fully expose the skull. 'There are a lot of rules here. I can help you get around some of them.'
Sarah thought for a moment he was going to reach over and touch her. The prospect nauseated her. But if she rebuffed him too harshly, almost anything might happen to her. The Sealy Posturepedic Suite, as the patients called the padded room, was occupied primarily by those who lashed out in some way against the authority of the staff.
'Look, um, Wes. I really appreciate your coming over to talk to me. But I just need to take things slowly… if you know what I mean.'
The man's face lit up.
'Oh. Oh, yeah. I know what you mean. You want anything right now? A cold drink? Something sweet? Maybe something white and powdery? You have no roommate and the room next to yours is empty.'
Sarah's nausea intensified. If this nightmare ever was over for her, she vowed to return to Underwood Six as a physician. And in the name of all those women who would ever be incarcerated there, she would hang this sleaze out to dry.
If…
She begged off any favors from him for the time being, told him it was fine for him to stop by later provided she was still awake, and continued staring intently across the campus. With each passing minute, she felt more and more determined, before the big blast, to find a way off Underwood Six and into the Chilton Building.
Now that idea, she acknowledged with a half smile, was crazy.
By three-thirty, she was beginning to lose her battle with exhaustion. She knew she was nodding off between stints with the binoculars. But she was totally unwilling to quit, and kept prodding herself awake. Rosa, Matt, and Eli had spent most of their day unraveling various threads of the CRV113 mystery. She had spent her day in group and her night fending off a mental health aide who was more disturbed than most of the patients. The impotence of her situation was intolerable. Somehow, she was going to make a contribution, she insisted to herself. Somehow, she was going to find a way to-
Sarah shook her head to clear it and wiped her face with the damp washcloth that had been her only ally through the long night's vigil. There was movement on the far side of the Chilton Building. She cut the overhead fluorescent lights, took up the binoculars, and braced her elbows firmly between the sill and the window. Lighting immediately around the Chilton Building was nonexistent. But the moon, though setting, was nearly full; and the campus walkway lights were numerous enough to further soften the gloom. Sarah waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but she felt certain already of what she was seeing.
The Huron truck was back.
• • •
Black Cat Daniels knew that he was going to die. And at times over the brutal hours he had spent as Eli Blankenship's captive, he had prayed that he would. Some time after being knocked unconscious, he had come to lying facedown in the back of what he assumed was the Huron Pharmaceuticals van. His hands were bound tightly behind him with thin wire, and his ankles were lashed to one wall. His head throbbed mercilessly, and his debilitating dizziness and nausea refused to ebb.
The van was parked inside a darkened structure of some sort, possibly a garage. There was some street noise-an occasional passing automobile-but no voices. The position Matt had been left in was horribly uncomfortable. But even his slightest movement sent pain screaming up his arms from where the wire cut into his wrists.
Blankenship made his first visit to the van long after Matt had regained consciousness. There was some surprise at seeing that it was he, but in truth, not all that much.
'I should have known,' Matt said.
'Yes. Yes, I suppose you should have.'
'You killed Colin Smith.'
'I had to.'
'And Pramod Singh.'
'Had to.'
'And you set up Ettinger to take the blame.'
'Now, that I wanted to do. So, then. I've answered your questions. Suppose you answer a few of mine. I need to know if there are any other, shall we say, loose ends I need to tie up. Is there anyone else I should be concerned about? Anyone else you've spoken with? Jeremy Mallon? Paris? What did they say to you?'
Matt did his best to turn away, but Blankenship merely shook his elbow. Matt screamed with the pain.
'I don't know anything,' he cried. 'I don't know anything else.'
Blankenship pulled his head up by the hair.
'I hope you're telling the truth,' he said. 'We'll see.'
He let go suddenly. Matt's face slammed onto the metal floor. The next time he came, he brought a drug- some sort of injection. Matt nearly passed out from the pain of merely having his arm moved about for the needle. Then, moments later, the pain vanished. For a stretch that might have been minutes-or days-he heard only isolated words and phrases, first in Blankenship's voice, then his own, floating through his mind like feathers. Finally darkness and silence swept down and enveloped him.
When he regained consciousness, he was sitting on the floor of a damp, totally darkened room, his legs extended, his ankles tied together. His hands were lashed behind him to a metal pipe. The air was dusty, and smelled of concrete and mold. His face felt battered and swollen. One tooth was broken off. The only positive thought he had was that he was still alive. But he knew that condition would not be lasting too much longer. Minutes later, now fully awake, he learned precisely how long.
The voice, a man's, came over loudspeakers that were mounted somewhere in the blackness.
'Attention, attention please,' it said. 'This building will be demolished by explosion in three hours. No one should be inside the structure, or within the blue protective barriers. Repeat. This building will be demolished…'
'Help!' Matt hollered. 'Please help!'
His voice echoed weakly about him. There was no chance anyone would hear him. No chance at all. Silently he cursed Eli Blankenship and his own carelessness. Then he lowered his chin to his chest and waited.
CHAPTER 42
At six-thirty, when a set of chimes announced wake-up, Sarah had showered and changed and was back in the patients' lounge, drinking coffee. If all went according to her still-evolving plan, she would be inside the Chilton Building within the hour. The clock was still ticking toward the 9 A.M. demolition, but the stakes had risen considerably. For hidden somewhere within the building, probably in the basement or subbasement, was a body.
The Huron Pharmaceuticals truck had remained by the building for half an hour. The driver, a large, strong man from what Sarah could make out, had pulled the body from the back of the van, swung it up over his shoulder, and hauled it down into the basement. Through the binoculars, Sarah had gotten a clear, unmistakable look at the arms of the victim, dangling down the driver's back. Thirty minutes later, the man returned to his van empty-handed and drove off.
A few minutes after that, Sarah approached Wes. Charming the aide was easy. Charming him without having him touch her was not. She flirted as she had not for many, many years and pandered to his ego in every way she could. She made thinly veiled promises that had the man's fantasies exploding like Independence Day fireworks. She ran her lips over the rim of her coffee cup as if it held vintage Dom Perignon. By dawn, she had learned how mealtimes were organized on Underwood Six. Group A-one of two classifications-were the least stable patients on the unit. They went down for meals in the cafeteria, but with no more than two patients per staff member. However, the evening shift staff had determined that Sarah was not predictable enough even for Group A. Her breakfast was to be sent up to the unit. The day shift could decide about lunch. Now, some flattery, some promises,
