Blow Me Down (40 page)

“Maybe he’s got his headphones on,” Holder suggested, starting down the hall past the staircase. “His computer room is back here. We’ll sneak up on him and give him a heart attack, okay?”

I followed, my spirits spiraling downward with every step. Holder pushed open the door at the rear of the house, leading into what once must have been an atrium, but which was now a UV-filtered glass room full of computer equipment. A long table along the windows was filled with three different computers and related peripherals, while on the opposite side of the room, a large glass-fronted metal case squatted, a plasma screen monitor perched on top.

The room was Corbin-less.

“Hmm,” Holder said, his brow wrinkled with puzzlement. “I was sure he’d be here. Maybe he’s in the shower, like I said. Or he could be asleep after pulling an all-nighter. I’ll run upstairs and check.”

“Why does he have so many computers?” I asked, moving over to the nearest one, jogging the mouse so the screen blanker turned itself off.

“That one is his personal computer. It’s tied into the server and the Internet. He manages the game from it. The other two computers are secure—the one farthest away runs Linux, for programming. And that middle one is devoted to rendering graphics, not that he does much of that. The server is behind you, in the air-conditioned rack. Be right back. If he’s asleep, I’ll let you come up and dump a bucket of cold water on him.”

I sat down in Corbin’s chair and looked at the computer screen, convinced from the empty silence of the house that Corbin wasn’t at home. Maybe he had gone to find me? I clicked to minimize a document full of technical computer info, and blinked at the sight of the Buckling Swashes client. It was the same as the VR model that had seemed to float on air, only this one was shown on the flat plasma computer monitor.

A little smile formed at the sight of the town square on Turtle’s Back. A line of icons to the left showed thumbnails of other spots in the game—a couple of ships, key shops and inns, and maps of three islands. I clicked on Corbin’s
Samurai Squirrel
and noticed that even without the captain present, his crew was busily maintaining the ship—swabbing down the deck, mending rope and sails, even doing a bit of carpentry.

“What an amazing world you’ve created, PC Monroe. Now, where the hell are you so we can share
this
world?”

I looked around the room but found no answers. There were no big “I’ve gone to find Amy” notes pinned up anywhere, no clues to tell me what he was up to and why he hadn’t called me. Like the rest of the house, this room was silent, nothing but the swish of the air-conditioning, a faint hum from the computer’s fan, and the soft, muted flutterings as the hard drive fired up to carry out some task.

The thump of Holder’s footsteps as he came back downstairs broke my angsty thoughts. “All right. Now I’m worried. His bed hasn’t been slept in. His bathroom is spotless, which means he hasn’t used it since the housekeeper cleaned up yesterday afternoon.” Holder stopped in the middle of the room and pinched his lower lip while he thought a moment before grabbing the phone on the table next to me. “I’m calling the police.”

My eyes widened, the sick feeling inside me morphing into something much, much worse. “Police? You think something’s seriously wrong? Like he might have been robbed or attacked?”

“No. But I don’t like this. The security system was off when we came in, the lights were all on, and nothing is out of place. If he was robbed, there is a good fifty grand worth of computer equipment in this room alone. Something is going on, and I don’t like it. What’s my emergency? Oh, sorry, police. I need the police, please. I’ve got a missing person to report. A missing millionaire person. Yeah, I can hold.” Holder covered the mouth of the phone and asked, “Is there anything on the computer there that says where he went?”

“No,” I said, scooting slightly to the side so he could see the monitor. I clicked around to show him the open programs. “There’s just the game client, some sort of financial program, what looks like a user database, and a document full of computerese.”

Holder peered at the screen. “That’s the game control, not just a client. And yes, that’s the user database—looks like he was pulling up your daughter’s info. Probably was looking for your phone number. That looks like his bank client. No idea what he was doing with that, unless it was to check and make sure he has enough bucks to keep you happy. That file isn’t computerese; it’s codese—part of the security protocol code used in the game. No doubt he was locking down the game so Paul couldn’t hack his way into it again. Hello? Yes, I want to report a missing person.”

