Come and Find Me

by Hallie Ephron

  Diana had been completely stunned when, a few weeks later, Daniel had been the one to suggest that they sell the farm, move back to the Boston area, and open a security consulting company as a trio of rehabilitated black hats.

  They’d settled on the name Gamelan. It was sufficiently obscure and she liked the way it sounded. It even made a kind of sense. Gamelan was a Balinese music ensemble of percussion instruments. Drums, gongs, xylophones, bells. The music sounded odd and discordant, like the way the three of them worked together.

  Daniel was the one who’d suggested they celebrate the impending transition by climbing the Eiger. But only two of them had come back alive, and instead of a dissonant trio, Gamelan Security turned into a fractious duo. Numbed by loss, Diana had been reluctantly dragged along by a determined Jake.

  The Klaxon alarm startled Diana back to the present. Her palms turned sweaty and the back of her neck felt like someone laid an ice pack across it. She wasn’t expecting a delivery, and besides it was too late for that.

  She silenced the alarm. Couldn’t be Ashley—she was supposed to be meeting Aaron downtown. Had to be a false alarm, the calm voice in her head reasoned, but she could barely hear it over the alarm that kept right on screaming inside her head.

  She checked the surveillance feeds. It was already dark out, and the lights around the house had automatically turned on. None of the cameras showed anything amiss. She toggled the sun icon to a moon, and the images changed to velvety black.

  There! In the feed from the camera alongside the house, she saw a bright green mottled shape moving across the screen. It disappeared from view and was picked up in the security camera angled behind the house. It could have been a person on all fours. Low to the ground. But it would have to be a small adult or a child.

  Diana watched as the shape meandered back to the side of the house. It was more likely a raccoon or a large dog with a longish tail. She wanted it to go away, and then finally it did, passing back through the electronic security perimeter and off the screens.

  Diana pushed away from the monitors, feeling as if she’d been picked up and shaken. Even though she knew it was insane, she toured the house, checking that every window and door was latched.

  She ended up in the kitchen. Rational analysis kept her bogeymen at bay, but just the unexpected jolt could stir up that still-potent residue of grief and trauma. She’d been on such an even keel that she’d gone a week without a single remote session with Dr. Lightfoot. She knew what her shrink’s advice would be: Try to stay in the present. And along with that: Remember, you can’t control what you can’t control.

  Diana checked that the back door was secure. Recognized the acrid smell of burned coffee. She’d left an empty pot on the warmer. Again. She shut off the machine and turned on the exhaust fan.

  She opened the refrigerator. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Her therapist had repeatedly warned her not to miss meals. Low blood sugar left her shaky and even more emotionally vulnerable.

  She opened the package of American cheese Ashley had brought her and ate three slices. She was working on a Granny Smith apple when the phone rang. She lifted it off the wall. Ashley’s cell-phone number glowed on the readout.

  She checked the time. A few minutes to six.

  “Hey, hon, you at Copley yet?” she asked.

  “Getting there. What are you up to?” Ashley said. Diana could hear the sounds of a city in the background. Traffic. A horn honking. Voices.

  “I took a nice long walk on the beach.”

  “Really?” Ashley said. Then laughed. “Sure you did. But you had . . . me going . . . for a minute there.” She huffed. It sounded as if she was walking.

  “Sooooo?” Diana asked.

  “So I dumped him . . . Aaron and me . . . we’re history.” There was the sound of a siren and laughter, not Ashley’s. “I did it.”

  “Really? That’s so great. How do you feel?”

  “Sore. Wet,” Ashley said.

  “What?”

  “I told him that I just wasn’t that into him. The relationship wasn’t going anywhere and I’d had it with his weirdnesses. So he just sits there, drawing circles on the bar with his swizzle stick. He goes, ‘You sure?’

  “I’m like, yeah. Completely. You okay with that?

