by Linda Cajio
He groaned and rolled onto his back. “I’m going to have to give you a lesson on how not to kill the mood.”
Ten
Adam was smiling as he retrieved Diana’s clothing from his living room. It had been an incredible night, and he hated the thought of its ending.
As he walked back into the bedroom, he admitted that he hadn’t allowed Diana to decide consciously if she wanted to make love. Instead he’d seduced her into it, quite ruthlessly. But he’d been desperate. Witnessing her metamorphosis had driven him nearly insane. She was his. He knew it, and she had seemed to know it too. He’d understood that she’d only been testing her feminine appeal to other men, but he’d been afraid that she would like the experiment and decide to “expand her horizons.” He had no regrets about forcing their relationship onto a more intimate level, and he was damn grateful that Diana didn’t either. Although he firmly believed that time would make no difference to their feelings, he realized he couldn’t rush her into anything else. She had to be very sure of both herself and him before that.
He knocked on the bathroom door. “Diana?”
The door opened a few inches and a long-nailed hand reached out for the clothes. He grinned as he handed them over. The door closed.
“I still haven’t figured out how you grew those nails in two days,” he said through the door.
“I haven’t figured out how I’m going to type on a keyboard without the darn things hooking in between the keys,” she called back. “You’ll probably have to rescue me again.”
He chuckled.
“I think torture chambers are masquerading as beauty salons nowadays,” she continued. “I’ve been sculpted, creamed, masked, waxed, plucked, cut, washed, and dried by a real nasty named Raoul and his two very nice assistants.” She sighed loudly. “It was wonderful.”
At her obvious ecstasy, Adam burst into laughter. Diana was very much a woman, to endure such horrors and actually think of it as pampering. Still, he had to admit the results were devastating to a man. Lord, but she had looked gorgeous. And it was very evident she had done it for him.
There was no sense telling her he’d always found her sexy as hell, he thought. After all she’d gone through, he doubted she’d appreciate the compliment.
“If I didn’t have this damned hotel annex to work on, I wouldn’t be taking you home,” he said, hoping she understood why he couldn’t spend the day with her. Hell, he thought. Of all times.
“Don’t worry about it, Adam. I’ll see you tonight.” There was a pause. “Will I see you tonight?”
“Diana. I’ll torture myself today because of my obligations. But I will not torture myself beyond that. We’ll have the whole weekend together. And more.”
“Good.”
He relaxed against the door. They’d probably spend the weekend at her house, and he couldn’t think of a more perfect place to be. Hidden away in the Berkeley Hills, her computer on guard against intruders, it would be a refuge where they could make love and talk.
Realizing he’d end up spending the weekend trapped at the office if he didn’t get dressed and take Diana home, he straightened and banged on the door.
“Get a move on, Diana. A knight is only chivalrous for so long when it comes to the bathroom!”
“I feel like a … wanton, coming home in my gown at nine in the morning,” Diana said as Adam’s Trans Am turned onto the long, shaded drive of her property.
“By rights you should be back in my bed being a naked wanton,” Adam said. “Tonight, though, you can start being a wanton for the weekend.”
She grinned. “With mirrors?”
“You’d better be careful,” he warned her. “You might just get what you ask for.”
It was amazing how natural she felt with Adam now, Diana thought. While her mind had been sidetracked by doubts and suspicions, her heart had been heading in the right direction all along. Still, she wouldn’t have realized how she felt about him—or how he felt about her—if she hadn’t acted on those doubts and suspicions. She idly wondered how long she still would have foundered if she hadn’t instigated the showdown with Adam and his brother. At this point she wasn’t sure whether she should thank Dan or murder him for the trouble he’d caused. She would have to talk to him soon, though, making it very clear that her relationship with Adam would in no way affect to whom her games were finally sold.
That thought brought on a more frightening one. What if Adam got upset if she didn’t sell her games to his brother? Unfortunately. Dan’s low offer already made that a real possibility.
“I’ll be back around five-thirty,” Adam said, breaking into her thoughts.
Realizing the car was nearing her front door, she nodded, and said, “I’ll cook dinner.”
“I’ll bring dinner,” he corrected her as he parked next to the deck. “I don’t want you wasting energy cooking anything but me.”
She shook her head. “I always knew you weren’t a knight in shining armor.”
“Found out at last.”
As he took her in his arms, she sternly told herself not to worry about imagined problems until they actually did happen. Surely they could be worked out. Surely.
Adam suddenly turned away before he’d kissed her, and she realized that something at the house had caught his attention. She followed his gaze, and to her surprise she saw her cousin Angelica striding out the front door. A flush rose instantly to her cheeks.
“Who’s that?” Adam asked, releasing her and straightening.
“My cousin.” She opened the passenger door. “I wonder what she’s doing here.”
Angelica leaned over the deck railing and demanded, “Where the hell have you been, Diana?”
Diana stepped out of the car and shut the door behind her. She wanted to curse heartily at her cousin’s interruption. And honestly, she thought as she heard Adam getting out of the car, Angelica wasn’t an idiot. Adam’s presence ought to be self-explanatory.
