Come and Find Me (15 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

J
ake disarmed the far door and led Diana out onto a landing. With a locked gate, blocking access to the stairway up, down the stairs was only one way out. She followed Jake down a flight, through a doorway, across a floor of the mill, and out into another stairwell. Back up a flight of stairs and down a long corridor, she lost track of where she was. She wondered if he was deliberately doubling back on himself.

Finally they reached a narrow upward-slanting corridor that ended in some crumbling concrete steps that led to a heavy steel door. She heard water rushing, and through one of the small windows set in the corridor wall, Diana could see the reservoir and dam.

“Careful.” Jake indicated a plywood ramp that had been laid over uneven steps. He punched some numbers into another wall panel and the door clicked open.

“Here,” he said, pulling the door wide.

The door was set in a three-foot-thick cement wall. A wave of cool, chocolate-scented air wafted out. Diana knew immediately what lay just beyond—the silo. She hesitated, but Jake was behind her now, his hand at her back, pressing her forward and through the doorway. The chocolate smell grew stronger and turned bitter.

Diana scrabbled back as the floor—a metal grating—twanged when she stepped onto it. Below, through the openings in the grating, she could see several stories down to the bottom of the silo. Anxiety sputtered and flared in the pit of her stomach.

“It’s okay,” Jake said.

Cold air seeped upward and Diana folded her arms against the chill. Overhead, light trickled in through a panel of glass in the domed roof.

Jake hit a wall switch and spotlights, mounted on windowless walls of poured concrete, flooded the space with light. The interior was crammed with worktables with rolling office chairs pulled up to them and loaded with computer equipment. Cables snaked away and spaghettied on the floor, which was studded with electrical outlets.

“And talk about secure.” Jake’s hollow laugh seemed amplified in the space. He closed the door and keyed in a code to lock it.

She recognized the equipment on one of the tables. All of it was hers, set up in the same configuration she’d had at home, right down to the Post-its she’d stuck on the outside of a system box. He’d even brought her tulip chair. It was pulled up to the opposite side of the table.

Sitting on one of the tables was a gray cowboy hat. Diana thought of GROB. Her throat tightened. She’d connected with him, let him in, trusted him. Disappointment and humiliation burned. She still couldn’t believe that GROB was Jake.

“Coffee?” Jake asked. He didn’t wait for an answer, just went to the opposite wall where there was a sink and a makeshift counter, a slab of Formica-topped wood propped on sawhorse legs. On the counter sat a coffee grinder, and beside that a coffeepot, its light glowing.

Jake poured two cups, adding milk from the refrigerator under the counter. He came back and offered one to her.

Diana took the hot cup and cradled it in two hands. As she inhaled the bitter smell of chicory, her heart gave an extra beat. That was New Orleans style, just the way Daniel had liked it.

“This is what you wanted me to see?” She looked around again. It was pretty impressive. “Sure beats a semitrailer.”

“By the way, we won the bid. Vault’s a go.”

It took a moment for her to put together what Jake was talking about. As if any of that mattered any longer.

“They want to meet with us tomorrow afternoon,” Jake said. “I’ll fly out early . . .” As he went on talking, he seemed so far away, like his voice was coming to her from deep in a wind tunnel. On an empty stomach—she hadn’t eaten since that morning—the pill was kicking in fast.

It struck her as so odd that he still thought she’d just keep working with him. He was right about one thing—back in the early days when Gamelan was no more than a dream, Vault was just the kind of client she’d dreamed of having. But she couldn’t go on engaging bigger and bigger clients, just to set them up to be victimized by the people behind Volganet.

Diana watched Jake set up her laptop on the table and plug it in.

“I’m not going to, you know,” she said. He looked over at her. “I’d never, ever work with you and your new partners.”

“New partners?” Jake narrowed his eyes.

“Volganet. Isn’t it obvious?” she said.

“Diana, I’m sorry for everything we put you through. But it’s not what you think.”

“It’s not? Then what is it?” She sipped coffee. The taste brought tears to her eyes. The last time she’d had coffee with chicory had been her last morning with Daniel. None of this would be happening if he were still here.

“Diana, trust me,” Jake said. “I know you’ll be surprised, but I hope you’ll be pleased too. You’ll understand, just as soon as . . .”

Diana followed his gaze up smooth silo walls that grew whiter and brighter as they rose toward the domed roof. About fifteen feet from the top was a small door, more of a hatch really. The metal spiral of stairs that she’d seen outside winding around the silo ended there. Inside there were no stairs, but there were U-shaped ends of rebars—steel bars, dark with rust—that stuck out of the concrete, at regular intervals.

A breeze stirred in the silo, and a sound, like the creaking of a rusty hinge, from overhead sent a chill down her spine. She squinted, shading her eyes as she tried to see past the bright spotlights shining down at her. Just beyond, the little doorway in the silo wall was open. A figure climbed through the opening and sat perched on the ledge.

