Off The Grid (31 page)

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.

Rachel waited for the red lights on all five of the news cameras to come on before beginning. She wanted to make sure nobody missed this.

“The town of Mill Creek has been off the grid for more than 11 years. As much of the country has become electrified through
StuTech’s wireless technology, small towns like Mill Creek have been forgotten. The utility company that served Mill Creek went bankrupt when StuTech took over its more populated service territory. Its customers quickly signed-up with StuTech and soon enjoyed less expensive and more efficient service from us. The original utility couldn’t afford to serve just the tiny, out of way town of Mill Creek. So, like so many other towns across the country, it went dark.

“I’m not from this town, but I’ve met some of its residents,” she glanced back at Tilly and smiled. “They are good, decent people. They didn’t ask to be forgotten, but they have been and they’ve suffered for it. Only about 175 people live in this town today, down from around 4,000 before they went dark. There have been 17 murders in this once-picturesque town in the past three years alone.
People fighting for survival. The mill closed, but not for lack of lumber. There is simply no electricity to turn it on. There is no electricity to do anything.

“Mill Creek shouldn’t suffer because
StuTech succeeded, but it has. So today I’m announcing the end of all this. My company’s actions, that were intended to help society, have hurt too many. We need to fix it and we’re starting here on Main Street. StuTech is committing $25 million to restoring this once proud town. It will start with free electricity to all current and former residents who wish to return. We will restore the buildings that burned to the ground when firefighters couldn’t get water pumped to the scene. We will fix what we broke.

“The lessons we learn here will help us restore countless other towns that have been forced off the grid by our actions.
StuTech is going to make this right. Across the entire country. I promise that.”

Luke and Tilly stepped up on either side of her and smiled. The camera flashes were blinding.

***

The news articles and photographs flooded the Internet and social media sites moments after Rachel ended her question-and-answer session with the media. “
StuTech to Restore Rural America” said one outlet, another claimed, “Electricity Giant Looking Out for the Little Guy” and “Monopoly No More.” The gushing stories generated priceless goodwill toward the company, even as it admitted to its past mistakes. It was brilliant and all Luke’s idea.

Sitting on the front porch of Gina’s home overlooking the town, Luke hoped that it would work. If just one comment from the company said it was a hoax then the plan would fail.

“And now we wait,” Gina said. “Let’s have dinner.”

As they got up to go inside the house, Luke pulled Rachel aside.

“There’s something you need to know about this place. About something I did here. I should have told you before, but I just couldn’t.”

“I know about Elliot Cosgrove,” Rachel said. “Gina told me. She said you shouldn’t have to. Those were different times and you were protecting her from a rapist. You have nothing to explain to me. He deserved what he got.”

A look of relief came over Luke’s face. They embraced, but separated when the loud, thump, thump, thump of propeller blades overhead and the white and red blinking lights of a news helicopter came into view over the town. It kept flying up the curve of the valley and hovered over Gina’s house. Luke and Rachel walked out into the front yard to get a better look and saw it wasn’t a news helicopter.

The black and red
StuTech logo was emblazoned on the bottom of the chopper. It was her father.

“Well, that didn’t take long,”
Rachel said.

Chapter 72

Warren Evans waited until the helicopter blades had stopped spinning completely and the dust had settled before stepping down onto the driveway. He leaned heavily on his cane as he moved toward the front porch of the house.

Rachel met him at the bottom of the steps.

“I think it’s about time for you and me to talk,” he said.

“Good, we’re about to make dinner,” Rachel said. “You’ve got until it’s ready to convince me I should listen.”

With that she turned and walked into the house.

“One more for dinner,” she said to Gina as she passed the group on the porch. The elder Evans slowly mounted the steps and shuffled into the house for the first meal he would share with his daughter in more than two years.

Gina and Tilly worked on a stew in the kitchen. Kathryn quietly excused herself out the back door. Luke had given her a job to complete before dinner was ready.

Luke, Rachel and Evans took seats in the living room. An uncomfortable silence filled the house as everyone waited for Evans to speak. When he did finally speak, his voice was a low, throaty whisper that sounded every day of his 70 years.

“You caused quite a ruckus today with your announcement,” he said to Rachel. “I think it was a clever maneuver. There is no way I can backpedal from the commitments you’ve made for the company. We’d be vilified from Wall Street to Main Street.”

