Off The Grid (27 page)

Chapter 60

Seattle, Washington

Rachel’s back was to her office door, so when she heard the knock, she simply said, “Come in,” without looking at
who it was. When she turned around, she instantly regretted it.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Steve Lunsford said, striding into the room and plopping down across from her desk. “Didn’t know you were back in town.”

He pulled a stick of gum out of the pocket of his ruffled jacket, popped it in his mouth and began chewing it with gusto. It had been nearly two weeks since they last spoke.

“I’m only in for today, I need to finish up a few loose ends and then I’ll be taking some time off. I need a little getaway.”

“Glad to hear it. I envy those who can take vacation time.”

His eyes were scanning the papers on her desk. Instinctively she scooped them up and placed them in a drawer, although there was nothing in them worth hiding.

“I got an interesting call from your former fiancé this morning. You must have worked your charms on him after his accident.”

Rachel had arranged for Luke to call Lunsford that morning but she played dumb.

“It’s not ‘former,’ it’s ‘fiancé.’ And I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I was a little worried that our boy had gone off the deep end. I told you that when we were in Moldova. I guess I misjudged him, which I’m sure you think I had. He said big things are happening down at
MassEnergy and he wanted to assure me that he was still working hard on behalf of StuTech. I can only assume that someone gave him a little shove in our direction. My gut says it was you.”

“Not that it’s any of your business. We obviously had a few other issues to work out considering him and that woman. I told him that he needed to make sure the last few months have been worth it to us and in turn, to the company.”

“That’s good. Very good. MassEnergy is trying to rush to market before the WES Act is law. Makes sense for them. They have got to pull out all the stops. You don’t think Luke’s trying to play both sides? I mean, you of all people stand to lose the most if MassEnergy becomes a real threat.”

“A woman knows,” she said. “He is with us.”

“That’s what I was hoping to hear. Your father will be pleased as well.”

“What do you mean that I have the most to lose?”

“As the sole heir to Warren Evan’s fortune you will have controlling interest in this company upon his death. Of course you know this. And God willing, he lives many more years.”

Rachel didn’t spend much time thinking about the vast fortune that awaited her after her father’s death. She’d always had more money than she knew what to do with. Even today, if
StuTech didn’t make another cent, she would have enough cash on hand to live ten more lifetimes. Her father was worth as estimated $7 billion, including his stake in the company.

“What I stand to lose is never getting my fiancé back and never having a normal life,” she said. “That means making sure that
StuTech can withstand challenges from its rivals, even upstarts like MassEnergy. This isn’t the best arrangement at the moment, so I urged him to wrap it up down there and get home.” 

“So, he’s reporting to you now?”

“As any good future-husband should. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.”

She took a file out from her drawer and began reading to herself, essentially telling Lunsford that he was excused.

***

Lunsford went back to his office and called the only person he could talk to about what had just happened. After summarizing the conversation, his confidante detailed the events that occurred that morning in Portland.

“So they haven’t started working on the material yet?” Lunsford asked.

“No, it’s being analyzed first. It might take a few days.”

“You know the clock is ticking in D.C., we don’t have a few days. This needs to happen now,” he said.

“I’ll see what I can do to speed the process, but I can’t promise anything. These things take time. Unless you give me the green light to ramp up my efforts.”

“Hands off Luke Kincaid. It won’t do us any good to hurt him. There’s still something he’s hiding and I need to find out what it is. Just get the towers up and running. That’s your priority now. It has to happen. If the WES Act gets signed before we launch, then we’re screwed.”

“I know, but there’s another wrinkle. Your boy got a hold of a sample of
double-A. There was some sort of spill and he snapped up some of it. He got lucky.”

“So what? That just confirms what Rachel said. He’s back on the payroll with us. Let’s just see how it plays out. I expect to hear from him again tomorrow.”

“I’m not so sure about him. I don’t like it. I just don’t see the point in letting him run around here. Let me end him.”

“No, just get those towers up and running and let me worry about the kid. Trust me, he’ll be out of our hair soon enough.”

Chapter 61

Portland, Oregon

Luke and Rachel sat at a small circular table tucked into a corner of their motel room. They choked back bitter cups of motel-room coffee. The place offered free breakfast and a cardboard-like mattress for $40 a night. Luke saw the place as a slight upgrade to his previous accommodations, although he’d been getting used to the Murphy bed. He wasn’t comfortable at his apartment any longer. Any number of reasons would do. First on the list was Beckman. Luke managed to leave the campus with the sample in his glove and avoid a one-on-one encounter with the man, but Luke had caught Beckman watching him several times. If he tried to get rid of Luke once, he’d probably do it again. No reason to take the chance. Better to keep a low profile.

Then there was
StuTech. Who knew who was watching Rachel? Sure, he shouldn’t be surprised that the company who hired him to steal secrets from its competition wouldn’t be totally on the up and up. Rachel had come to the same conclusion.

“They have mines on four continents, but only claim to have one in Colorado,” Rachel said. “One source for their precious material. I believe the humanitarian outposts are storefronts for the mining operations. It explains why they would invest in locations that have no obvious market for goods. Claiming to have grand humanitarian goals is the perfect cover. Once they establish a strong presence in those areas, no one is going to argue when they go public with the mining operation. It’s actually pretty ingenious. They are buying cooperation.”

