CHAPTER 1

Like many of David Oster’s bad decisions, his escape from California to the state of Washington would be justified with an orgy of lies.  The worse the decision, the more he liked to sugarcoat it to his critics, and in this instance, he prepared himself for a virtuoso performance. Trying to get some decent food into his mouth, he eyed the dishes stacked up in the sink of his usually tidy Spanish bungalow, then the chocolate ice cream cartons and the Dewar’s bottles in the trash.  The mail was piled against and atop the phone, a sort of totem against those women trying to get through to him, though it couldn’t block the rapid flash of numerous messages lighting up his voicemail.  His cell was off, his e-mails unread, while he attempted to barricade himself against the pitiless availability of the modern world.  But he knew he couldn’t keep this up much longer.

Only one man could save him from a definitive female throttling, and that man was Niels Hoekstra, director of the Larson Kinne Institute for Applied Physics.  As he stood in the steamy August night air, staring out of the kitchen window at the hibiscus growing halfway up the glass, he decided he had to call Hoekstra himself.  The older man had trouble hearing him for a moment, but at last blared into the phone, “Oster?  Good to speak to you.”  There was rustling in the background and the noise of a glass hitting the table.  “Shh,” Hoekstra said, presumably to someone else in the room, and then in a louder voice,   “I am just finishing up my work.”

“Ahh, I was wondering. . . .”

“Yes?” he growled.