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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 along 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 rearview mirror reflected the glare of 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 as if 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 out of 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 master’s 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 the death of her parents 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 would be closing 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 dropped the knapsack onto the passenger seat of her aging Toyota Tercel, rounded the car, and got in.
As her Tercel roared to life, farther 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.
CHAPTER THREE
Jessica
My adviser Shelley removed her glasses and set them on the desk. “You’re making progress with your thesis. I must say I’m impressed.” She ran her fingers through her shoulder-length hair and rolled her head back, rotating it as if to loosen her neck muscles.
I could feel an inadvertent smile form as I pulled my manuscript pages from a folder. “If you like that, I think you’re going to love this.”
Shelley put her glasses back on and glanced at the first page. Laughing soundlessly, she grinned. “Oh, my God. You’re actually writing that novel?”
“How could I not accept such a challenge?”
She turned her attention to the story. After turning the page, she said, “Well, you’re off to a rousing start, that’s for sure.”
“And you don’t think the beginning is too corny?”
“Well.” Shelley paused and set aside the manuscript. “It’s not exactly War and Peace, is it?”
“Exactly! I’m not trying to write the Great American Novel. I’m just trying to tell a great story.”
Shelley shrugged. “To me, it reads like the stuff that sells. Not that I’m a big expert.”
“Nobody is.”
Shelley nodded. “Got that right. Look how that ‘Fifty Shades’ book did. Who would have thought?” She shook her head. “Think you can keep this up while working on your thesis? Writing a novel isn’t the easiest thing.”
