She hesitated, fingers on the keyboard, not certain if she should proceed. She probably wouldn’t get the answers she needed, and she would only be acknowledging her presence to whomever might be out there at another workstation. Then she realized that, if he really was nearby, he already knew she was in her office, alone. She had nothing to lose by trying to follow the data chain. But when she attempted to type in her instruction, the keyboard was locked; the keys wouldn’t depress.
The printer hummed.
The room was positively arctic. On the screen, scrolling up:
I’M COLD AND I HURT
MOM? CAN YOU HEAR?
I’M SO COLD
I HURT BAD
GET ME OUT OF HERE
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
NOT DEAD NOT DEAD
The screen glowed with those words—then went blank.
Again, she tried to feed in her questions. But the keyboard remained frozen.
She was still aware of another presence in the room. Indeed the feeling of invisible and dangerous companionship was growing stronger as the room grew colder.
How could he make the room colder without using the air conditioner? Whoever he was, he could override her computer from another terminal in the building; she could accept that. But how could he possibly make the air grow so cold so fast?
Suddenly, as the screen began to fill with the same seven-line message that had just been wiped from it, Tina had enough. She switched the machine off, and the blue glow faded from the screen.
As she was getting up from the low chair, the terminal switched itself on.
I’M COLD AND I HURT
GET ME OUT OF HERE
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE
“Get you out of where?” she demanded. “The grave?”
GET ME OUT OUT OUT
She had to get a grip on herself. She had just spoken to the computer as if she actually thought she was talking to Danny. It wasn’t Danny tapping out those words. Goddamn it, Danny was dead!
She snapped the computer off. It turned itself on.
A hot welling of tears blurred her vision, and she struggled to repress them. She had to be losing her mind. The damned thing couldn’t be switching itself on.
She hurried around the desk, banging her hip against one corner, heading for the wall socket as the printer hummed with the production of more hateful words.
GET ME OUT OF HERE
GET ME OUT OUT
OUT
OUT
Tina stooped beside the wall outlet from which the computer received its electrical power and its data feed. She took hold of the two lines—one heavy cable and one ordinary insulated wire—and they seemed to come alive in her hands, like a pair of snakes, resisting her. She jerked on them and pulled both plugs.
The monitor went dark.
It remained dark.
Immediately, rapidly, the room began to grow warmer. “Thank God,” she said shakily.
She started around Angela’s desk, wanting nothing more at the moment than to get off her rubbery legs and onto a chair—and suddenly the door to the hall opened, and she cried out in alarm.
The man in black?
Elliot Stryker halted on the threshold, surprised by her scream, and for an instant she was relieved to see him.
“Tina? What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
She took a step toward him, but then she realized that he might have come here straight from a computer in one of the other third-floor offices. Could he be the man who’d been harassing her?
“Tina? My God, you’re white as a ghost!” He moved toward her.
She said, “Stop! Wait!” He halted, perplexed.
Voice quavery, she said, “What are you doing here?”
He blinked. “I was in the hotel on business. I wondered if you might still be at your desk. I stopped in to see. I just wanted to say hello.”
“Were you playing around with one of the other computers?” “What?” he asked, obviously baffled by her question.
“What were you doing on the third floor?” she demanded. “Who could you possibly have been seeing? They’ve all gone home. I’m the only one here.”
Still puzzled but beginning to get impatient with her, Elliot said, “My business wasn’t on the third floor. I had a meeting with Charlie Mainway over coffee, downstairs in the restaurant. When we finished our work a couple minutes ago, I came up to see if you were here. What’s wrong with you?”
She stared at him intently. “Tina? What’s happened?”
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