Come and Find Me

by Hallie Ephron

  Jake rolled his eyes at Daniel. It was his there-she-goes-again look.

  “Why not?” Diana said.

  Jake folded his arms across his chest. “Clients want you. You’re Superwoman. The giant killer.”

  “The one with the squeaky-clean reputation,” Daniel said.

  “The one they trust,” Jake said.

  “What about your new partners, Volganet?”

  At that, Jake barked a laugh. Daniel shot him a warning look.

  “What?” Diana said.

  Daniel said, “I promise you, there’s no new partner.”

  “And strictly speaking, we don’t need you to work with us either,” Jake said.

  Daniel rushed to add, “But it would be much better all around if you did.”

  Jake sat at one of the computers, typed something, then clicked the mouse a few times. A gigantic framed image sprang to life, projected across the silo’s curved wall opposite them. It was OtherWorld, Diana’s office, with Nadia standing in the middle of it. The avatar pivoted to face them. She was wearing her dark business suit.

  “Welcome to the offices of Gamelan Security. I’m Nadia Varata.” Jake spoke into a microphone and a voice balloon appeared over Nadia’s head, but the voice that came from the computer sounded exactly like Diana’s.

  “Voice sim,” Jake said. “It’s come a long way. And in case you were thinking about sabotage, we took out a little insurance policy.” He brought up a map. Typed and waited. He pointed to a green dot on the screen.

  She stepped closer. It was a map of downtown. He zoomed in. The dot was at the same intersection as the Palm Court Hotel, where Ashley worked.

  “It’s a live feed,” Jake said. “The location gets updated every five minutes, tracking the GPS signal in your sister’s BlackBerry.”

  Diana touched the screen. Then she turned to look at Jake, then Daniel. Who were these men, neither of whom would return her gaze? “You’d kidnap her again?”

  Jake said, “I can’t promise what—”

  “Cool it, would you, Jake?” Daniel said.

  “I told you this wasn’t going to work,” Jake said. “She nearly blows away everything just when . . .” He shook his head. “Crap. It’s all going to crap. All because of her.”

  “You’re being a jerk,” Daniel said.

  “And you’re being fool,” Jake said. “Know what I think? I think it’s time to pull the plug.” He hit a switch and the projected image went blank. “If she won’t work with us, then we need to cut our losses.”

  His voice was cold, his jaw set. This was a side of Jake that Diana had never seen before. How far would he be willing to go to keep her from screwing up whatever business they were up to? And what had she done, she wondered, that had made it necessary to reel her in? She didn’t buy for a minute that they needed any special expertise that she had.

  “Not yet. That wasn’t the plan,” Daniel said.

  Jake paced up and back, his footsteps vibrating across the mesh floor. “I don’t care what we planned. It’s time.” He stopped. “Hell, it’s past time. Abort the mission.”

  Diana’s mind was racing. She didn’t know what Jake meant, but his tone was ominous. Were they just playing good cop/bad cop? She wasn’t nearly cool enough to tough it out.

  “Hold on, hold on,” she said, stepping between them. “Tomorrow, we have our meeting with Vault?” Jake and Daniel traded a look she couldn’t read. “I’ll play my part, I promise.”

  “Sure you will,” Jake said.

  “Have I ever not delivered on a promise?” Diana shot back at him.

  “And after that?” Daniel said.

  Both of them watched her, wary, waiting for her reply. “I . . . I can’t lie,” she said. “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  “At least she’s being honest with us,” Daniel said, addressing Jake.

  “I still don’t like it,” Jake said.

  “Don’t mind him. He’s a slow learner,” Daniel said to Diana. “So are we good?”

  Diana took a sip of the chicory-laced coffee that she’d left on a table, but it had gone cold. “For now,” she said.

  Over the rim of the cup, she watched Daniel. Just like that, he was back. It seemed impossible. Somewhere, beyond shock and surprise, she groped for her own emotions. Distrust. Confusion. And beneath that, dread. She knew there was another shoe that had yet to drop.

