Jivaja (Soul Cavern Series Book 1) Read online

  He splashed water on his face. In the movies, that always seemed the thing to do in a bathroom, but it really only made a mess. He reached for the towel on the rack, but drew back. The red of the towel brought the horror of his dream. David pushed the memory aside, snatched the towel and wiped up the spilled water. Ignoring his haggard reflection now, he left the bathroom.

  The living room was quiet when he trudged down the stairs. The basement door stood ajar, warm light seeping around the edges. He thought about the cracked hard drive waiting for him down there, and the dark cloud of his mood lifted enough to let him hope.

  Sara sat at the second, smaller, desk, typing on the keyboard. She looked up when he entered and treated him to a smile.

  “Feeling any better?”

  When he shrugged, she motioned to the counter along the back wall. The black sludge in the coffee pot had been cleaned out and a fresh pot steamed on the hot plate. A mug about the size of a soup bowl sat beside a small plate with three muffins.

  “Coffee will help. At least it always helps me when I have nightmares.” She brushed a hand through her short, dark hair. “I didn’t start looking through the drive, by the way. I figured you’d want to do it yourself.”

  “Thanks.” David poured the steaming, black liquid into the mug and thanked fate that Sara had grown up to be so resourceful. He held the cup with both hands and let the warmth settle into his fingers, glad to see that his hands didn't shake. The hickory-tinged aroma settled his nerves. He moved to the unoccupied chair and swiveled so he could face her. “Sorry I scared you.”

  “It happens. At least you know it’s a nightmare and not real. That’s the plus side of waking up screaming.”

  Theoretically. But he said, “I suppose there is that, yes.” He spent a moment wondering why she would wake up screaming.

  Sara nodded at one of the monitors on the wall over the larger desk. It held a Windows environment with shortcuts for typical business and internet programs. “There it is. Just go through it like you would a normal desktop. E-mail’s there. Files are there. Let me know if you need help, yeah?”

  David found himself struck by her goodness and couldn’t speak for a moment. He coughed, to clear the frog from his throat, as he rolled his chair over. “Thank you.”

  She only smiled and turned back to her own monitor. The smooth voice of Nat King Cole crept into the room from unseen speakers. A surprising choice of music given her age, he thought, but he found himself glad of the soft sounds. He sipped the rich, black coffee and took a deep breath before tackling the computer.

  The time on the screen read 5:48 p.m.

  Two hours later, David had looked through the files and programs on the hard drive and found them to all be business related, from a common accounting program, down to interoffice memos. They all pertained to the running of the import-export business. Nothing about kidnappings, college girls, or death in a parking lot. He wanted to put his fist through the damned monitor. Any of them.

  He did find several e-mails from Emilia Laos to someone named Thomas, who seemed to be the person in charge of running the business. All her communications were directives about how to deal with the customs officials, where a particular delivery should be made, when to acquire specific pieces of artwork. He could find nothing that hinted at where Mecca might be.

  David leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose with two fingers. It didn't help. There had to be something to discover, some way to find Emilia Laos. When he opened his eyes, the e-mail on the desktop caught his attention again. He found the text itself trivial, but he looked at the e-mail address associated with Emilia Laos.

  “Sara?”

  “Hmm?” She'd spent the entire time tacking on her own keyboard, sometimes humming along with the music in the background.

  “The header of e-mails can tell us where they came from, right?”

  “Yeah, usually. It’s got the originating Internet address unless the sender sets it as something else.”

  “Can you find a geographic location based on that?”

  She turned her chair around to face him. “Not directly. And it really depends on whether the e-mail comes from their Internet service provider or whether it’s from an e-mail service, like Yahoo! or Gmail.”

  “I doubt she would use a service. I think she’s too much of a control freak for that. Besides, the e-mail address looks like it’s from her business.”

  “Maybe she has her own mail server then. That could make things easier.” She rolled over to him and looked at the screen, then reached for his mouse. “May I?”

  When he withdrew his hand, she took over, clicking here and scrolling there until she had the full header of the e-mail. She pointed to a group of numbers sandwiched in among symbols and letters.

  “That’s the sender’s IP address. The same way longitude and latitude can find you an exact place on a map, an IP address can find an exact machine on the Internet. Every computer connected to the net is assigned an IP address, either permanently or temporarily. If she’s got her own server, it’s could be a static IP.”

  She opened a web browser and pulled up a search page. Watching her sure-handedness, he realized that, though he liked to play with technology and computer security, he didn't really know anything. He could buy all the password breaking programs he wanted; he could play his little hacking games, but he'd never be as adept at the Internet and computer security as Sara.

  She keyed in the IP address and several lines of information came up, including the name and contact information of a company called Speedy DSL.

  “And there’s the ISP,” Sara said, leaning back. “They’ll have a record of who has what IP address.”

  “How do we get a location?”

  “This is where it gets fun.” She shot him a lopsided grin. “Well, fun for me. It may not really be fun for other people.” And with that, she clicked and tapped at a speed that David could barely follow.

  “What’s your daughter’s name?” she asked.

