Diana Racine 02 - Goddess of the Moon

people, most of whom were dead, so she said she’d lost her psychic gifts. Because her father was unwilling to give up the notoriety and the money his daughter generated, he devised her act. Her performances employed assigned seating, and a series of computer hackers matched the information culled from the credit card payments to the people she called onstage. Though using most of her researcher’s material to avoid giving herself away, she couldn’t resist incorporating a tidbit from her psychic impressions that, despite raised eyebrows, she logically explained away.
    Computer hacker Jason Connors was the latest in a line of techno geeks employed first by her father, then later by her. They all signed a confidentiality agreement, and to date no one had cashed in on what would surely be a juicy story. She picked up the phone, punched in Jason’s cell number, and felt a wave of nostalgia when she heard his enthusiastic greeting.
    “Wow, Diana,” he said, “I never expected to hear from you.”
    “Why not, we’re friends, aren’t we?”
    “Yeah, but now that you’ve retired, I didn’t think you’d have any need for me.”
    “Ah, surprise. I do need you. How ’s your new job?”
    “Boring computer crap. Nothing like the excitement of working for you, but it’s a job that pays the bills.”
    “I’ve got an assignment for you. I want you to research a guy by the name of Edward Slater. I need to know everything about him, especially medical records. Also, while you’re at it, do a number on Silas Compton. When you finish, send me a bill.”
    “Compton, the billionaire?”
    “Yeah. I know you’ll find a lot of anti-government dogma, but it’s his religious views I’m most interested in. I don’t want the standard Googling ; anyone can get that. I want what isn’t attainable.”
    “He’s gonna be tough. From what I’ve read about him, his privacy is guarded like Fort Knox. I doubt I can break into his system. It’s probably tighter than cracking the Pentagon, and that was the hardest crack ever.”
    Diana chuckled. Jason had hacked into the Pentagon to see if he could do it. Fortunately, hackers who knew what they were doing also knew how to use backdoor programs to cover their tracks , and Jason was one of the best .
    “I know, but for you it should be a snap. Start with Slater first. ” She gave him all the basic information she had. “ There are ten years when you might not be able to find anything on him except some drunk charges. Those are the years I want. See if you can find out where he was during that time. He tried to commit suicide a few times, so there should be records.”
    “You don’t make it easy.”
    “If it were easy, I wouldn’t need you.”
    * * * * *
    B ecause of the warning note Diana received in the mail, Lucier begged her to be careful when she went out. After an hour and a half of performing at the children’s ward of the hospital, s he picked up some groceries, then locked herself securely inside her house, made lunch, and settled on the sofa with a book. N o matter how hard she tried, her thoughts wandered back to her bizarre experience in the nursing chair, knowing that the incident frightened her but acknowledging, in a sliver of reality, it also intrigued her. She still felt the phantom hardening of her breasts, the sensation of nursing a baby. Her hand un consciously moved to her chest, and her fingers caressed her sore nipples. She smiled at the maternal feeling it generated ― until she thought of Edward Slater.
    If that strange and wondrous event occupied part of her thoughts, Slater dominated the rest. His confession confirmed her original impression of a conflicted persona. There were rare times when she couldn’t separate intuition from her highly receptive sensory channels ― those things she envisioned ― as one overlapped the other. Slater confused her because emotions got in the way. Even though he’d come to terms with his situation, she felt sorry for the life he didn’t have and for the tor ture he’d endured.
    In the past, her psychic abilities connected her to missing persons, audience participants looking for fun, or wealthy patrons planning their lives by what she sensed in their futures. With the exception of relating to a death, rarely did those associations delve any deeper or develop into anything more personal.
    Slater wasn’t a subject, not overtly, and he’d been careful not to put himself in that position. Nevertheless,