  “And before I know it, he grabs the leg of my bar stool and yanks. And just like that, I’m sitting on the floor, my drink is all over me, and Mr. Wonderful is staring down at me. The place goes dead silent. Longest ten seconds of my life. Finally, a waiter comes running over. Aaron is still there, shell-shocked, like he can’t believe what just happened either. Then he grabs his coat and heads for the door. On top of that, he leaves me to pay the bill. Again.”

  “What a prince.”

  “You know what? It was worth it. Wish you could’ve seen his face.” Ashley hooted. “Looked like someone had popped his . . . Wow, you should see this crowd. Diana. It’s like—” For a few moments her voice was smothered by competing voices.

  “So, other than sore and wet, how do you feel?” Diana asked.

  “Strong. Tough.”

  “I’m so proud of you,” Diana said. She was. For once, Ashley had broken up with a guy without having his replacement waiting in the wings. And now she was on her way to meeting new people. Alone, without a man on her arm.

  “I knew you’d be impressed,” Ashley said. A pause. “Uh-oh.”

  “Uh-oh what?”

  “I thought . . . never mind. False alarm. Listen, I gotta go. Looks like this is about to happen. Call you tomorrow?”

  “Hang on! You know you left your computer at my house?”

  “I did? Shit. I thought I left it in my car. I’ll come by for it Saturday or Sunday morning. Not too early.”

  That went without saying. On a weekend, “morning” usually started around noon for Ashley.

  Diana could hear a man’s voice shouting. “Synchronize! It’s six o’clock . . . NOW!” Then applause.

  “Diana,” Ashley said, her voice a whisper. “Do you think I did the right thing? About Aaron, I mean.”

  “Of course I do!” But a burst of static cut across her reply. “Ashley? Are you there?” But all she heard was silence.

  Diana stared at the dead phone. “You idiot. Of course you did the right thing.” She threw the phone back into its dock.

  Later, when she tried to get back to GROB, there was no response. Fair enough. She’d ignored him, now she deserved the same treatment.

  Chapter Eight

  Saturday morning, first thing, Diana checked the Spontaneous Combustion Web site. It said the video from the improv was Coming soon!

  After a bowl of instant oatmeal, she got to work. For a second time, she opened the information that had come back from MedLogic’s hackers. These were people, she reminded herself, individuals with friends and family, not disembodied evil entities. But who were they? Where were they? Though she didn’t have the sophisticated knowledge and tools that Jake did, she could do some basic investigating.

  First she traced the connections as the message had hopped from server to server on its way from the hackers’ system to hers. Next to the start of the list were four numbers—that would be the IP address of the server that was providing the hackers their Internet access. She ran a DNS search and got the site name: Volganet.net. Entering that URL in her browser brought back a blank screen with an error message.

  Volganet. The name made it sound as if they were somewhere in what had once been the Soviet bloc. That she could check.

  She opened up Telnet and queried Volganet’s time server. Back came:

  Sat Apr 24 09:35:44 2010n

  09:35? That was Eastern Standard Time. Volganet was operating in her own time zone. Interesting for what it ruled out, but to narrow down the location further she’d have to sift through the lines and lines of information that
had come back and use what she found to break into the hackers’ system.

  She was desperate to know if these were the same people who’d preyed on Gamelan’s other clients. If it got out that their clients were being singled out, that would be the end of Gamelan Security. The end of everything she’d worked to build. The end of the one thing she had left.

  She’d crush them before she’d let that happen.

  While Diana was mulling over that cheery thought, envisioning appropriate payback, a message popped up.

  GROB: RU there?

  Her stomach turned over. She liked him, she really did—and that scared the hell out of her. Her hand hovered over the keyboard as she was still trying to decide how to respond when INTRUDER ALERT flashed in the corner of the computer screen. Diana silenced the alarm, but not before it sent her heart racing.

  She checked the front video monitor. A man in a parka and a knitted cap was coming toward the front door. Slung over his shoulder was a canvas bag. He pulled out from it a rolled-up flyer, stuffed it into the handle of her screen door, and continued on to the next house.

