Midnight Voices

CHAPTER 36

“I want to know where Laurie is!” Ryan demanded. His fists on his hips, he glowered furiously at Melanie Shackleforth.

“I’ve already told you,” Melanie replied, putting far more patience in her voice than she felt. “She’s spending the night with one of her friends.”

“Who?” Ryan challenged.

Melanie’s eyes narrowed and her lips compressed. There was a time — a time she still remembered very clearly — when children were to be seen and not heard, and children like Ryan Evans were given a sound thrashing until they learned to mind their manners. But that was a different time, and Anthony Fleming had given her strict instructions that she was not to strike the boy, no matter how offensive he became. But if the boy kept this up much longer—

“You don’t know, do you?” Ryan taunted, seeing the anger in her eyes. “You don’t know because you’re lying!” He moved closer, and raised his voice. “Liar! Liar! Liar!”

Melanie’s fury, which she’d carefully held in check all through the long afternoon she’d stayed with Ryan, was on the verge of boiling over. She should have left him locked in his room — as Anton had instructed — but when he’d begged to be allowed to go to the bathroom, she’d decided that Anton could be overruled. And until a few minutes ago, he’d behaved himself. But now it was becoming apparent that Anton was right — she should have left him locked in his room to sulk all afternoon. That’s what Virginia Estherbrook would have done. But Virginia was gone, never to return, and Melanie Shackleforth — a name she was starting to like even better than ‘Virginia Estherbrook’—intended to be much more modern. But Ryan Evans was making it very difficult.

“Liar, liar, liar!” Ryan chanted now, his voice taking on a mocking lilt that pushed Melanie’s rage past the boundaries Anton had set. Before she could even think, her arm rose up then arced downward, her hand slashing across Ryan’s face so hard it stung her own hand.

With a howl of rage, Ryan threw himself at her, his nails gouging into her skin before his fingers grabbed her hair and began tearing at it. Melanie screamed as bits of hair tore loose from her scalp, but a second later her own fingers found his, and with far more strength than she’d felt in years, she began peeling his fingers loose from her hair. “How dare you,” she hissed. Her hand closing on his wrist, she dragged Ryan upstairs and down the hall, shoved him through the door to his room, pulled it shut, and locked it. “You’ll come out when you’ve learned some manners, young man!” she said through the thick mahogany door. “Your stepfather was right!” Not waiting for a response, she went back downstairs, then into the powder room next to the library. Turning on the lights, she stared at herself in the mirror.

Her cheeks — the bone structure looking more perfect than ever under the young supple skin that had been her share of Rebecca Mayhew — showed deep scratches where Ryan’s nails had sunk into them. For a moment she felt a flash of panic, but then reminded herself that this was fresh, young skin that would quickly heal. It would be decades before her face once more began to show the ravages of time. But when she shifted her attention to her hair — the wonderful, thick hair she hadn’t had in twenty years — her eyes glistened with tears. The boy had torn at it, and now her scalp was bleeding. But I’m young again, she reminded herself. It will heal. It will all heal. And when the boy was ripe — as ripe as his sister — all the men would regain their youth, too, not just Anton.

But next time, she would choose the children herself. She’d known these two were a mistake — she’d told Lavinia and Alicia as much when they’d first arrived. They, and their mother.

That had been the real mistake — using children with a mother. How long did Anton think they could get away with that? Last time, when he’d been so happy to find twin boys so close to being ripe that neither he nor any of the other men had been able to resist the promise of a feast, it might have been worth the risk. But this time it had been a mistake. Even though Caroline was locked away, Melanie was certain the police would be back, and though Anton could probably handle it, every decade it was getting harder and harder. But as she gazed in the mirror, Melanie knew that no matter how hard it became to find the children, it was worth it.

Even with the scratches in her skin and the bits of hair missing from her bleeding scalp, she looked better today than she had in decades.

Perhaps even centuries…

Ryan listened to the lock click into place, then looked at the clock on the table next to his bed. Just a little after three-thirty. Tony Fleming had said he wouldn’t be back until five-thirty or maybe six, which meant that Ryan had two hours to explore the maze of secret passages, since he was pretty sure he’d made Melanie Whatever-She-Said-Her-Name-Was mad enough that she wouldn’t come near his room until his stepfather came home.