Still she stammered. “Well … ah …”
“You’d better get in here,” Angelica broke in. “I can’t figure out what’s missing, and—”
“Missing!” Diana yelped.
“You had a breakin last night.”
Diana raced up the steps. “That’s impossible! Charlie was on duty.…”
Not wasting any more words, she ran into the house and headed straight for the workroom. Nothing could circumvent her computer, she thought wildly. Charlie couldn’t be enticed with a piece of drugged meat, as a dog might. Charlie couldn’t be bribed. He was even battery-backed in case of a power failure. She checked him every day to make sure he was working properly.…
“Nooooo!” she screamed, skidding to a halt on the threshold of the workroom.
It was a shambles. Chairs were overturned, papers, books, and disks were strewn everywhere, and the bookcases were lying on the floor like rusted ships left to rot in the shallows.
Curiously enough, the computers themselves seemed untouched. Then she spotted Charlie, and cried out a second time.
She ran over and knelt on the floor next to the smashed console and broken circuit boards that had once been her favorite computer. Tears coursed down her cheeks as she touched the wreckage in disbelief.
“Diana!” Angelica exclaimed as she came into the room.
Diana barely heard her, or Adam’s barnyard curse.
“They killed Charlie,” she whispered.
Angelica knelt beside her and put an arm around her. “I know, kid. I’m sorry.”
“He was old and outdated … but he was my first computer. I learned how to program on him … he had such a lovely screen editor. And now he’s … dead!”
Diana burst into tears. She knew it was irrational to cry over an inanimate object, but in an odd way Charlie had always seemed alive to her. He talked back, scolded her with beeps on occasion, and was contrary whenever she wanted him to do something difficult. He had had a unique quirkiness that had always made her think of him as an individual. And
now he was gone.
Suddenly she was in Adam’s soothing arms. She pressed her face against his chest and sobbed.
“Go ahead and cry it out, sweetheart,” he said as he patted her back.
She cried for a long time, until all she had left inside her were watery hiccups. Gulping them back, she tried to calm herself.
“This place is a fortress,” Adam said. “How could burglars have gotten past the alarm system?”
“The police aren’t sure,” Angelica replied. “They told me they always thought nobody could break in here. As far as they can tell, though, the people who did it certainly knew what they were doing. The police think the phone line was cut first, so the computer’s automatic police call wouldn’t go through, and then the sliding glass doors were smashed. The only way to stop the outside alarm was to destroy the computer. Someone who was passing by happened to hear the alarm before it was cut off, and called the police. When the police couldn’t get Diana, they called me.”
Nobody spoke for a moment. Then Adam asked, “Sweetheart, do you think you’re ready to start sorting through the mess?”
Sniffling, Diana looked up into his concerned face and nodded. She gazed around the room again and said, “At least my equipment looks okay. Except … Charlie.”
“That’s odd,” Adam said. “Although it’s possible it was just vandals. The damage looks as if it were done more to destroy than for the sake of burglary.”
“Vandals are usually kids,” Angelica said. “I can’t imagine kids going this far and passing up a free computer, can you? Besides, no other room in the house has been touched.”
Adam frowned. “Maybe the police scared them away before they could take very much.”
Diana gasped at his words. She hadn’t even considered what might have been stolen! If the thieves had gotten her Sir Morbid game, and if they realized that it was the first adventure game to utilize voice capabilities, they could also realize how much it would be worth to a software company.…
She pulled herself out of his arms and ran over to the far wall, where the coin-operated games stood. Sitting on her heels, she carefully examined the side panel of one of the games, then pressed her fingers along a thread-sized crack. The hidden panel flap swung outward, and she slumped in relief at the sight of a small square lead box. She lifted it out and opened it. Her disks were safely tucked inside—none missing. There were other copies hidden in different parts of the house, but since the intruders had only disturbed this room, the additional disks were probably still safe.
“Is it there?” Angelica asked.
“Sir Morbid is still with us.” With a smile, Diana returned the box to its hiding place, then rose to her feet.
Angelica shook her head. “You’ve got to be kidding! That’s so open and easy!”
“No, it’s not,” Diana said. “Anyway, these aren’t the only copies I have of the Sir Morbid game, but they’re the only ones in this room. Disks are easy to hide as long as you’re careful about magnetic fields from TVs—”
“What about these others?” Adam asked as he bent down and picked up several disks from the floor.
“I’m not as concerned about those as I am about my games in progress,” she answered, stepping around the mess on the floor as she walked over to him. “I don’t bother to hide software that’s already been published and copyrighted, as these are. I wouldn’t lose a livelihood if they were stolen. But I’ll have to go through them to be sure none are missing. From the number on the floor, though, I’d have to say that most of them are here. And that’s odd.” She took one out of his hand and held it up. “This one alone retails for several hundred dollars.”
“You’re kidding!” Adam exclaimed, staring in disbelief at the little black cardboard squares he still held.
“Nope. It’s not the value of the materials, but the amount of time that goes into creating a program, that makes it so costly. A complicated business program can take a team of programmers years to bring to a salable state. The burglars must have been very dumb not to know that these would still be worth a pretty penny to an unscrupulous computer enthusiast.”
