Chapter Eight
Saturday morning, first thing, Diana checked the Spontaneous Combustion Web site. It said the video from the improv was Coming soon!
After a bowl of instant oatmeal, she got to work. For a second time, she opened the information that had come back from MedLogic’s hackers. These were people, she reminded herself, individuals with friends and family, not disembodied evil entities. But who were they? Where were they? Though she didn’t have the sophisticated knowledge and tools that Jake did, she could do some basic investigating.
First she traced the connections as the message had hopped from server to server on its way from the hackers’ system to hers. Next to the start of the list were four numbers—that would be the IP address of the server that was providing the hackers their Internet access. She ran a DNS search and got the site name: Volganet.net. Entering that URL in her browser brought back a blank screen with an error message.
Volganet. The name made it sound as if they were somewhere in what had once been the Soviet bloc. That she could check.
She opened up Telnet and queried Volganet’s time server. Back came:
Sat Apr 24 09:35:44 2010\n\0
09:35? That was Eastern Standard Time. Volganet was operating in her own time zone. Interesting for what it ruled out, but to narrow down the location further she’d have to sift through the lines and lines of information that had come back and use what she found to break into the hackers’ system.
She was desperate to know if these were the same people who’d preyed on Gamelan’s other clients. If it got out that their clients were being singled out, that would be the end of Gamelan Security. The end of everything she’d worked to build. The end of the one thing she had left.
She’d crush them before she’d let that happen.
While Diana was mulling over that cheery thought, envisioning appropriate payback, a message popped up.
GROB: RU there?
Her stomach turned over. She liked him, she really did—and that scared the hell out of her. Her hand hovered over the keyboard as she was still trying to decide how to respond when INTRUDER ALERT flashed in the corner of the computer screen. Diana silenced the alarm, but not before it sent her heart racing.
She checked the front video monitor. A man in a parka and a knitted cap was coming toward the front door. Slung over his shoulder was a canvas bag. He pulled out from it a rolled-up flyer, stuffed it into the handle of her screen door, and continued on to the next house.
Her phobia was exhausting and she was goddamned sick and tired of feeling wrung out, five or six times a day. Diana grabbed Daniel’s walking stick and went to the door. Dr. Lightfoot had recommended that she acclimate herself to the outside world again, building slowly, a little each day. So at least once each morning, she pushed herself out of the house.
The first time she’d tried it, a few months earlier, she’d made it as far as the front steps. Breathless, her heart hammering like a crazed bird trying to get out of her chest, she’d turned tail and burst back into the house, slammed the door, the urge to hide driving her body into a protective crouch.
Now her goal was to breach her own electronic fence once a day. She put her hand on the doorknob and counted down from ten. When she got to zero she took a deep inhale and pulled the door open, pushed open the storm door, and stepped outside. The skim of sweat on her forehead and at the back of her neck turned cold, but she welcomed the sensation, and the smell of smoke from someone’s fireplace and the feel of dew as she touched the railing.
Next door, in the driveway of a big Victorian that the new owners had painted mauve, pale yellow, and gray green, her neighbor had the back door of her car open and was loading her toddler into a car seat. The woman had a long solemn face and dark hair, early Cher. She glanced over and waved. Diana waved back. The woman got in the driver’s seat, started the car, and drove off.
The scent of exhaust lingered as Diana gazed at the empty spot in her neighbor’s driveway, then at the closed door of her own garage. One day she’d actually get in her own car. Take a drive. Maybe even have the courage to introduce herself to her neighbor.
For now, just taking a walk in her own backyard was challenge enough.
Diana took a deep breath. She left the porch and stepped into the driveway. Crossing her arms to fend off the chill from outside and in, she began to walk the perimeter of her property. Focus on what’s outside not inside, Dr. Lightfoot had suggested. The lawn was patchy and stringy, pale purple crocuses that had probably been planted by her mother decades ago were pushing their way up in front of bushes alongside the house. The quince bush was budding, and farther on, the tiny yellow blossoms on the witch hazel were already starting to open.
When she reached the back of the yard, she took a step beyond her own property line. She knew she’d breached the invisible electronic fence and the Klaxon would be going off in her office, alerting no one. She turned and looked at her house. All the window shades were drawn. The dark green paint around the windows was beginning to peel.
She beat back the urge to sprint back to safety. Instead, she reached into her pocket and pried open the lid of the container with her thumb, tipped it until she felt a pill in her palm. Tiny and white, it was no bigger than the birth-control pills she’d once taken daily. Just rolling a pill between her thumb and forefinger calmed her.
She slipped the pill back into the container, picked up a small stone from the ground, and completed her circuit. Back at the door, she placed the stone alongside others she’d lined up in the grass by the door, each marking another step forward, another time she’d breached the boundaries of her property and made it back alive.
She was squatting, counting stones—there were over fifty of them—when she noticed a dark limousine coming up her street. It reminded her of the limo she and her girlfriends had rented to carry them, dateless, to their senior prom. And the lecture the driver had given them about the hundred-dollar deposit he wouldn’t return to their parents if any of them threw up. But a morning limousine wouldn’t be picking up girls for a dance. More likely the passengers would be mourners on their way to a funeral.
It slowed to a crawl in front of her house. Diana ducked inside and locked the door behind her. She lifted the shade of one of the front windows and watched, shivering, as the car paused in front of her house, and then accelerated and continued on its way.