Which was exactly what he’d planned ever since she’d arrived to watch him while his stepfather went out to do whatever it was he did. He’d known right away that she wasn’t there to stay with him at all — she was there to make sure he didn’t get away. But it hadn’t been hard to sweet talk her into letting him go to the bathroom, and be nice enough that she let him stay out of his room long enough to find what he needed. That had been easy — he’d found a whole stash of batteries in the bottom drawer in the kitchen, and taken enough so that he shouldn’t run out if he was careful.

The second thing he’d decided to take was the ring of keys that his mother had swiped from the store yesterday. That had been a little harder, since his mother’s purse hadn’t been on the table in the front hall where she usually left it. He’d been afraid she might have taken it with her to the hospital, but then he’d decided to try to find it anyway. That had taken almost an hour, and finally he’d had to sneak into the dressing room off the big bedroom and go through most of her drawers before he finally found it. Melanie — or whatever her name really was — had almost caught him that time, but he’d gotten back to his room just as she’d come to the top of the stairs, and by the time she asked him what he was doing, he was sprawled out on his bed reading a book and the keys were hidden between the mattress and the box springs where she’d never find them even if she was looking. He’d swiped a laundry marker, too, so he wouldn’t have to waste time carving marks in the corners to keep from getting lost.

Now, safely locked in the room with her mad enough after the fight that she wouldn’t let him out again, he checked his pockets one last time. The knife, the laundry marker, and the keys were in the front pocket of his jeans, and the pockets of his jacket were stuffed with extra batteries. He was ready.

Half an hour later he’d found his way down through the maze of passages until he was pretty sure he was in the basement of the building. Most of the passages had been pretty narrow, except for a big room that he thought was right behind Tony’s study. There’d been some things in that room that looked like hospital equipment — racks of bottles and tubes and stuff like that — and a bunch of other passages that had led away from it. He’d explored a couple of them and found peepholes along every one of them. He hadn’t been able to see anything through most of the peepholes, but whenever he found one where he could see the room on the other side of the wall, it always looked like a kid’s bedroom.

But except for him and Laurie and Rebecca, there weren’t any kids in the building.

And now Rebecca was gone.

And Laurie—

He’d almost started crying then. No matter what Tony said, he was certain Laurie hadn’t gone to school, and he’d known for sure that Melanie had been lying about her going somewhere after school.

And if they’d done something to Laurie, and his mother didn’t come home—

That was when he’d made himself stop thinking about it, because if he started crying he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to stop, and then somebody might hear him, or he might get lost, or—

He’d decided he’d better not think about that, either, so just to keep himself from thinking about all the bad things that could happen, he’d concentrated on making sure he didn’t make any mistakes at all on marking the path he took. At every intersection he put enough arrows that he couldn’t possibly make a mistake, and he’d even put numbers that would tell him how many floors he was from where he’d started.

Which was why he was now pretty sure he was in the basement, since he’d come down seven levels since he’d started from the ceiling of his bedroom, which was on the sixth floor. But the passages had changed on this level, too. There was only one, and it was wider than the ones upstairs, and the floor was made out of cement, and there weren’t any turns.

And it smelled funny — musty and kind of rotten.

There was a door at the far end, and he was halfway to it when he saw another door in the side wall.

He paused, uncertain which door to try first, and in the end decided on the one he was closest to.

Locked.

He shined the flashlight on it. It was just a big panel of wood, with none of the fancy carved moldings most of the doors in the building had. But under the brass knob was the same kind of keyhole as the door to his room — and every other door he’d seen so far — had.

He pulled out the key ring, and began testing the keys.

The twelfth one fit.

The lock clicked open.

Screwing up his courage, Ryan switched the flashlight off, then twisted the knob.

The door swung open, and a terrible odor flowed out, strong enough to make Ryan take an involuntary step backward and put his hand over his nose. But after a few moments his curiosity overcame his revulsion, and he moved close enough to the door to peer inside.

