by Darin Gibby
“You should have thought about all this before Sung-soo did his little invasion of the Patent Office database. I don’t think the PTO is going to be too keen to give you anything since you’ve stolen the government’s technology, and it looks like you’ve knocked off one of their examiners. Have you mentioned that to your investors?”
Quinn remained silent.
“Well that’s all water under the bridge now,” Addy continued, trying to sound blasé. “I’m going to end up going to jail, and you will never get any patents. Seems to me like you’ve got a bigger problem. At least I’ll be safe in prison.”
Addy paused and listened, wondering if anyone was closing in on them. Except for Quinn’s heavy breathing, it was quiet.
“What can I say besides I’m sorry? I thought I had everything figured out, but I didn’t realize I was being used. I let my ego get to me, and now it’s going to cost me everything.”
“One thing is for sure, they won’t be selling water cars in the US If the DOE has patents on any part of your technology, they are going to put the hammer down. This little boy from Korea is not going to beat Uncle Sam.”
Addy expected another groan, but he was silent. Instead, Quinn’s face brightened with a wry smile.
“But you could.”
“Don’t try to sweet-talk me,” she said. “And I already told you, when this is all over, even if I can get out of doing any prison time, I’m not going to have a license to practice law.”
“I know you have a plan,” Quinn persisted. “You wouldn’t go to prison without a fight. Whatever you’ve conjured up, I want to help. It will be my way of making things right.”
“What makes you so sure I have a plan?”
“I know you too well. You do have a plan. Admit it.”
“I do, but I’m not going to tell you what it is.”
She stopped. She was almost certain she heard the hum of a car’s engine. It could be one of her neighbors, but it could be someone else.
“Did you hear that?” Quinn said. “We need to get going. Now will you accept my offer?” He reached up slowly and took the blade of the knife between two fingers and pushed it away. “I want to see everyone driving a water car. I don’t care about the money. The only thing I want is credit for my invention. I’ve studied history. I don’t want to be another Eli Whitney, who spent his life trying to enforce his patents. Life is too short. I’ll leave WTG, and we can work together.”
Addy set the knife down on the floor, but stayed atop his chest. She didn’t trust him, but he had something she still needed. She could use him just as he’d used her.
“There’s more,” Quinn continued. “I think there’s something between us—”
Addy could feel the heat in her cheeks. Even if she did have feelings for Quinn, she wasn’t about to admit it. And she was still too furious to even like him. But when she gazed into his bloodstained face, something struck her heart.
“Maybe I do too,” she muttered, “but there’s still this trust issue.”
“You can trust me. Is there anything I can do to prove it?”
Addy sensed her chance. “How much are you worth—in cash?”
“If that’s what we’re going to talk about, can’t you at least let me sit up?”
Addy got up and off him and waited while he hoisted himself up. Quinn rubbed the back of his head.
“Are you okay?”
“I’ve got a goose egg the size of a softball.”
“I’m sorry about that, but I think you understand. Now, about my question.”
“How much do you need?”
“A little over four million.”
Quinn’s head whipped around, his eyes wide. “What, are you kidding?”
“You said the money didn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t. But what makes you suppose I have that much money?”
“Your stock in WTG. How much is it worth?”
“I couldn’t sell it all at once. They wouldn’t let me.”
“Don’t you have a marketing budget or some kind of other slush fund?”
“Getting that much money isn’t easy. It will set off all kinds of alarms.”
“Tell you what, you come up with the money, and I’ll trust you. Perry needs it by tomorrow morning.”
Quinn grunted. “You know we’re not exactly on speaking terms.”
“I know how Perry is, but he still needs the money—by ten tomorrow. You know how to contact him.”
Quinn smoothed his hair and tapped his fingers gingerly around his contusion. “You really need that much?”
“You were right. I do have a plan. I’m going to tell our story to the world, tell them that if it weren’t for a few corrupt governments and some unsavory companies, we’d all be driving cars fueled by water. Then I’m going to recruit humanity to fight for me. It’s the only way I can prove my innocence.”
“I agree with you, but I don’t see how you’re going to do it.”
“Just trust me with your money and you’ll find out.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You’re the one who said something about becoming mincemeat.”
The sound of a car door closing interrupted their conversation. Addy flinched, quivered, then whispered while she felt around for her money, “Let’s go.”
They slipped out the back door, scrambled over the brick fence, and made their way to Addy’s rental car. Addy fumbled with her keys to unlock the door.
“Where’s your car?” she said pressing the key fob.
“I took a cab,” Quinn said, staring at her swollen hand. “I don’t dare get in the same car twice.”
“Get in. We can talk while I drive.”
“I think you should let me drive. What happened?”
“Never mind,” Addy said opening her door. “We should be going.”
Quinn winced the moment his head encountered the headrest. Addy started the car and pulled into the street. “Where can I take you? Half Moon Bay?”
“No, they’d find me there. I gave up that place. How about the Stanford Park Hotel?”
“Got it,” she said as she turned north toward Palo Alto.
“Where are you staying?” he asked.