  David looked from the screen to Sara. “You need that to find the location?”

  Sara stopped and looked at him like he was an idiot. “No. I’m curious.”

  “Oh.” And now he felt like an idiot. “Her name is Mecca.”

  “That’s pretty.” Sara went back to typing.

  “Thank you.”

  An awkward almost-silence settled over them, the only sound the clacking of her keys. David tried to follow what she was doing, but had been lost within a minute. He finished off his cold coffee. He still hated involving Sara, but he’d been honest when he’d said he was glad he went to her. She’d proved even more resourceful than he’d thought.

  “Can I ask you a question?” she said, still looking at the monitor.

  “Shoot.”

  “Who’s got your daughter?”

  David couldn’t answer right away. He found a hitch in his throat that he had to swallow down. He couldn’t tell her the complete truth anyway, but he owed her some measure of it.

  “There are people who think she did something, and they kidnapped her. I don’t know exactly why. She’s still alive—or she was this morning—but also I don’t know what they plan to do with her.”

  “And you don’t want the cops involved.”

  “No.”

  Sara nodded and though she didn’t say anything more, he knew she must have had a million questions.

  “I don’t want to tell you too much. I’ve already put you in danger just being here.”

  Disappointment flashed across her features for a moment, and she shrugged this time.

  A wall went up between them. “Play it how you like.”

  By 9:30, David had been pacing the floor for half an hour. Sara came up from the basement.

  “Well? Do you have the address?” As soon as it came out of his mouth, David realized how it sounded. Selfish. Like he was using her.

  She watched him for a moment and then asked, “What are you
going to do when you get it?”

  “Go over there. I’m going to see what the situation is.” He ran a hand over his short hair.

  “You going to go in like the Terminator or something?” The corner of her mouth tilted up.

  “I doubt it. What I do will depend on what the place is like, how many people are there, if it’s guarded.”

  “What if she’s not there?”

  David frowned. He hadn’t considered the possibility that Mecca might be held elsewhere. That had never occurred to him at all. “She’ll be there. She has to be.”

  “I’m sure she is.” Silence settled for a few minutes. Then Sara offered a folded square of paper to him, held between two fingers.

  He looked from her to the paper and back again, before he finally reached out and took it from her.

  “I have a pair of binoculars, if you think those would help.” She went to a door tucked away in the corner and rummaged around in the closet. She brought out a small, black case. “It’s got a tiny digital camera built into it, between the lenses. I don’t know if you’ll need to take pictures, but the binoculars might come in handy anyway. Just don’t leave them hanging from some tree limb, okay?”

  She grinned, and he couldn’t help but smile as he took the case and hiked the strap onto his shoulder.

  Her personality was so much like Mecca’s. A stab of guilt twisted his gut. He fished into his pocket and came out with the wad of bills. Sara raised a brow as he split it, put half back into his pocket and held the other half out. “Here.”

  “Thanks, no. I don’t need it.”

  “Consider it my contribution to Headquarters. It’s the least I can do.”

  She hesitated, but then finally took the money. She nodded at the paper he still held. “You know where that is? I think it’s east of Stone Mountain.”

  “I’ll look it up.” David put a hand on her shoulder, feeling a pride he had no right to feel. “Sara, your grandmother would think the world of you. You’re amazing.”

  She blushed and looked at her toes. “Thank you. Are you leaving right now?”

  “Yeah. I need to get out there.”

  “I want to come with you.”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “Why not?”

  Hadn’t they already gone over this? “I’m not going to put you in any more danger. You can’t imagine what these people are like. I could never have imagined until I met them. Please trust me on this.”

  She frowned, her lower lip stuck out just a little. “There’s a spare key around back, underneath the garden robot, in case you need to come back.”

  “Garden robot?” What the hell was that?

  “I’m a geek. Gnomes aren’t my thing.” She gave him that grin again. “Promise you won’t be a stranger?”

  If I get out of this alive. “I promise.”

  Chapter Twelve: Mecca

  She is sobbing. The bedspread beneath her is soaked with her tears. The voices of the people downstairs waft up to her, with their condolences and apologies, their handshakes and hugs. She’d had to escape from them. What do they know about it anyway, with their sad eyes and pity in their voices? Patting her shoulder and hugging her tight.

  It only made Mom’s death more final. More painful.

  She knows she can’t stay up here much longer. Dad will wonder where she’s gone. Everyone will wonder. Then will come another round of tsk-tsk and “the poor child.”

  She pulls herself up and sits on the edge of her bed, clutching on to Katybun. The floppy-eared, stuffed bunny—her first gift from her parents as a baby—is as stained with her tears as the bedspread.

  She runs a hand across her face, using the sleeve of her black dress to dry her cheek. She wanders out of her room and sits on the top step of the staircase, settling Katybun on her lap and wrapping her arms around him. The fuzzy head tickles as she rests her chin on it.

  Downstairs, people roam around, speaking with her grandparents and talking to each other. Soft music plays in the background, and she recognizes the voice of Billie Holiday, Mom’s favorite blues singer. Fresh tears spring to her eyes, but she snatches them away with the back of her hand.

