She heard breathing.

She held her own breath but could still hear it. She lifted her head off the vent. The breathing sounded louder. It was coming from the vent itself. She jumped off the toilet, recoiling from the sound. Broken glass tinkled under her feet.

A voice whispered from behind the grate.

Her heart seized.

Then she heard it again. “Iris . . .”

Screaming, Iris crashed through the bathroom door and went careening across the room. She tripped and fell hard but scrambled back up. She flew blindly out of the office and down the corridor.

All she could hear was the whispering voice saying her name over and over. It wasn’t until she’d almost reached the elevators that it registered in her head that Ramone was calling her. She stopped.

“Iris!” he bellowed again.

“Ramone?” she whimpered.

“What the hell you doin’?” A flashlight came barreling toward her, and behind it was Ramone.

“Was that you? The whole time with the flashlight? Was that you?”

“Who else would it be? You gone crazy?”

“I . . . I don’t . . .” Her face crumpled into tears. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m crazy! I must be going fucking crazy!”

“Hey, hey. Take it easy now. It’s all right.” Ramone took her under his arm and led her back down the hall.

A giant lump had swelled up on her knee where she fell. He sat her down in the receptionist’s chair, then picked her field bag off the ground and handed it to her.

“Thanks,” she managed, and wiped her tear-soaked face on her shirt. Her head swayed on her neck.

“Sorry I snuck up on you. I saw your car down in the dock, and I got worried.”

“Sorry. I guess I should have checked in with you. I’m trying to make my deadline tomorrow, so I’m working late.”

“Maybe you should let me know next time,” he said with tired eyes.

“Yeah. I just thought I could squeeze in one more floor, but then it was hot, and the lights didn’t work, and then I found that bed . . .”

“Bed?”

“Not a bed bed, but someone’s been sleeping on the couch in the big office.” Iris pointed toward it from the reception desk. “Then I heard footsteps and—I don’t know—I guess I freaked out.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. This place can get under your skin. Believe me, I know.” His asphalt voice was soothing.

Still, she knew she’d really sound like a freak if she mentioned hearing voices in the air shaft. Her imagination had probably conjured the whole thing anyway. It was just the heat . . . and the hangover.

He pointed his light toward the hall. “Let’s get you home, huh?”

“Yeah. Just give me a minute to make sure I’ve got everything.” She decided to make small talk to cover up her hysterics. “Say, what happened in that office down the hall?”

“What do you mean?”

“That office that’s all messed up.” She stood up and put her bag on her shoulder. “Here, let me show you.”

She led him down the hall to the office where she’d been hiding, hoping that seeing the place again in the light might erase the whisper from her head. She clicked on her flashlight and pointed it into the room.

It was worse than William S. Thompson’s office down on the ninth floor. Every stick of furniture had been destroyed. A steel wall-safe stood open on the far wall. The outline of a picture frame was sunburned into the wallpaper. The safe was empty. Her flashlight fell on the bathroom door and stayed there. She listened for more whispers.

“Damned junkies!” Ramone muttered behind her. “They come up here sometimes looking for stuff they can sell, you know. I guess somebody got frustrated.”

“I guess so,” Iris murmured, not really listening through the pounding in her ears as she inched closer to the bathroom door.

Iris stepped through it and brandished her light at who, or whatever, might still be in there. The bathroom was empty. She checked again and exhaled the breath she’d been holding. There was no one. She stepped inside and shined the beam into the vent grate where she had heard someone breathing. All she could see were the sides of a dull sheet-metal box that stretched beyond the reach of her light. There was a shadow pattern on the far wall. It looked like a ladder.

“You lookin’ for something?” Ramone’s voice rasped behind her.

“Is there a way for . . . ?” Iris searched for words that didn’t sound insane. “For a person to get in there?”

“I’m not sure. Why?”

“It’s just that . . . wouldn’t maintenance personnel need to get in there for, I don’t know, maintenance?”

“Maybe. But not since I’ve been here. Say, it’s getting late, and I don’t know ’bout you, but I’m tired.”

Iris nodded and followed Ramone out into the hall. She stopped and made a note of the name on the door of the ransacked office. She had to trot to catch back up to Ramone.

“Uh, thanks for finding me. So what do you do at night around here?”

“I read,” he said, and pressed the call button for the service elevator.

It was not as interesting of an answer as she’d hoped. She wanted to ask about him trying to pick locks in the vault the other day, but instead she decided to play it safe. They stepped into the elevator car, and she stared at the buttons.

“Hey, why isn’t there a thirteenth floor in the building?”

“I asked that same thing years ago. Know what they told me?”

“What?”

“It’s bad luck. Thirteen’s bad luck. I’ve heard that there’s a mess of buildings around town without a thirteenth floor. Ain’t that somethin’? Don’t know if it ever really helped this place, though.”

“Huh. I’m as superstitious as the next person, but erasing an entire floor seems a bit crazy.”

“It ain’t half as crazy as the stuff I’ve seen.”

Iris was pretty sure her little performance that evening had made it onto the crazy list.

“I’ve seen some weird stuff too,” she said. “Say, Ramone?”

“Yeah?”

“I found something strange on the eleventh floor today. It was a suitcase. Someone had left it in a broom closet. Do you know anything about it?”

A small light flickered in his eyes, then went out. “I’ve learned not to go lookin’ in closets around here. You’d do best to leave that stuff alone.”

It was a strange warning that didn’t really answer her question. She opened her mouth to ask again but thought better of it.

Five minutes later, Iris collapsed into her front seat and lit a cigarette. After three long drags, she glanced back at her clipboard and then cranked the ignition.

The words scrawled in the corner in her shaky hand read “R. Theodore Halloran, Vice President of Finance.”

CHAPTER 40

Thursday, December 7, 1978

“Ramone, what the hell we doin’ up here? The floor’s empty.”

A light snapped on in the hall. It leaked around the doorframe into the abandoned office where Beatrice slept. She sat up with a jolt. She had just settled into her makeshift bed for the night. Footsteps grew louder as they neared the door. It was locked, but the approaching security guards had keys. She could hear them jingling.

“Elevators have been acting real funny lately,” a deep voice replied.

It sounded closer than the first. Cigarette smoke seeped under the door. Beatrice scrambled back from her bed away from the voices and into the dark bathroom. She could still hear them talking as she eased the door shut.

“What do you mean, ‘funny’?”

“What do you think I mean? Cars been comin’ up here the past few days all hours of the night.”

“So? They probably just busted. Come on, man. Everything in this dump acts funny. Wasn’t you just sayin’ yesterday that those security cameras are constantly on the fritz? Let’s get back to the poker game.”