Chapter 1
Bill Phillips leaned back against the headboard of the bed as he looked at the item that had led to the painful situation he now found himself in. It was so simple, and still very common, although not as common as they had once been. Not quite 3 inches wide by 2 inches high, and if you looked at it from the side it appeared to be in the shape of a small wedge.
An everyday package of paper matches. He opened it and counted the remaining matches inside, and came up with 35, the same number he always arrived at when he went through this ritual. Five were missing; another number that never changed. He wondered why he took the time to count them again, and considered that maybe it was a sign of his depression.
This particular package was plain white in color, both inside and out, with fuchsia printing on the flap that opened to reveal the matches inside. When he first saw the package he thought of the color as sort of a light purple, but a secretary at the office had told him that no, it wasn't purple, it was fuchsia.
Someone else told him later that the printing was magenta, and when he checked it out on the Internet he found that the two names were synonymous. It didn't really matter; although he sort of thought that every time he would see the color in the future it was going to bring him feelings of sadness and loss.
There wasn't any phone number, or address, or map to show you how one would find the place it was advertising. All that was printed on it, in fancy script, was 'The Puma's Den'.
When he first saw that name he had no idea of what it meant, and by this time he sometimes wondered if it might not have been better if he had never learned of its significance. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.
Bill had almost another hour to wait before he made a promised call to his sister Sandy, and he decided to once again spend his time going back over everything that had happened since his first exposure to this plain book of paper matches.
It had all started just over two months ago.......
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It was Thursday and almost 9 p.m. Eastern Time, time for Bill Phillips to make his normal call home to his wife Linda. He made the call at the same time every evening when he was out of town in Colorado Springs. It was only 7 p.m. Mountain Time, but he had already eaten, and would probably watch some sporting event on TV when he got off the phone to his wife.
Bill Phillips was 37 years old, a ruggedly handsome man of almost 6 feet in height, with brown hair and blue-gray eyes. He knew his wife Linda, who was a year younger than him, would be sitting near the phone just as he was.
He could picture her as clearly as if she was sitting there beside him, with her short dark brown hair, her dark eyes, dimpled smile and her well proportioned 5 foot 4 body. He found himself smiling in anticipation of being at home with her again the next night.
During the last week of every month he made a trip to his company's Colorado Springs facility to check, test and upgrade the computers and servers that his IT department was responsible for.
Bill relied on the local manager during the rest of each month, but Bill was the one in the company that had the expertise to ensure that everything was being done according to the specs of the equipment and software manufacturers, and to the strict requirements the board of directors he reported to insisted on. He'd been making these trips for almost 18 months, ever since their company, Abstract Devices Inc., had purchased one of its main competitors, a firm that had their offices and manufacturing facility situated in this lovely city in Colorado.
His trips always started the same way, leaving Dayton, Ohio in the afternoon on Wednesday and returning home from Colorado late in the evening on Friday. Full days on Thursday and Friday would ensure that all of the software had been properly upgraded to the latest revision levels, and the antivirus programs were up to date with the latest virus signature files.
It was also important that all of the firm's networked computers contained nothing but the software they should contain. The two buildings, one for manufacturing and the other containing office facilities housed several hundred terminals as well as their controlling servers and the devices interconnecting everything. It took a lot of time to ensure they were all compliant.
Their company manufactured electronic devices for the military, and the last thing they would need was a surprise visit by the military that found something out of order with their computer security. It was a given that the military would check at least once per year without giving them any heads-up. It was his job to make sure those inspections never found anything that was unacceptable.
Bill had phoned Linda on Wednesday evening, letting her know that he had arrived safely, and that the weather was wonderful compared to the rain they were experiencing in Ohio. The conversation lasted for approximately 15 minutes, the usual amount of time they would spend on the phone.
They had exchanged their normal 'I love you' messages at the end of the call, and he had spent the rest of the evening answering corporate emails. Bill finally called it a night about three hours later, shut off the television and the lights, and then crawled into bed.
Now it was Thursday evening and he only had this one night left to pass before he would head back to Dayton. He was watching the clock, and finally it was close enough to 7 p.m., the time that he normally would make his call.
As usual his wife answered on the second ring, and reported that as usual, she was fine, but had had a busy day at work. She was a sales manager at a large furniture store in the Dayton Mall, located not too far from where they lived. There were four other locations around the Dayton area, and her job entailed overseeing their sales forces as well.
There wasn't much of great importance to talk about, because he had only been gone from Dayton for a day and a half. Instead they took turns joking with each other about who had the most difficult job, but soon they exchanged their customary messages of love and he hung up the phone.
Within 15 minutes he was getting comfortable on the bed, watching baseball, when he realized that he had not told his wife that his return flight would be getting him home at the unusual time of 7 in the evening, instead of what had been the more normal time of 10 o'clock Dayton time.
The airline's scheduled flight from Colorado Springs had been permanently moved forward by three hours, a change that he welcomed wholeheartedly. He was lucky he had checked his ticket in time, as he had just naturally assumed his flight would leave at the time that he had become accustomed to.
When he phoned to confirm the change he was told that in order to accommodate new routes the flight from Colorado Springs to Dayton by way of Indianapolis had to be bumped up to the earlier hour. Sometimes change was good, he decided.
