Come And Find Me Part 3

"Great in a don't-mess-with-me kind of way."

Ashley tugged the jacket smooth. "I can live with that." She stood tall, her feet apart, arms folded over her chest. Wonder Woman. "Don't mess with me." She delivered the words with a snarl.

"It all fits you so perfectly," Diana said.

"As if they were made to order. So, when I give them back, are you going to wear these clothes or what?"

"Or what, what? Of course I'm going to wear them."

"I meant out. Otherwise, what's the point?"

"The point is . . ." Diana took a deep breath. Because if she barely left her own property, then what was the point of gorgeous hand-tooled boots and a b.u.t.ter-soft leather jacket?

"I'm sorry," Ashley said. "Forget it. I should mind my own business." She slipped on the wraparound sungla.s.ses. "These are perfect too. Where'd you get this outfit?"

Diana jerked her thumb toward her office.

"No. You found them online?"

"In OtherWorld. And I didn't find them. You draw what you want, then send them the design and your measurements, and they make the pieces to order."

Ashley's mouth formed a perfect O as she looked down at her outfit, across to the door to Diana's office, and back again. "This is the same outfit . . . ?"

Diana nodded.

"It's much better in the flesh. You've got to show me how you do it."

Moments later they were sitting side by side in front of the computer. Diana scrolled through her inventory of OtherWorld places and transported Nadia to the unimaginatively named Main Street Mall. Sidewalks, trees, and storefronts, even a fire hydrant materialized around her avatar.

"Put it up over there." Ashley indicated the wall.

Diana toggled a switch and the screen went blank. Main Street Mall came up on the wall across from them. Ashley sat forward, staring at the ma.s.sive image, her elbows propped on the desk. She whooped when Diana pressed the up key and Nadia rose into the sky. She skimmed low across store roofs, over a pergola, a town green, landscape materializing around her as she flew. Soared over a winding river and back.

Diana glanced over. Ashley was gripping her chair arms. It felt like 3-D without the 3-D gla.s.ses.

Diana brought Nadia down onto sidewalk. "You want to drive?"

"You bet."

They switched seats. Diana showed Ashley how to use the trackball and b.u.t.tons to angle the view, and the keyboard's arrow keys to move Nadia and change direction. Ashley got the hang of it quickly. From behind, they watched Nadia saunter along, neatly avoiding colliding with a couple strolling hand in hand in the opposite direction.

"Those are . . . ?" Ashley asked.

"Not window dressing. There's a real live person somewhere in the world controlling each of them."

"This is way cool, love the way Nadia's hair is kind of springy, like a sea anemone. And that hip-swing thing she's got," Ashley said.

"Recognize it? It's your walk. I programmed it. And I sell it."

"You sell my walk? How come I don't get a cut?"

Ashley tapped the arrow key and Nadia continued, past a car dealership and a gun store.

"Okay, stop there," Diana said.

Ashley paused Nadia in front of a door that said HEADLESS BARBIE'S CLOTHING TO GO. Naked mannequins in the windows were displayed, as promised, without heads.

Ashley chortled. "How perfect is that?" She moved Nadia through the shop's door and inside. The store had pink walls and clothing racks on either side, a desk and a cash register in the front. Nadia was the only avatar there.

Diana took over the mouse and clicked on one of the clothing racks. A woman's voice said, "Can I help you."

"Custom order," Diana said.

A text box floated on the screen.

Customer?

Pa.s.sword?

Diana typed in Nadia's name and pa.s.sword.

Style?

Diana examined the invoice that had come with the new clothes and typed in the seven-digit style code she found. A 3-D image of her avatar's outfit-boots, jeans, jacket, cap, and sungla.s.ses-popped up, revolving in s.p.a.ce.

"You want it in a different color?" Diana asked Ashley. "It's easy to tweak." With a few clicks she'd turned the jacket orange and the boots bright blue.

"Ick. I liked it just the way it was," Ashley said.

Diana changed it back. "We just drag it over to the cash register." She clicked on the outfit and dragged it over. "And voila. We're good to go."

She was about to click check out when Ashley put her hand out to stop her. "So, what else can you get here?"

Diana smiled. Ashley was so easily hooked. "Whatever your little heart desires." She offered Ashley the microphone. "And if you keep it simple, you can just say what you want."

Ashley thought a moment. Then said, "Long pink dress."

A floor-length, off-the-shoulder dress materialized and revolved-a swirl of pale pink chiffon with a shimmering skirt-replaced a few moments later by a hot-pink strapless gown, replaced by a pink chintz number with muttonchop sleeves and tiny b.u.t.tons going up the back to a ruffled high neck.

"That one's definitely you," Diana said. "Little House on the Prairie. Just enter your measurements, charge it to your credit card, and it's made to order."

"Leather jacket," Ashley said into the microphone.

Up came a brown World War Istyle bomber's jacket, followed by a fitted black blazer, followed by a western-style jacket with serious fringe, followed by Diana's design.

"Order that one and I get ten percent," Diana said.

"Of what?"

"More than you can probably afford."

