Come And Find Me Part 24

He shook his head.

Lau continued. "Tampering with federal data. It's a federal offense."

"s.h.i.t," Daniel said under his breath. He returned to his computer and brought up his network manager. "Can't believe . . . so stupid . . . idiot," he muttered. A moment later he was scrolling through log files.

Lau continued to speak but Diana wasn't listening. "Daniel, what are you looking for?"

He didn't respond. He just sat there, gaping at his computer screen.

Diana realized that Lau had stopped talking. Presumably he was waiting for her response. Fortunately, Daniel didn't appear to be paying close attention.

"So, how can we help?" she said.

"Go ahead with the security audit and penetration testing," Lau said. "But forget about tracking the stolen data. It's very important that you leave that alone. For now, at least. Understood?"

"Understood. We'll start testing right away."

"When do you think you'll have a report for us?"

"I'll need a meeting first with your in-house-"

"Jesus Christ," Daniel exploded.

"Pardon?" Lau said.

"Can you give me a moment?" Diana clapped a hand over the microphone, switched the sound input to mute, and froze the screen. She turned to Daniel. "Daniel, they can hear you."

He barely glanced over at her. He was scrolling through lists and opening files, swearing under his breath. "s.h.i.t. None of these files were here before. And now . . . s.h.i.t. s.h.i.t. s.h.i.t."

"Daniel!"

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h." He directed the word at his computer screen. "What the h.e.l.l is going on?"

"Good question," she said. "You tell me. What in the h.e.l.l 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 s.p.a.ces, 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.

"s.h.i.t. Who the h.e.l.l . . . ?" 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 h.e.l.l is going on?" Diana asked.

The infrared camera showed the first-floor corridor empty. Daniel switched to the feed from 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 antic.i.p.ated 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 h.e.l.l 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!"

The door vibrated as the person on the other side banged on it. Daniel strapped on the backpack and, without a moment's hesitation, started up the wall, springing from rebar to rebar like a mountain goat.

Go, go, go. Diana watched him as she backed up against the door.

"Let me in!" It was Jake. Thank G.o.d Daniel hadn't heard. Diana threw her weight against the door, slamming it shut and muting Jake's voice.

Diana had turned back the system clocks, adjusted Daniel's wrist.w.a.tch, but she'd never expected Jake to arrive back at the mill two hours early. He must have caught an earlier flight home after what had been a routine meeting with Vault, hours ago, while Daniel was sound asleep and dead to the world.

"Hurry!" she shouted up to Daniel.

Halfway up, Daniel stopped and adjusted the backpack.