Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense - By Hallie Ephron Page 0,16
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 2010\n\0
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