Come And Find Me Part 23

"Remember? Right before you fell asleep. Come on. You need to lie down and rest."

She wasn't sure he'd heard her. But then he licked his lips and nodded.

She helped him sit on the floor. "You want to work all night, you should at least put a mattress or a couch in here," she said.

"Mmmm." He crossed his legs like a little kid sitting at a campfire. "Jake?"

"He's in Maryland. For the meeting with Vault?"

"Oh, yeah." He started to tip sideways. Stopped and looked at her. "What time is it?"

"We have plenty of time. The meeting's not for another couple of hours."

"But I need to . . ." Again he tried to push himself up. He was like the blow-up clown toy she'd once had that kept bobbing upright no matter how many times you smacked it down.

"I've got it under control. We'll be ready," Diana said.

"But . . ." He mumbled something unintelligible.

She knelt beside him and wrapped her arm around him. He smiled and gave her leg a weak squeeze. Rank, coffee-scented breath rose to meet her.

"You don't need to worry," she said. "I'm finis.h.i.+ng up the presentation. Adding some material I researched. Enumerating the benefits and a.s.sessing the downside of doing nothing." She went on, making it up as she went, allowing her voice to rise and fall in a gentle rhythm like this was a bedtime story. "Don't worry about Jake. He's probably in the air. I checked. There's no weather to speak of in Baltimore. Looks like his plane is scheduled to land on time."

She went on and on, inventing status updates. Little by little she felt Daniel go limp. She eased him the rest of the way down onto the floor. He turned over and curled up. She took off her jacket, folded it, and slid it under his head.

Then she waited. Daniel's eyes were closed. His breathing evened out. When his computer beeped, she slowly got to her feet and went over to it. Another message-waiting alert had popped up on Daniel's screen. This time it was a voice mail.

She hooked the Bluetooth over her ear, turned it back on, and clicked open the message. "New message, marked 'urgent,' " said an electronic voice. A pause. Then: "Dr. Kennedy? This is Ashley Highsmith. You treated me at Neponset Hospital and left me your business card?" Ashley's voice sounded decidedly odd. Lighter and breathier. "I'm running a hundred-and-three-degree fever and"-she coughed and wheezed-"my chest aches." In the background, Diana heard a mockingbird singing. That had to be Pam's birdie clock. "My fingers and toes are swollen. Please. Call me." The phone number she left was Pam's.

When the message finished playing, a window popped up asking Diana if she wanted to return the call. She glanced quickly at Daniel. He was snoring. But before she could click yes, an e-mail message from Jake appeared. He'd sent it just seconds earlier, at 2:31 P.M. An hour and a half to go, just in time for him to get to Bethesda for the meeting. His message to Daniel began: Plane delayed. Finally at BWI. Did u c? ^5!

On the next line was a link. Diana clicked and a news article came up.

DNA evidence proves the impossible Federal law enforcement officials confirmed today that DNA collected from blood evidence at the scene of a recent bank robbery matches the DNA of a woman who died five years ago after undergoing a bone marrow transplant. When asked how this was possible, officials had no comment.

This was worthy of a high five? Diana read the rest of the article, then read it again, trying to wrap her head around the implications. Blood evidence at a crime scene matched a woman who'd died after undergoing a bone marrow transplant. How was that possible?

Diana rocked back in her chair. The implications were staggering. Every defense attorney in the country would be saving that news clip to read to their next jury, proof positive that DNA a.n.a.lysis was unreliable. Talk about instant reasonable doubt, and it could infect every case that involved DNA evidence. Daniel would have called it sabotage in defense of privacy.

Surely it was no coincidence that the file stolen from MedLogic was a DNA profile, or that one of the files she'd opened on Volganet was a DNA profile too. Many of Gamelan's clients would have had DNA profiles of patients stored in their databases. How many of them had Jake and Daniel ama.s.sed?

Diana retraced her steps, looking for the DNA profile she'd found earlier. It didn't take long. In the same directory, there were hundreds and hundreds more.

Now she understood why Jake and Daniel had been desperate to ensure that Gamelan's relations.h.i.+p with their newest client got off to a smooth start. Working with Vault would 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 pa.s.s 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. G.o.d, 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 b.u.t.ton. 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 in and tapped the Bluetooth silent.

"Oh, yeah." Daniel fiddled at the computer for a few moments. "Liberate Nadia."

"Makes a good b.u.mper sticker," Diana said.

Daniel scanned through the messages that had popped into his queue. "Here it is. Jake with the meeting coordinates," he said. "He copied you."

"Uh-oh. What's this?" She bent down and pretended to pick up the Bluetooth from the floor. "This yours? I almost stepped on it." She slid the little audio receiver onto the table.

Daniel barely glanced at it. "There. Reboot your system and you should be all set."

Diana settled at her computer and restarted it. She turned on the audio and slid the volume control louder. When she got back into OtherWorld as Nadia, messages streamed into her queue. She found the one supposedly from Jake, clicked it open, and pasted the coordinates for the Vault meeting into her transporter.

"Engage?" She looked over at Daniel.

Daniel laughed and pulled his chair up behind her, gave the screen a two-fingered salute. "Make it so."

Diana clicked go and the silo dissolved around her avatar. A moment later Nadia was hovering over a barren OtherWorld island. A box appeared and Diana typed in the pa.s.s code. A whirring sounded, then a click, like a safe opening. Clever touch.