“Or to the copy crackers,” Angelica added. She began to collect some of the scattered disks.
“What are copy crackers?” Adam asked, his brows drawn together in puzzlement.
“People who crack a program’s protection scheme and make copies to distribute,” Diana said. She took the rest of the disks from him and made a mental note of the titles before setting them on a table.
“You’ve heard of bootleg records and tapes?” Angelica asked.
He nodded.
“Well, the software business has the same problem, in spite of the copy-protection schemes built into the programs. One out of every ten copies of Diana’s already published games is an illegal one. I figure just on ‘Space Pirates’ alone she’s lost about half a million in royalties from illegal copies. That, mind you, is at less than two dollars in royalties per copy.”
“Can’t something be done?” Adam asked.
“Those caught are prosecuted to the hilt, but it’s tough to catch them. I’m eternally grateful the burglars didn’t get any games Diana’s working on now. You can’t copyright an idea, and until a program is submitted to a company it’s only considered an idea by the law. Those who did this could have sold it on their own, and Diana would have received nothing.”
“Then it’s a damn good thing the bastards didn’t know what they were doing,” Adam said in a cold voice. “Because I would have killed them.”
“My hero,” Diana murmured affectionately, and kissed his cheek.
He drew her into his embrace. “If you had been here alone last night …”
She wrapped her arms about his waist in answer. She was feeling better, although she still shuddered at the thought of how easily her home had been invaded. Her workroom was a disaster, but obviously the intruders had been scared away before they could take anything of real value. They’d probably done a quick trashing for revenge.
A dreadful thought occurred to her, and she whispered, “What if they come back?”
Adam’s arms tightened. “I’ll be here.”
She nodded, feeling safe and protected. She would always be safe with him. Then she remembered that he needed to be at his job that morning.
Reluctantly she stepped away from him. “You have to get to work, Adam, and I have to clean up this mess and talk to the police.”
“First I’ll help you clean up,” he said, “then I’ll go to the office. But I’d better call John.”
“No phone,” Angelica said. “The line was cut, remember.”
“Damn!”
“Good,” Diana said sternly, her hands on her hips. “Now you have to go to work.…”
Half an hour later Diana sighed with resignation as she watched Adam right the bookcases. In truth, she was secretly glad to have lost the argument. Adam had taken charge and sent Angelica down to a neighbor’s to phone his partner, then to call the phone company to fix the outside line and to get someone to replace the broken glass on the sliding door. Diana’s job was to find out what was missing. She’d already checked her other “safes,” and none of them had been disturbed either. Then she’d changed into jeans and a T-shirt before tackling the workroom.
She smiled, remembering the gleam of appreciation in Adam’s eyes when she’d reentered the room. It was the same look he’d given her the night before.
Promising herself she could daydream later, Diana concentrated on sorting through the mess. She created manageable piles of papers, books, and disks by type and subject. After returning from her errand, Angelica began to help. Adam put the books and manuals back on the shelves.
As Diana worked her way from one end of the room to the other, her initial relief at having only possible minor losses was slowly replaced by a growing apprehension. Finally, she set the last piece of notepaper on its proper pile, and claws of fear raked her spine.
“My source codes ar
e gone,” she whispered, sending a last desperate glance around the room.
“Your what?” Angelica asked in puzzlement.
Focusing on her cousin, Diana swallowed. “The hard copy for the game. I printed out the program the other day, because I had a slight problem with the game’s graphics. It’s easier to find the mistakes on paper than it is on a monitor screen. Now the papers are gone.”
Angelica’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “The whole program? On paper?”
Diana nodded.
“Why didn’t you lock that away too?”
Diana closed her eyes. “The papers are too big to fit in my cubbyholes, so I mixed them up with others that just had a lot of junk on them. It was the hide-in-plain-sight theory.”
Angelica cursed loudly.
“What’s the problem?” Adam asked as he picked up another load of books.
Her insides numb, Diana explained about her source codes. He dropped the books and knelt beside her, hugging her in silent comfort.
“So they got what they were looking for after all,” Angelica said in a cold voice. “Everything seemed so odd, didn’t it? I couldn’t understand how people who knew exactly how to get around the computer alarm system didn’t seem to know what computer stuff to take once they were inside. And they took the time to trash the place, but not the time to search. They probably went through the disks on the tables first, and when they didn’t find the game, they went for the computer print-outs. They were more lucky there.”
“Not luck,” Diana said, beginning to tremble with fury and helplessness. “Anyone who knows about programming would realize that I’d probably have a print-out somewhere.”
“But who knows about how your alarm works?” Adam asked.
“That wouldn’t matter,” she said. She stood up, and he did as well. “It would be dead easy for anyone who knows about alarm systems. They’re always vulnerable at the phone line because that can be cut without triggering the alarm itself. Then the police can’t be called. You saw how easily the rest of the system was … disarmed.”
“The game would be worth hundreds of thousands to a software company,” Angelica said slowly, turning her eyes to Adam. “If not millions. Someone could have become tired of making offers for the game. Offers that weren’t being accepted. Or that were being stalled.”
