Programmed for Peril

motivations or her mother’s.
    All that assuming she could escape from Carson.
    Monday morning she woke aching, as though she had spent the whole weekend doing calisthenics. She thought she was coming down with the flu—in the summer yet. Let no one tell her the mind and body weren’t yoked together like oxen. She gave Melody her breakfast, then called Jill Beestock. She told her about the canceled wedding and listened to her sympathies. She begged a ride for her daughter to day camp. Considering what had just happened to Trish, Jill offered to bring Melody home, too. Trish felt too sore and sluggish to protest. She called Michelle and told her she wouldn’t be in today. She tottered back up to the bedroom with a cup of tea and closed the door. Under the light covers she started to get the chills. She thought she ought to close the windows. She looked out over the coverlet.
    The windows were closed.
    Curious. She remembered them being open yesterday morning. Melody must have been fooling around. She closed her eyes, still not sure whether she was getting sick or suffering emotional hangover. She felt herself drifting off.
    A noise!
    Downstairs. She had locked the door. No one could get in. She sat up, her heart pounding. She strained to hear... Silence, then a distant creak on the staircase.
    Someone was coming up to the second floor.
    “Who’s there?” she called.
    Silence. Then another creak, closer. She slid out of bed and hurried to the door. She turned the knob and jerked. The door didn’t open. It was locked. How? She never used the lock! She shoved at the lock lever. It didn’t budge.
    It had been tampered with!
    She whirled, looking for the purse in which she kept her pistol. It was downstairs.
    Slow footfalls in the hall came closer!
    “Jill? Is that you, Jill?” Her voice cracked.
    No reply.
    “If you don’t answer, I’m calling the police!”
    Was that the hiss of heavy breath approaching? She spun and snatched up her bedside phone. She keyed in 911 twice before she realized.
    No dial tone.
    With a weak cry she threw the useless phone down. She jumped up, stood in the center of the room. She didn’t know what to do. She flew to the closed door. “Carson!” she shouted.
    The voice through the wood was thick. “No.”
    “Who are you? What do you want?”
    “I have a message from Carson.”
    Trish gasped and pressed palms to her chill face. “You are Carson. You are!”
    “No.”
    That voice! She sensed it was disguised, that she had heard it earlier. Wait. Carson had had vocal chord surgery. His voice had been changed by it. It had been that “new” voice that had threatened her. It had been he all along, not some faceless ally. He had a different voice to match a different face! It was Carson beyond the door. “What message do you have... from Carson?”
    “He knows your wedding won’t happen.”
    “How? ”
    “He still hears what happens here. Nicholas is clever, but Carson’s more so.”
    There were new bugs in the house! Trish was close to the door now. Carson was on the other side, inches away, though he himself might not realize it through his fog of self-delusion and madness. Long ago, in June, when all this had begun, she suspected it would come to this. Closer and closer Carson had moved, freezing her and closing in. Was this Monday morning the moment when she would again behold his face, masked or naked? She swallowed heavily. “Are you coming in, Carson?”
    Beyond the door what had been a slow hiss of breath speeded up. She sensed it catching in a thick throat. After long moments he said, “No. I told you I brought a message.” Trish sagged against the door, tasted relief.
    Beyond the wood the hiss slowed under the rein of will. She had heard such sound in her life: the wordless voice of sexual arousal.
    She closed her eyes and pressed her fingers against the door. They shook like stalks in the wind. “What’s the message?”
    “Pack for a long trip. For both you and Melody. Then meet Carson at a place I’ll tell you later.”
    “And after the trip?”
    “You’ll be together forever.”
    Just as he had written on the photograph. Trish’s despair rose up like fog. “The wedding’s no more. That’s what you wanted.”
    “That isn’t all he wants. You should know him better than that.”
    The Master of Excess. Trish closed her eyes and clenched her fists. She had broken the bargain for her soul. She couldn’t go back to him. Was she even tempted? If she