The Planck Factor

PROLOGUE

Kevin

He knew he had to act. Major plans were in the works. And lives were on the line.

But he had to eliminate Fred.

Fred had joined the group, ostensibly as a card-carrying anti-government dissident. But something felt off about him.

Fred wasn’t genuinely involved. Kevin had always figured he was up to no good.

It was increasingly clear his allegiance belonged to the woman—a novelist, no less—who was using information he’d learned by infiltrating the group.

In short, Fred was a spy. Kevin shuddered, feeling he’d had an epiphany. This was entirely the wrong time for a spy to come along and botch the group’s plans.

His only option was to kill Fred.

CHAPTER ONE

Jessica

“This sucks!” I shook my head. Why did I open the story with a man, alone at night on a twisty mountain road? I may as well have written, “It was a dark and stormy night . . .” I sighed and reconsidered the first lines again.

I had reworked the opening scene of my novel more than a few times. How many ways were there to show that danger lay ahead?

I banged out a few more lines, but they still didn’t seem quite right. Sometimes writing was like turning on a faucet. I could sit at the keyboard and the words would flow nonstop, brain to fingertips. On days like that, I couldn’t type fast enough. This was not one of those days.

“Ugh!” I stopped typing and read (for the third time? or was it the fourth?) the intro to my suspense novel-in-progress, The Planck Factor, and again reviewed the other scenarios under which Daniel could be killed. I’d chosen an auto accident along a mountain road—plausible enough, but overdone. Would an editor scan the first few lines, roll her eyes, and toss the manuscript into the round file?

How about a mountain road in broad daylight? Nice sunny day. Totally defying expectations. Almost Hitchcock-ian. But the night scenario was so evocative. I liked the dark and the fog, the feeling of dread, the promise of malevolence to come. It was an old trick but, in this case, maybe a good trick.

I envisioned other possibilities—Daniel pushed from a window and made to look like he had fallen? No, no—that and other kinds of accidental death would leave a very obvious body. In my version, Daniel was burned beyond recognition. Only dental records could establish that the body was his. I liked that.

Wait! What if Daniel were attacked in his lab? Then what if someone set it on fire and made it look like an accident? He could be working alone, hear a noise, and think Swede was coming. Then—wham! He’s knocked unconscious or killed. And the poor schmuck gets roasted.

I breathed a deep sigh. If I went that way, I’d have to rethink the whole thing. And that dark scene on the road was so clear in my mind.

I rubbed my eyes, sipped some coffee, and gazed out the window of my condo at the stellar view of the Flatirons, the rocky protrusions thrusting upward at the western edge of Boulder, Colorado. They glowed rust-red in the sunrise.

After a five-minute break, I returned to the keyboard. Working on another scene might help. And I needed to develop the character Alexis.

After an hour’s work, I looked over the results. Not bad. Might even work—assuming it wasn’t too detailed. I thought of Elmore Leonard’s advice: “Leave out the boring parts.” What the heck? Run the changes by my writers group. See what they think.

The sun had risen and the Flatirons stood in sharp relief against a bright blue sky, the white-capped peaks of the Rockies poking up in the distance. I stood and stretched my arms overhead. “Time to make the doughnuts.”

I finished my coffee, washed out the cup and my French press, and gathered my belongings before heading off for a meeting with my program adviser. We had a friendly ongoing argument, of sorts. I initially wanted to write my master’s thesis on how genre fiction could have literary value. She convinced me to choose another subject. But then she

challenged me to write a novel. I took her up on that and even joined the writers group.

As I placed my belongings into my old Dodge Dart, I thought about how genre fiction was often equally worthy of the acclaim often granted to so-called “literary” works. I had no idea if I could accomplish such a thing. I told myself, “You’re not trying to write War and Peace. Just write a story you would read.” What I’d settled on was a suspense story with a hint of science fiction and touch of espionage at its heart. Writing about a scientific topic was a bit of a stretch, but a good one, I hoped. Plus my research into physics was fascinating.

I started the car and headed toward the university.

As I drove off, I glanced in my rearview mirror. Two men in tan jumpsuits emerged from a dark van sitting in my parking lot. A young man with flaming red hair carrying a large case and an older man with a clipboard. They seemed to be walking toward my building.

A dark van? Just like in my story? Too weird. I shook my head and laughed. Jessica Evans, you’re getting paranoid. Since when did life really imitate art?

CHAPTER TWO

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?