Behind the door was a large room roofed by the main beams that supported the floor above. It wasn’t quite pitch black in the room — in fact, after the total blackness of the maze of passageways, it seemed almost light by comparison. It took Ryan only a moment to determine the source of the light — in the far wall, high up, there were a few narrow windows opening into the drainage channel that ran around the building, tiny openings that let in just enough light so that the room wasn’t totally dark.

But it wasn’t light enough for him to see much of anything, either.

He switched the flashlight back on.

And instantly heard a faint moan.

He switched the light back off.

There was a long silence, and as it stretched onward, Ryan’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. When the sound wasn’t repeated, he began edging forward, pausing to listen after each step. After about ten paces he came to one of those rolling tables they used to move people around in hospitals. But why would they have one of those in the basement of The Rockwell?

Then, a dozen steps further on, he came to another one. Except that this one wasn’t empty.

A sheet lay over it, and there was something under the sheet.

Something that was the source of the stink that filled the room. Ryan stood staring at the table — and the still form under the sheet — for several minutes, fighting an almost irresistible urge to turn around and slip back into the darkness. But even as he took the first step backward, a voice whispered inside his head: ’What if it’s Laurie?’ But it couldn’t be Laurie.

Could it?

He hesitated.

His terror grew, but even as his skin turned clammy with fear, the voice in his head grew more insistent, and finally he reached out, his fingers shaking, and lifted the sheet just far enough to see what was under it.

A body, its skin dull gray in the dim light.

Laurie!

The thought crashed into Ryan’s mind, and once again he felt an urge to turn away and flee into the darkness. But once again, the other side of him — the side that had to know—won out. Peeling the sheet all the way back, he turned on the flashlight and shined it on the corpse.

Or, at least, what was left of the corpse.

The belly had been laid open, and in the empty cavity that had once contained the vital organs, maggots were already doing their work, their fat white bodies wriggling and burrowing through the rotting flesh, abandoning their feast in a frantic effort to escape the glaring beam of light. His gorge rising, Ryan shifted the light to the face, and found himself staring into a pair of empty eye sockets.

But the rest of the face was familiar — even with her eyes gone, Rebecca Mayhew was still easily recognized.

His eyes flooding with tears — but the pounding of his heart easing slightly as he realized that at least it was not his sister, he dropped the sheet back over Rebecca’s ruined corpse, and moved on.

He came to another gurney.

On this one, the shape wasn’t quite covered — the head was still exposed, and when Ryan shined his light on the face — the face of a boy only a little older than he himself — the eyes, wide and deeply sunken in their sockets — blinked.

Ryan jumped, then froze.

The boy’s lips moved, but no sound came out.

Uncertainly, Ryan reached out and laid his hand on the boy’s forehead, so gently that he barely touched it. “It’s gonna be okay,” Ryan whispered. “I–I’m gonna get you out of here.”

But even as he spoke the words, he could hear their hollowness, and he was sure the boy, whoever he was, didn’t believe them any more than Ryan did himself.

Then, out of the gray twilight, he heard another sound. It was a little louder than the one he’d heard when he first turned on his light, and now he knew what it was: a voice, but so faint and weak that he was almost afraid he’d imagined it. But then it came again.

“M-mom?”

His heart suddenly pounding, Ryan swept the room with his flashlight. On the second sweep, he saw it.

Yet another gurney, yet another shape all but concealed beneath a sheet. But there was someone on the gurney, and even though the single word he’d heard had been barely audible, he was almost certain he recognized the voice.

His heart racing now, he hurried toward the next gurney and a moment later was shining the light on the face of the person lying on it.

Laurie.

“N-no—” she stammered, trying to twist her eyes away from the glare of the light. “Don’t—”

Ryan shifted the light away from her eyes. “It’s me!” he whispered as loud as he dared.

For a moment Laurie didn’t react at all, but then she slowly turned her head toward him. Her lips worked for a moment, and then words began to come out, slowly and weakly.

“Find Mom,” she whispered. “Find her, Ryan. If you don’t, I’m going to die.”

