Come and Find Me A Novel of Suspense - By Hallie Ephron Page 0,83
the camera in the adjacent stairwell. Two figures, like black shadows, moved up the stairs.
“They’re almost here. We don’t have much time,” he said.
“Daniel, who are they?” Diana asked. “And what are they looking for?”
Daniel hesitated. She could almost hear the question caroming back and forth in his mind: who to trust? That was the very question she’d asked at all the wrong times and come up with all the wrong answers.
Finally he said, “You heard what he said. Maybe it’s the FBI. And if it is, then they’re about to find what they’re looking for.” He looked over at the two computer servers.
“What they’re looking for is on the hard drives?” she asked.
He nodded.
“So delete the data. Haven’t you got a kill switch built in here somewhere? A digital suicide bomb that will overwrite everything?”
Daniel blinked at her.
“Or we can pull the drives and shred them. Have you got a media shredder?”
But Daniel was looking at the first-floor camera again. More bright green figures were moving through the inky dark.
“Surely you must have anticipated something like this could happen,” Diana said, though she knew the answer. As usual, there was no plan B, not for Daniel and Jake, masters of their little universe. They never believed that their plans could fail.
But with the likelihood of exposure staring him in the face, Daniel slumped in his chair. He rubbed his hand back and forth over his stubbly chin. “Christ. Years and years of planning. And then he can’t wait a couple of more days?”
Years. Diana was beyond aching. She went over to him and took his hand. She turned the palm up. “And these?” She touched a mutilated fingertip. “It’s not frostbite, is it?”
He waved his hands like the consummate magician that he was. “Anonymity. That’s all I ever wanted. For me. For the world.”
“But there was still DNA,” Diana said. “Each person’s unique identifier—”
“Linked, in a government database, with a name, an address, a Social Security number.” Daniel finished the thought, shaking his head in disgust.
“So you decided to discredit DNA by, what, scrambling the databases?”
He went on, as if he hadn’t heard her. “Only it doesn’t stop there. It’s never enough. Without anyone’s permission, the government routinely tests the DNA of babies and stores it . . . indefinitely. And do you know what they’re talking about now? Christ, in some places, it’s already happening. Embedding GPS chips in newborns. Soon, every minute of every day, they’ll know where you are.
“I knew I couldn’t stop them. But every dragon has its vulnerable spot. I keep poking. Here. There. Slowing it down and slowing it down—”
“Hoping that sooner or later humanity comes to its senses?” Diana said.
Daniel’s eyes glittered. “We’re going after the computers on satellites next. GPS depends on their alignment.”
“Every plane landing at Logan depends on their alignment,” Diana said.
“Hey, you gotta break a few eggs . . . Don’t you see? That’s why we couldn’t leave you out there. You were so close to figuring it out when we were so close to making it happen.”
He was so casual, so matter-of-fact about it. Diana felt as if she’d been sucker-punched. But this was no time for pointless self-pity. “Guess I’m an A student,” she said. “You taught me well. But why risk everything with ransom demands? You never used to care about money.”
“I still don’t. That ransom thing?” Daniel gave her a pained look. “That’s Jake. But he’s supposed to wait.”
The security panel, just yards away from them, was beeping. Truly startled, Diana jumped to her feet. Someone was entering the code to the silo door. What in the hell was going on? Even if Jake’s flight back was on time, he shouldn’t be there yet. She’d counted on at least another hour.
“They’re here already.” Daniel backed away from the door.
Diana recovered quickly. “You need to get away before they get in. Take the data with you.” She ran over to the computer servers and started pulling out hard disks, emptying the racks. Three. Five. Eight. Twelve of them—metal and plastic about as large as an oversize paperback book—littered the floor.
Daniel grabbed a backpack from under his worktable and began to stuff the media into it.
There was a long beep as the silo’s electronic door latch released. The door gave a fraction but the bolt held it in place.
Daniel stuffed the last hard disk into the backpack. The zipper barely contained them all.
“Go.” She pointed up toward the hatch high in the wall. “Hurry!”