57

The door opened wide. A big guy in a suit and tie stood briefly silhouetted. Then he clicked the wall switch, and light fell throughout Room 414.

Jeffy held the key to everything in his right hand. He clutched the pistol in his left, holding it down at his side, where his body concealed it.

The hotelman looked perplexed, as if he had been expecting to see someone else. He glanced at the overturned chair and shattered mirror, swept the rest of the room with his gaze, and said, "What're you doing here?"

Even in a tight corner like this, Jeffy lacked the ability to lie convincingly. He wanted more than anything right now to be a bullshit artist, but when he said, "This is my room, I checked in last evening," he sounded less sincere than a politician promising free everything.

The security guy was one of those slabs of beef who looked slow-witted, but that proved to be wishful thinking. Maybe Jeffy didn't appear upscale enough to be a guest of Hotel Suavidad, or maybe the absence of luggage and any personal effects were clues that the room had not been rented. And the bed remained neatly made at this late hour. Whatever his reasons, the big man didn't give Jeffy the benefit of the doubt or much in the way of courtesy. Scowling, he came straight at him, saying, "Show me some ID."

Jeffy looked at the key, wondering what was taking so long. The search symbol was not on the screen anymore. It had been replaced by the word WARNING, the now familiar skull and crossbones, and the words CONFIRM DESTINATION.

Damn it, he had already been to 1.77 and had been advised to retreat, and he hadn't retreated, and now he wanted to go back there right away, and he was being given more grief than someone trying to board an airplane with an AK-47. This was another clue that this project was a government operation: they didn't trust the average citizen to know what the hell was good for him; next there would probably be a tedious list of all the things that could go wrong if he insisted on making the trip, from stubbing his toe on arrival to contracting Montezuma's revenge from the local drinking water to having his skull harvested.

"I asked for your ID," the hotelman reminded him, looming now like an avalanche waiting to happen.

"My daughter's in danger, life or death, she's only eleven, in some sick death world, for God's sake, I've got to jump to her now," Jeffy gushed, having given up on bullshit, trying truth, hoping to buy just a few seconds to figure out how he was supposed to confirm his destination. There wasn't a button with those words on it, and he didn't want to touch the home circle for fear that he would switch off the device and have to start all over again, like he'd done once before. Seventy-six billion dollars, and the stupid freaking thing was about as user-friendly as a cell phone manufactured in the Kingdom of Tonga.

He had decided that the skull and crossbones, glowing between the words WARNING and CONFIRM DESTINATION was sort of like a button and that he ought to press it in the absence of anything else to press, when the big guy—he was a bull in a suit—glimpsed the pistol and said, "Oh, fuck." The hulk pulled some incredibly effective martial arts move that drove Jeffy to his knees and made all the strength drain out of his arms, so that he dropped the gun and the key to everything.