Holder turned away while he gave the pertinent info about Corbin. Something about the computer bothered me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I saved the document with the computer code, then closed it, looking at the icons on the desktop, wondering what it was that was making me uneasy. I closed the user database, glancing over to the computer’s front. The little green hard drive light was blinking away madly. I clicked on the game client and brought it to the fore.

“Is it okay if I close the game control?” I asked Holder.

“Yeah, sure. The server has the same control panel running,” he answered quickly before explaining to the police dispatcher for the third time his relationship to Corbin, and why he felt the disappearance should be taken seriously.

I closed the client, frowning at the computer unit. The green hard drive light was still flickering, indicating the hard drive was running. “That leaves you,” I said softly as I maximized the financial program’s screen. It wasn’t one I used, but it was simple enough for me to do a little snooping into Corbin’s financial state. Bank accounts, investments, tax information—it was all there.

That’s when I noticed what the program was doing. Before my astonished eyes, one of Corbin’s accounts suddenly generated a transfer and zeroed itself out.

“Holder?” I said, clicking back to the account tracking page, pulling up a history. Goose bumps crawled up my spine as I did some mental addition of the amounts that were involved in the last few transactions. “Holder, can you come here?”

“Busy with the cops,” he muttered. “Fools don’t seem to understand how unlike Corb this is.”

“I seriously think you need to see this,” I said, investigating the transactions with a few clicks of the mouse. “You said that Corbin is a millionaire.”

“Yeah, but he puts most of it back into the company.”

“Well, according to this, he has approximately one hundred and eighty-two thousand dollars to his name,” I said, clicking on the sum function. “But another one million, four hundred thousand has been transferred away in the last couple of hours.”

“What?” Holder yelled, leaning over me to look at the screen. “Holy shit! What’s going on?”

The hard drive ran again. I clicked back to the account screen just in time to see another account transfer trigger. “Someone is moving Corbin’s money. See?” I pointed to the transaction list. “Those are the accounts the money is being sent to.”

We looked at each other and said the same word at the same time. “Paul.”

“He’s stealing Corbin’s money,” I said.

“Trying to ruin him any way he can.” Holder nodded. “Can you stop him?”

“I’ll try.”

“Officer, I think I know where he is,” Holder said, turning away from me. I tried to cancel the transaction in progress, but the program wouldn’t allow me to. I would have closed it to stop it, but the program was tapped into Corbin’s bank, and there was no way I could shut down the bank’s servers.

“I can’t shut him out. He’s using Corbin’s password to access the accounts, so the bank’s software thinks it’s really Corbin.”

Holder swore.

“What’s Paul’s address?” I asked as he argued with the police. He continued his attempt to convince them of the gravity of the situation while scribbling an address on a sticky notepad. I snatched the top page off it and headed for the front door.

“Fine, we’ll just see you in court when his mangled body is found because you wouldn’t do anything for forty-eight hours!” Holder snarled into the phone, slamming it down to run after me. “Wait, Amy, you can’t go there alone. You need backup.”

“No, this is what I need,” I said, snatching a heavy scimitar off the wall. The blade gleamed wickedly in the sunlight pouring in through the glass panels on either side of the front door. “But you’re welcome to come, too.”

Holder sighed as he took a matching scimitar, hurrying after me as I leaped down the stairs to the path that led to the detached garage. “A sword, Amy? Those who live by the sword die by the sword, remember. This is real life, honey. If you shove a sword into someone here, you’re going to go to jail.”

“Yeah, well, after the last few virtual weeks spent with a sword strapped to my hip, I just feel a lot more comfy with one at hand,” I answered, tossing the scimitar onto the backseat of my car before scooting behind the wheel. “Jump in if you’re coming; otherwise, watch your toes.”

Holder leaped into the car as I started it, grousing as he strapped himself in that I was just like Corbin, determined to be the hero at every opportunity.

“I’d settle for just
having
the hero,” I muttered and tried to push down my fears for Corbin so I could concentrate on driving safely.