“But how can you be sure they are mining underground in those areas?” Luke asked. “You said yourself that you never saw any digging whatsoever.”

“Follow the money,” she said. “I kept copies of the books I saw in Bolivia, Sudan and Moldova. Each of them was flush with cash. The notations on the ledgers said the money was for taxes, security, local access-“

“Which means bribes,” Luke added.

“Exactly. The amount of money being spent couldn’t have possibly been used for the medical clinics or office buildings. For the amount on the books, we could have built a first class hospital. Not a drafty medical tent.”

“What about Nevis?” Luke asked. “If StuTech knows about the other sites, why aren’t they mining there too?”

“Who says they aren’t? Deep World Oceans is a subsidiary company of Atlantis Oil. Atlantis recently had a shake-up in their top leadership, which has led some investors to believe that they are gearing up to fight a hostile takeover or it already happened, just not publically.”

“So StuTech owns Atlantis,” Luke said.

“Possibly. Or maybe they’ve just taken a strong position with them. I haven’t had enough time to dig that far into it.”

“They aren’t publically mining the site, so maybe they are under orders to just keep others away,” Luke said. “I can’t believe your father wouldn’t tell you about the mines before sending you to each of those places.”

“I’m not one bit surprised. He needed to confirm that his operations were well hidden. Who better to tell him than the person he sent to give him a hands-on report.”

“Did you ever give him your notes?

“I did. I dropped them with the guard at the gate of his estate just so he’d know that I found out about his little game.”

“Do you think we should go public with this?”

“No, not yet. We need definitive scientific proof if we want people to believe this. Besides,
StuTech is a publically held company that at the moment is providing electricity to more than half of the United States. If investor confidence in the company drops, then its stock value will plummet.”

“So what, serves them right.”

“It hurts the company, sure, but it will also threaten the lives of millions of people. The elderly people on oxygen; people could freeze to death. Do you want that on your hands? And cities like Mill Creek will lose any chance of getting back on the grid. Crushing StuTech isn’t the answer. It hurts too many people.”

“But your father isn’t going to just roll over.”

“With the right evidence we can roll him. I can be very persuasive.”

“All right, so we’ve got two of the three ARC samples we need, one from Nevis and one from Moldova,” Luke said. “Are we set to get the last piece of the puzzle?”

“I downloaded the schematics of the StuTech operation in Colorado. It is set up similar to the plant in Moldova, but on an even larger scale. The material comes up into the main warehouse over a seven-day period, when an armored truck company picks it up for transport to the refining plant three miles away. That’s where we hit them.”

“Armored truck?”

“Yes,” Rachel said. “They pick up the raw extracted rock from the mine.”

“So your plan is for an accountant and an engineer to hijack an armored truck full of guys with guns.”

“It’s a little more subtle than that.” 

“Too bad, because that sounded like a really great plan,” Luke said.

Rachel ignored the sarcasm.

“We’re missing one thing though,” she said. “We need a third to make this work. Do you think Kathryn will do it?”

Luke considered this for a moment.

“She put her neck on the line to allow me to get the sample at
MassEnergy and she didn’t have to. And I couldn’t have gotten the material off the island if she weren’t there. I’m sure I can get her on our side, she’s scared to death of Beckman.”

“But do you trust her? That’s what matters.”

“I think she’s our best option,” Luke said.

“All right. There’s something else I need to know before we bring her in on this. You had to work very closely with Kathryn and you spent a lot of time together. Be honest with me. Did anything ever happen between you two?”

“No. Nothing.”

Rachel’s heart sank. She could still see the image of Luke kissing Kathryn on the street. If he wasn’t honest with her, then what else happened that she didn’t know about?

“Wait. That’s not completely true,” Luke said. “She kissed me, once. It was right after I found out you left Seattle. The things your father said really tore me up inside. I was a mess and we’d both had too much to drink. But I didn’t let it go any further than that. I immediately regretted it. That’s not an excuse, but-“

“What do you mean, ‘what my father said?’” Rachel asked.

“He told me you left me,” Luke said. “He said you realized that people like us didn’t belong together and so you moved on. I wanted to contact you, but you were out of the country. Your condo was subleased. I thought you were gone.”

“And you believed him? After all these years of me telling you that my father is a snake, you take him at his word on something as important as that?”

Luke thought back to his surprise run in with Evans in the Seattle hotel room. Rachel leaving him wasn’t the biggest surprise to come out of that meeting. Luke always thought he was “marrying up” with Rachel, so when Evans simply confirmed his insecurities, Luke believed him. At the same time, Evans was threatening to expose his involvement in Elliot Cosgrove’s death. Looking back on it, he realized that Rachel would never have left him like that. She was not her father. Luke had been conned by a professional liar and he felt like an idiot for it.

“I’m not cut out for this double-life stuff,” he said. “I didn’t know what to believe. When I saw you in the hospital room after the car accident, I wanted to ask you about it, but I-.”

“You had other priorities.”

“No, I just, well, yes I . . .”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I know what it’s like to be led to believe something that isn’t true. Pretty much my whole life. You’ve got to promise me that from now on we’re in this together,” she said. “No matter what.”

“No matter what.”

“And you’re going to have to make it up to me,” she said.

“How?”

“I bet we can think of something.”

She leaned in close to him, pressing her body next to his and she kissed him deeply.