enough. He wasn’t going to hesitate. He was going to kill us.”

  “I know,” she said softly, staring off into the distance of desert night. “I’m just glad I came around the long way to the substation, otherwise we’d all be dead.”

  The time alone in the car was good for the couple. No matter what happened from this point on, they had no intention of ever leaving each other again. Their partnership was so much stronger now than it ever was before. There was only one thing blocking their complete happiness – the mysterious rocks they were about to analyze. But so many questions remained.

  If they could confirm StuTech was intentionally manipulating the market, would Rachel have the courage to stand up to her father and put an end to it? She’d been under his thumb her entire life. And at what lengths would he go to silence them? Would he send another man like Amir to kill them?

  Luke was also concerned about the samples from Nevis. There was a strong chance that they were not connected to the others. Even if Deep World Oceans was controlled by StuTech, they didn’t know who was pulling the strings at either company. Now that MassEnergy knew of the Nevis site, who was to stop them from mining it? It was possible that Luke had in fact unwittingly provided MassEnergy the missing pieces it needed to build its wireless systems. Maybe it was for the best. But they couldn’t answer any of these questions until Luke analyzed the samples.

  ***

  Stanford had an Earth Element Particle Analyzer, locked away in the laboratory of the McDonald Building for Computational Earth and Environmental Sciences. It was nearly identical to the machine that the techs at MassEnergy were using to reverse-engineer StuTech’s tower and stubs. Now that he had samples from Nevis, Moldova and Colorado, he could analyze them and compare the results.

  The McDonald Building was dark as they approached a side entrance. Luke didn’t have a magnetic scan card to unlock the door, so he tried his old pass code – his sister’s birthday. Nothing, just as he feared, they still cleaned out the personal access codes every semester.

  “The outside access is controlled by different systems,” he told Rachel. “It’s a redundancy built in so that someone breaking in would have to know more than one code, or get past more than one set of locks. I suspect the inside codes haven’t changed. They never did before. The professors are lazy and hate to remember new codes.”

  “But if we can’t get in to find out, it really doesn’t matter,” she said.

  “Have some faith.”

  Just off the cobblestone pathway to the entrance was a landscaped flowerbed with three dwarf trees and a rock lining. Luke dug a small hole in the rocks under the middle tree and pulled up a yellow plastic keychain. Hanging from the chain was a silver key fob.

  “I can’t believe it’s still here,” Luke said. “They only allowed so many access cards, so the lab assistants buried this key here so that we didn’t have to call into the lab and interrupt each other to get in.”

  He waved the key fob over the access control plate and the door clicked. They were in.

  Chapter 69

  Luke kept the shades of the laboratory drawn through the night. Rachel finally got some fitful sleep in a reclining desk chair while he worked. He was on his second pot of coffee, but his night was rather productive considering how exhausted he was. The Earth Element Particle Analyzer was a hexagon with a cylindrical glass insert on the top. Luke placed each separate sample element in the insert, closed it with the side clips and lowered it down into the machine for analysis.

  The time in the machine was dependant on the weight and size of the item placed inside. The Nevis and Colorado samples were pure rock samples, but the Moldova sample was already refined down to a substance like ash. Each rock sample ran for just over two hours inside the machine. The Moldova sample took less than an hour. Once it was finished the machine spit out a glossy cash-register style list of elements.

  It was morning before all three samples had been analyzed. Luke woke up Rachel to show her the results.

  “They are identical,” he said. “There are minor variations that you would expect from being mined in different parts of the world and contamination from transport, but these are the same fundamental elements.”

  “So my father has been pulling the wool over the eyes of the entire world for his own greedy benefit,” she said.

  “I’m afraid so, but there’s something else. After I ran the Colorado samples to form our baseline of material, I cross-referenced it with the specifications I downloaded from Amir’s computer. The MassEnergy techs provided him a list of the elements they found when they reverse-engineered the StuTech systems.”

  “In English, please.”

  “None of these samples contain all of the elements included in the towers. StuTech has been adding its own mixture of elements.”

  “Wouldn’t you expect that they had to combine several things to get the ‘secret sauce,’ as my father always called it?”

  “Yes, but I did a mathematical analysis of the radio frequency that we could reasonably expect to come from the three samples. I then compared that to the signal strengths that I used to work on when I was designing residential systems for StuTech.”

  “What did that show you?”

  Luke didn’t have the chance to answer as they both turned at the sound of the laboratory door latching shut. Luke was once again facing down the barrel of a gun, this time held by Steve Lunsford. Another man, wearing a Chicago Cubs hat, followed Lunsford into the room.

  “Let me tell you what that means, my dear Rachel,” Lunsford said, walking the outer aisle of the laboratory, toward the Earth Element Particle Analyzer. “It means that your father has been gaming the system for years. Intentionally making a weak product to sell more towers. You see, if he’d cranked these puppies up to full capacity, he’d only be able to sell a few every hundred miles, but with his diminished product he has to sell dozens of them instead of just one. Crafty, isn’t it?”