“Hey, kiddo.”

Electrical sparks shot through her. Fifteen months and two weeks—that’s how long it had been since she’d heard that voice. It wasn’t possible, but there he was, swinging his leg and holding on to the frame of the sill above his head. He let go with one hand and waved to her. Diana’s stomach turned over and she gasped. But Daniel was relaxed, glued to his perch, as sure as an insect that gravity had no hold on him.

She heard a beeping sound, and whirled around just in time to see the door to the silo close. The panel by the door blinked yellow, then steady red. Jake was gone.

Diana started to quake, she couldn’t breathe, and that floaty feeling that briefly had buffered reality was gone. Her insides wrenched and her vision blurred. Her knees buckled under her as she reached for the tulip chair, but it slid away, overturning. Diana dropped to the floor.

As if he’d flown down, seconds later Daniel was crouched in front of her and holding her hand. It had to be a dream. She closed her eyes, willing herself to wake up. But still she felt his hand, holding hers. Smelled the tang of his sweat.

She opened her eyes. He looked older, thicker. Like Jake, his head was completely shaved.

“Oh God, is it really you?” she whispered. “How . . . ?” She could barely wrap her head around the questions that followed. How had he survived? How had he come back? How long had he been here? How could he have come back and not let her know?

When he brushed the hair back from her forehead and tucked a tendril behind her ear, it felt as if he left a trail of red-hot embers. He put his arms around her.

Daniel, Daniel, Daniel . . .
He was alive.

“It’s okay, it’s okay . . .” He whispered the words in her ear.

And then she was crying. Deep sobs racked her body. Waves of agony overwhelmed her as the enormity of his deception washed over her. She tried to pull away but he held her tight in his arms.

Her throat closed, and she could barely get the words out. “You bastard. You lousy son of a bitch.” She struggled to free herself. He’d let her believe that he was dead. Nothing could make that okay. “How could you let me . . . ?”

In a blind fury, funneling rage, confusion, and a backwash of grief, she drew back and tried to slap his face, her open hand connecting with the arm he’d raised as a shield. She tried again but he blocked the blow.

He reached out for her but she scrabbled back across the mesh floor. “Get away from me! How could you do—” When he closed in on her she pounded his chest with every ounce of strength she could muster.

He caught her wrist and held it.

She flailed, trying to free herself. “I hate you I hate you I hate you . . .”

He pulled her toward him.

“I . . . trusted . . . you.” She spit the words out into his face.

He grabbed her other wrist. She tried to twist away but couldn’t.

“And you . . . you . . .”

He held her until at last she went still. Time seemed to stop as he drew one of her hands to his mouth and kissed the tip of her thumb. Her index finger. She felt the warmth of his lips, his tongue.

He kissed each of the other fingers, one by one. Then her wrist, and she closed her eyes, her body vibrating with sensations she’d thought she’d never feel again.

When Diana opened her eyes, Daniel was looking directly at her. Slowly, without breaking eye contact, he kissed her, a long deep kiss. She remembered the soft fullness of his lips, the strength of his arms around her, how his very essence filled and overwhelmed her. She remembered how, in his embrace, the world outside simply ceased to exist.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

D
iana sat curled in Daniel’s lap on the floor, feeling his warm breath in her ear. She reached up and touched the back of his neck, the hollow where the prickliness of his shaved head met soft skin. He let her draw her fingers across the familiar contours of his cheek, his sandpaper jaw, the puckered cleft in his chin.

“What happened?” she asked. “Why didn’t you come back?”

“I can explain everything.” He put his finger under her chin and gently raised her face to his. “Just give me a chance. I can explain.”

“I’m listening.”

A muscle worked in the corner of his jaw and he took a breath. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but when I woke up in the hospital I had no idea who I was. They told me that I’d crawled out of the wilderness into a little village. I was in pretty bad shape. I’d been out there for days. I have no idea how I stayed alive or I how got there, but I did. They airlifted me to the nearest hospital. They said it was a miracle that I came through in one piece. Pretty much, anyway.”

He splayed his fingers, showing her their scarred tips. “Frostbite,” he said. “My toes too. The end of my nose. They were able to reconstruct it. I was very lucky. It could have been much worse.

“All I had on me was my driver’s license. I was so raw and swollen, no one would have believed that the face on it was mine. Water had gotten under the laminate, and the name, address—most of the print on the license was illegible.

“I spent weeks in the hospital, months in rehab.” He glanced down at her. “I started to walk again, but still I didn’t know who I was or where I’d been. I kept coming back to that driver’s license, holding it up to the light, examining it, trying to decipher the name. I had to guess at some of the letters. I Googled every possible permutation until finally I found my own death notice. I’d been dead for six months. It felt unreal.

