The Planck Factor

Chapter 2

Daniel

Daniel had thought about burning the evidence of the research he and Swede had worked so hard to gather—-but throwing away all those years of work was more than he could bear. Did it come down to pride? Daniel maneuvered his VW bug along the switchback turns. Was it foolish pride that had led Robert Oppenheimer to head up the Manhattan Project?

Not pride--fear. Fear that Nazi Germany would develop the atom bomb first. Today, we're not fighting Nazis. Today, it's much harder to figure out who the bad guys are.

The VW's headlights pierced the light veil of fog descending around Oregon's coastal range. In places, the veil thickened into a shroud. The headlight beams swept across sentinel trunks of tall Douglas firs. Daniel squinted from the reflected glare as the car plunged into another cottony patch of fog.

All the things he'd never told Alexis and the arrangements he had made in case the worst should happen. He'd done his best to keep Alexis out of it and protect himself. Found someone who didn't have as big a stake in the whole thing as he and Swede did. Someone other than Alexis that he could trust.

A wave of guilt over what he'd never said to Alexis mingled with his anxiety about where all his work could lead if allowed to get into the wrong hands.

Daniel turned the wheel hard to follow a tight curve, and the VW slid sideways beneath him—-a feeling of being totally out of control—-in keeping with the rest of his life.

He steered as far from the precipitous drop along the roadside as he could. One moment, Daniel peered through the murk. The next, he squinted as his rear-view glared reflected high beams.

Daniel's heartbeat quickened. Keep calm, he told himself. Then, the car jolted as the vehicle behind him rammed his car.

"What the fuck?" he said. Daniel gripped the wheel harder. He focused on breathing evenly and staying on the road.

Daniel spotted a crossroad up ahead that led into the mountains. If he could just turn fast enough, maybe the vehicle behind him would overshoot the road. Hopefully, he'd lose the tail.

As he approached the road,Daniel waited until the last second and yanked the wheel left. The car spun asif floating. Daniel held fast to the wheel. A loud crash filled the air.Everything went dark.    

***

Alexis

Two weeks. That's all the time Alexis had allowed herself after her fiancé, Daniel's, tragic death. Just two weeks off. Then it was back to her studies. She had a limited scholarship, after all. No parents, no big inheritance, no trust fund to rely on. She couldn't drop school, after all the work she'd done on her master's thesis on existentialism and modern literature. She had to keep going.

Alexis had to stay on track to get her Masters in Philosophy at the University of Oregon within the three years her scholarship allowed. But now her studies were more than a means to a scholastic end. Her textbooks were a blanket wrapped around her consciousness. One that protected her from her parents' deaths, barely a year ago, under circumstances too painful to contemplate. And now Daniel. It was too much to take in.

Alexis worked in her carrel until the lights flickered. The library closed in ten minutes. Nine o'clock already? Where did the time go?

Reluctantly, she closed out her word processing program and turned off her laptop. She placed her books neatly to one side on the carrel's shelf and the little paper placard that read "Reserved" in the middle.

Alexis placed her belongings in a knapsack and, with a casual wave to the reference librarian at the desk, strolled out the door toward the parking lot. She placed the knapsack on the passenger seat of her aging Toyota Tercel, rounded the car and got in.

As her Tercel roared to life, further back in the lot, a small dark van's engine did the same. The van held three men—-one behind the wheel and two in the back. Alexis eased out of the space and exited the lot. The van followed.