Pixel by pixel, a meeting room rezzed around Nadia. The walls were the uneven dirt of an underground cave, but the table that Jake's avatar was seated at along with four other avatars, all in business suits, was a regulation conference table. There were two empty chairs. Diana sat Nadia in one of them.

In the real world of the silo, Daniel stooped behind her and draped an arm over her shoulders. "Here we go."

"All for one-" she whispered, looking up at him.

"One for all." He looked at her expectantly.

She smiled. "And every man for himself." She kissed him softly on the lips. Game on.

Then she pulled over the table microphone and spoke into it. "Nadia Varata."

One of the male avatars stood. She hovered the cursor over him, checking that this image was supposed to represent Andrew Moore, Vault's head of IT. "We're looking forward to working with you," Moore said.

He introduced the others and Diana wrote down the names and t.i.tles. Daniel returned to his own computer as she began delivering her presentation. She moved through it as quickly as she dared, lest Daniel zone out or fall asleep again before they got to the good part.

She had an odd sense of deja vu. Nadia and the virtual Jake were working together just as they had for the last eight months, the pair of them a team making these new clients comfortable, lulling them into what would turn out to be a much more intimate relations.h.i.+p than they'd bargained for. Only this time, the clients wouldn't be the ones unpleasantly surprised.

She concluded her presentation with, "Bottom line: you need to know if your lost data is being traded or sold, and lock down your systems and procedures to prevent this kind of thing from recurring. We'd like to start right away."

"The sooner the better," Moore said. "This couldn't have come at a worse time. We're at a critical point in our sales cycle. If this gets out, the results will be disastrous. We want to get out in front of this and manage any fallout. But we need to know exactly what we're looking at."

"Excellent. Then we're on the same page," Diana said. "We'd like to come at this two ways. Detection and prevention. As soon as we get a copy of the data that was taken, we'll start tracking globally to see if it's out there. I understand you're concerned about security access codes as well and vulnerability in general. We can start penetration testing your network right away too. As soon as we finish with this meeting, if you like.

"One of the foremost experts in the world will be working with us on this." She glanced over to see if Daniel was listening. "It's possible that, within a few hours even, we'll have some answers for you. Then we'll be able to advise your staff on any changes that are needed."

"That's all well and good, but I'm concerned that-" Moore began, but he was interrupted. The audio feed sounded as if conversation was going on at the other end. "I'm sorry. Just a minute."

Although the avatars on the screen remained seated, Diana could hear m.u.f.fled voices, then nothing, as if Moore had put his side on mute.

"Uh-oh." Diana made sure she said it loud enough so Daniel couldn't help hearing.

"What?" he said. "What's going on?"

"Shh. I think they're conferencing about something they don't want us to hear."

Daniel came over and stood behind her.

Finally the sound came back on. "Jim Lau," a voice said, and another male avatar, this one also dressed in a dark suit, his face a cliche from an Asian comic-book, materialized.

"That's their COO," she whispered up to Daniel.

"I know that," he shot back, his face tense. "I thought he wasn't going to be there."

"Jim?" A voice balloon appeared over Moore's head. "These are the folks from Gamelan Security. They're ready to get started."

"I'm sorry to have kept you in the dark," Lau said, his voice deep and resonant like someone who'd had radio training. "It was unavoidable. But there's been a development, and I wanted to bring you all the news myself because it's going to affect this project. You understand, the nondisclosure is in effect?"

"Of course," Diana said.

"No one's listening in on your end?" Lau asked.

She looked up at Daniel. He covered his ears, then his eyes, then his mouth. "Absolutely not," she said.

"All right, then. We've just received some disturbing news. I've been asked not to put anything in writing. To discuss it on a purely need-to-know basis. And you all need to know." He paused for a moment. "We've had a ransom demand."

Diana looked over at Daniel. He looked genuinely stunned.

"You sure it's for real?" she asked. "Because sometimes news of these kinds of . . . unfortunate events"-she didn't know what else to call leaving confidential corporate data on a commuter train-"can leak out. Someone might be trying to capitalize on the chatter."

"I'm afraid it's far more serious than that," Lau said. "We've been faxed a copy of one of the missing doc.u.ments. It's genuine, all right. The demand is for ten million dollars. If we don't pay up in three days, they're threatening to sell the information to the highest bidder. I've had no choice but to call in the authorities. The data that was taken is highly sensitive. I can't go into detail, but suffice it to say that in the wrong hands, the results would reverberate to the highest levels of our government."

"Bogus," Daniel muttered under his breath. "Completely bogus."

Diana tensed, sweat beading on her upper lip. What was he thinking?

"Why isn't he saying anything?" Daniel continued. "He's just sitting there like a block of wood." Diana realized he meant Jake.

"That's the bad news," Lau continued. "But the good news is, precautions were taken to safeguard the data. Digital time bombs were embedded in the files, and when one of the files was opened, presumably to print the data that was faxed to us, a homing beacon was detonated. Right now, it's transmitting a signal. Agents are closing in on a location, as we speak."

"Agents?" Diana said.

"FBI."

Diana turned to Daniel. He'd gone pale. He stood, looking up into the domed roof of the silo, a hand cupped to his ear.

"What?" she whispered.