Tina finished checking the carpenter’s bill and approved it for payment.
Alone now on the third floor, she sat in the pool of amber light at her desk, surrounded by shadows, yawning. She’d work for another hour, until five o’clock, and then go home. She’d need two hours to get ready for her date with Elliot Stryker.
She smiled when she thought of him, then picked up the sheaf of papers that Angela had given her, anxious to finish her work.
The hotel possessed an amazing wealth of information about its most favored customers. If she needed to know how much money each of these people earned in a year, the computer could tell her. It could tell her each man’s preferred brand of liquor, each wife’s favorite flower and perfume, the make of car they drove, the names and ages of their children, the nature of any illnesses or other medical conditions they might have, their favorite foods, their favorite colors, their tastes in music, their political affiliations, and scores of other facts both important and trivial. These were customers to whom the hotel was especially anxious to cater, and the more the Pyramid knew about them, the better it could serve them. Although the hotel collected this data with, for the most part, the customers’ happiness in mind, Tina wondered how pleased these people would be to learn that the Golden Pyramid maintained fat dossiers on them.
She scanned the list of VIP customers who hadn’t attended the opening of Magyck! Using a red pencil, she circled those names that were followed by anniversary dates, trying to ascertain how large a promotion she was proposing. She had counted only twenty-two names when she came to an incredible message that the computer had inserted in the list.
Her chest tightened. She couldn’t breathe.
She stared at what the computer had printed, and fear welled in her — dark, cold, oily fear.
Between the names of two high rollers were five lines of type that had nothing to do with the information she had requested:
NOT DEAD
NOT DEAD
NOT DEAD
NOT DEAD
NOT DEAD
The paper rattled as her hands began to shake.
First at home. In Danny’s bedroom. Now here. Who was doing this to her?
Angela?
No. Absurd.
Angela was a sweet kid. She wasn’t capable of anything as vicious as this. Angela hadn’t noticed this interruption in the printout because she hadn’t had time to scan it.
Besides, Angela couldn’t have broken into the house. Angela wasn’t a master burglar, for God’s sake.
Tina quickly shuffled through the pages, seeking more of the sick prankster’s work. She found it after another twenty-six names.
DANNY ALIVE
DANNY ALIVE
HELP
HELP
HELP ME
Her heart seemed to be pumping a refrigerant instead of blood, and an iciness radiated from it.
Suddenly she was aware of how alone she was. More likely than not, she was the only person on the entire third floor.
She thought of the man in her nightmare, the man in black whose face had been lumpy with maggots, and the shadows in the corner of her office seemed darker and deeper than they had been a moment ago.
She scanned another forty names and cringed when she saw what else the computer had printed.
I’M AFRAID
I’M AFRAID
GET ME OUT
GET ME OUT OF HERE
PLEASE… PLEASE
HELPHELPHELPHELP
That was the last disturbing insertion. The remainder of the list was as it should be.
Tina threw the printout on the floor and went into the outer office.
Angela had turned the light off. Tina turned it on.
She went to Angela’s desk, sat in her chair, and switched on the computer. The screen filled with a soft blue light.
In the locked center drawer of the desk was a book with the code numbers that permitted access to the sensitive information stored not on diskette but only in the central memory. Tina paged through the book until she found the code that she needed to call up the list of the hotel’s best customers. The number was 1001012, identified as the access for “Comps,” which meant “complimentary guests,” a euphemism for “big losers,” who were never asked to pay their room charges or restaurant bills because they routinely dropped small fortunes in the casino.
Tina typed her personal access number — E013331555. Because so much material in the hotel’s files was extremely confidential information about high rollers, and because the Pyramid’s list of favored customers would be of enormous value to competitors, only approved people could obtain this data, and a record was kept of everyone who accessed it. After a moment’s hesitation the computer asked for her name; she entered that, and the computer matched her number and name. Then:
CLEARED
She typed in the code for the list of complimentary guests, and the machine responded at once.
PROCEED
Her fingers were damp. She wiped them on her slacks and then quickly tapped out her request. She asked the computer for the same information that Angela had requested a while ago. The names and addresses of VIP customers who had missed the opening of Magyck! — along with the wedding anniversaries of those who were married — began to appear on the screen, scrolling upward. Simultaneously the laser printer began to churn out the same data.
Tina snatched each page from the printer tray as it arrived. The laser whispered through twenty names, forty, sixty, seventy, without producing the lines about Danny that had been on the first printout. Tina waited until at least a hundred names had been listed before she decided that the system had been programmed to print the lines about Danny only one time, only on her office’s first data request of the afternoon, and on no later call-up.
She canceled this data request and closed out the file. The printer stopped.
Just a couple of hours ago she had concluded that the person behind this harassment had to be a stranger. But how could any stranger so easily gain entrance to both her house and the hotel computer? Didn’t he, after all, have to be someone she knew?
But who?
And why?
What stranger could possibly hate her so much?
Fear, like an uncoiling snake, twisted and slithered inside of her, and she shivered.
Then she realized it wasn’t only fear that made her quiver. The air was chilly.
She remembered the complaint that Angela had made earlier. It hadn’t seemed important at the time.
But the room had been warm when Tina had first come in to use the computer, and now it was cool. How could the temperature have dropped so far in such a short time? She listened for the sound of the air conditioner, but the telltale whisper wasn’t issuing from the wall vents. Nevertheless, the room was much cooler than it had been only minutes ago.
With a sharp, loud, electronic snap that startled Tina, the computer abruptly began to churn out additional data, although she hadn’t requested any. She glanced at the printer, then at the words that flickered across the screen.
NOT DEAD NOT DEAD
NOT DEAD NOT DEAD
NOT IN THE GROUND
NOT DEAD
GET ME OUT OF HERE
GET ME OUT OUT OUT
The message blinked and vanished from the screen. The printer fell silent.
The room was growing colder by the second.
Or was it her imagination?
She had the crazy feeling that she wasn’t alone. The man in black. Even though he was only a creature from a nightmare, and even though it was utterly impossible for him to be here in the flesh, she couldn’t shake the heart-clenching feeling that he was in the room. The man in black. The man with the evil, fiery eyes. The yellow-toothed grin. Behind her. Reaching toward her with a hand that would be cold and damp. She spun around in her chair, but no one had come into the room.