It turned out that Paul lived a good hour’s drive away, at the foothills of a nearby mountain range, in a suburb of yet another high-tech town. The ride there was ample time for me to envision all sorts of horrible scenarios involving Corbin, visions of him lying dead or near fatally wounded while the evil Paul danced around him waving his bank account statements filling my brain with morbid frequency. Holder tried alternately to reach Paul (he just got voice mail) and to reason with the police, but they were sticking to their policy of investigating disappearances only after a certain length of time had passed.

“They say the only way they will send someone out to Paul’s house is if we have actual proof of a crime. Speculation isn’t enough. Damn, what happened to the police state where you used to be able to send cops out to check up on someone without having anything more than a gut feeling?”

“Someone is going to have more than a feeling in his gut if I find he’s harmed Corbin,” I muttered. The rest of the ride was in silence, Holder confining himself to consulting the GPS unit on his Palm Pilot and giving me occasional directions.

“Game plan?” Holder asked, breaking the quiet as he directed me down a street. “His house should be the third one on the left.”

“The game plan is we go in, rescue Corbin, and call the police to haul Paul’s ass to jail.” I pulled into the driveway of a typical sixties housing tract rambler, staring at the blank windows for a moment as if they’d give me a clue to Corbin’s well-being.

“So in other words, no game plan.”

“Just that big ole can of whoop ass you mentioned earlier,” I answered, snatching the scimitar off the backseat. “Ready?”

He twirled his scimitar and saluted me with it. “Aye, aye, Captain. Lead on.”

“You know, I find it refreshing that you don’t want to take charge and try to protect me or any of that sexist crap,” I said as we marched up to the front door.

“I’ve been married far too long to have any false impressions as to the supposed frailty of females,” he answered with a slight smile. “My wife has a black belt. She can kick my ass all the way to Cleveland and back.”

“I like her already. Damn. Door’s locked.”

“You didn’t even knock,” he said, a slightly shocked look on his face.

“You don’t knock on the door of a kidnapper’s house,” I argued as I followed stepping-stones around to a wooden fence that surrounded the backyard. “Haven’t you ever watched
Cops
?”

“Wife won’t let me. She says it instills too many bad ideas of male dominance in my mind. Um. Amy, just playing devil’s advocate here. What if Corbin isn’t here? What if Paul isn’t the one moving Corbin’s money around?”

I opened the gate to the backyard, pausing to say over my shoulder, “Then I will apologize profusely to Paul and probably get charged with breaking and entering, which I won’t fight. But I don’t think that’s likely.”

“Nor do I, but I just felt like someone had to be the voice of reason here.”

“Shhhh. Eek!” A fat spaniel waddled out of a small dog-house on the edge of a cement patio, wagging its stubby tail like mad at me. I squatted down to give it a couple of quick pats, figuring it wouldn’t hurt to make friends with an animal that might send up an alarm, not that the old dog seemed to be the least bit inclined to bark. Holder paused to pat as well, then we ducked down under a couple of windows to sidle up to a set of French doors. I took a quick peek in the doors, then slid a cautious hand to try the handle, breathing a sigh of relief when the doors opened with a soft click. We found ourselves in a formal dining area.

“What now?” Holder whispered as we skirted the dining table.

I held up my hand to stop him, holding my breath to listen. The house seemed to be quiet, but it felt different from Corbin’s house. This house was not empty. I tiptoed to the opening to the hall, peeking quickly around it, then gesturing with the scimi for Holder to follow. The doors nearest me on either side of the hall were shut, but at the far end, one was tantalizingly half-open. I walked as silently as I could on the wood floor, taking a good, firm grip of my scimitar as I gently eased the door open.

The room had clearly been intended to be a master bedroom, but like Corbin’s atrium, this one was filled with computer equipment, the table directly across from the door holding an impressive array of computers. An empty computer chair sat pushed aside. On one of the computer monitors, a familiar financial screen was blinking slowly.

“Gotcha,” I said softly as I stepped into the room.

“Mmarfm?”

I spun around at the muffled voice, gasping at the sight of the bloodied man who lay bound and gagged, propped up against a metal filing cabinet. I ran to squat next to him, tossing down my sword in order to run my hands over him in an attempt to assess how badly he was injured. Holder was right behind me, doing a protective sweep with his scimi.