  In a rush, Diana realized how isolated she’d become, a prisoner in both real and virtual worlds. Meanwhile, Ashley would be out there, sick with worry about what had happened to her.

  “Hey, guys, if you don’t want my sister to send out an alarm, I’d better call her.” She took her cell phone from her jacket pocket. “She’s expecting me to call her from this phone, but it doesn’t get any bars in here.”

  Jake gave her an uneasy look.

  “Here,” she said, offering Jake the phone. “You want to call her and tell her I’m okay?”

  “Very funny,” he said. “Okay, but make it short.” He indicated the door to the outside corridor.

  Four beeps and Jake had disarmed the door. He held it open so she could go past him, out over crumbling concrete steps and into the passage connecting to the main mill building.

  She was halfway down the passageway when Jake called, “That’s far enough.”

  Diana stepped to one of the small windows. Looking out, she could see that the rain had stopped, and the wind had died down so much that the surface of the water in the reservoir was glassy smooth.

  “By the way,” Jake said, “just so you know, there are security cameras everywhere.” He indicated a camera that aimed into the corridor from over the door to the silo. “They can see in light or dark.”

  Diana turned her back to him. It wasn’t until she went to dial that she realized her hands were shaking. She brought up recently placed calls, found Pam’s number, and hit send. She waited through the message telling her that she had fifty-three minutes left in the prepaid account.

  Pam picked up on the second ring. “Diana!” she said. Diana felt a rush of relief that Pam had recognized her number. “Where on earth—”

  “Hey, Ashley,” Diana said, cutting her off. “It’s me.”

  There was dead silence on the other end. Diana pretended she was listening. As if in response, she said, “Yeah, well, I got to Mill Village and I thought he wasn’t there but it turns out he was.”

  “Mill Village? Where the hell is that?” Pam whispered. “Are you okay?”

  “Of course I’m not,” she said, keeping her voice upbeat, hoping that Pam would tune out the emotion and hear the words. “Right. Staying with some old friends.”

  “Online friends?” Pam asked.

  Diana laughed. “Yes, and no.” She waited through a few beats of silence. “No, don’t bother to pick up groceries for me this week. I could be here awhile.” She laughed again. “Yeah, yeah, I’m taking notes and photos, twenty-four/seven, proof that I left the house.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Pam said. “Should I try and find you?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  Jake gestured to her from the doorway to speed it up.

  Diana raised her index finger, threw a couple of “uh-huhs” into the phone. Then: “Tomorrow morning, I’ll be in touch. And, Ashley, Pam said she’d call. Could you two talk so I don’t have to call her too? I’ve gotta go now. We’ll talk soon.”

  “Tomorrow,” Pam said. “I’ll reach Ashley.”

  Diana hid a smile and disconnected the call.

  “Did it sound as if she bought it?” Daniel said, coming out to her.

  “Of course she bought it.” Diana tried to keep her voice even as she tucked the cell phone into her pocket.

  “Mission accomplished,” Daniel said. “Are we still allowed to say that?” She le
t him wrap her in his arms. “You’re as amazing as ever.”

  She rested her head on his shoulder and for a moment let him support her weary body. She’d forgotten how good this felt. Despite his betrayal, she still ached for him.

  “You know, there’s one thing about this that bothers me,” he said, pulling away.

  “Right.” She slipped the cell phone from her pocket and looked up at him. “This?”

  “GPS signals. They can be tracked.”

  She looked down at the phone, possibly her last link to the outside world. “But if Ashley tries to call . . .”

  “She won’t. I faked my own death. How hard will it be to fake yours as well?”

  She gave him a long look, like she was making up her mind. Only she was thinking how easy he thought it would be for her to let her sister think she was dead—after all, it had been no big deal for him to let Diana think he’d died.

  “Do you trust me?” she asked. She’d learned about trust from Daniel. Trusting was the first and most essential step—you couldn’t get betrayed if you didn’t take it. “Actions speak, right?”

