“I think I’ll be too busy. Besides, I’m not sure Erica likes football.”
“I don’t envy you then.”
“About Erica?”
“No, I mean the renovations to the stadium parking lot aren’t done yet. Everybody’s going to have to park in the commuter lots, one of which is right outside this building. By 10:00 Saturday morning, there are going to be 75,000 rabid Miami and Tech fans in this town.”
“Great. Just what we need.”
“Stay in here and you’ll be fine. Now, let’s take a little tour of my new domain.”
After about twenty minutes, Kevin felt more comfortable in the lab. All of the equipment was familiar to him, and he could have the Adamas process set up by the end of the day tomorrow.
Ted handed Kevin a set of keys hanging from a black Harley-Davidson keychain. Ted pointed to the keys as he spoke. “The first one is to my office. I’ll show you where that is in a minute. The next one is to the deadbolt on the lab door. This one is to the cabinets over on the far end. And this one is the key to the building. They lock the front doors around six. The other keys are to rooms you won’t need to get into.”
“Are you sure no one’s going to ask me what I’m doing here?”
“You know what it’s like during the conference. Almost all the professors will be there. The people who are left will just think I’ve got a new student. Say that if anybody asks.”
Ted locked up the lab and led Kevin down the linoleum-lined hall to another beat up wooden door. He opened it to reveal a cramped office sparsely furnished with two bookshelves and the requisite metal desk. Books were still piled in boxes on the floor, and papers overflowed the desk space not occupied by the Macintosh. Kevin bit his lip and nodded his head.
“I know. It’s not exactly what I was hoping for,” said Ted. “But it hasn’t got that homey touch yet. One thing I do have, though, is a view.”
Ted raised the venetian blinds. From directly below the window to about a hundred yards out stretched the commuter lot he had talked about. Past the expansive lot, however, was a splendid mountain vista brightly lit by the full moon and dotted by lights from scattered houses.
“Bet you have fun riding your bike here,” said Kevin, thinking of the unrelenting flatness of Houston. Ted was an avid road cyclist and would routinely bike 75 miles in a weekend.
“You know it. Even after two months, my legs are still killing me from all these hills.”
Ted paused as if he didn’t know how to say something. “You sure you don’t want to go to the police?”
Kevin hadn’t told Ted about the run-in with the police yesterday or the death of his father. He worried that it might make Ted rethink letting Kevin use the lab.
“No. At least not yet. Maybe when we’re done in the lab.”
“How long will you need it?”
“Two days. Maybe a little longer. We’ll be out of here by Sunday night.”
“No problem. Stay as long as you need.” Ted didn’t ask more about why Kevin wanted the lab, but Kevin could tell he was curious.
“Anything else you need?” Ted asked. “I saw you brought a cellular phone and laptop with you, but if you need to use my computer, you’re more than welcome.”
“We won’t be using the cellular phone. Call us paranoid, but it may be traced.”
That brought a raised eyebrow from Ted, but he didn’t pursue it. “You can use ours if you want while we’re gone. I got one of those deals. You know, get the phone free, sign up for two years’ service. Don’t worry about using it. We get 30 minutes a month included.”
“Aren’t you the yuppie?”
“Actually, I was going to tell you in a couple of weeks anyway, but since you’re here, I might as well tell you now. I got it for Janice, so I wouldn’t be worried. She’s pregnant.”
Kevin’s jaw dropped. Then he grabbed Ted’s hand and shook it furiously.
“Congratulations, you stud. I knew you had it in you, but I didn’t know it would be so soon.”
“Don’t mention it to Janice. She wants to wait until she’s past three months.”
“No problem,” said Kevin. “But you have to let me buy you a beer on the way home.” He was too tired to get any work done tonight anyway.
Ted looked at his watch. “I think we can find an open bar at 11:00 in a college town.”
CHAPTER 26
In a neighborhood near the Rice University campus, Bern drove as Lobec searched for a house at 1509 Albans. It was 1:00 pm on Thursday, and Lobec knew he was running out of time. The longer Kevin Hamilton and Erica Jensen remained at large, the greater the chance that he would never be able to recover the Adamas notebook, that they would turn it over to the police or someone else who may eventually understand the significance of it. Then the chase would be over. Every minute was valuable, and he and Mr. Bern were wasting it by following his arrogant boss’s orders.
Lobec hadn’t thought even Tarnwell would be foolish enough to bet everything on an untested technology. Then Tarnwell had proclaimed to the shareholders and press that he would announce a revolutionary new process next Tuesday, five days from now. With Adamas, his net worth would triple overnight. But if Tarnwell didn’t have the invention in hand at the time of the press conference, the stock would plummet, leaving him with no way to service the debt on the new company. It was all or nothing. Lobec supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised.
Despite Tarnwell’s orders, Lobec had taken time to find out why Murray Hamilton had left his son and Erica Jensen at LuminOptics. After some monetary persuasion, the sales representative told Lobec they had purchased a laser at well above list price.
The reason for the purchase was immediately obvious to Lobec. They had obtained the laser in order to repeat the Adamas experiment, to produce enough diamond for evidence. It was possible that Kevin Hamilton did not even believe that the process worked. All of which led to the conclusion that they would acquire the rest of the equipment necessary and find somewhere to run the experiment. If Lobec found that place, he would find them.
Instead of looking for that place as they should, some of his men were staking out various locations throughout the city or maintaining phone taps, and the rest of his team, including Lobec and Bern, was interviewing anyone in Houston connected with Hamilton or Jensen. Although he did not agree with the tactic, they had learned some information. The hospital confirmed that Erica Jensen had called the school on Tuesday to tell them she would not be in the rest of the week, giving the excuse that she had a death in the family.
They had also learned from the transaction for the laser that Miss Jensen had a sizable insurance payout from the death of her parents and had used it to cut a check for the laser. It also explained how they were able to get by without the use of credit cards. She had merely made another withdrawal from an automated teller machine in Dallas the same day Lobec tried to capture them. With the additional three hundred dollars, they wouldn’t need to withdraw money for at least several more days. Lobec had instructed Mitch to report Murray Hamilton’s pickup truck stolen, but he didn’t have much faith in the ruse working twice. His quarry could be anywhere in the contiguous United States by now.
“Here it is,” said Lobec, spying the number “1509” through the leaves of a live oak.
Bern stopped the car in front of the house. They got out and prepared their identification as they walked toward the door. Lobec carefully touched his throbbing nose. No one had mentioned his injuries, but he did observe several curious looks during the interviews.