Night lay like a shroud over the city, and as Ryan gazed out his window at the park, the first thing that popped into his mind was what had happened to his father there. Ever since that night, Ryan had hated even the thought of going out alone after dark, terrified of what might happen to him. But tonight there was no choice.

He’d wanted to leave right after he found Laurie — in fact, he’d wanted to take Laurie with him. But she was so weak she could hardly even talk, let alone get off the gurney and follow him through the maze to—

To where?

That was the thing — even if Laurie could make it, he didn’t know where to take her.

He didn’t even know how to get out of the building. In fact, he didn’t even know if he could get out of the building.

Once he’d figured out she couldn’t make it up even the first flight of stairs, he’d wanted to just stay with her, but she’d kept arguing with him. “You have to find out how to get out — you have to find Mom. If you don’t…”

Her words had trailed off, but she hadn’t had to finish for him to understand.

They’d both die, like Rebecca.

So finally he’d promised Laurie he’d find a way out, then gone to see if he could keep his promise. The first place he’d tried was the door at the far end of the corridor he’d come into as he came down the last flight of steps. He’d approached it slowly, stopping every few steps to listen for anyone who might be coming, for the closer he got to that door, the farther away he was from the stairs that were the only other way out. But there had been no sounds, and finally he’d come close enough to the door to try its knob.

Locked.

Locked, and with no keyhole.

He’d gone over every inch of the door, using up two whole batteries, searching for a way to open it, but except for the knob, there was nothing at all on his side of it. No hinges whose pins he might be able to pull, or a place where he could try to pry it open if he could find a crowbar somewhere. When the batteries had started to fade, and he’d seen what time it was, he’d given up on the door, but instead of going straight back to his room, he’d explored as much of the maze of corridors as possible.

And found no way out.

On the first floor, there’d been only one narrow corridor, with only one door. Or at least he thought it was a door. It hadn’t had any knob or lock or anything else, but it looked like it might slide if he could just figure out how to release it. But when another set of batteries began to fade as he searched for anything that might open the door, he finally gave up, knowing he’d never find his way back to his room if he ran out of batteries.

He hadn’t had enough time to explore all the passages on the upper floors, and when he’d dropped back into his closet, he’d only had one set of fresh batteries left.

It wasn’t more than five minutes after he got back that a key turned in his lock, and there stood his stepfather, his dead eyes fixed on Ryan. “You will apologize to Miss Shackleforth.”

Ryan did it, carefully making his face look like he was really, really sorry for what he’d done.

He sat through dinner, forcing himself to eat, pretending he believed his stepfather’s story that Laurie was having a sleepover with one of her friends.

He didn’t ask which friend; instead he acted like he didn’t care.

At eight, he told his stepfather he was tired, and was going to go to bed early, and when Tony came in to tuck him in, he didn’t object. And he asked if he could go visit his mother in the hospital the next day.

“We’ll see,” Tony told him. Then he left, closed the door, and just as Ryan had been hoping, locked it.

Now Ryan was looking out into the night, and the courage he’d been working up all evening was starting to ebb away. Taking one last look out the window, he patted the batteries in his jacket pocket, checked for the keys and the black laundry marking pen and his pocketknife, then stuffed some extra pillows under the covers, just in case Tony came back for a look. Turning all the lights off, he went into the closet and climbed up the shelves one more time. Lifting the trapdoor carefully, he pulled himself through, then re-closed it.

Using the flashlight as sparingly as he possibly could, feeling his way along the passages that were now familiar to him, he began working his way upward. This time he ignored most of the side passages, going only far enough down any of them to determine that there were no stairs leading further up, for tonight he had a single goal.

To get out.

And if there were no way out through the basement or the first floor, there was only one thing left: the roof.

He was on the ninth floor — which he was pretty sure was the top floor — when he ran out of stairs. The last flight of steps seemed longer than any of the others, and when he finally came to the top, the passage only ran for about thirty feet before it ended at another passage that ran perpendicular to it.

He shined the light in both directions, but neither seemed any more promising than the other, and finally he started down the one to the right. It ended after about fifty feet, and there was another perpendicular passage. He explored the corridor in both directions and found dead ends both ways.

