Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense - By Hallie Ephron Page 0,79

give them access to thousands more profiles—Vault stored the health records of federal prisoners, civil servants, and elected officials. Anyone who’d had a DNA swab, or fertility treatment, or registered to donate a kidney or bone marrow. Possibly even elected officials whose DNA had been collected just in case their remains had to be identified.

Diana knew how easy it would be to alter the records in a DNA database, merrily swapping one person’s profile for another’s. Corrupt DNA databases—you’d only need to hit a couple—and you could upend Big Brother. To someone like Daniel, as the slogan went, that was priceless.

But with Daniel and Jake’s usual thoughtless, scattershot approach, not every person who found himself implicated by DNA evidence would be dead. Innocent people would find themselves standing trial and others would get away with murder. And if the scheme was discovered, Diana would surely look as if she’d been partner to the conspiracy, if not the ringleader.

Now she understood why they’d had to bring her in. She’d given them no choice. The minute she’d intercepted that DNA profile from MedLogic, she’d outlived her usefulness. When she found Volganet, she was a hairsbreadth from figuring out what was going on. By bringing her in, Daniel must have thought he could control her. After all, she was isolated, alone. And she still had to be in love with him, didn’t she?

Diana glanced down at Daniel. His eyelids quivered and his shoulders twitched. He was having a bad dream. Poor baby. But whatever was going on in his sleep, it was nothing compared to what he was going to wake up to.

She found the screen that had popped up and returned “Ashley’s” call.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Daniel slept on. Six hours later, when Diana waved a cup of unadulterated coffee under his nose, he finally blinked awake. He sat up, groaning.

“Jesus. What happened? How long—?” He looked at his watch. “Quarter to four. Christ. Is that all it is?”

“You told me to wake you for the meeting,” Diana said.

Daniel looked at the coffee she offered him and winced, but then took it and drank some. He glanced around. “We got anything to eat?”

“There’s that egg sandwich you got me this morning. It’s a little tired, but—”

“Nuke it. Nuking kills anything that can kill you.”

“Interesting theory.” She found the greasy paper bag and stuffed it into the microwave. When she hit the switch, the light came on, and the little carousel inside started turning. After a bit, the odor of egg oozed out. Diana had been so busy, she hadn’t realized how hungry she was. She’d even have eaten that disgusting egg sandwich.

When she turned back, Daniel was staggering to his feet. “So, are we ready for the meeting?”

“We”—Diana paused—“are all set. Just waiting for Jake to e-mail me the coordinates and the pass code.”

The microwave dinged. Diana opened it and handed Daniel the hot sandwich. He stared at it for a moment as if she’d handed him a dead frog. Then he opened a corner, sniffed, and took a bite.

Diana’s stomach rumbled. God, she was hungry. She’d drunk most of the coffee milk and a PowerBar that she found, but that had been hours ago.

“If you want me to attend this meeting,” she said, “then you’ll have to unlock her.” She jerked her thumb toward her computer, where Nadia stood in suspended animation in her business clothes in OtherWorld’s re-creation of the mill’s silo.

“Huh?”

“Nadia. She seems to be stuck in neutral.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry.” Daniel shambled over to his worktable and glanced at the dark screen of his computer. He jiggled the mouse but nothing happened. Pressed the on button. The screen came to life. As he waited for it to boot up, his gaze traveled across the computer equipment on the table, down the cables to more equipment on the floor, as if checking that everything was the way he’d left it.

A beep brought him back. He swiped his index finger across the fingerprint reader attached to his laptop. When his desktop materialized he glanced at the bottom corner of the screen. “I can’t believe it’s so early. Feels like I slept for days.”

“Oh? And what, exactly, does that feel like?” Diana asked.

Daniel grimaced. “Hey, I said I was sorry. Besides, drugging your sister was Jake’s idea.” As he scratched his head and yawned, Diana heard a barely audible electronic voice: “Hel-lo So-kay-oss. Wel-co-me ba—”

She’d inadvertently left the Bluetooth earpiece turned on in her pocket. Clearing her throat to cover the noise, she casually reached