  Her phobia was exhausting and she was goddamned sick and tired of feeling wrung out, five or six times a day. Diana grabbed Daniel’s walking stick and went to the door. Dr. Lightfoot had recommended that she acclimate herself to the outside world again, building slowly, a little each day. So at least once each morning, she pushed herself out of the house.

  The first time she’d tried it, a few months earlier, she’d made it as far as the front steps. Breathless, her heart hammering like a crazed bird trying to get out of her chest, she’d turned tail and burst back into the house, slammed the door, the urge to hide driving her body into a protective crouch.

  Now her goal was to breach her own electronic fence once a day. She put her hand on the doorknob and counted down from ten. When she got to zero she took a deep inhale and pulled the door open, pushed open the storm door, and stepped outside. The skim of sweat on her forehead and at the back of her neck turned cold, but she welcomed the sensation, and the smell of smoke from someone’s fireplace and the feel of dew as she touched the railing.

  Next door, in the driveway of a big Victorian that the new owners had painted mauve, pale yellow, and gray green, her neighbor had the back door of her car open and was loading her toddler into a car seat. The woman had a long solemn face and dark hair, early Cher. She glanced over and waved. Diana waved back. The woman got in the driver’s seat, started the car, and drove off.

  The scent of exhaust lingered as Diana gazed at the empty spot in her neighbor’s driveway, then at the closed door of her own garage. One day she’d actually get in her own car. Take a drive. Maybe even have the courage to introduce herself to her neighbor.

  For now, just taking a walk in her own backyard was challenge enough.

  Diana took a deep breath. She left the porch and stepped into the driveway. Crossing her arms to fend off the chill from outside and in, she began to walk the perimeter of her property. Focus on what’s outside not inside, Dr. Lightfoot had suggested. The lawn was patchy and stringy, pale purple crocuses that had probably been planted by her mother decades ago were pushing their way up in front of bushes alongside the house. The quince bush was budding, and farther on, the tiny yellow blossoms on the witch hazel were already starting to open.

  When she reached the back of the yard, she took a step beyond her own property line. She knew she’d breached the invisible electronic fence and the Klaxon would be going off in her office, alerting no one. She turned and looked at her house. All the window shades were drawn. The dark green paint around the windows was beginning to peel.

  She beat back the urge to sprint back to safety. Instead, she reached into her pocket and pried open the lid of the container with her thumb, tipped it until she felt a pill in her palm. Tiny and white, it was no bigger than the birth-control pills she’d once taken daily. Just rolling a pill between her thumb and forefinger calmed her.

  She slipped the pill back into the container, picked up a small stone from the ground, and completed her circuit. Back at the door, she placed the stone alongside others she’d lined up in the grass by the door, each marking another step forward, another time she’d breached the boundaries of her property and made it back alive.

  She was squatting, counting stones—there were over fifty of them—when she noticed a dark limousine coming up her street. It reminded her of the limo she and her girlfriends had rented to carry them, dateless, to their senior prom. And the lecture the driver had given them about the hundred-dollar deposit he wouldn’t return to their parents if any of them threw up. But a morning limousine wouldn’t be picking up girls for a dance. More likely the passengers would be mourners on their way to a funeral.

  It slowed to a crawl in front of her house. Diana ducked inside and locked the door behind her. She lifted the shade of one of the front windows and watched, shivering, as the car paused in front of her house, and then accelerated and continued on its way.

  Chapter Nine

  By the time Diana returned to her office, GROB had given up waiting. The chat window was closed.

  She checked Spontaneous Combustion’s Web site again—they’d posted a video of “Up in the Sky.” First she scanned the file to make sure it was safe. Video downloads were a favorite way to distribute malware, malicious little programs that installed themselves. When she determined it was safe, she ran the video.

  It opened with a man wearing a black baseball cap with the word DIRECTOR printed over the brim. He bellowed through a bullhorn, “Okay, agents. Listen up!”

