Off The Grid (22 page)

Chapter 46

Estevan
started a pot of coffee. No reason to think they’ll be sleeping much tonight. Antoine finally woke up about 2 a.m. with a throbbing headache, but not much the worse for wear. Estevan ordered him to stay in bed and rest.

“At least he’s all right,” Luke said.

“He’s been through worse,” Estevan said. “He was in and out of the deep everyday for decades as a welder. The companies he worked for didn’t always put safety first. They pushed for longer dives and fewer safety stops because it shortened the time in the water. He got decompression sickness about ten years back. Never went back under after that. Spent a week recovering in a decompression chamber in Antigua.”

“Is that why he stopped diving for the silver sand?”

“That and they built the oil rig and restricted access to it.”

“Speaking of the rig, I didn’t think there were oil deposits this close to the island. Most rigs are in much deeper water.”

“Apparently there’s something down there, otherwise they wouldn’t have built that monstrosity off the coast. The only good I’ve seen come from that thing is the revenue the company dumps into the economy here. They fund schools, roads and infrastructure.”

“But with the rig only producing a small amount of oil, they still have the money to bribe the government?”

“It’s not a bribe when it’s legal.”

Luke was exhausted, but he knew Kathryn would be back any minute and they would have to leave for the airport. He needed some answers from
Estevan before it was time to go.

Luke sat down next to the fire. He was still chilled from the cold dive and his adrenaline was finally slowing.

“Estevan, I need to ask you about your daughter,” Luke asked. “Kirkhorn was trying to fix Loretta, we’ve established that. I can only assume he was doing it under your supervision. You used this mineral on Ann. What happened?”

Estevan
stared at the fire and sipped his coffee.

“I never told Brother
Kirkhorn that it would work, but he insisted on trying, despite the risks. When Loretta became paralyzed, I was the first person he called. I’d long given up hope that my work would do anything to help people like Ann. I thought that maybe he could find something that I didn’t.”

“What didn’t you find?”

“I didn’t find anything. I am, or at least was, a medical doctor, not a medical researcher. It’s a different type of medicine and skill set. I wasn’t looking at trials and documentation. I wanted to fix my daughter, but in my blind emotion, I ... I killed her.”

Estevan
said this with the matter-of-fact tone of a man long resigned to the reality of his actions.

“I don’t understand,” Luke said. “How did you kill her?”

“What did Kathryn say? A caveman created this process? Yes. I tried to recreate it in a lab environment, but I was clueless. The mineral wasn’t extracted in a pure form. It still contained trace elements of rock and sediment and probably other things that I didn’t know how to remove. And because I was doing the testing alone, I couldn’t ask for help. Which was my first mistake. Blaine led me to believe that his material was special in some way, but I didn’t dare tell him what I was planning on doing. He’d have tried to stop me. Anyone would have told me that injecting this material into a human wasn’t safe.”

“So you injected it in Ann’s spine?”

“Not at first. I couldn’t risk it on my daughter. I injected myself first. I placed it on the same area of the spine that was damaged in Ann. It did nothing to me. I didn’t feel it, no sensation, nothing. But no side effects either.”

“So that’s when you gave it to Ann?”

“I thought that it couldn’t do any harm, since it didn’t do anything for me. She wanted me to try and I couldn’t say no, as much as I knew it was wrong,” the tears were flowing down his face. “She was in so much emotional pain. She wasn’t herself anymore. She hated being stuck in that chair, so I gave her what she wanted. Its impact was immediate. She went into cardiac arrest and died within minutes. I couldn’t save her.”

Couldn’t save her.
In Luke’s mind he could see the headlights of the truck bearing down on him and his parents on that dark highway. He could see his father dying in front of his eyes. He was familiar with the torture Estevan felt. Helplessness.

“I’m so sorry,” Luke said. “That is a terrible thing to have to live with.”

“My guess is that the injected material entered her blood stream and traveled to her heart, where it caused a blockage and forced the cardiac arrest.”

“Why wouldn’t that have happened to you?”

“I can’t prove it, but I suspect that the injection in me stayed in my spine because it was functioning fully. It gravitated toward a healthy, working process. Since her nerve endings were dead, it couldn’t find an attraction and moved on to the blood stream.

