Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense - By Hallie Ephron Page 0,59
Except for you, of course. Don’t you realize—?”
He returned her entreaty with a blank stare. Of course he didn’t realize. Couldn’t, really. Jake had never been able to fathom anyone’s emotions but his own paltry array of them.
“Jake, why didn’t you just ask me to meet you?”
“And you would have come?”
She thought about that. “Maybe not right away. But eventually I—”
“I couldn’t wait for eventually.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I can explain, but not here. Not now.”
“Why not?”
“It’s complicated. I wanted to show you this amazing place we’ve got set up.”
“We?”
“You’ll see. I promised I wouldn’t tell you. But you know how you wanted to track down the hackers who’ve been after our clients? Well, now you’re going to get your wish.”
This was about Volganet? Were they part of Jake’s post-Daniel business model? Nadia set up the chumps and then Volganet fleeced them—with Jake collecting from both sides.
“So we have a silent partner?” she asked.
He gave her a narrow look, as if he was trying to glean what she knew. “I guess you could call it that.” Uncertainty was something she’d rarely seen in Jake.
“And what if I don’t want to go with you?”
“Diana, after what happened with your sister, I’d understand. But I think you’ll change your mind, once you see everything. And if we get there and you decide you don’t want to stay, I promise you can leave. Trust me.”
“Trust you? I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
“Fair enough. But come with me and let me show you.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out her keys. “Here. You can get out right now, or you can drive.”
As Diana stared at the keys he offered to her, she realized that she really didn’t have anywhere to go back to.
The wipers swept slowly back and forth, across the windshield, and drizzle had turned to a steady rain by the time Diana drove past the town’s final convenience store and the driveway to the last house abutting the road. Jake, who’d looked tense when she’d started the car and pulled back out into the street, had settled into his seat.
When they reached the highway entrance, he said, “Just stay with the road we’re on.”
The terrain was hilly and the road narrowed as it snaked through dense forest, a blur of trees surging past on either side. Jake leaned forward and peered through the windshield as the wipers stroked and cleared.
“We’re almost there. Slow down,” he said.
She remembered the map of this area and tried to imagine where “there” was—north, or maybe northwest of Mill Village, five or six miles. There’d been a lake or reservoir in this direction.
“Turn there,” he said, pointing to a dirt road.
Diana slowed and turned onto it. It was impossible to go more than fifteen or twenty miles an hour on the rutted surface.
“It’s a ways in,” Jake said. “Just keep going.”
In a thicket of brush and trees, Diana could make out what had once been a building foundation. The chimney and the remains of a brick wall seemed to be standing in a shroud of fog. Beyond that they passed a field and a small pond.
The car lurched and once again they were on paved road, skirting a perimeter of chain-link fencing that surrounded a multistory brick complex that looked like an old industrial mill. The first-floor windows were boarded over, but on the floors above, glass was all still intact.
The Hummer rocked in and out of potholes before Diana had to come to a halt at a sliding gate. Jake took his own cell phone from his jacket pocket, punched in a number, and a few moments later the gate clanked and slid open.
“Go ahead,” he said, pointing ahead. “Not much further.”
Diana hesitated.
“Change your mind?” Jake said. “Because I can get out right here and walk the rest of the way. You can turn around and go home. But if you want to know what’s going on, the answer is here.” He pointed straight ahead.
Diana drove the car through the gate. On the other side, she stopped and twisted around, watching through the rain-shrouded rear window at the gate sliding shut behind them. She turned and peered through the front windshield.
“We’re almost there,” Jake said.
Diana drove past what looked like the building’s main entrance, now a padlocked door, and on around the corner. Jake opened the car window. Cold, damp air surged into the car, anchoring Diana’s senses. She exhaled a puff of dragon’s breath.