  From the hallway behind her comes muffled voices. She didn’t know anyone else was up here. She stands, still holding Katybun close, and walks down the hall. The voices come from the door of her father’s office. If she leans in, she can just make out most of the words. Dad and Gramps are having an argument.

  “You need to tell her, Dave,” her grandfather says in his husky voice.

  “She doesn’t need to know. It’s not necessary.”

  “Of course it’s necessary. She’ll find out.”

  Mecca’s heart skips a beat. It’s true. It’s my fault. She bites her lower lip, trying to keep the tears from tumbling down. Her heart sinks in her chest.

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Relax, Dave.” Uncle Ken is in there too. He’s younger than Dad, but is always the middle man between Dad and Gramps. “I don’t think he means it that way. But for what it’s worth, I agree. You should tell her.”

  “I have one question for you.” Gramps again, accusation in his voice. That confuses Mecca. “Did Teresa die naturally?”

  She stifles a sob and leans so close to the door that her ear is touching the cool wood. The silence spirals out. Finally, her father speaks.

  “That’s not your business, Dad.”

  Mecca can’t stand there any longer without bawling. Dad must be protecting her. He must know that her falling asleep with her mom is what… what made Mom have to go to the hospital. He doesn’t want to tell Gramps and Uncle Ken because he doesn’t want them to blame her.

  She shuffles down the hall and pushes open the door to her parents’ room. The king size bed is taller than her own twin size, but Mecca scales it, Katybun clutched under her arm. Not until she is curled up in a tiny ball with her head on her mom’s pillow does she let her sorrow loose again. Her body shakes with her weeping.

  When all her tears are spent, she lies there, motionless. Everything is just too heavy. She listens as the sounds from below eventually die away, and she stays there. Her only movement is to snuggle with her father when she wakes in the night to the sound of him sobbing beside her.

  Mecca drifted up into consciousness and had an odd sensation of being both in her dream and in reality at once. She remained still, waiting for the strange feeling to pass. Thoughts of her father moved through her mind and though love welled in her heart, bitterness and confusion tinged it.

  If she could wish anything right now, she wished to never have known about Susan Harrington or the other women. She wished to be back in her dorm room, making plans for dinner with her dad over the phone. It was Sunday, she thought, and that's what she should be doing. She pursed her lips and fought to reign in her emotions.

  “Welcome back.” The voice was male, soft, familiar. Mecca opened her eyes to see Claude reclined in the chair nearby. He wore a dapper black suit with a cream colored shirt, a single button open at the collar. One slim leg draped over the other, showing off well-polished black shoes. “You slept much longer than expected.”

  Mecca realized she wasn’t lying down any longer, but sitting in a wheelchair. Her hands were free, covered with thin gloves, but she found her legs bound with leather straps. Her feet had been cuffed to the leg rests of the chair.

  “What’s going on?” When Claude seemed disinclined to stop her, she touched the wheels of the chair and then gave them a push. She rolled across to the far wall, then maneuvered around to turn and face him. His gaze met hers and her heart thudded.

  “Emilia thought you might like some fresh air, so she will be seeing you out on one of the balconies. She has arranged for dinner to be served there.” He rose and approached her and then slipped behind.

  “Aren’t you afraid I’ll jump out and do something terrible?”

  He laughed.

  Why did her belly quiver?

  “I doubt you wil
l be much of a threat this evening. You are bolted in that chair too tightly for you to even consider getting free.” He turned her around and opened the door with his keycard before pushing her through and closing it behind them.

  Small sconces threw soft light along the wood-paneled hallway, giving it warmth. Mecca blinked quickly, trying to get her eyes to adjust faster.

  The chair’s wheels made no sound as he pushed her along, the bottoms almost engulfed by the thick carpet beneath them. He didn't seem to have any trouble pushing her. The hall wasn’t long, but half a dozen dark wooden doors lined either side.

  “What are behind those?” She inclined her head toward one as they passed.

  “Various things: research rooms, conference rooms and the like. I believe there’s a room full of computers behind one of the doors as well, though that may well be a rumor.” He laughed again, softer and more gentle.

  “So where are we going?”

  “Upstairs.”

  At the end of the hall, Mecca spied a recessed elevator door done in dark wood to match the others. When they approached, Claude produced his plastic card from his pants pocket and waved it over the metal pad to the right of the elevator. The doors slid open as he pocketed the card. He wheeled her inside.

  Mecca looked at the panel on the wall as Claude turned her around to face the door. A dozen buttons from the number four at the top to B1 through B3 and S1 down to S4 at the bottom. The S1 button glowed white. Claude moved beside her and tapped the button for the third floor with a pale finger.

  “How old are you?”

  Claude looked down at her and quirked a brow. “That is quite the thing to ask.”

  “I’ve never been good with segues. Older than Will, I suppose.”

  “That’s a very good guess.”

  “Are you Emilia’s boss?” Mecca wanted to take advantage of his candid mood. Let him play the ostentatious host.

  “Me? No. I’m just an old friend who’s visiting for a while.”