“The school insisted on an autopsy, but I refused, which raised some eyebrows with the administration. They ordered an autopsy anyway and discovered a foreign, unidentifiable substance in her body. I never admitted publically what I did, but they knew something was amiss. Our laws here are very clear. Experimenting on another human, without approval and protocols is unlawful.”

“And they took away your medical license.”

Estevan
nodded and continued to stare into the fire.

“I knew everyone on the medical review board,” he said “They knew I was trying to help Ann, even in a misguided way. Taking away my license wasn’t the worst thing they could have done. They could have turned me in to the authorities where I would have been charged in her death. They didn’t cover up what I did, they just didn’t push it as hard as they could have.”

“Wouldn’t the school also have some culpability in the matter since you used its resources?” Luke asked. “There had to be a reason they didn’t push it any further.”

“It’s certainly possible,”
Estevan said, finally looking away from the fire.

“When did Professor
Kirkhorn find out about Ann?”

“He was back on the island in 1984, the year after she was hurt. Officially he was researching Nevis Peak for his employer, but he was looking into the silver sand as well. He couldn’t help himself. The silver sand was too interesting to him. He didn’t know anyone else on the island, so we became friends, although I never told him about my ideas for medical uses for the material. I told him what I did after she died. He said that I was reckless for injecting her. We didn’t speak again for more than 25 years, until Loretta got hurt.”

“He wanted to know what you did with Ann, so he could try it on Loretta. But he knew that it failed?”

“Yes, he never got the chance to test it on her and I don’t know that he would have unless he was sure. He emailed me updates on his progress and I gave him what advice I could. He only worked on it for a few years before he died.”

“Do you still have those e-mails?”

“Yes, I can send them to you,”
Estevan said.

“Thank you. Those e-mails might be a game changer. When I get the samples back to Portland I’m certain we can isolate and separate the unique minerals in the rocks,” Luke said. “The number of people that this technology could help is huge, and not just in the U.S. This mineral – whatever it is used for might be the missing link. It could have global repercussions.”

“You really think our rocks are that important?”

“We won’t know until we try.”

They both turned when the headlights of the rental car shown from the driveway. Kathryn honked the horn.

“Can you promise me something?”
Estevan asked. “Don’t forget about Ann and Loretta when you get back to the States. I still think the silver sand, in one way or another, can have a medicinal use.”

Luke thought of the mask on Tilly’s face as she breathed in her life-sustaining medication through the foot-powered machine operated by her mom. How she didn’t have the breath to blow out her birthday candles.

“There’s a little girl back in California who won’t let me forget.”

Chapter 47

Portland, Oregon

MassEnergy’s VP of Development, James Beckman pulled out of the parking garage of Portland’s largest financial institution. He’d just ended a meeting with a pair of potential investors, set up by his personal broker. It couldn’t have gone better. His week was looking up.

Earlier that morning Kathryn Tate had delivered even better news concerning what she was bringing back to Portland. He didn’t hesitate to arrange a private plane out of Nevis and back to Portland. If he could have flown there himself that instant, he would have.

His impressions of Kathryn continued to be correct. She got the job done at all costs. She was a first class bitch, but one that he wanted on his side. He couldn’t wait to be rid of her – she was only supposed to be a temporary employee anyway. She was gaining the attention of company management. Not a good sign for him. Regardless, he hoped that what she claimed about these magical rocks was true. The science of wireless electricity wasn’t his strong suit and the lab guys would have to be the ones to prove it worked. And do it fast.

The clock was ticking on
MassEnergy. It had to introduce a product to market in the next two quarters or be forced to declare bankruptcy. It would be an absolute embarrassment - a complete failure.

The engineering candidate class and Kathryn’s ridiculous “pods,” all had one goal. The all-out push against
StuTech was MassEnergy’s last-ditch effort to stave off the trash heap. They had a plan, but it was missing a few key items – like a product that worked.

While Beckman didn’t have a significant stake in the company, his stake did comprise the entirety of his net worth, around $6 million. He should have diversified, sure, but he didn’t. His fortunes would mirror those of
MassEnergy.

Simple bankruptcy and the loss of a personal fortune wasn’t the only thing at risk. Time was running out on another front as well. Legislators were currently debating a bill in the Senate that would give
StuTech exclusive rights to the radio spectrum it used to transmit its signals. It was called the Wireless Electricity Spectrum Act, or WES Act. The House had already passed it. If MassEnergy wasn’t allowed to use the same spectrum, they wouldn’t be able to transmit wireless electric signals at all.