He went back the other way; passing the corridor he’d originally come through, he found a second transverse at the far end.

Both ends of this transverse ended as abruptly as the first.

No way out.

His heart sinking, he started back toward the passage that would take him to the stairs leading downward, but then, just as he was about to start down the steps, he remembered how he’d gotten into the passages in the first place.

Shining the flashlight upward, he began going back through the passages one more time, this time in search not of a door or of stairs, but of another trapdoor.

He found it at the very end of the first passage he’d explored. At first he wasn’t sure what it was — it looked like a ladder that was bolted to the ceiling. But when he examined it more closely, he could see that it was hinged at one end, and that there was what looked like a rope going up through the ceiling at the other end.

He stretched, trying to reach the ladder, but no matter how hard he strained, his fingers couldn’t even come close to touching it.

Taking off his shoes so he’d make as little noise as possible, he jumped.

And still didn’t touch the ladder’s lowest rung.

A stool — that’s what he needed. But where was he going to get one?

His desk chair?

But how could he even get it up through the trapdoor? And if he dropped it, and Tony Fleming heard the noise—

The flashlight was starting to get weak, and he reached into his pocket for the last set of batteries. Then, as he was deciding whether to change them now, or wait until the others were completely dead, an idea started forming in his mind. Stripping off his jacket — a thin nylon one whose big pockets had been more important than its lack of warmth — he tied a knot in one of the sleeves, then dropped all the batteries he had into the sleeve. Twisting the jacket as tight as he could, he grasped the end of the other sleeve so that he had a sort of makeshift rope with a weight at one end. It wasn’t very long — maybe four feet total, but if he could sling the weighted end over the bottom rung of the ladder, he just might be able to pull it down.

He hefted the jacket, giving it an experimental swing. If he wasn’t careful, the sleeve with the batteries in it would thump against the wall or the floor and—

He decided he didn’t want to think about that.

Taking a couple of more test swings, he finally arced the sleeve of the jacket up toward the ladder.

It thumped against the ceiling, not even hitting the ladder, then dropped back down. Ryan barely caught it before it hit the floor.

He tried three more times before he finally found the angle that would hit the bottom rung of the ladder.

It took twelve more tries before the sleeve containing the batteries miraculously slid through the narrow gap between the rung and the ceiling itself.

He started flipping the jacket, trying to feed more of it over the rung, counting on the batteries to pull it down the other side.

His right arm was fully extended when he realized that the second sleeve was still a foot from his grasp.

For almost a full minute, he stared up at the jacket and the ladder, then made up his mind. The lower sleeve still in his hand, he jumped up, trying to feed the jacket a little further, then let go of the sleeve.

And now both sleeves hung tantalizingly above him, just out of reach. But if he jumped, and then grabbed both sleeves at the same time—

He paused, gathering himself, then crouched down and took three deep breaths, as if he were about to dive into water instead of leap into the air. Then, as his lungs reached full capacity he launched himself upward, and a split second later his hands closed on the sleeves of the jacket.

And as the end of the ladder came down he heard the faint squeak of an unseen pulley as the counterweight rose somewhere in or on the other side of the wall. A moment later the bottom of the ladder was on the floor, and Ryan held it in position as he unknotted the sleeve, put the batteries back in the jacket pocket, and put the jacket on. Then he climbed the ladder, and pushed up on the small trapdoor that the ladder’s rungs and rails had hidden almost perfectly.

He was in the attic of the building, and as he flashed the light around, he saw another door.

A door whose lock responded to one of the keys on the ring his mother had taken from the shop.

A door that led to the roof.

He paused on the threshold, sucking the cool night air deep into his lungs. Above, the sky was clear, and the moon was almost full. Turning off the flashlight, he dropped it into the pocket of his jacket and began making his way along the narrow catwalk that ran between two of the roofs’ steeply pitched peaks, around one of the turrets, and finally to the low rampart that ran around the building’s perimeter.

He worked his way slowly all the way around, searching for a fire escape.

And found none.