"I doubt that." Ashley set her chin on her hand as she watched leather jacket after leather jacket materialize and dematerialize. "I could definitely get into this."

While Ashley changed back into her own clothes, Diana stayed in her office. It took just a minute to reorder the outfit. She planned to set the clothes aside for Ashley's next birthday. It was an expensive gift, but she'd never been able to adequately repay her sister for the way she'd been there for her when Daniel died.

As she waited for the receipt to print, she picked up the walking stick from the umbrella stand beside her desk. Bleached bone white, the long, smooth, slender piece of driftwood had belonged to Daniel.

She ran her hand along its surface. Her breath caught as pine resin-more a feeling than an actual smell-seemed to enter through the palm of her hand, swirl through her chest, and climb up the back of her neck and into her sinuses. Her eyes stung.

She shook herself out of it, put the walking stick back in the umbrella stand, slipped on her earpiece, and called Jake back.

"Diana?" Jake answered. "It's about time. Are you trying to get us fired?"

"They were headed for the exit long before I opened my big mouth."

"You don't know that."

"I sure as h.e.l.l do. I know when I'm being played."

"Played? What are you talking about?"

"This makes at least the third time a client has circled the wagons the instant we get a lead on the hackers. All we're doing is damage control, plugging holes. I want to put the hole makers out of business."

"News bulletin: Gamelan provides a service. We do what our clients want us to do."

"Is that how you see it, Jake? They tell us what to do and we salute and march? Daniel would have-"

He cut her off. "Would you stop with Daniel already? The truth is, neither of us has any idea what Daniel would or wouldn't have done. Let's just stick with what's going on here and now."

"Here and now, we're supposed to have some kind of expertise that our customers are paying for."

"Paying for. Exactly. We're in business to make money. And it wouldn't hurt if we focused a bit more attention on the bottom line."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Diana said. If they were having a cash-flow problem, it was news to her. Jake did their accounting and Diana drew enough to live on. With what they were charging and the way the business had grown, there should have been plenty for her and Jake and more after that.

"We're doing fine," Jake said. "But it's a very small world out there and we can't afford to p.i.s.s off clients. So could you at least discuss your next outburst with me before you go off half-c.o.c.ked again? We're supposed to be partners."

Partners? More like the remaining two legs of a three-legged stool. Still, she couldn't disagree-she should have talked with him before the meeting.

"It's just that I . . . I get impatient," she said. "It's frustrating going after hackers and then getting stopped when we've barely slowed them down."

"Diana, these guys are just pulling the same kind of c.r.a.p we were up to two years ago. Without them, we've got no work."

"So you're saying we shouldn't try to track them down? Gee, maybe we should put them on the payroll."

"I'm saying that even if you track them down, it won't fix the problem. You think there's just one group of hackers out there and they're targeting our clients?"

"Of course not. That's ridiculous. But still, it makes me furious. I want to know who they are. This time, and the time before that, and the time before that. We could lose our reputation just as fast as we gained it if it gets out that our clients are being shaken down."

"You don't know that's what's happening."

"You're right. But I'm sure as h.e.l.l going to find out."

There was a pause on the other end. "What are you up to?"

"I set a little trap."

Jake groaned. She told him that she'd been banking on the hackers not realizing that they'd been detected and coming back to the same laptop, looking for more. "Before MedLogic wiped the laptop, I planted another data file on it. Only this time it wasn't just data. It had a program embedded in it-a digital LoJack that goes off when the file is opened."

"But they wiped the laptop."

"Not soon enough."

Jake chuckled. "G.o.d, I am so glad you weren't out there trying to bust us a few years ago." He added, "So what do we know about them?" Diana noted the shift from "you" to "we."

She clicked on the message that had come in and opened the attachment. She began scrolling through the lines of code that had come back from the hackers. Some of it she understood; most of it she didn't. "Want to see?"

"And who's paying for my time? We've got no client."

"That never stopped us before."

"Before was different."

"As you keep reminding me. You wouldn't have thought twice about doing this in the old days."

"Diana, I was perfectly happy with the way things were in the old days. You're the one who wanted to go straight."

She scrolled through the information that had come back. "Linux operating system. A half-dozen IP addresses. I've never heard of this e-mail server software they seem to be running."

She waited. Then sighed heavily. "I sure do wish I could figure out what this is telling me."

Jake laughed.

She added, "You know you want to see this. Come on, admit it."

"All right, all right."

Diana resisted the urge to pump her fist in the air. She attached the file to a blank message and uploaded it to the drafts folder of their shared e-mail account.

"Okay, it's in the dead drop," she said. She could hear clicking on Jake's end. "Find it?"

Jake grunted a yes. More clicks. She could hear Jake's intake of breath. "Holy . . . cool, very cool." Then silence. Combing through the file would be like sorting spaghetti, finding meaningful strands among the junk.

"You're good," he said. "d.a.m.ned good."

Good at what? Diana wondered-at out-geeking a geek or at emotional blackmail? "I had the best teachers," she said.

"Let me look through this and see what I can figure out. We may not know who they are, but I should be able to get us in through their back door."