  She dropped the cell phone on the floor, and ground it with her boot heel until the case cracked. Then she unlatched one of the windows in the corridor wall and held it open.

  Daniel picked up the broken phone and smiled at her. He glanced past her at Jake, who was standing in the doorway to the silo. “I told you she’d be cool,” he said. Then he reared back and tossed the phone out the window.

  Diana watched it arc across the cloud-streaked sky and disappear. A few seconds later there was a splash as it landed in the reservoir.

  Later that night, Diana was alone with Daniel, back in the makeshift bedroom. She was ready to stop trying to stay awake. “I’m exhausted. You’re not, are you?”

  Daniel shrugged. She remembered now how he’d never seemed to run down the way normal people did. He could go flat out, wired and crackling with energy, for literally days on end. Then, practically midsentence, he’d collapse into the sleep of the dead.

  “You still pull all-nighters?” she asked.

  “Sure. You used to be able to do it too. All the time.”

  Jake had picked up pizzas for dinner. Once upon a time, she could’ve put away an entire pie. Now, after just two slices, the pepperoni started to taste like salted wax and the cheese felt as if it were hardening into a layer of sludge in her stomach.

  “There are lots of things I used to be able to do.”

  Daniel picked her up and carried her to the bed. Once her bed. Before that, their bed. He set her down gently and lay down beside her.

  She turned away from him. Daniel had told her that the red roses on the bedside table were “for new beginnings.” More like betrayals and severed ties. Already some were losing petals and hanging their heads.

  From outside she heard water rushing over the dam. In the corner of the sleeping alcove were a sink and toilet and a modular shower stall. A shelf was filled with most of the contents of Diana’s home bathroom—her toothbrush and shampoos and soaps. So considerate of them.

  Daniel nuzzled her neck.

  “What do you think we’re doing here?” she asked.

  “Messing around, I hope.” He nipped her ear. “Don’t overthink it, babe.” That was what he used to tell her when she froze up during a climb or hesitated during a combat sim. It was his equivalent of May the force be with you.

  She curled tighter. Daniel put his arm around her waist and spooned behind her. He slipped his hand up under her shirt and she shuddered as he stroked her back.

  “Remember that game we used to play?” he said, his breath warm on her neck.

  In spite of herself, Diana closed her eyes and envisioned the letters as he traced them out. First i. Then a heart. Then a u. Again and again, his fingers like feather dusters traced the same pattern on the small of her back. His hand wandered down her hips and reached around to touch between her legs.

  Part of her wanted to surrender—it would have been so easy, so natural. And what better way to cement his trust? But she couldn’t. He’d let her believe he was dead. To protect the insurance settlement? She’d have returned the money in a heartbeat if it had meant having him back.

  Instead, one by one, he and Jake had severed Diana’s remaining links to the real world. Kidnapped—there was no other word for it—her sister. Sown distrust with her one friend, Pam, and leaving in her place a single false friend, GROB.

  Daniel and Jake were stronger and undoubtedly smarter than she was. Her one advantage over them: she knew her own weaknesses. They both would insist that they didn’t have any.

  “You’re right. I’m tired,” she said. “And—” She rolled over to face him and grabbed his hands, feeling the coarseness of his fingertips where frostbite had supposedly eaten away the tips. “You can’t just expect everything to go back the way it was. I’ve changed.”

  “You haven’t changed. You’re just trying to be something that you’re not.”

  Diana hesitated. Could that possibly be true? Was she still the girl who’d fallen crazy in love with a wild man, who’d allowed herself to break nearly every rule she’d followed growing up?

  “Look in my eyes,” he said, squeezing her arm. “I’m the same guy.”

  “You’re hurting me.”

  He loosened his grip. “Sorry. I’m out of practice.”

  “I’m still getting used to you being here at all,” she said.

  He rolled over on his back, put his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. “I want things to be the way they were.”