Each of the four fire escapes that served the building started from the eighth floor, two floors below Ryan.

There were no ladders, no pipes, not even a ledge to creep out on.

He started around the building again, and when he came to the west side of it, he suddenly saw something.

On the building behind The Rockwell, the fire escapes began at the roof, and ran all the way down to the second floor. But the roof of the building next door was a full floor lower than The Rockwell’s rampart, and the fire escape was opposite a spot where The Rockwell’s roof pitched so steeply downward that Ryan didn’t dare try to creep out on it. But a few yards to the left, there was a flat area before you came to the cupola on the corner.

Still, the gap between the buildings looked like it had to be at least ten feet wide.

He’d never make it.

He’d fall down the shaft between the buildings and hit the concrete at the bottom and—

Suddenly the chasm itself seemed to be pulling at him, and a horrible dizziness came over Ryan. He backed away from the precipice until the sick feeling that he was going to fall began to lift.

But then he edged closer again, and took another look at the gap.

Maybe it wasn’t ten feet — maybe it was only eight.

And in school last year, he’d done almost seven and a half feet on a running start. And since the roof of the building next door was lower, he was sure to go further.

Wasn’t he?

He looked down again, then quickly looked away as the dizziness washed over him once again.

But what choice did he have? It was either try it, or give up.

Backing away from the edge, he tried to gauge exactly how many steps it would take to reach the rampart.

If he missed the rampart—

If he was wrong about how wide the chasm was—

If he tripped—

If—

Then, as he kept staring at the chasm, he heard his father’s words once again: ’Keep on going…’

Making up his mind, Ryan sucked his lungs full of air, then began running toward the precipice.

One step. Two steps. Three steps.

His right leg stretched forward, raised high, and his foot found the top of the rampart. He swung his arms back, heaved himself forward, and led off into the air with his left foot.

His right foot left the rampart, and he was suspended in mid-air.

And time seemed to stop, stretching into eternity…

I’m not crazy. I’m not paranoid and I’m not psychotic. It’s all true. It all sounds crazy, and it all sounds paranoid, but it’s not. It’s all true. The words had become a mantra to Caroline, and she’d silently repeated them to herself so many times that they had taken on an almost mystical quality, the words themselves repeated so often that they’d become meaningless, but the rhythm of the chant embedding itself deeper and deeper into her soul, an anchor to keep her sanity from drifting away. It’s all true. It’s all true. It’s all true. Not paranoid. Not paranoid. Not paranoid. Not crazy. Not crazy. Not crazy… But despite the constant repetition of the mantra, she could feel herself slipping closer and closer to the edge of madness. It yawned before her, an immense bottomless chasm that seemed to be drawing her toward it as surely as a great height exercises its deadly magnetism on an acrophobic.

The thing of it was, even with the mantra to cling to, her memories were seeming more and more like figments of her imagination, or something she’d dreamed. How, after all, could they possibly be true?

Tony couldn’t be dead.

Melanie Shackleforth couldn’t be Virginia Estherbrook.

And she couldn’t possibly have seen Tony and all her neighbors gathered around her daughter, draining the very life out of her.

Yet even as she lay strapped in the bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for—

For what?

What was she waiting for?

A doctor? A doctor who would come and make her well?

But she wasn’t sick.

Not sick… not crazy… not paranoid…

But wasn’t that the very definition of paranoia, that you thought all the things you imagined were really true?

What if the doctor — if he really was a doctor — was right? When he’d come in to see her — when? Hours ago? Minutes ago? Not that it mattered. All that mattered was that he’d explained it all.

Explained it all as if he were talking to a five-year-old.

“You’ve had a breakdown,” he told her. “Nothing serious — I suspect you’ll be able to go home in a few days. You just need a good rest, away from your job and your children. Just think of it as time for yourself.”

But it wasn’t a breakdown and she wasn’t crazy and—

And she remembered the look in Detective Oberholzer’s eyes when she’d tried to tell him what was happening. He hadn’t believed her any more than the doctor had.