StuTech
had lobbied hard for the WES Act, which was sponsored by a senior Congresswoman from Washington state, who was a former StuTech executive. She argued that StuTech was offering the country a perfect mix of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. If they were forced to fend off competitors in their market, they would be distracted from that pursuit. It was a ludicrous idea and everyone knew it. StuTech had bought the votes for such a monopolistic bill out of its own sense of self-preservation. It certainly violated anti-trust laws and wouldn’t likely hold up to a court challenge, but it didn’t matter. MassEnergy wouldn’t have the funding to fight it if it couldn’t sell a product that worked.

A few pro-business senators were stalling a vote on the bill, knowing its massive ramifications. The president had already promised to sign the WES Act into law and was putting pressure on the Senate holdouts,
who couldn’t delay the bill indefinitely.

Beckman figured if they could get a product on the market, even just a test case, before Congress adjourned for summer recess, the bill couldn’t get passed. But if they missed the window, it would be over for good.

This was Beckman’s reality. He was all-in or it was all over. It had to work and he would do everything in his power to make it happen.

Chapter 48

The executive airport terminal at Portland International smelled like leather and popcorn, a high-class movie theater. A co-pilot for the chartered jet had carried Luke and Kathryn’s bags from the luggage hold into the terminal on a soggy red carpet. Luke and Kathryn slept most of the flight back and thus did little talking. Luke wasn’t interested in conversation anyway.

He was embarrassed about their kiss the night she told him about
Kirkhorn. He was still mourning his break-up with Rachel and should have known better than to let it go that far. He was relieved that he had followed his head that night, not his sexual urges.

It didn’t take him the entire flight back to Portland to realize that she was just playing him. That was her plan all along. The dollar signs that he now saw spinning in her eyes had clearly impacted her in ways he didn’t expect. Why was this a surprise? What did he really even know about her? She was his boss and this was a job - nothing else to her.

The rock samples were his insurance. He hadn’t let the backpack out of his sight since they left Estevan’s home the previous morning. He used it as a hard pillow on the flight and now carried it slung over his shoulder. It wasn’t going anywhere. 

StuTech
wasn’t going to take him back so his chance of ever getting into Advanced Analytics was gone. Warren Evans didn’t want him at his company or around his daughter. But he had a choice. His first option was to present the samples to Evans and cut his ties with MassEnergy all together. He’d beg for mercy from the old man and hope Evans would keep the Elliot Cosgrove affair a secret. But that would require trusting Evans and that was a long shot.

His second option could be lengthy. Give the samples to
MassEnergy and see what it could do with them. Slowly chip away at StuTech and wait it out. But he was setting himself up for a fall. If Evans learned how instrumental Luke was in getting the samples for MassEnergy – and they proved valuable – Evans would be furious and not hesitate to seek retribution.

His options weren’t appealing and despite the valuable material he held in the backpack, he still wasn’t in control.

Rain streaked the windows of the airport’s terminal lobby. It was a typical Portland day – raining and overcast. They both huddled inside the entryway, behind the double doors leading out to the parking lot. There was supposed to be a car service waiting for them. Beckman ordered them to head straight to the office, no matter when they arrived, so the samples could be analyzed immediately. It was just after 5 p.m.

After about ten minutes of waiting, Luke grew impatient and found the one terminal agent working the entire private lobby.

“We landed about 15 minutes ago and I believe we were supposed to have a car waiting for us. Is there another spot we should be waiting for it to arrive?”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t at the counter when your flight landed,” the middle-aged female agent said. “You must be Luke Kincaid. Are you traveling with, let me see here, Ms. Tate as well?”

“Yes.”

“Again, my apologies, I have your keys right here,” she set two sets of rental car keys on the counter. “There was a mix up of some sort with the car service. I’ve been instructed to provide you each a rental car instead.”

Luke thought it would be nice to stop off at home first and get a shower and change of clothes. Maybe the time away from Kathryn could help him decide his next move, he was certainly ready to part ways with her.

He thanked the agent and scooped up the keys.

“Looks like we’re flying solo the rest of our adventure,” Luke told Kathryn. “Car service issue. They got us each a car to get to the office.”

“Two cars?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Apparently. I’m going to stop at home really quick and change my clothes.”

“No rush, take your time. It’ll probably be a long night at the office.”