Free 2 Dancing With Death by Liz Marvin Page A

internet hadn’t survived the storm.
         She was stranded. Cut off. Isolated from the cyber world that made up her livelihood, her hobbies, her social networking. A choking feeling rose up her throat. Hold on, she thought, forcibly holding off the oncoming panic. The world wasn’t ending because she couldn’t check her e-mail.
         Who was she kidding? Of course the world was ending! What if she missed out on a great client? Or an amazing deal? What if some of the items she had up for auction online were about to expire?
         Betty closed the blackout curtains, letting her vision adjust once more to the dim artificial light. She rubbed her eyes. Okay Betty, she thought to herself. Think. Think hard. Are there any customers who might need immediate help? Any shipments due next week? Any clients likely to have a major crisis?
         She squashed the foreboding certainty that there was a customer having a meltdown and threatening to pull their business from Betty’s company if she didn’t respond that morning. Everything would be fine. So the wireless internet was down. That didn’t necessarily mean that there was no way for her to check her e-mail. The hotel must have a backup. She just had to find out what it was.
         Betty dressed quickly in loose pants and a tank top, pulling her hair back into a pony tail. She scrawled a note and left it on the table, just in case someone woke up while she was gone. She couldn’t make a phone call from the room phone to the front desk without waking everyone else in the room up, so she’d just have to go to the front desk herself.
         It took a few wrong turns and one kind maid to point Betty in the direction of the elevators. Once again, Betty was struck by the labyrinthine design of the hallways. It was as though the architect had decided to play a joke on the hotel visitors. She could imagine him perfectly, wearing a villainous moustache and a horrid plaid suit, chortling with glee over the struggles of hotel customers on a desperate search for the ice machine. What a jerk.
         By the time she finally reached the elevator, Betty had had it. That’s it, she thought. I’m not stopping at asking for internet. I demand a map! A nice, detailed, color coded map that even the most direction-challenged person could decipher with ease. And I want it to have cartoon figures like on the Candy Land game board, so I can recognize landmarks. So there, evil architect man. I will defeat you!
         This time, when Betty walked through the grand entrance hall, she paid no attention to the people milling about, or the grand gold and red décor. She was a woman on a mission.
         “Excuse me,” she said to the woman at the front desk. “I have a question about your internet.”
         The woman looked at her over horn-rimmed glasses and said in a nasal voice, “What about it?”
         “You see,” Betty said, patting herself on the back in reward for her outward poise. “There’s no wireless internet in my room right now. I’m sure it’s the storm. I was wondering where I might be able to check my e-mail.”
         “If the wireless is down,” the woman droned, turning to type on her computer, “then there isn’t any internet available.”
         Betty gritted her teeth.
         “Are you absolutely sure about that?” she asked. “There’s no back up internet anywhere in this hotel?”
         “No Ma’am. If the wireless internet is down, there’s no internet available to guests.” The woman continued to work on her computer, clearly done with paying attention to Betty.
    Betty clutched the counter, her knuckles white. They let this woman run the front desk? She was horrible! She could at least look a Betty while talking to her.
         “Can I help you Miss Crawford?” a man asked, coming to stand behind the counter. It was George, the concierge who had come to tell them about the weather. The woman who’d