She nodded. There were four occupied beds on her side. The first two were empty and cast in a thick, neglected shadow. There was a small fluorescent lamp above the third bed. Its light fell over the soft face of a little girl who looked to be ten or eleven years old. Teri stopped and held the girl's hand, amazed at how tiny and delicate her fingers were. How old was she really? And how long had she been here? And who were her parents? Had they searched for their daughter the way Teri had searched for Gabe? Of course, they had.

"Teri!" A sharp whisper of admonition from Walt.

"I'm sorry."

She went down the row, one bed at time. Gabe was not one of the occupants, thank God. This was where he had been, though. She had no doubt of that. He had slept here in this cold room, maybe in one of these darkened beds, a tube going into his arm to feed him, another coming out to drain him. No love. No mother. No father.

Oh, Gabe, I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry.

"He's not here," Walt said.

"What are we going to do?"

"Keep looking."

"No, I mean about these children. We can't just leave them here."

"Teri, we can't take them with us, either."

She knew that, of course. Though it was something she did not readily want to admit to herself. She had already let Gabe down, how could she do the same to all these other children?

"We'll make a report," Walt said. "Tonight. As soon as we get back, all right?"

Teri nodded.

"All right?"

"Yes," she said.

And then the door behind them opened.

[131].

Gabe sat up in bed, leaning on his cast. He thought he had heard something coming from the next room, something that had sounded like voices. Cody, who had been asleep for a good long while, stirred uneasily.

"Cody!"

"What?" he moaned, one eye opening reluctantly.

"Listen."

[132].

"Excuse me, you folks lost?"

Teri Knight looked as if she might clutch her heart and fall over dead right there. Her mouth opened, her eyes widened, her coloring went instantly white. Walter Travis, on the other hand, hardly seemed surprised. He pulled the woman to his side, and shined his flashlight in Mitch's face.

"Get rid of the light," D.C. said.

Obediently, the man turned it off and dropped it to his side.

"No, I think I better take that," Mitch said.

The man passed it handle-first, no resistance. Folks tended to be cooperative when they had guns pointed at them. D.C. had learned that years ago, and it was just as true today as it had been the very first time he had tried it. Mitch frisked both of them, finding a nice little Ruger P-85 strapped under Mr. Travis's left arm. He took possession of it, along with both of their backpacks, and stepped back again.

"So, now that we've checked your luggage, to what do we owe the pleasure of your company?" D.C. asked.

"Where's my son?"

"And you are?"

"You know who the hell I am."

"I'm sorry?"

"Teri Knight. My name is Teri Knight."

"Well, Teri Knight, if he's not here, then it's my guess you're probably looking in the wrong place. Maybe the mall would be a more likely place. Wouldn't you agree?"

"I want my son," she said firmly.

"We don't always get what we want, Mrs. Knight. Though, I suppose it never hurts to ask." This was as true for him as it was for her, of course. D.C. had not wanted to find himself in this position. It wasn't going to make Webster happy, him with his blunt warnings. Nor was it going to make walking away from the Institute any easier. "Why don't we take a little walk?"

He took them upstairs to a small office on the second floor, using the elevator this time. There was only one door. Plenty of windows. No way out unless they were tempted to try a swan dive into the rock walkway below. Not as secure an environment as D.C. would have liked, but secure enough to hold them until he could decide what to do next.

Things are getting exciting now!

[133].

"Did you hear it?" Gabe asked.

"Sounded like someone talking," Cody said, still wiping the sleep from his eyes. He sat up in bed, looking a little younger and a little more fragile than he had when he had first been wheeled in by Miss Tilley.

"Exactly."

"You think it's Tilley?"

"Did it sound like her?"

"I don't know."

"I think it was my Mom," Gabe said, hoping that just saying it out loud didn't jinx the possibility it might be true. "Mom and Mr. Travis."

"Who's Mr. Travis?"

"He's a friend of hers. A detective." Gabe threw off his covers and climbed down from the hospital bed, the tail of his gown hooking on the side railing until he pulled it free. The floor felt cold against the bottom of his feet. He went after his slippers. "My Mom said he used to work for the police."

"Really?"

"No lie."

"Maybe he came looking for us?"