  Rachel ignored the comment and spoke directly to Alan Grant.

  “You’ve come a long way from the mountains of Bolivia, Alan.”

  “Gotta follow the money. You know how it is. Sorry about all this. We’re just going to be-”

  “That’s enough,” Lunsford said. “If I want you to talk, I’ll tell you what to say.”

  Luke wasn’t feeling any more comfortable with a gun pointed at him now than he did two days ago, but he spoke up anyway.

  “Why did you send me into MassEnergy. What possible benefit did it have?”

  “You haven’t figured it out by now? I didn’t pick you. Why would I? Her father did.”

  “Did he tell you why he picked me?” Luke asked, knowing full well that Lunsford could easily lie.

  “He didn’t have to, you twit,” Lunsford spat. “Just look at that pretty little thing next to you. I wouldn’t want you as my son-in-law either. I have to give you two a little credit though. You just about messed up my whole operation too, you’re a sticky pair.”

  “So you are the one who sent MassEnergy the refi
ned minerals from Moldova,” Rachel said.

  “In the flesh my dear. But you make it sound like charity work. Nothing is free. I got a nice little piece of the pie from MassEnergy for that windfall. If Warren wasn’t going to see the big picture, someone had to. He was right about one thing though, he just wanted you out of her life,” he pointed the gun at Rachel. ”Didn’t seem to work though, seeing as you’re here together. But we can take care of that right now.”

  He cocked the slide and raised the gun, leveling it at Luke’s head. The muzzle of the gun had a long round extension attached to it that Luke recognized from the movies as a silencer. The precaution meant Lunsford could shoot the gun without the sound alerting people outside the building. He intended to use it.

  “Steve, don’t,” Alan said in a firm voice from the other side of the lab. “No way, I didn’t agree to this. We’re supposed to get the samples and go. That’s it. That’s what you said.”

  “I told you what happened to Amir. Poor guy got roasted – well done. Ok, it was probably the most effective way to contain that little bastard, but still – bold move from these two.”

  “I didn’t sign up for this,” Alan said, raising his arms as if to surrender his involvement. “At least not the girl.”

  “Having second thoughts after Luke survived your little car accident? Got a little crush on the sweet tart here, do you? Tough. These two have been a thorn in my side since the day I laid eyes on them. No more. I’m done playing second fiddle to a crazy old miser like Warren Evans and I can’t have these two ruining all of the work I’ve put in to this MassEnergy deal. I earned it.”

  “Then I’m outta here,” Alan said. “I can’t be a part of this.”

  “You already are,” Lunsford gave him a crooked grin. “You’re my fall guy, after all. You should never have tried to kill these two.”

  Lunsford whipped the gun around and shot Alan twice.

  Snap. Snap. The silenced bullets hit him in the chest. He fell backward against a steel sink before hitting the ground with a thud.

  Turning back to Luke and Rachel, “Now we have a cozy little story to go along with your deaths. Three geeks in a lab killed each other off. Tidy. I like it.”

  The tears streaked down Rachel’s face as she watched a second man die in front of her in as many days.

  “You’re a monster,” she said, standing up to face him.

  “Whoa there, don’t come any closer,” he said.

  She continued to walk toward him, ignoring the gun.

  “You’ve always been a low tier employee at StuTech,” she said. Her voice was almost a whisper and Lunsford had to lean in to hear her. “My father told me that he only keeps you employed out of pity. It’s a wonder you’re still around, the way he treats you. Of course, your only recourse is theft and murder, so what kind of man are you?”

  Lunsford nearly stumbled over a stool as Rachel continued to advance on him, but kept on his feet. The slight distraction gave Luke enough time to reach into the front pocket of his hooded Stanford sweatshirt and pop off the cap to a sample vial from Moldova. He poured it into his hand, clamped his fist around it and put his hand back at his side.

  He was now side by side with Rachel. He placed his other hand on her shoulder.

  “I can’t let you do this,” he said, stepping in front of her and raising his hands above his head to surrender, knowing that Rachel wouldn’t have any of it. As she pushed her way past him, Lunsford took his eyes off of Luke and looked back to Rachel, even though she was still behind Luke.

  Luke threw his fist full of ash toward Lunsford’s face, blasting him in the eyes. He immediately raised his hands to his face, trying to rub out the bits of chalky rock and dust.

  Luke hit him full force in the chest and wrapped his arms around the man, taking him to the ground. The gun went flying through the air and landed on a counter, smashing glass beakers and cylinders before coming to a rest against a tiled wall.

  Lunsford was blinded, but not defenseless. The older man was built like an ox and pushed Luke off of him with ease. He thrashed about wildly on the floor, trying to make contact with his attacker, but Luke had already moved out of his reach. Lunsford was on his feet in no time. Rachel let out a small scream as Lunsford picked up a compact metal microscope and waved it around, trying to hit Luke. He followed the sound of her scream and started for her.

