Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense - By Hallie Ephron Page 0,82
is going on?”
Daniel was scrolling through network log files. He didn’t even acknowledge her question.
Diana got up and went over to him. “Daniel!” she said, squeezing his shoulder.
He looked up, startled.
“Listen to me. This is just like what happened with my last client. Stolen data. Clients freaked out. I thought there might be a ransom demand, but I didn’t have the evidence to prove it. Now we do.”
A muscle in Daniel’s jaw twitched. His gaze traveled from Diana to her computer screen, where the avatars from Vault and Jake waited in suspended animation, then returned to his own computer.
“Or,” Diana continued, “is this making some kind of sense to you that I’m still not getting?”
Daniel didn’t answer. He continued to gape at the network logs.
“Daniel?”
Finally he shook himself out of it. “Honestly? I don’t know. This time I haven’t even a clue.”
“This time?” Diana said. “This time? Are we in this together or not?”
He gave her a dark look. “Diana, you’re out of your depth. You have no idea what you’re dealing with. Trust me on this.”
Trust you? Right. “Well whatever it is, you’re right about Jake. He’s acting weird. He’s just sitting there, like—”
Daniel narrowed his eyes and finished the thought. “Like he isn’t really there.”
Diana felt as if her heart had vaulted into her throat. Had he seen through the fantasy she’d so carefully constructed? She tried not to react.
“Exactly,” she said.
“I don’t like this,” he said. “It feels . . . wrong. The whole thing feels wrong. End the meeting.”
“But Vault—”
“Frankly, Vault and their security issues are not my biggest concern right now.” A vein throbbed in his forehead. “End the meeting right now. It’s a setup.”
“You sound like me.”
“Paranoid?” He looked up into the silo’s domed roof again, tense and alert. “I’m never paranoid. I know I’m surrounded by the enemy.”
This time Diana heard it too. The churning, low rumble of an engine. A car? A motorcycle? Daniel might even think it was choppers.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Diana could almost smell her own anxiety, sharp and pungent, like the inside of a tin can. When she unfroze the screen, Jake’s avatar continued to sit there like a department-store dummy. But Daniel was beyond noticing. He was tabbing through the mill’s surveillance screens.
Diana did her best to stay in character and end the meeting quickly. She transported Nadia home. Then she watched over Daniel’s shoulder as he checked the stills being fed by cameras positioned inside and around the mill—the outer gate, hallways, loft spaces, stairwells, the loading dock. There was nothing to see. The final feed was pitch-black—the first-floor corridor with the windows boarded over.
“Why don’t you switch to infrared?” Diana said.
Daniel clicked the sun icon, turning it to a moon, and the image changed. Now there were bright green mottled shapes, the rough outlines of people.
“Shit. Who the hell . . . ?” Daniel said.
Two of the figures looked as if they were crouching. Just the top of a third was visible creeping beneath the camera. Another was captured midway up the steps. A fifth looked as if it was far away, just entering the corridor to the loading-dock platform.
When the image refreshed, there were only three figures.
“I don’t understand how they’re getting in,” Daniel said. “That door is supposed to be locked. And if they broke in, there’d have been an alarm.” He sprang to the wall of the silo and checked the keypad. “They’ve got the code.” He gave her a long hard look.
“Daniel, I’ve got no access to the outside world. On top of that, I haven’t got your security pass codes. What about this door?” She indicated the door to the silo. “Is it still armed?”
Daniel checked the door itself. “It is for now. But just to be sure . . .” He slid a metal bolt into the jamb.
“Who’s got the pass codes?” Diana asked. “The alarm company?”
Daniel gave her a pitying look, and she added, “So, just you and Jake?”
The image refreshed again. Now there were two figures remaining in the loading dock, both of them on the platform.
“That means they must have gotten to Jake,” Diana said.
Daniel’s eyes went wide. He glanced at the door. Checked his watch. Turned back to the video screen. Now the loading dock was empty of human figures.
“They don’t know where we are,” he said, “but it won’t take them long to figure it out.”
“What in the hell is going on?” Diana asked.
The infrared camera showed the first-floor corridor empty. Daniel switched to the feed from