Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense - By Hallie Ephron Page 0,70

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.

When her breathing had eased and the edges of her world had gone warm and slightly fuzzy, she resisted the pull of sleep. She stood and stepped to one of the windows. Four stories down, dull moonlight lit the mirrored surface of the still water that backed up behind the dam.

She crept to the edge of the wallboard screen and peered out. Under her bare feet, the uneven wide pine floorboards felt dry and splintery in places, worn smooth in others. Soundlessly she crossed from one end of the loft space to the other, trying each of the doors.

Returning to bed, she nearly tripped over a leg of the metal rack with its IV bag still hanging from it. A little red light glowed as, even now, a camera watched over where she now slept, where Ashley had been held unconscious for days. She recalled Jake’s remark: They can see in light or dark. She imagined her own infrared image glowing fluorescent green and wondered if either of the two geniuses was aware of her movements. They’d thought