Come And Find Me Part 17

Diana toggled back to the map and street view. Mill Village was set on the banks of a tributary of the Merrimack River, just south of where it widened into what looked like a lake.

She could hear GROB's synthesized voice in her head: . . . that diagnosis? It's bogus.

Chapter Twenty-Four.

That night, Diana tried to fall asleep on Ashley's pullout couch. What could GROB have to tell her? That Ashley hadn't been sick at all? Or that she had something more serious wrong with her, like HIV/AIDS or MS? Or-and now Diana knew she was being paranoid-that she'd been exposed to some highly contagious viral infection or deadly toxin that would panic the public. And what did Pam, aka PWNED, have to do with all of this? Diana's mind churned the possibilities.

She took a pill and finally fell asleep. But an hour later she was awake again, bathed in anxiety. She'd been dreaming that she had to pack her clothes and meet Ashley at the airport, only she couldn't find her suitcases, then she couldn't find Ashley's car. She fell back to sleep, only to wake up terrified by the kind of mountain-climbing nightmare she hadn't had for months.

The next morning she felt more exhausted than she had when she'd gone to bed. Before Ashley left for work, she insisted that Diana take her GPS tracker, loaded with the coordinates of her destination. Ashley's parting shot had been "I can't get used to that hair," followed by "Call me. Because I'm calling the police if I don't hear from you by five o'clock-"

"Eight," Diana said.

"Six," Ashley said. "And not a minute longer. And if the police don't get on the stick fast enough, I'm coming up there to find you myself."

"You have reached your destination," announced the robotic, British-accented female voice on Ashley's GPS. The screen told her it was 11:50 A.M. She was ten minutes early. The drive had been easy, any remaining rush-hour traffic having dissipated by midmorning. The sky had gone from clear to overcast.

WELCOME TO MILL VILLAGE announced a cheery sign. Diana was stopped in traffic bunched up at the one stoplight in the center of town. The borders of the Hummer's broad winds.h.i.+eld framed her surroundings. There was the town green with storefronts surrounding it. The gazebo. The center of Mill Village was exactly like the town green in OtherWorld, where GROB had transported her after they'd been attacked on the beach.

She checked her rear- and sideview mirrors. GROB had to be here, somewhere. In a parked car. Inside one of the businesses lined up along the street. Walking on the town green. Was he dressed like his avatar, as she was like hers?

An elderly couple strolled by, the woman in a summery straw hat and white parka and the man in starched tan trousers and windbreaker. They stopped in front of Tweets, a pet store, and looked in at a person-size birdcage in which a bright green parrot hopped about. They both carried umbrellas, and Diana smiled to herself, imagining the bird checking them out: a pair of winter birds that had returned prematurely to New England.

A man strode down the sidewalk toward her, a knitted cap pulled down over his forehead and a plaid m.u.f.fler around his face. GROB? Diana gripped the steering wheel and her heart lurched. She ducked down as he hurried past without even glancing at the Hummer. She watched, breathless, as he ducked into what looked like a luncheonette.

Diana sat forward and unstuck her T-s.h.i.+rt from her sweat-slicked back. She tried to swallow. She'd taken a pill before leaving Ashley's apartment. She didn't want to think about what she'd be feeling if she hadn't.

A car behind her tooted. The light had changed.

Diana continued slowly up the block, looking for a place to park. Finally she pulled into the lot of a motel. Its black sign with RITZ in bold white letters outlined in neon tubing welcomed cars to a deserted parking lot. The proprietor must have had a flare for irony because the place looked a whole lot more like the Bates Motel than the Ritz-Carlton. Diana didn't need anyone to cue the scary music.

"Turn around when possible." It took her a moment to realize that the GPS had picked that moment to put in its oar. It told her she'd overshot her destination, and that it was now 11:58.

She turned off the GPS and slipped it into her jacket pocket. Then she waited for a break in the traffic, pulled out, and drove back the way she'd come in. She found a parking spot in front of the luncheonette. Painted in yellow letters across the plate gla.s.s, it said THE SUNNY SIDE UP. As she watched, unseen hands pulled from the window a sign advertising Full Breakfast for $3.99 and replaced it with one advertising Meatloaf Plate for $6.99.

Now what? She was here, but where was GROB? He'd never find her behind the Hummer's dark tinted windows. She rolled down her window an inch. Chilly air seeped in. No matter what the calendar said, this late March felt wintry.

Across the street a woman wearing a short puffy jacket, a long skirt, and boots biked across the town green. Its empty gazebo was large enough to double as a bandstand. The structure was set, like a wedding-cake topper, on a little rise at the center of the gra.s.s with six footpaths radiating out from it. It offered a perfect vantage point, an un.o.bstructed view of the storefronts and houses and, more important, GROB could see her.