“I can find a place,” Addy said, since she still had serious trust issues.
“Have it your way. So tell me about your plan.”
“I need another Hindy,” she said without further explanation. “Perry and I went to get her out of impound, but she was gutted.”
He laughed, then grabbed his head and moaned.
“What’s so funny?” Addy said. “I’m being serious.”
“I know you are. You forget that using Hindy to announce the discovery was my idea. You stole my idea.”
“I had that idea long before you ever did,” she said, then pursed her lips. “Anyway, Hindy is out of the question. She’s still in the impound lot, doesn’t even have a transmission or drive train, and I can’t get her out, even if you gave me a fuel cell.”
“So, let me see if I understand. You don’t have a fuel cell that will work with the catalyst, and you don’t have a car for the fuel cell.”
“Something like that,” she admitted.
“And you need me, not only to get your hands on a few million dollars, but also to provide a car with one of my fuel cells in it.”
“We can call it an even trade. You get me the money and the car, and I’ll forgive you for ruining my life.”
Quinn took a deep breath. “Let me get this straight. You want me to give up my company, get you a few million in cash, add to that a new car, and risk my life, all without telling me what you are planning.”
“That’s right. You’ll need to trust me.”
“No. You won’t be safe. You need to let me help you.”
“I can take care of myself,” Addy insisted.
Quinn raised his eyebrows, then adjusted the rearview mirror and studied the headlights behind them.
“Why won’t you tell me? I want to be a part
of what you’re doing. After all, it is my invention.”
Addy sighed. He was right. He needed to be as passionate about her plan as she was. Just asking for money and a car wasn’t going to do that.
“I suppose that’s fair,” she began. “Perry and I have planned a massive public relations campaign. We are going to make this story go viral. We’ve set up everything we need for it to take off, social media, major news networks, freelance reporters, everything. But we need a spark, something to get the world’s attention. If we could do that, everyone would want to chatter about it. Everyone would demand a car that runs on water.”
“And what kind of spark are you thinking about, the one that is going to cost me the pittance of four million dollars?”
Addy paused to let the tension build. Quinn shifted in his seat, turning to face her.
“A Super Bowl ad,” she finally said.
This time Quinn didn’t laugh. “So you’re going to make a commercial, driving a new Hindy that runs on water.”
“Actually, it will be a personal appearance on the playing field, but you get the point. It would be seen by more than a billion people. And when they realize there might be a world without gas stations, and all the pollution, poisons, and politics associated with the petroleum industry, they are going to want to know more.
“We’ve got websites, pages on social networks, everything set up to feed them the truth. Your patent application is going to be published for all the world to see. And I’ll have a blog with my story, how I was set up, how our government tried to stop this. I’ll plead my case to the world.”
Quinn’s face remained stoic while he absorbed her idea.
“Well?” Addy said when he didn’t respond.
He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.
“What?”
“It’s a good plan,” he finally said, “but—”
“But what?”
“The Super Bowl is tomorrow.”
“And that’s why I need the money pronto, and a new Hindy. It’s going to be a live commercial.”
Quinn clapped his hands. “I like it,” he said. “In fact, it’s brilliant! It’s worth betraying WTG, and it might just work.”
Addy felt herself grinning, the first time since she’d walked up the steps of the Patent Office with Quinn before their fateful interview with Examiner Johnston.
“I’ll see if I can get the money, but it’s not going to be easy. I’m not sure what restrictions our banks have on our accounts, especially for a transfer in less than twenty-four hours. And it is the weekend. All I can say is that I’ll give it my best shot.”
“And the fuel cell?”
“That one is a little easier. We always knew we’d need a show car when the catalyst was finished. We built one each for Asia, Europe, and the US To avoid problems with US customs, we had it built here. It’s got the same fuel cell that we showed to Examiner Johnston, only on a much larger scale. I would have brought it to the interview, but you said a small model would be good enough, so I didn’t bother with the car.”
“Where is it?”
“Good question. We keep moving it around so it won’t be discovered. But it’s somewhere close. It hasn’t left the Bay Area.”
Addy smiled. Looked like her plan just might work.
“The problem is that you have the only available catalyst,” Quinn said.
“Understood, but I won’t give it to you. That’s my only leverage.”
“If I’m going to get the money, it would really help if could show them I have the catalyst.”
Addy knew she wasn’t going to give in, no matter what Quinn offered. “I’m confident you can find a way without it.”
Quinn raised his eyes, fiddled with the rearview mirror and said, “I need you to hang a quick left, then floor it. Now!”
Addy obeyed, squealing the tires and sending agonizing bolts of pain from her injured hand while she cranked on the wheel. Quinn gave her a few more directions, telling her to keep her foot glued to the pedal. Every time she turned, he looked into the mirror and shook his head. “We’ve got to shake them.”
“How? I can’t drive any faster without killing us. We’re going to run into the Stanford campus.”
“That’s the idea,” Quinn said. “I’m taking you close to the dorms, where there will be plenty of students. Then we’re going to ditch the car and make a run for it. Find any way you can to blend in. We’ll find each other later.”
