Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense - By Hallie Ephron Page 0,21

Beneath the brim of his Stetson, his mirrored sunglasses reflected back Nadia’s image. That must have been a bear to program. He was handsome as hell, square-jawed and muscular. Diana wondered if this avatar bore even a passing resemblance to the person behind it.

Diana typed wave/ and Nadia raised her arm.

A voice balloon appeared over GROB’s head. “You came.” The voice that came through her earpiece sounded synthesized.

Diana angled the view, taking in the deserted beach dotted with coconut palms. “Wow. Where are we?”

“Ever been to Hawaii?”

“Never.”

“We’re on the Big Island. And over there?” GROB turned and pointed.

Diana angled the view 180 degrees. Behind them was the outline of a mountain range, not jagged like the Alps but gently rising and soft, as if its peaks had been sketched with pastel chalk.

“That big one?” GROB said. “That’s Mauna Kea. Its name means ‘white mountain.’ It’s got permafrost and snow all year-round. Just an hour-and-a-half drive from this beach. But we can get there much faster. Take my hand.”

GROB held out his hand to Nadia. Diana’s hand spasmed into a fist. He wanted her to link Nadia to him. That gave him control over where they went.

Nadia is not me, Diana reminded herself. Avatars were impervious. They couldn’t get mangled by outside forces. All she had to do was shut down OtherWorld if things got hairy, and when she brought it up again Nadia would be home again, no worse for the wear.

Diana forced her hand open and typed in the command link/. Nadia’s hand grasped GROB’s. When he rose up into the air, she flew beside him, soaring out over the ocean and then back over the beach and on toward the mountain range.

Diana felt breathless. She made Nadia point to a pair of nearby peaks, one twice the size of its neighbor, each with gently sloping cone-shaped sides and a dimpled depression at the tip. She loved mountains, and here were peaks as distinctive and yet so different from the imperious majesty of the Eiger or the Grand Tetons. She felt stirring in her an urge she’d nearly forgotten—she wanted to go there.

“Cinder cones,” GROB said. “Wouldn’t it be cool to walk out to the rim of that big one on a moonless night, to stay there until sunrise watching the stars? Too bad you can’t do it. Native Hawaiians consider the place sacred.”

They flew back to the beach and their two avatars walked hand in hand, side by side along the water’s edge, their virtual feet leaving behind a trail of prints that washed away as each new wave lapped the shore. Diana told him about some of the places she’d hiked. Death Valley, in December, one of the most spectacular and spiritual spots in the universe. New Hampshire’s White Mountains in May—that had been three years ago—when a snowstorm nearly buried their tent in snow. But icefall climbing, she told him, was the most magical of all.

Surfing was more his thing, he said. That and nature. He told her about camping at a remote nature preserve in Costa Rica accessible only by boat. There, where the jungle ended at a white sand beach, the howling of monkeys and a symphony of birds woke him each morning.

They talked on and on. She told him about her sister “Susannah,” a name she invented on the spot for Ashley. It felt good to admit, out loud, how worried she was. Ashley’s absence was gnawing at her.

GROB told her about his brother, Tom, a recovered alcoholic who couldn’t hold a job. GROB was the only anchor in his brother’s chaotic life.

“I’m sorry. That must be hard for you,” Diana said. “My sister’s annoying. But truly, she’s totally there for me. Except when there’s a man in the picture or when she’s convinced that she’s deathly ill.”

GROB laughed. “Hypochondriac?”

“And then some. We couldn’t be more different. Her favorite color was pink; mine was red.” Diana told him about the pictures in their family photo album from a typical Halloween—her blond sister posing in a leotard, pink tutu, and feather boa; dark-haired Diana, two years older and all knees and elbows, wearing a red cape she’d made out of one of their mother’s old cocktail dresses, red tights, a leotard, construction-paper horns on her head, and a garden pitchfork clasped in her hand.

“Believe it or not, when I was little I was fearless,” she said. “I jumped off our garage roof one time on a dare. Sprained my ankle. A month later I