Diana zipped her jacket and turned up its collar. In her rearview mirror, her dark-rimmed eyes looked back at her, wide and frightened. She found the sungla.s.ses in her jacket pocket and put them on. Ran her fingers through those blond curls. Ashley wasn't the only one who found her new hair jarring.

She pictured Nadia getting out of the Hummer. Crossing the street and walking decisively across the green, and stepping into the shadow of the gazebo. She could do it too. Diana grabbed Daniel's walking stick before opening the car door a crack. When there was a break in the traffic, she opened the door farther and stepped into the street.

Fighting the impulse to dive back into the car, she slammed the door, pressed the remote to lock it, and crossed the street. She could feel the vibrations traveling up her legs as her boot heels connected with the brick walk with each deliberate stride toward the gazebo. She climbed the steps and stood on the platform, as tall and straight as Nadia might have stood in OtherWorld, waiting for GROB to show himself.

She checked her watch. It was 12:05. Cars drove by. There were plenty of pedestrians, but no one was coming her way.

She sat down on a bench in the gazebo and picked up a newspaper that had been left there. She settled back and waited. Made a futile attempt to read the news.

12:11. Still no one had approached her.

A week ago she could never have contemplated doing what she was doing, sitting alone on the town green of a village that, until an hour ago, had been nothing more than a dot on the map. To new beginnings. That's what Daniel had said the night before their last climb.

The three of them had rented a one-room condo at the foot of the Eiger to use as their base camp. Over a dinner of spaghetti, warmed in a microwave oven, Daniel had raised a paper cup with an inch of brandy in a toast to their future.

"You guys sure you want to do this?" Diana had said, or words to that effect. "Leave behind your checkered past? No more free Hummers, you know."

Daniel had laughed, snorting brandy.

"And what will NASA do without our drawing attention to their security lapses?" Jake added.

Daniel drew a little hash mark in the air and poured another inch all around. "Here's to the time we turned that bank's Web pages upside down-"

Jake broke in, "And replaced their surveillance camera feeds."

That had been Daniel's brainstorm. He'd hacked in and replaced South Savings Bank's video surveillance feeds with a continuously looping five-minute Three Stooges clip. Before the bank could fix it, another hacker replaced the Stooges with continuous p.o.r.n.

Jake and Daniel went on, pa.s.sing their escapades back and forth like they were kicking a soccer ball downfield. Diana had prepared for just that moment. She pulled out a narrow scroll of paper on which she'd listed all the hacks she'd heard Jake and Daniel talk about and all the ones they'd pulled off since she joined up with them. She struck a match and offered it to Daniel. He lit the end of the paper.

"To starting over," Diana said as she dropped the burning paper into a garbage can and they watched for a few moments in silence. When just curls of ash were left, Daniel and Jake exchanged a look. They both grinned.

"This is gettin' on my noives," Daniel said.

"Shut up," Jake shot back.

Daniel poked a finger at Jake's chest. "You talking to me?"

"Nah. I'm talkin' to the fish."

It was another of their endlessly recycled Three Stooges routines, and Diana had heard it so many times that she could intone the reply at the same time as Daniel.

"Don't call me a fis.h.!.+"

Daniel reached across and smacked Jake in the back of the head, and a minute later he and Jake were rolling around on the floor together like a couple of overgrown puppies.

When it was time to go, Jake had paused in the doorway, his hand up for Daniel and Diana to hold on to. "All for one!" he said. It was the start of yet another Three Stooges routine.

"One for all!" Diana said, joining her hand to theirs.

"Every man for himself!" The three of them chorused the punch line.

That had been a lifetime ago. A fat tear fell on the front of her jacket and she smeared it across the black leather.

12:25. Still, no one had approached her in the gazebo. The air turned a notch cooler, and she realized the sound she heard was light rain falling on the roof. Was there really some big secret about Ashley's medical condition? Or was it just a ploy to get Diana out there?

Diana fished the cell phone out of her pocket, turned it on, and called Ashley. The call went immediately to voice mail.

"It's me," Diana said. "I'm here and I haven't been kidnapped by the Ripper." She paused. She couldn't bear to deliver the pathetic news that she'd come all this way only to be stood up. "I should be heading home soon."

She was about to put the phone back when the message-waiting alert went off. Had to be Ashley, seeing the missed call. But when Diana went to retrieve the text message, she saw it was from a number she didn't recognize.

She nearly dropped the phone as she started to read.

