Fatal Error

to her today and tomorrow, so the sooner I can have the info the better.

Brenda R.

After pressing send, Brenda closed the laptop and put it away. Then she hurried downstairs. Her mother’s worsening vision problems made leaving Camilla a note impossible.

I’ll call her later, Brenda thought.

She stepped out on the front porch just as an older-model silver Lincoln Town Car pulled to a stop in front of the house. As Brenda hurried forward, the passenger window rolled down. A well-dressed woman was at the wheel.

“Brenda?” she asked.

“Yes,” Brenda answered.

“I’m Ermina,” the woman said. “Get in.”

Ermina Blaylock was lovely. Her auburn hair glowed in the cold winter sunlight that came in through the sunroof. She had a flawless complexion and fine features.

“Thank you for picking me up, Ermina,” Brenda said. “I don’t have a car right now, and that makes getting around tough.”

“No problem,” the woman said. “But call me Mina. Everybody does.”

12

Grass Valley, California

Waiting to see if Mina would show that Friday, Richard had a tough time concentrating. He was distracted enough that he didn’t dare do any of his usual Internet correspondence. It was important to keep all his stories straight, and he didn’t want to end up saying the wrong thing to the wrong person.

He had delivered his completed programming fix to Mina the week before. He knew the test flight had been scheduled for Wednesday. He and Mina were still operating under his eyeball-to-eyeball protocol, so she didn’t send him an e-mail. She didn’t call.

She had told him that if the test flight was successful, she would bring him his bonus on Friday, so Richard waited on tenterhooks. Earlier in the morning he had briefly considered cleaning house in advance of her visit, but he had eventually decided against that. He was sitting at his desk watching for her through the living room window when she arrived, apparently on foot. She pushed open the lopsided gate and walked up the weed-littered sidewalk.

When Richard had first returned to Grass Valley, his neighbors had been incredibly curious about him. He wasn’t a very personable guy, and he’d been firm in rejecting their overtures of friendship. Over time they had adjusted to the fact that he was reclusive. If they wondered about why he ordered anything and everything online, they didn’t discuss any of that with him.

Because the neighbors were used to a steady stream of delivery folks who left their vehicles on the street below and trooped up and down the sidewalk leading to Richard’s house, he and Mina had hit upon her masquerading as a delivery person whenever she came to see him.

Today, as usual, Mina arrived on his doorstep using a faux UPS driver uniform with brown khaki trousers and a brown jacket. And as she had done on previous occasions, she carried a stack of boxes to lend credence to the disguise.

Richard didn’t want to appear overeager. Nonetheless, he hurried to the door to meet her. “It’s about time you got here,” he said. “How did it go?”

“How do you think it went?” Mina asked with a smile as she set down her boxes. “I’m here bearing gifts, aren’t I?”

“Great.” Richard could barely contain his relief. “Come on in.”

He led the way into the living room. He was halfway back to his desk when a powerful blow hit him squarely on the back of the head. Down he went.

By the time Richard struggled back to woozy consciousness, she had secured him to one of the dining room chairs with packing tape-probably his own packing tape from the dining room-and there was tape over his mouth as well. He was in a sitting position, but the chair had tipped over onto its side.

The room was surprisingly dark, as though night had fallen while he was unconscious. Mina was seated at the desk in front of his computer, her face eerily aglow in the lamplight. She was dressed in clothing that was different than he remembered. The brown uniform was gone. Her shoes were covered with something that looked like surgical booties; she wore gloves.

Struggling to loosen the bonds, Richard tried to speak. He meant to say, “What are you doing?” but his words came out in an incomprehensible mumble.

“Quiet,” she ordered. “Be still!”

She left the computer and came back over to where he lay on his side on the floor. Picking up the hammer, she waved it in front of his face. “Do not make a sound,” she said.

Richard understood that the hammer was a very real threat. He fell silent.

“Where’s the money I gave you?” Mina said. “I want it. I also want my thumb drive.”

Richard tried to make sense of this. She was robbing him of the money she had paid him? Worried about the possibility of some drug-crazed addict breaking into his house, Richard had hidden the money, and he had hidden it well, but it had never occurred to him that Mina might be the one trying to take it away.

But it was his money. He had worked for it. She owed him for getting her damned UAVs back in the air, and he would not give her back that money, not in a thousand years. The same thing with the thumb drive. He looked at her and shook his head.

That seemed to throw Mina into a fit of rage. She ran back to the dining room and cleared his mother’s curio shelves of Richard’s entire model airplane collection, knocking them to the floor, where she stepped on them and ground them to pieces.

“Tell me,” she said.

With his mouth taped shut, he couldn’t have told her if he had wanted. But it was a grudge match now. He wouldn’t tell her no matter what. He shook his head. Emphatically.

She disappeared from view for a time. When she returned, she was carrying his mother’s old kitchen shears. At first he thought she was going to cut through the tape and free him. Instead, she walked behind him. The pain when it came was astonishing. Even with the tape over his mouth, he howled in agony.

When he could breathe again, tears were streaming down his face. She came around and dangled the remains of one of his fingers in his face.

“Tell me,” she said.

He knew then that he was going to die, and the only satisfaction he could have was to deny this woman what she wanted. Twice more she went behind him. Twice more Richard’s world exploded in absolute agony. He passed out then. When he came to sometime later, he was aware of a peculiar racket, and the air around him was filled with the stale odor he always connected with his mother’s old vacuum cleaner.

Why is that running now?

Then she appeared again, bringing with her another of the dining room chairs. She set the chair close to his head and then sat on it.

“Tell me,” she said again.

“No,” he managed. Even with the tape over his mouth, it sounded like what he meant to say, “N-O!”

Suddenly, out of nowhere a plastic bag appeared. With a single deft movement, she pulled the cloudy plastic down over his head.

“Tell me and I’ll let you live.”

Richard was an experienced liar. So was Mina Blaylock. He knew that, no matter what, she going to kill him anyway. So since it would make no difference, Richard would not give her his money. No matter what.

He heard her tear loose a swath of transparent packing tape. He felt it tighten around his neck. For a few moments-a minute or so-there was enough air to breathe inside the bag. As the plastic went in and out with each