After the shot — the shot that made her fall asleep so quickly she hadn’t even been able to finish what she was saying to Oberholzer — everything had gotten hazy. When she woke up, her mind had been foggy, and she’d felt too tired even to try to sit up. She’d simply lain there — she didn’t know how long — until slowly the fog began to lift and the memories began to return. At first the memories had seemed like they must have been nightmares she was having trouble shaking off, but as her mind cleared more and more, the images didn’t slip away like the ephemera of dreams.

Instead they became more vivid with each minute that passed, and as they came into clearer and clearer focus, her terror for her children rose up inside her once again, overcoming the power of the drugs they’d given her. That was when she’d begun repeating the mantra. It’s all true… it’s all true… it’s all true…

But if it was all true, and she wasn’t crazy, then she had to find a way to get out. Out of the room, and out of whatever hospital she was in. The only way to do that was to keep her mind clear, and the only way to keep her mind clear was to avoid the drugs. If they gave her another shot—

Caroline refused even to finish the thought in her head, but instantly changed her mind. If she wasn’t crazy, then she could face reality squarely, and make rational decisions about what to do. She reformulated the thought, and this time made herself follow it through to its logical conclusion. If they gave her another shot, she’d lose consciousness again. If she was unconscious, there was nothing she could do to help her children. She would have to wait until the drugs wore off, and the fog cleared, and start all over again. Time would be lost and Laurie would be dead.

Dead.

And she would not let that happen, not as long as she had a breath left in her body.

After that, things had been simple. She concentrated on a single thing at a time. First, she’d searched the room for any means of escape. It had been clear right away that wherever she was, it wasn’t a regular hospital. Aside from the bamboo-patterned wallpaper, which looked far more expensive than anything she’d ever seen in a hospital, there were some other things that didn’t fit either. No clock, anywhere in the room. No television. And no window.

Just a bare room, with an oak door with crystal knobs.

The same kind of crystal knobs as the apartments in The Rockwell!

Was that where she was? In one of the apartments in The Rockwell? But that didn’t make any sense — the way Detective Oberholzer had been acting, it had to be some kind of hospital. The doctor had been with him, and there’d been a nurse. So it had to be a private hospital — one of those fancy places for rich people that don’t look like hospitals.

Certainly, Tony could afford one of those places.

And if it was one of those places, it was probably small, which meant that if she could figure out a way to free herself from the straps that held her to the bed, and the door wasn’t locked, then maybe she could get out.

The only way to get free of the straps was to stay calm.

So the next time the nurse came in, Caroline had smiled at her, and asked if she could go to the bathroom. The nurse — who’d said her name was Bernice Watson — had eyed her appraisingly, but when Caroline had managed to betray none of the emotions that were raging through her, carefully concealing not only her terror for her children but her rage at her husband as well, Bernice Watson had decided it was safe. Releasing Caroline from the straps, she’d helped her to her feet and guided her to the bathroom. Then she waited with the door open until Caroline was through, and guided her back to bed.

Caroline had found herself far too weak even to resist, let alone attempt to escape.

She hadn’t objected when Bernice Watson reattached the straps, and she had gratefully ate every bite of the food the nurse had brought her. When the man who called himself Dr. Caseman came in, she’d assured him she felt much better, and talked a little about the “dreams” she’d had — the dreams that had upset her so much that Tony had had to bring her here. She’d even apologized for her behavior earlier, when he’d had to give her a shot.

And he hadn’t insisted on giving her another.

Now she was facing another meal, and Bernice Watson had released her arms so she could eat. Once again, she ate everything on the tray.

Once again she made no objection to having the straps refastened after the nurse accompanied her to the bathroom.

“Now all that’s left is our sleeping pill, and by morning we’ll feel much better,” the nurse said after an orderly had taken the tray away.

Caroline obediently opened her mouth and accepted the two small pills in the tiny paper cup the nurse held in one hand, then drank from the glass of water she had in the other. “Thank you,” she said after drinking half the water.

“By tomorrow, we’ll feel much better,” Bernice Watson assured her. A moment later, she left the room, and Caroline heard the click of the lock as the nurse turned the key.

And a moment after that, she spat the pills out of her mouth.