Rescuing Diana (15 page)

“Diana!” Angelica exclaimed as she came into the room.

Diana barely heard her, or Adam’s barnyard curse.

“They killed Charlie,” she whispered.

Angelica knelt beside her and put an arm around her. “I know, kid. I’m sorry.”

“He was old and outdated … but he was my first computer. I learned how to program on him … he had such a lovely screen editor. And now he’s … dead!”

Diana burst into tears. She knew it was irrational to cry over an inanimate object, but in an odd way Charlie had always seemed alive to her. He talked back, scolded her with beeps on occasion, and was contrary whenever she wanted him to do something difficult. He had had a unique quirkiness that had always made her think of him as an individual. And now he was gone.

Suddenly she was in Adam’s soothing arms. She pressed her face against his chest and sobbed.

“Go ahead and cry it out, sweetheart,” he said as he patted her back.

She cried for a long time, until all she had left inside her were watery hiccups. Gulping them back, she tried to calm herself.

“This place is a fortress,” Adam said. “How could burglars have gotten past the alarm system?”

“The police aren’t sure,” Angelica replied. “They told me they always thought nobody could break in here. As far as they can tell, though, the people
who did it certainly knew what they were doing. The police think the phone line was cut first, so the computer’s automatic police call wouldn’t go through, and then the sliding glass doors were smashed. The only way to stop the outside alarm was to destroy the computer. Someone who was passing by happened to hear the alarm before it was cut off, and called the police. When the police couldn’t get Diana, they called me.”

Nobody spoke for a moment. Then Adam asked, “Sweetheart, do you think you’re ready to start sorting through the mess?”

Sniffling, Diana looked up into his concerned face and nodded. She gazed around the room again and said, “At least my equipment looks okay. Except … Charlie.”

“That’s odd,” Adam said. “Although it’s possible it was just vandals. The damage looks as if it were done more to destroy than for the sake of burglary.”

“Vandals are usually kids,” Angelica said. “I can’t imagine kids going this far and passing up a free computer, can you? Besides, no other room in the house has been touched.”

Adam frowned. “Maybe the police scared them away before they could take very much.”

Diana gasped at his words. She hadn’t even considered what might have been stolen! If the thieves had gotten her Sir Morbid game, and if they realized that it was the first adventure game to utilize voice capabilities, they could also realize how much it would be worth to a software company.…

She pulled herself out of his arms and ran over to the far wall, where the coin-operated games stood. Sitting on her heels, she carefully examined
the side panel of one of the games, then pressed her fingers along a thread-sized crack. The hidden panel flap swung outward, and she slumped in relief at the sight of a small square lead box. She lifted it out and opened it. Her disks were safely tucked inside—none missing. There were other copies hidden in different parts of the house, but since the intruders had only disturbed this room, the additional disks were probably still safe.

“Is it there?” Angelica asked.

“Sir Morbid is still with us.” With a smile, Diana returned the box to its hiding place, then rose to her feet.

Angelica shook her head. “You’ve got to be kidding! That’s so open and easy!”

“No, it’s not,” Diana said. “Anyway, these aren’t the only copies I have of the Sir Morbid game, but they’re the only ones in this room. Disks are easy to hide as long as you’re careful about magnetic fields from TVs—”

“What about these others?” Adam asked as he bent down and picked up several disks from the floor.

“I’m not as concerned about those as I am about my games in progress,” she answered, stepping around the mess on the floor as she walked over to him. “I don’t bother to hide software that’s already been published and copyrighted, as these are. I wouldn’t lose a livelihood if they were stolen. But I’ll have to go through them to be sure none are missing. From the number on the floor, though, I’d have to say that most of them are here. And that’s odd.” She took one out of his
hand and held it up. “This one alone retails for several hundred dollars.”

“You’re kidding!” Adam exclaimed, staring in disbelief at the little black cardboard squares he still held.

“Nope. It’s not the value of the materials, but the amount of time that goes into creating a program, that makes it so costly. A complicated business program can take a team of programmers years to bring to a salable state. The burglars must have been very dumb not to know that these would still be worth a pretty penny to an unscrupulous computer enthusiast.”

“Or to the copy crackers,” Angelica added. She began to collect some of the scattered disks.

“What are copy crackers?” Adam asked, his brows drawn together in puzzlement.

“People who crack a program’s protection scheme and make copies to distribute,” Diana said. She took the rest of the disks from him and made a mental note of the titles before setting them on a table.

“You’ve heard of bootleg records and tapes?” Angelica asked.

He nodded.

“Well, the software business has the same problem, in spite of the copy-protection schemes built into the programs. One out of every ten copies of Diana’s already published games is an illegal one. I figure just on ‘Space Pirates’ alone she’s lost about half a million in royalties from illegal copies. That, mind you, is at less than two dollars in royalties per copy.”

“Can’t something be done?” Adam asked.

“Those caught are prosecuted to the hilt, but
it’s tough to catch them. I’m eternally grateful the burglars didn’t get any games Diana’s working on now. You can’t copyright an idea, and until a program is submitted to a company it’s only considered an idea by the law. Those who did this could have sold it on their own, and Diana would have received nothing.”

“Then it’s a damn good thing the bastards didn’t know what they were doing,” Adam said in a cold voice. “Because I would have killed them.”

“My hero,” Diana murmured affectionately, and kissed his cheek.

He drew her into his embrace. “If you had been here alone last night …”

She wrapped her arms about his waist in answer. She was feeling better, although she still shuddered at the thought of how easily her home had been invaded. Her workroom was a disaster, but obviously the intruders had been scared away before they could take anything of real value. They’d probably done a quick trashing for revenge.

