"Over here, sir."
He turned toward the voice, and the hairs prickled on the back of his neck as he saw The Store employee standing next to a long black limousine.
The limo from his dream.
He made no effort to move.
"Sir?" the employee said. "Your ride is here."
Bill nodded dumbly.
A pause. "Mr. King is waiting."
"I'm coming," he said. "I'm coming."
He moved forward, put one foot in front of the other, and it was a cold sweat that dripped down his face as he walked across the tarmac and forced himself to get in the car.
2
He was dropped off directly in front of the Black Tower.
It was like nothing he had ever seen.
The Stores themselves bespoke average American sophistication -- up-to date, but in a way the ordinary swap meet shopper could relate to. They were impressive not so much for what they were but for the context in which they appeared.
The Black Tower was just plain impressive.
Under any circumstances.
He got out of the limo, looked up. The building was not catering to rubes or yokels or the average joe. There was no attempt here to feign modesty or mediocrity. This was the true Store, the real Store, the home of Newman King, and though it possessed superficially the attributes of the average downtown Dallas skyscraper, within those confines it asserted its independence and its supremacy. The Black Tower stood alone, the artistry of its design and the quality of its construction marking it as the property of an extremely powerful, important, and influential man.
Newman King.
The smoked-glass front door of the tower opened, and the same blond employee who'd met him at the airport in Phoenix and the airport here in Dallas strode down the marble walkway toward him.
Bill frowned. This wasn't possible.
The employee drew closer, and now that he looked more carefully, he realized that it was not the same employee after all. The one in Phoenix probably hadn't been the one at the Dallas airport, either. They just looked the same.
He found that disturbing.
"Mr. King's waiting for you," the blond man said with a smile. "I'll take you to him."
Bill nodded. He didn't know what he was going to do, what he was going to say, how he was going to act when he met the CEO. He thought of Ben, and part of him wished he'd brought a gun or a bomb or some type of weapon, but he knew that even if they didn't search him, he'd probably have to go through some type of metal detector.
The two of them walked through the front door into an enormous lobby with a two-story-high ceiling. The floors were marble, the walls were marble, there were palms and cacti, modern sculptural fountains with running water. Behind a gigantic desk, under The Store logo, sat a single receptionist, a pretty blond woman wearing black leather.
He was led past the receptionist, ushered into a glass elevator, and he and his escort rode to the top of the Tower.
The metal doors slid open. Before them was a huge boardroom with windowed walls that overlooked the skyline of the city.
The CEO's office from his dream.
A chill passed through him as he glanced around and saw familiar furniture in familiar places, a scene through the windows he had seen before.
In front of him, fifteen or twenty business-suited men were seated around a gigantic black marble table.
But the only one who mattered was the one at the table's head.
Newman King.
There was something inherently frightening about the CEO, something unnatural and disturbing in his too-pale face, his too-dark eyes, his too-red lips. Taken individually, his features were not that unusual, but they had come together in a way that seemed grotesque, both aberrant and abhorrent. It was not something that translated, not something that could be seen in photographs or on television. There was intelligence evident in his face and an all-American sort of ruthless business acumen, along with an aw-shucks, one-of-the-guys demeanor that could be highlighted or shut off at will, emphasized or de-emphasized according to need. Those things translated.
But that inner wildness, that horrible, undefinable inhumanity -- that could only be experienced in person. Even this far away, across the boardroom, with all of those other people present, it was a powerful thing to behold.
Bill's instinctual reaction was to run, to get as far away from King as he could, as quickly as possible. He felt shaky, his bowels and bladder ready to give at any second, but he stepped out of the elevator and into the boardroom, facing the CEO.
King smiled, and though his teeth were all white and even and straight, there was a sharklike malevolence to the gesture, a vampiric quality about it.
"Mr. Davis, I presume?"
His voice was smooth, strong, carefully modulated, with none of the twangy folksiness he used in public, but again, there was something about it that seemed unnatural.
Bill nodded.
"Welcome. Have a seat." He motioned toward a series of black chairs to the left of the conference table.
"No, thank you."
King's smile widened. "Brave man." He held up a hand and was suddenly holding a sheaf of papers, though Bill could have sworn that both of his hands had been empty a moment before. "Do you know what these are?" He did not wait for an answer. "Your faxes, your E-mail."
Turning on the charm, the CEO began walking around the table toward Bill.
The other board members remained seated, unmoving, staring across the huge table at each other. "If I didn't know better," King said, "I would say you were not a supporter of our organization. If I didn't know better and I was a cruder sort of person than I am, I would say that you're an anti-American agitator. But of course, that can't be the case. You're a Store Club member, your youngest daughter works as a Store sales clerk and your oldest daughter has been appointed temporary manager of the Juniper, Arizona, Store."
"Temporary manager?" Bill said.
"She cannot become a full-fledged manager unless she completes our two week training course."
"I thought she had."
"No."
Newman King was next to him now, and this close he seemed even stranger, ever! more monstrous. Not only was his skin pale, it seemed to be fake, made out of rubber or some sort of malleable plastic. His too-perfect teeth also looked artificial. The only parts of him that seemed real were his dark, deep-set eyes, and they burned with a cruel animal ferocity.
The CEO held up the handful of papers, shook them. "So what do you want me to do?" he asked. "I've been reading your missives, and I can't quite figure out what you want. Do you want me to close the Juniper Store?"
Bill was more frightened than he had ever been in his life, but he ignored his quaking legs and gathered his courage and, in the strongest voice he could muster, said, "Yes."
King was smiling. "What would that accomplish? It would put a lot of people out of work, that's all. It wouldn't bring back all of those other businesses." His smile grew. "It wouldn't bring back your Buy-and-Save market."
The smile stretched into grotesquerie. "It wouldn't even bring back Street's electronics shop."
Bill's heart was pounding crazily. "You know about them?"
"I know everything that affects The Store."
"You drove them out of business."
"So?"
"You killed people. Or you had them killed. Or your people did. All those missing --"
"Casualties of war," King said.
Bill stared at him. If he'd only smuggled in a tape recorder . . .
"Tape recorders don't always record me correctly," King said. He turned away, began walking back up to the head of the table.
Lucky guess, Bill thought, hoped, told himself. Hands shaky, legs wobbly, he started after the CEO, not sure if he planned to jump on him or punch him in the back or simply yell at him. Everything he'd ever thought about The Store, the worst of it, was true, and though he was more terrified than he'd ever been before, he was angrier than he'd ever been before, as well, and he focused on the anger, used it to give him strength.