  The herky-jerky footage felt as if it had been taken with a handheld camera by someone being jostled by the crowd. The time stamp at the bottom of the video read yesterday, 6:03 P.M. That had been about the time Ashley called to say that Aaron was toast.

  The man held up his cell phone. The camera pulled back to show a crowd of about a hundred people, clustered around him on the broad steps in front of the trio of granite arches at the entrance to the Boston Public Library. Almost everyone in the crowd had on sunglasses.

  The camera panned from the library to the expanse of Copley Square across the street, a spacious area with brick walkways flanked by a fountain on one side and Trinity Church on the adjacent side. The facade of the church glowed an unearthly pink in the setting sun. The camera continued around to the facade of a hotel, and finally back to the crowd gathered on the library steps.

  There! Diana thought she’d caught a glimpse of Ashley. But it was too quick to be sure.

  The screen dissolved to black, and after some titles it returned to a close-up of the man with the bullhorn.

  “Yo, thanks for coming out,” he said. “Make sure Casey here has all your cell-phone numbers.” The woman beside him, who had long blond hair and was wearing bright green-and-yellow-striped tights, waved a clipboard. “Up the volume on your ringers full blast. Then spread out across the street in the square. Mill about.”

  He continued giving directions as the camera pulled back to show the crowd, cutting to close-ups of individuals. None of them were Ashley. Jazzy percussion played through speeded-up footage of the crowd dispersing, people crossing the street to Copley Square and mingling with pedestrians in the plaza.

  Then the screen went black and the word SHOWTIME! came up in white block letters. A wide shot of Copley Square took over the screen, followed by a close-up of a cell phone lighting up and the sound of cell phones going off. The ring tones weren’t synchronized, so all Diana could make out were competing piano arpeggios and the whooshes of speeding bullets that rose to the top of the cacophony.

  The camera closed in on one woman in the square. She had her dark hair pulled back in a thick ponytail. She held her cell phone aloft and pivoted to face the hotel across St. James Street. The camera drew back to show scores of other similarly frozen, sunglass wearers facing the hotel, cell phones raised. A c
rush of Superman-themed cell-phone rings filled the sound track.

  Snippets of video showing the reactions of pedestrians were spliced together. Some just kept going. Others stopped and stared, then turned to look across to the hotel. A cop on the corner pushed back his cap brim and watched, his mouth open. A man hoisted a toddler onto his shoulder and the woman with him, pushing a stroller, raised a camera and took a picture.

  Diana whooped. It was perfect.

  For a brief moment, Diana thought she saw Ashley. The red hat, which would have stood out in morning sun, seemed nearly black in twilight. But the camera panned away before she could be sure.

  Focus shifted to the facade of the hotel. A spotlight shone on a window near the top floor. The view zoomed in as the window raised and a figure leaned out. It was a man in bright blue with a red Superman S in a yellow field on the front. He raised his arm—not a wave but a stiff-armed salute.

  That’s when Diana realized that it was a mannequin in a Superman costume. The curl over his forehead would have done Christopher Reeve proud.

  From behind, the figure was pushed out the window, headfirst. Its shoulders and ankles seemed to be attached to a wire. Then Superman was sailing through the sky across Copley Square, his red cape streaming.

  Diana didn’t spot Ashley again as the camera pulled back and scanned the watchers who were pivoting in unison. Super-Dummy slid at a leisurely pace across the square, got snagged by the spire that topped a tourist information kiosk, and then continued on. It crash-landed, headfirst, against a band of ironwork that bordered the top of a four-story office building on the opposite side of Boylston. A cheer rose as the dummy was hauled onto the roof by unseen figures.

  Then a massive, three-story-tall crimson banner unfurled from that building’s roof. In white letters, it said P2H4, followed by Spontaneous Combustion’s URL.

  P2H4—Diana Googled it—turned out to be the chemical notation for a highly combustible form of phosphorus.