Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense - By Hallie Ephron Page 0,25

of a legitimate company.

Diana opened the proposal she’d been working on. It was nearly finished. She’d taken special pains, referring frequently to the specifics of Vault’s business and inserting statistics that would impress upon their management team how thorough, knowledgeable, and trustworthy Gamelan was. She wasn’t about to take this client for granted.

A new text message popped up.

JAKE: You there? Call me.

Automatically she reached for the phone. Stopped. What if Ashley were trying to call her? She didn’t want to tie up the line and she didn’t own a cell phone—didn’t need it since she never left home. Or . . . Then she remembered. Months ago, Jake had sent her a prepaid cell phone so she could make untraceable calls to various 800 numbers that hackers were using to hijack bank accounts.

She found the phone at the back of her top desk drawer. Flipped it open. Of course it was dead. She scrounged in the back of the drawer and found the charger. Plugging it in, she started to punch in Jake’s number. Five digits in she changed her mind. Instead she started a message back to him.

Not now. Distracted. My sist

She stopped. Her concerns would only cement Jake’s opinion that Ashley was an airhead. Texting his way through his one date with her had been his way of dealing with terminal boredom.

She deleted the words and wrote:

I’m here. Busy. Expecting a call. Working on Vault proposal. 30 min.

Work was usually good therapy—most of the time it occupied the mind and anesthetized the gut. But today she had to force herself to focus on finalizing their proposal. As she reread and edited, she had to admit it sounded pretty impressive. She’d hire them.

Satisfied, she opened the e-mail account that she shared with Jake, attached the proposal to a message, and saved it to their drafts folder. Then she shot Jake a text message telling him she’d left it for him.

Soon after, she found herself pacing through the house. She peered out between slats of the living-room blinds. Flinched as a minivan drove past. A Volvo station wagon was parked across the street. There was no sign of a gold Mini Cooper.

She turned back and surveyed the room. She’d done a sterling job of destroying what little order Ashley had restored. She did a quick tour of the room, collecting the discarded T-shirts and socks, a sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants, and one sneaker. Where was the other one?

She checked behind the chairs and sofa, stacking books and newspapers as she went. There was the white toe of the sneaker, poking out from under the side of the couch. She reached down and pulled it free. A silver lipstick tube rolled out. Diana picked it up and stood. Not hers. It had been aeons since she used lipstick except virtually on Nadia.

She opened the tube and twirled the base. Touched her finger to the smooth stub of hot pink that remained. As she did so, a snap of licorice filled her head and she felt Ashley’s presence so strongly that she had to sit down.

Ashley was the only person Diana knew who actually loved Good & Plenty candies. For her seventh birthday party, Ashley had wanted only pink and white balloons, pink paper plates, pink plastic forks, and candy to match. She’d been delighted when most of her friends left their candy-filled party cups untouched. Their mother, in a rare burst of domesticity, had baked white cupcakes and iced them with pink frosting.

Diana wondered—maybe Ashley had called their mother.

Chapter Twelve

“What’s wrong?” her mother said the minute she heard Diana’s voice on the phone.

“Why should there be something wrong?”

“Because you never call me. I call you. Your sister calls me. That’s the way things work in this family.”

“So has she?”

“Why is it always a contest?”

Diana took a breath. “Let’s start over. Hi, Ma. How are you?”

For the last five years, her mother had lived in Jensen Beach, Florida, in a condo surrounded by golf courses. “Men golf,” she’d explained to Diana, forever hopeful that she’d find a better partner than Diana’s father, who’d disappeared from their lives long before he’d taken off with the woman whom Diana and Ashley referred to as Tiffany because that was her favorite place to shop. She had not long after been replaced by Tiffany II.

“Sorry. Do I sound cranky? I can’t complain. A few creaky joints. I always thought that was a figure of speech but it turns out they do creak. And click.