Addy wheeled the car to the right, feeling the tires separate from the pavement and settle back down as they shot onto Campus Drive, Addy doing her best not to hit one of the students pedaling away on his cruiser.
Quinn pointed to her left, and she screeched into a small parking lot next to a two-story sandstone building. “This is as good a place as any,” he said. “Leave your phone in the car.”
“It’s okay. I bought one of those cheap reloadable ones.”
“No,” Quinn shot back. “As long as you are connected to the phone network, the feds will find you. They know where you’ve been, and they can map that up with calls made from the same area. By now they know your phone number.”
“Then how can I call you?”
Quinn dove his hand into his jeans pocket and fished out a smart phone. “Here, use this one. It can’t connect to the phone network. The only way it works is using local Wi-Fi hotspots. Coffee shops are usually good places. You can’t be tracked this way. And, it’s got some apps that might come in handy.”
Addy pulled in behind a row of scooters and shoved the car into park. She swiveled around to see who had been following her. Quinn yanked on his door handle. “Don’t look, just disappear.”
“Wait, how will I find you? And the money? And the car?”
Quinn reached out for her hand and slipped a wadded-up gum wrapper into her uninjured hand, closing it into a fist. “Don’t lose this. It has my phone number along with a simple code to decrypt my geolocation, just in case our messages get intercepted.”
“You’re going to send me GPS coordinates?”
“Yeah, like in Vietnam. I’ve got to find the car, then text you the location, but I can’t risk letting anyone else find it. I’ll set up the warehouse as a cache, then encrypt the location coordinates. We’ve got a lot of people chasing us right now.”
“But you said our phones were safe.”
“They should be, but with technology these days, you never know. If the text is discovered, I suspect some of them are smart enough to crack the code and figure out it’s a geographical coordinate, but the encryption will slow them down enough to let you make your Super Bowl appearance.”
Addy raised her eyebrows.
“You have a better plan?”
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “It’s brilliant.”
33
ADDY DIDN’T BOTHER closing the car door before she fled, sprinting over a cobblestone path between two dorm units, clutching Quinn’s phone in her good hand.
She darted across a large field and disappeared behind a row of hedges, gasping for breath while she peeked over to see if she could glimpse her pursuers.
The spacious lawn, dimly lit by a few streetlights, was empty. She’d managed a clean escape. She wondered whether Quinn had been as fortunate.
The sun had long disappeared, and the damp, cool evening made her shiver. She remembered Quinn wanted to stay at the Stanford Park Hotel, which was just on the other side of campus. Her problem was that she only had the money from her condo that she’d stuffed down the front of her top. She fished it out and unfolded the wad. A hundred and six twenties. Not nearly enough. Rooms in Palo Alto never went for less than two-fifty.
With her adrenaline rush seeping away absent immediate danger, Addy’s body began to crave sleep. She couldn’t remember how long she’d been running on empty. She told herself to keep pushing on. There was still too much to do. With the Super Bowl only a few hours away, sleep was hardly an option.
If Quinn could g
et the money and the car, she still had a chance at making her debut. She had to let Perry know Quinn was back in the picture, and that Perry should start making plans to finalize the live commercial and to kick off their PR campaign.
Her biggest problem was how to communicate. The phone Quinn had given her could send a text, but only if she found a Wi-Fi hotspot. She considered walking to Wyckoff’s offices, hoping to find Perry working late. But she worried that she’d been detected and might possibly endanger Perry’s life.
Her best bet, she decided, was to find an all-night coffee shop, settle her nerves, and send Perry a message. There would be plenty near the hospital; strategically positioned to serve those with loved ones waiting to hear the latest updates. With her injured hand, she would fit right in.
Keeping in the shadows, she made her way across the enormous campus until she found Tully’s Coffee Shop, across the street from the emergency entrance. She found a padded booth, ordered a cup of coffee and asked for the Wi-Fi password.
She tapped out a text to Perry, then waited. Her coffee arrived, and she slowly sipped from the cup, feeling the beverage warm her core. Perhaps he didn’t recognize her new phone number. She considered putting her name in another text, but figured that was too risky.
So she waited several minutes and typed out another message to Perry, asking him to at least confirm he received her message. Again, no response. She wondered whether he, too, had been overcome with exhaustion. She could feel her own eyelids drooping. She wanted to send Lynda a text message, asking her to make sure she watched the halftime show at the Super Bowl, but her gut told her it was a bad idea. She could only hope Lynda would be watching.
When Perry still didn’t respond, Addy decided a catnap would do her good, just a few minutes while she waited for Perry’s reply. She switched off her phone, leaned over on the table, rested her head on her arms, and dropped into a deep sleep. It was about four-thirty when she felt a hand shaking her. A long-haired woman wearing a pinstriped uniform hovered over her.
“Sorry,” the waitress said. “I let you sleep long enough. Time to move on. They’ve got places over at the hospital if you want to crash there.”
“Sure,” Addy said, rubbing her eyes. “Just let me shoot off a text.”