  Trying to avoid the blunt object, Luke went to his knees and did what he’d been taught to do for years on the soccer field. He executed a clean slide tackle, tripping the man. Lunsford fell face first to the ground and into the blunt microscope he clutched in his hand. His head cracked into it and then the ground. He was out cold, but probably not for long.

  Luke checked his pulse. He was still alive.

  “Call 9-1-1 and go unlock the front door for them,” he said. Rachel raced to the phone.

  Luke used the cord of the microscope to bind Lunsford’s hands and feet. It was only moments before Lunsford came to again.

  “You little S.O.B.,” he said, unable to move on the floor. His eyes shot darts of hatred. “You think when the cops show up and find a dead guy and a man hogtied that they won’t think it was you who did it?”

  “Steve, you’re not the greatest teacher, but I did learn something from you. Always cover your ass.”

  Luke wiggled the mouse of a desktop computer sitting near the Earth Element Particle Analyzer. Four moving images appeared on the screen - four different camera angles from all four corners of the room.

  “You just murdered a man on video and then tried to do the same to us. I don’t think there is a jury in the country that wouldn’t convict you.”

  Chapter 70

  It took 12 hours for the police to process the scene, review the videotape and release Luke and Rachel. They had both given thorough statements about what happened in the lab that day and the events that led up to it. They both conveniently left out the part about Amir being killed days before. But they knew they would have to likely revisit the incident again soon.

  Since their stories matched, the police saw no reason to keep them locked up. The school had insisted on breaking and entering charges, so after they paid bail, they were free to go.

  “How did you know to turn on the cameras in the laboratory?” Rachel asked. “I thought we were trying to stay out of the spotlight. That sort of gave us away.”

  “I wanted to make sure that I recorded my work, just in case we had to pack up in a hurry. Since you were snoozing I didn’t want to forget anything. I would have just erased the recording from the hard drive.”

  “But now the recording and all of the rock samples are state’s evidence against Steve Lunsford.”

  “True,” Luke pulled a thumb drive out of his pocket. “But I prepared for that too. We’ve got everything we need to convince your father to make StuTech electrify all parts of the country, not just the ones that will make him the most money.”

  “That’s perfect, but there’s one problem,” she said. “That recording is in the hands of the police. It’s evidence now and will be used in a public trial against Lunsford. He said my father was rigging the towers so they were less powerful. When that gets out, the company will be ruined. There’s no coming back from that. Nobody will trust StuTech again.”

  “You think people do now? I don’t.”

  “That’s not the point,” she said.

  “Here’s the point. Lunsford was right. Just before he got to the lab I was about to show you a mathematical model that proves the towers are intentionally under-producing. The police could release that recording anytime. Because of who your father is and because you were an attempted murder victim, it’ll be a big publicity victory for them. They won’t just sit on what they have. We need to get out in front of it, before they release it.”

  “So we have to save StuTech from possible ruin, to take it down on our own time?” she asked.

  “Something like that, but I’ve got an idea that might give us both,”
Luke said.

  Chapter 71

  Mill Creek, California

  There were dozens of regional and national media trucks lined up neatly in the parking lot of the high school. Reporters had descended on the tiny off-the-grid town hours earlier when a news release went out over the wire to every media outlet in the country that StuTech was going to make an announcement that would change the world. The reporters had interviewed any local resident they could find to try and get a jump on this potentially massive story, but the residents of Mill Creek were, as always, in the dark. In truth, they didn’t know anything.

  The press office in Seattle denied that StuTech was making any such announcement, but the reporters came anyway, lured by the presence of Rachel Evans, who had recently escaped death from the hands of a senior executive at the company. The shooting at Stanford had led newscasts across the West Coast for days. The heir to the Evans fortune reportedly fended off two men with the assistance of her fiancé, Luke Kincaid. Little was known about Kincaid, only that he was once a star soccer player from Stanford.

  The press pool had assembled in front of the boarded up store front of Creasman’s Hardware on Main Street, behind the bed of a rusty red pick-up truck. Rachel, dressed in a jet-black designer pantsuit with a blue blouse, used a wooden crate to step onto the tailgate of the truck. Luke, in jeans and a leather jacket, followed Rachel up, but stood behind her and slightly to the left. Standing in front of him was Tilly, in her yellow church dress. Her cough hadn’t improved. She tried to hide it, but the medicine was having less and less effect on her. Luke could feel her wheezing as he placed his hand on her shoulder.

  Gina and Kathryn stood on the sidewalk nearby next to Walter Perkins, Gina’s weed distributor. It was Walter’s truck parked in the middle of the street. It was near dusk and the camera flashes lit up the corners of the street, casting long shadows. The blasts of light were an unfamiliar sight to the remaining few residents of the town who had also gathered to hear whatever news was to be announced.