A dreadful thought occurred to her, and she whispered, “What if they come back?”

Adam’s arms tightened. “I’ll be here.”

She nodded, feeling safe and protected. She would always be safe with him. Then she remembered that he needed to be at his job that morning.

Reluctantly she stepped away from him. “You have to get to work, Adam, and I have to clean up this mess and talk to the police.”

“First I’ll help you clean up,” he said, “then I’ll go to the office. But I’d better call John.”

“No phone,” Angelica said. “The line was cut, remember.”

“Damn!”

“Good,” Diana said sternly, her hands on her hips. “Now you have to go to work.…”

Half an hour later Diana sighed with resignation as she watched Adam right the bookcases. In truth, she was secretly glad to have lost the argument. Adam had taken charge and sent Angelica down to a neighbor’s to phone his partner, then to call the phone company to fix the outside line and to get someone to replace the broken glass on the sliding door. Diana’s job was to find out what was missing. She’d already checked her other “safes,” and none of them had been disturbed either. Then she’d changed into jeans and a T-shirt before tackling the workroom.

She smiled, remembering the gleam of appreciation in Adam’s eyes when she’d reentered the room. It was the same look he’d given her the night before.

Promising herself she could daydream later, Diana concentrated on sorting through the mess. She created manageable piles of papers, books, and disks by type and subject. After returning from her errand, Angelica began to help. Adam put the books and manuals back on the shelves.

As Diana worked her way from one end of the room to the other, her initial relief at having only possible minor losses was slowly replaced by a growing apprehension. Finally, she set the last piece of notepaper on its proper pile, and claws of fear raked her spine.

“My source codes are gone,” she whispered, sending a last desperate glance around the room.

“Your what?” Angelica asked in puzzlement.

Focusing on her cousin, Diana swallowed. “The
hard copy for the game. I printed out the program the other day, because I had a slight problem with the game’s graphics. It’s easier to find the mistakes on paper than it is on a monitor screen. Now the papers are gone.”

Angelica’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “The whole program? On paper?”

Diana nodded.

“Why didn’t you lock that away too?”

Diana closed her eyes. “The papers are too big to fit in my cubbyholes, so I mixed them up with others that just had a lot of junk on them. It was the hide-in-plain-sight theory.”

Angelica cursed loudly.

“What’s the problem?” Adam asked as he picked up another load of books.

Her insides numb, Diana explained about her source codes. He dropped the books and knelt beside her, hugging her in silent comfort.

“So they got what they were looking for after all,” Angelica said in a cold voice. “Everything seemed so odd, didn’t it? I couldn’t understand how people who knew exactly how to get around the computer alarm system didn’t seem to know what computer stuff to take once they were inside. And they took the time to trash the place, but not the time to search. They probably went through the disks on the tables first, and when they didn’t find the game, they went for the computer print-outs. They were more lucky there.”

“Not luck,” Diana said, beginning to tremble with fury and helplessness. “Anyone who knows about programming would realize that I’d probably have a print-out somewhere.”

“But who knows about how your alarm works?” Adam asked.

“That wouldn’t matter,” she said. She stood up, and he did as well. “It would be dead easy for anyone who knows about alarm systems. They’re always vulnerable at the phone line because that can be cut without triggering the alarm itself. Then the police can’t be called. You saw how easily the rest of the system was … disarmed.”

“The game would be worth hundreds of thousands to a software company,” Angelica said slowly, turning her eyes to Adam. “If not millions. Someone could have become tired of making offers for the game. Offers that weren’t being accepted. Or that were being stalled.”

Pain tore through Diana’s body.

“Someone,” Angelica went on, “who knew exactly what to look for. Someone who knew Diana probably wouldn’t be home until very late last night, or possibly not at all. Someone who decided to take advantage of that. And maybe that someone had a partner who was romancing Diana all along just to keep her busy and off-guard.”

Diana cried out in agony at her cousin’s destructive reasoning. She didn’t believe it. Refused to believe it. But, heaven help her, it sounded so horribly logical.

“Are you implying that I had something to do with this?” Adam demanded.

Adam forced himself to rein in his temper at Angelica’s incredible line of reasoning. He couldn’t imagine anyone even thinking that he’d had any part in the break-in. And who the hell was supposed to be his “partner”? The whole idea was laughable—completely and totally laughable.

Then he realized Diana wasn’t laughing.

“Starlight Software has made several offers in the past for Diana’s latest game,” Angelica said in a very soft voice, drawing his shocked attention back to her. “They were all turned down as too low. We didn’t hear from Starlight again. Then Diana met you. Suddenly, this past Monday, we received yet another offer, from the president of Starlight. I believe that’s your brother. Tuesday he made an appointment to see me on Thursday to discuss the offer further, then abruptly canceled it later that same day. Thursday night—last night—Diana went out to dinner with the two of you. It’s obvious that she spent the night with
you. You have been in this house before, in this room, and you knew what kind of alarm system there was. I can only wonder about the sudden renewed interest of Starlight. And having dealt before with Starlight’s high-pressure tactics, I also wonder just how far such people would go to ‘acquire’ a game.” She turned to her cousin. “I’m sorry, Diana. But the circumstantial evidence is overwhelmingly against him and his brother.”

As Angelica spoke, Adam watched Diana’s face. There was no trust, no belief in him in her violet eyes; only a knowing sadness and pain. Her cousin’s reasoning was outlandish, and yet Diana believed it.

“My brother
might
have bid for Diana’s games,” he said between clenched teeth. “But you’re crazy to think he or I had anything to do with the missing source codes.”