“I tried to find out more about myself. Finally I found that ridiculous photograph of the three of us all dressed up for Halloween. Remember?”

Diana did. They’d started out thinking they’d go as the Three Musketeers and ended up as the Three Stooges. As Larry, Daniel had worn a flesh-colored bathing cap with teased-out steel wool glued around the sides and back. Jake had gotten a buzz cut so he could go as Curly. Diana as Moe wore a black wig with bangs down to the bridge of her nose. She’d practiced that sour, disgruntled Moe expression, fueled by a pugnacious chin. Daniel and Jake had drilled her on the routines, and for one drunken night, she’d completely gotten into what they found so hilarious about the slapstick shtick.

She’d broken down after that and actually watched some of the Three Stooges shorts. Soon she’d had enough. But it made her realize that for all the violence the knuckleheads inflicted on one another, they shared a genuine affection.

Daniel shifted Diana off his lap and helped her to her feet. Then he sat in one of the rolling office chairs. “Did we have a great time or what?” He tilted the chair back, crossing his arms and grinning at her. The familiarity of the pose took her breath away. “That photo of us, goofing around like that—it was the trigger. After that, things started coming back to me. Know what I remembered first? Before my parents, before my hometown, before anything else I remembered Toro, the black Lab we had when I was a kid. Memory’s weird.

“Soon, more and more memories came back. But it was months before I could even think about what I was going to do next. By then, I’d started to remember what happened.”

He went on, but Diana barely listened.
Pick, pick . . .
That was the sound she’d heard as she and Jake had waited on the icy ledge, their climbing ropes coiled on the ground. She’d tried to peer over the edge, but the wind had buffeted her, eager to bite any part of her that was exposed. She’d slipped her balaclava back on, crouched, and listened as Daniel sank his picks into the ice and drove in one crampon then another. She’d imagined him pushing and pulling his way up.

Then a moment of utter silence. She’d thought,
He’s reached the second screw hold
as she waited for the sound of his ax and a reassuring shout that he was on the move again. Instead there had been a cry and a sickening thud.

Diana had scrambled to the edge of the outcropping, desperate to see what had happened and almost slipping over herself. Daniel’s howl of despair had grown alternately fainter and louder as it bounced off frozen rock.

“Daniel!” Diana had screamed, the wind flinging the words back into her face.

Frantically, arm over arm, Jake had hauled up the climbing rope. From the end dangled an empty safety harness.

Afterward, after the search party returned with only his dented helmet, everyone had asked how this could have happened to an experienced climber. Theoretically it was impossible to fall out of a properly rigged safety harness. But it was even more impossible to survive the kind of fall Daniel would have taken.

She stared up the wall of the silo to the ledge on which Daniel had perched. He must have made the descent using the rebars. No ropes, no climbing harness. A single misstep would have been his last.

“Were you free climbing then too?” she asked, interrupting him. “Is that how you fell? Is that why you insisted on coming up last?”

He gave her a long look. “It was the Eiger.” He spread his hands, that bad-boy charm still working for him. “How could I do it any other way?”

Diana knew. She’d always known. They had each rigged their own safety harnesses, and it had been the only explanation that made any sense. Daniel never buckled a safety belt on a roller coaster. Never encountered a railing he didn’t climb over or an extreme sport he didn’t relish. Canyon gliding. Parachuting. Bungee jumping. Skateboarding through the city, holding on to the bumpers of cars.

“How long have you been back?” she asked.

“December,” he said.

That was four months ago. By then Diana had long ago moved into her mother’s house. The new business was taking off.

“So Jake knew,” Diana said. A statement, not a question.

“Not until I called him.”

“But why didn’t you get in touch with me?” Diana just stared at him, trying to fathom how he could have left her twisting in agony.

“Jake told me that you’d moved back home. Buried me in your mind. Collected the insurance. A million bucks.” He whistled. “Exposed that health insurance scam. Awesome. It was what you’d dreamed about. You were already a legend. I couldn’t just show up and pull the rug out from under you. I mean, it would have been a huge mess. You’d have had to return the insurance settlement.”

Diana felt her mouth drop open. So he’d been doing her a favor, keeping her in the dark?

He went on. “I’d created a new identity for myself. It’s a lot easier to do that abroad than it is here. When I got back to the States, Jake put me up. Then I found this place. But coming back turned out to be harder than I thought it would be. And it wasn’t the same without you. But you’d grieved and gotten on with your life. I felt like I couldn’t just show up.” He reached over for the cowboy hat and put it on his head. “But I missed you. I had to see you.”

Tears pricked in Diana’s eyes. “As GROB?”

“I couldn’t help myself. I guess that was selfish. But I knew we couldn’t be together. I thought at least we could talk.” He swallowed. “I thought that would give us both back part of what we’d lost.”

She wanted to believe him. Really she did.