Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense - By Hallie Ephron Page 0,57

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 porn.

Jake and Daniel went on, passing 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 fish!”

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