Sorry. Car c.r.a.pped out. Sunoco on 3A at I89. Meet me? GROB She didn't know what to feel. Dread that there was still, at the very least, unsettling news about her sister? Relief that she hadn't placed her trust in a creep who was just out to make her look like a fool? Guilty excitement that he was waiting for her?

She pocketed the phone and used the newspaper to cover her head as she sprinted back to the car. She opened the door, tossed the walking stick into the back, climbed into the driver's seat, slammed the door shut, and jammed the key into the ignition.

"h.e.l.lo, Diana." The familiar voice walloped her.

Chapter Twenty-Five.

"s.h.i.+t, s.h.i.+t, s.h.i.+t!" She held on to the steering wheel with both hands, waiting for her vision to clear, her heart to stop galloping.

She turned around. Jake was sitting in the backseat. He looked transformed since they'd last met in person, his head completely shaved, a reddish Vand.y.k.e beard and mustache on his face. If it hadn't been for the voice and the John Lennon gla.s.ses, she'd never have recognized him. He'd caught Daniel's walking stick and had it pointed at her like a javelin.

"What in the h.e.l.l are you doing here?" she said, her voice shaking. It felt as if Jake had sucked the oxygen from the air in the closed car. She gasped for breath. That's when she saw the cell phone, sitting on the seat beside him.

Idiot! A pall of mortification settled over her. No wonder GROB had used a voice synthesizer. GROB was Jake.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He put his hand on her shoulder. "Take it easy, please, don't freak out." In a single fluid move, he slid between the front bucket seats and into the front pa.s.senger seat.

Diana screamed and pressed herself against the door. She had to get out of there. She clawed for the handle, but before she could open the door there was a dull thock. Doors locking. Diana felt her blood thrumming in her ears. Her keys were no longer in the ignition.

"Take it easy, take it easy," Jake said. "I'm sorry for freaking you out."

"Let me out," she said. "Jake, please, let me out now. Whatever you have to say to me, you can say it out there." He didn't move.

"Help!" she screamed, banging at the window. "Help, help!" She screamed as loud as she could, but not a single person was near enough to hear, and the tinted gla.s.s made her invisible. She started to reach into the backseat for the walking stick.

"Stop!" Jake cupped his hand behind her head, twined his finger in her hair, and pulled it taut, immobilizing her. "Calm down. I was afraid you'd be like this."

"Ow!" she cried as he tightened his grip, and she felt the skin pulling at the corners of her eyes.

"I can explain." He brought his face close to hers and stared back at her. "Let me explain. Okay?"

Diana could smell coffee breath, aftershave, and the metallic scent of her own fear. She took a shuddering breath and managed a nod. Jake loosened his grip.

"Okay?" he said.

She nodded again. Slowly Jake let go. They sat in silence for a few moments, and Diana felt as if she were in a cage staring out at him. Her chest hurt as she took in air and exhaled.

"O-kay. Let's start over," he said. "I'm sorry I had to do it this way, but I need you to come with me. Diana, it's okay, really it is." He was talking to her like she was a child. "You can trust me."

"Trust"-Diana's voice was hoa.r.s.e-"is something you earn. You trick me to get me to come here. Hide in the backseat and then scare me half to death, and now I'm supposed to trust you?"

"I'm sorry. I had to wait in the Hummer because I wasn't sure it was you. You look . . . different from what I was expecting."

"I thought I was meeting . . . There's nothing wrong with my sister, is there?"

His silence confirmed it.

"You made me think she was deathly ill. My sister, the last person I can trust in this world. Except for you, of course. Don't you realize-?"

He returned her entreaty with a blank stare. Of course he didn't realize. Couldn't, really. Jake had never been able to fathom anyone's emotions but his own paltry array of them.

"Jake, why didn't you just ask me to meet you?"

"And you would have come?"

She thought about that. "Maybe not right away. But eventually I-"

"I couldn't wait for eventually."

"I don't understand."

"I can explain, but not here. Not now."

"Why not?"

"It's complicated. I wanted to show you this amazing place we've got set up."

"We?"

"You'll see. I promised I wouldn't tell you. But you know how you wanted to track down the hackers who've been after our clients? Well, now you're going to get your wish."

This was about Volganet? Were they part of Jake's post-Daniel business model? Nadia set up the chumps and then Volganet fleeced them-with Jake collecting from both sides.

"So we have a silent partner?" she asked.

He gave her a narrow look, as if he was trying to glean what she knew. "I guess you could call it that." Uncertainty was something she'd rarely seen in Jake.

"And what if I don't want to go with you?"