“That was the goal,” she said. “To force corrective action.”

“Then you’ve succeeded,” he said.

“So you’ll agree to allow the reconstruction of off-the-grid towns?”

“You’ve forced my hand,” he said. He wasn’t trying to hide the rage in his voice. “I’ll do what I can to save my company. My life’s work! Your stunt could have taken it all from me.”

“You’ve misused your power,” Luke said. “It was time to make up for it.”

“I gave the world a gift,” Evans said. “If it wasn’t for me, half the country would be in the dark. Misused? No. I should be praised for what I did.”

“For leaving thousands of towns to rot – for people to die?”

“My invention helped far more people than it hurt,” Evans said. “Every revolution has some collateral damage.”

Those words hung in the air. Evans knew about the car accident that killed Luke’s parents. He had done an extensive background check on Luke when he and Rachel started dating. He also knew Luke had an ax to grind with
StuTech, which is why despite his skills and promise, Evans blocked Luke from the Advanced Analytics team at every turn. Luke was a variable that couldn’t be controlled, which is why he had shipped him off to MassEnergy.

“My parents weren’t collateral damage to Gina and me,” Luke said. “It could have been different. You didn’t have to let these towns go dark. They didn’t have to die.”

Evans cleared his throat and picked up a cup of hot tea that Tilly had placed on the table for him. He sniffed it, wrinkled his nose and quickly placed it back on the table.

“I wasn’t driving that truck,” Evans said. “I can’t predict the future either. I didn’t know back then that we’d force so many towns into a blackout. Hell, if not for Rachel’s reports from the Moldova outpost, I wouldn’t even know about the mine.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. 

“I asked you to visit all those outposts because I suspected there was more going on than I was being told,” Evans said. ”I wanted you to confirm we were just setting up to launch our products and nothing more.”

“You can’t possibly want us to believe that you didn’t know each of those locations contained a rare earth element that you needed for wireless electricity,” Rachel said.

“Yes, of course I did. That’s why they were located where they were, but my orders were not followed. I never authorized those sites to be mined for their minerals. We weren’t ready. The first time I heard about Moldova’s factory was when I read your report. That greedy bastard hid it.”

“You mean Steve Lunsford,” Rachel said.

“Yes, him and others.”

“How could you not know?” Rachel asked. “You review the operational budget of every department in the company. You sign off on everything.”

“But I’ve kept the security operations separate from the rest of the company’s books. I paid it out of my private account. I trusted that Steve, my oldest friend, was being truthful. He kept asking for more money – lots of money. I assumed it was to continue to secure the locations, not full-scale mining operations. I wanted the locations under wraps so we could develop them over time, maybe raise demand a bit first. Jack up the price.”

“What about Nevis? Why didn’t you build an outpost there?” Luke asked. “It was just like the other locations.”

“I found out about the ocean field much later on and kept it to myself. I bought Atlantis Oil to keep an eye on it. It was too exposed and too valuable to leave unattended.”

“So Lunsford didn’t know about it?” Rachel asked.

“Not until you showed up,” Evans said, glaring at Luke.

“And you didn’t know he was selling StuTech’s minerals to MassEnergy?”

“Of course not. Apparently he made a deal with a man named James Beckman. Steve provided
MassEnergy the raw material in exchange for a stake in their company. Lot of good it did him.”

“Not knowing what he was up to was one thing, but how could you authorize Lunsford’s goon squad? You even forced me to spy on the competition,” Luke said. 

“You needed to be watched. Still do. I told you to stay away from Rachel. You aren’t like us. Lunsford’s little spy academy was the right way to keep an eye on you.”

“There is no ‘us’ here,
dad
,” Rachel said.

The word “dad” seemed to hit Evans like a dagger. She had never called him that.

“Well then, I think we’re done here.”

As he slowly got to his feet, there was a knock at the front door. The helicopter pilot stepped inside and turned his attention to Evans.

“Sir, we’ve got a slight problem,” the pilot said. “We’ve ruptured a fuel line. It looks like we’re going to be here for a few hours until we can fly in a replacement line and more fuel.”

Evans looked defeated. He sat back down on the sofa.

Only Luke noticed Kathryn emerging from the kitchen, wiping off her hands with a wet towel. Helicopter fuel can be so messy.