  If wishes were fishes . . . She rested her head against his chest. “Suppose it doesn’t work out. What happens then?”

  He didn’t say anything.

  She sighed and closed her eyes. What was the point, anyway? Any promises extracted from Daniel would be empty ones. He said he loved her. Wanted to be with her. Couldn’t stand another day without her. It was a nice story—one Daniel himself might even believe.

  In her mind, she reconstructed the layout of the mill, two yellow spots glowing in this loftlike space where she and Daniel lay. They’d left Jake, still at work in the silo. She zoomed out, and farther out, until her mental map encompassed the entire state of Massachusetts. A pair of yellow spots glowed, one in Boston and one just south—Pam and Ashley. She hoped that by now they’d put together what each of them knew.

  Diana focused on the steady thub-dub of Daniel’s heart, and beyond that, on the constant sound of water flowing over the dam outside. Why was it so important to him that the three of them were working together again? The Three Musketeers. Three Stooges. Three mice, although she was the only one flying blind.

  “Are you ready for the meeting with Vault?” Daniel asked.

  “Is it tomorrow?” she asked.

  She felt his body tense. “You know damned well it is. Jake is leaving here in the morning to catch a flight out of Manchester to BWI.”

  Diana propped herself up on an elbow and looked down at him. “No, I’m not ready.”

  “We have a deal,” Daniel said.

  “I still have work to do—”

  “Jake’s got the proposal.”

  “But it’ll take some time to prepare a presentation for the kickoff. Why not postpone until later in the week?”

  “It’s not negotiable. The meeting is tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Why the rush?”

  Daniel paused. “Because that’s when they’re expecting to meet with us. Gamelan built its reputation on delivering on what we promise.”

  Coming from him, that was too funny. Next, he’d be reciting the Boy Scout pledge.

  “I may not have been there,” Daniel said, “but I have been paying attention. This has to feel like business as usual.”

  “Business as usual.” Diana sighed. As if that were
something to aspire to. She laid her head down.

  “You’ll be ready?” he asked.

  “I’ll have to work on the presentation in the morning. I couldn’t do a lick of work now if my life depended on it.”

  She edged away from him and closed her eyes. A few minutes later, she felt him slide off the bed. Heard his footsteps cross the room. She caught a glimpse of him, just before he slipped out the door.

  Click. He’d pulled the door shut and she was alone again. She recognized the chirping sounds—he was keying in a code to lock the door. The blinking yellow turned to a steady red. Not to keep danger out, but to keep Diana in.

  Chapter Thirty

  Diana opened her eyes what felt like a minute later but couldn’t have been because it was pitch-dark. She sat bolt upright up in the bed. The sound of rushing water seemed like it was roaring in her head and her heart pounded painfully against her rib cage. She tried to catch her breath.

  Shapes came into focus and she remembered. She was in the mill. Shadows danced in the windows and the makeshift walls that surrounded her seemed flimsy, easily breached.

  As she panted for air, the room seemed to spin. She curled into a ball. She shivered, as much from anxiety as from the cold, and her fingers tingled. She knew she was making herself sick, gulping air and hyperventilating.

  Counting slowly and deliberately, she regained control of her breathing. The mound at the foot of the bed, dark against light bedding, turned out to be the leather jacket she’d ordered from OtherWorld, the one Ashley had borrowed what seemed like a lifetime ago. She reached for it and pulled it to her. Dug her fingers into one of the pockets and found her medication.

  With shaking hands she pried open the container and shook the pills into her palm. They seemed to glow in the half-light. There were just six left. She’d have to ration the remaining pills. She broke one, swallowed half, and fed the rest back into the container.

  She put on the jacket, then lay back, bunching the pillow under her head. She counted the familiar items she could just make out in the dark. One, the tall, tapering post at the foot of her bed. Two, the bedside table that had once stood by her parents’ bed. On that, the bouquet of wilted roses, her welcome home. Three, four—the tiny red lights that glowed from where she knew there were keypads beside the doors at both ends of the loft.