Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense - By Hallie Ephron Page 0,62

shelves were.

“Just because my things are here doesn’t make it home,” she said.

That’s when she noticed a metal rack, standing in the corner. An empty plastic pouch hung from it, upside down. She went over to it and lifted the plastic tubing attached to the pouch. A spicy licorice smell filled her head and she remembered the tender spot on the back of Ashley’s hand.

“What did you do to her?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“Four days of nothing?”

“Just kept her quiet. Even you admit that’s an improvement.”

He could be such a smug bastard. “Why?”

“It was”—there was a pause, like Jake was carefully picking the word—“a mistake. A complication I didn’t anticipate.”

“She’s not a complication? She’s my sister.”

“I know, I know. But I thought . . . I didn’t realize . . . she looked just like—”

“Me.” Diana finished the thought. She closed her eyes and let the realization sink in. This was her fault. She’d known that if she let her guard down, something terrible would happen. And then, without thinking, she’d dressed Ashley up as Nadia and launched her into a world that she knew was too dangerous to set foot in.

“Why can’t she remember anything?” Diana asked.

“Rohypnol. It’s a sedative that prevents memories from forming.”

“I know what it is. You just happened to have it on you? Were you going to use that on me if I’d been there and didn’t toddle along with you?”

He didn’t bother to reply, and in his silence, the enormity of what he’d done sank in. “You kept my sister unconscious for four days?”

“I didn’t want to hurt her, but it took me a while to figure out a way to get her home.”

The hospital release forms. That explained the odd assortment of tests that never would have been run, the prescription with Pam’s signature forged on it.

“So Pam doesn’t have anything to do with this, does she?” Diana asked.

Jake dismissed the question with a pitying look.

Diana shivered. It had been such a practical solution, warehousing a human being until Jake had figured out how to throw her back. She scanned the walls and ceiling. Mounted in the corner she found what she was looking for, a pinpoint of red light. She waved at it.

“So where’s Big Brother?” she asked.

“Exactly. That’s why you’re here,” Jake said.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Jake disarmed the far door and led Diana out onto a landing. With a locked gate, blocking access to the stairway up, down the stairs was only one way out. She followed Jake down a flight, through a doorway, across a floor of the mill, and out into another stairwell. Back up a flight of stairs and down a long corridor, she lost track of where she was. She wondered if he was deliberately doubling back on himself.

Finally they reached a narrow upward-slanting corridor that ended in some crumbling concrete steps that led to a heavy steel door. She heard water rushing, and through one of the small windows set in the corridor wall, Diana could see the reservoir and dam.

“Careful.” Jake indicated a plywood ramp that had been laid over uneven steps. He punched some numbers into another wall panel and the door clicked open.

“Here,” he said, pulling the door wide.

The door was set in a three-foot-thick cement wall. A wave of cool, chocolate-scented air wafted out. Diana knew immediately what lay just beyond—the silo. She hesitated, but Jake was behind her now, his hand at her back, pressing her forward and through the doorway. The chocolate smell grew stronger and turned bitter.

Diana scrabbled back as the floor—a metal grating—twanged when she stepped onto it. Below, through the openings in the grating, she could see several stories down to the bottom of the silo. Anxiety sputtered and flared in the pit of her stomach.

“It’s okay,” Jake said.

Cold air seeped upward and Diana folded her arms against the chill. Overhead, light trickled in through a panel of glass in the domed roof.

Jake hit a wall switch and spotlights, mounted on windowless walls of poured concrete, flooded the space with light. The interior was crammed with worktables with rolling office chairs pulled up to them and loaded with computer equipment. Cables snaked away and spaghettied on the floor, which was studded with electrical outlets.

“And talk about secure.” Jake’s hollow laugh seemed amplified in the space. He closed the door and keyed in a code to lock it.

She recognized the equipment on one of the tables. All of it was hers, set up in the same configuration she’d had at home, right