Read an Excerpt
Dead Easy
By Olga Bicos Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.
Copyright © 2004 Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-7783-2076-6
Chapter One
Los Angeles - Police answering a 911 call arrived at the scene of a burglary to discover the only thing taken was a human brain. In what police are calling a college hazing incident, two youths have been charged with the theft. The brain was part of a research project on human memory conducted by a local pharmaceutical company specializing in herbal remedies. The brain remains missing.
Reuters News Service The woman sitting in front of the computer worked with frenetic energy, legs pumping, shoulders hunched. Nails bitten to the quick flew over the keyboard as waves of color reflected off her face from the twenty-one inch monitor. Completely focused on the flat-panel display LCD screen, she typed as if she were taking dictation, giving values to the simulation program she'd named Neuro-Sys as a joke.
She began writing Neuro-Sys two years ago, but the program needed constant updating. She'd become a late-night fixture in the lab, easily recognizable for her spiked near-white hair and funky contacts that turned her eyes to anything from two tiny eight balls to hypnotic swirls. The system at the university ran Linux, the hacker's choice, and it was fast. Still, she thought she had time to get a cup of coffee before Neuro-Sys coughed up results.
The offices spanned just two rooms connected by glass doors. Six flat screens and recessed lighting showed the yellow brick path of foot traffic pounded into the carpet as she made her way to the Mr. Coffee machine. After she poured herself coffee bitter from overheating, she glanced at the clock. She was behind schedule, but no biggee. There wouldn't be any traffic at this hour.
With the air-conditioning out, the computers heated the room to just shy of hell. But she needed to stay awake, so she loaded the coffee with sugar and the powdered creamer some students called "White Cancer." She wasn't worried about cancer.
In the next room, she heard the software she'd installed on the computer sound off, a sudden burst of "Hallelujah!" from a choir singing Handel's Messiah, alerting her. Time to check her results.
Back at the computer, the screen showed a three dimensional image of a brain. Horizontal lines designated cross-sectional slices. Neuro-Sys allowed her to rotate the brain in any direction. Once she clicked on a line, the cross section would float out toward the front of the screen as the image of the brain receded to the upper right-hand corner. Like the PET scan used in hospitals to measure brain activity, Neuro-Sys displayed activity levels of the brain cells themselves. These results looked promising. A lot of red.
She printed the data from several slices, glancing at the clock - she'd really have to floor it on the 405. She jotted notes in the margin before slipping the sheets into an interoffice envelope, then plugged a one-gigabyte memory stick into the USB small port to back up. She moved the cursor to log off, then hesitated.
She told herself it was nothing, the file. Just some bullshit someone was using to mess with her head. Her company was onto something big - anybody, even someone on the inside, could be trying to sabotage the project.
But that wasn't what she really believed. That wasn't why she'd come here at the last minute or why she had a plane ticket tucked away in her backpack.
Before she could change her mind, she added the file, "LYNN STRATFORD." The past couple of weeks, she'd been messing with the operating system. She'd disabled the logging to keep anyone from finding out which files she'd copied.
Rushing out of the laboratory, she passed a small plaque: Phoenix Pharmaceuticals. She rounded the corner and stopped at the honeycomb maze of mailboxes where she pushed an envelope into the slot marked "Gunnar Maza."
"Freakin' asshole," she said under her breath. The Gunman thought he knew what was best for her, always calling the shots, telling her what to do. But tonight she was one step ahead of her brother.
It wasn't until she turned for the double doors leading out that she saw something jammed inside her own mailbox.
She stopped, frozen in place, her heart pumping like some junkie's getting a hit of something too strong. She'd emptied her mailbox just before going into the lab tonight. There'd been the typical stuff: a flyer for another kegger Friday sponsored by the Greeks, a candlelight vigil to protest Yankee Imperialism, a bunch of junk mail.
Only now there was something else. A folded envelope.
Stepping back, her first instinct was to run. Don't look! Don't even touch it! But she needed to make sure. She couldn't just walk away - she had to see if it was real and not some sort of mirage.
She pulled out the envelope and opened it, breathing hard. A plain sheet of paper slipped onto her hand. The writer had clipped letters from a magazine to spell out his message, so that the whole thing looked cock-eyed, the letters forming a roller coaster of highs and lows in rainbow colors.
The threats came almost every day now. She never tried to find out who sent them. She hadn't reported anything to the cops. She didn't want to have anything to do with these letters. She just wanted to push the delete key and run away.
She wadded up the paper and jammed the ball inside her jacket pocket. All gone. Disappear. She shoved past the doors and raced down the steps, skipping several. She caught her foot and stumbled into the middle of the small quad, almost falling to the ground.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Dead Easy by Olga Bicos Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