"Bet he did," Gabe said. His slippers had somehow made their way underneath the bed, all the way to the other side. He found the right one first, underneath the box top to the Monopoly game Tilley had brought in when he had first arrived. He leaned against the edge of the bed, balancing on one foot, and managed to get the slipper over his toes and hooked across the back of his heel. Then he went about finding the other one.

"What are you going to do?"

"Maybe I can get their attention." The left slipper was stuffed into the corner between the bed frame and the wall. Gabe dug it out, got it onto his foot, and went to the door. He pressed his ear against it.

"Hear anything?"

"Uh-uh," he said, shaking his head. It was completely silent on the other side, not even the restless sound of the ocean, like you heard when you held a sea shell to your ear.

"Maybe they left already."

That's what he was afraid of... they had come downstairs to check on something and they hadn't seen the door, or if they had, they hadn't imagined anyone would be on the other side, and they had left without checking to make sure.

Gabe slammed the palm of his hand against the cool, smooth metal surface, and heard it echo on the other side. Someone had to have heard that. It sounded as if a cannon had gone off. Someone had to have heard it.

Another slam, harder this time.

"What are you doing?"

"Help!" The word resonated at the back of his throat. "Help! We're in here!"

[134].

"It seems like every time I turn around, I'm asking this question again," Teri said, sitting on the edge of a desk. The fear that had screamed its lungs out downstairs was quiet now, subdued by the knowledge that at least for the moment they were out of danger. It didn't prevent the queasiness from churning in her stomach, though. That fear might not settle for several more days, assuming the two of them were afforded several more days.

"But here it goes again," she finished. "What do we do now?"

"Try to find a way out," Walt said evenly. "Any suggestions?"

"Don't look at me. It was everything I could do just to get us in here."

He grinned, and Teri had to admit that she didn't know where the humor had come from. It was something she wouldn't have had two weeks ago, before Gabe had come back. She might have cried then, or she might have grown tired and lain down and fallen asleep. But she wouldn't have been able to laugh. Not in the best of circumstances.

"Can you pick the lock?"

"They took my backpack with my tools."

She hopped down from the desk and pulled out the middle drawer. A tray had been built into the front span. It was filled with pens and pencils, rubber bands and paper clips, old pennies and a couple of letter openers. She plucked out a paper clip.

"How about this?"

He looked up from the lock. "You've been watching too many movies."

"Okay." She dug around a moment longer and brought out one of the letter openers. It wasn't anything fancy. Not one of those engraved ivory-handled things or even an antique sterling pewter opener. Just an everyday straight-and-narrow stainless steel letter opener. That was all. "What about this?"

"No," he started to say. Then he caught himself. "Well, let me take a look at it."

Teri passed it to him.

He turned it over in his hands a couple of times, as if he were trying to get a feel for what it might actually be able to do. "Even with the tapered end, it's too big to pick the lock," he said thoughtfully. "But then, picking a lock isn't the only way through a door, is it?"

"It isn't?"

"You better hope not."

[135].

Jake put aside his checkbook. There was too much going on tonight, and D.C. had told him no more screwing around. He hated the idea of losing more than a hundred dollars to the bank, but he hated the idea of losing his job even more. He could always pull out his checkbook and have another go at it tomorrow.

The nearest monitor flickered from the room with the sleepers to the room with the two boys. One of the boys was sitting up in bed, his face pale, a pillow pulled into his lap. The other boy was barely visible out of the corner of the camera. Jake sat forward. It appeared the kid had gotten out of bed and moved to the door. He was pounding against it with his good arm, his hand coming down again and again and again.

Jake flipped an audio switch.

"Help! We're in here! Please! Help!"

He flipped it off again.

Christ, what next?

He sat back again, and moistened his lips, which had begun to chap a couple of days before. The question he had to wrestle with was this: would this be something D.C. would need to know? He didn't think so, though he had to be careful. He hadn't made a report when Amanda Tarkett had taken the kid out of the room for the first time, and everyone knew how that had turned out. Sometimes the little things you didn't think mattered much mattered more than you could ever imagine.

Still, Jake didn't think this was one of those. At the very worst, the kid might scream himself raw. He certainly wasn't a threat to break out. Not with that door. It was as solid as they came. Even screaming the way he was, it was debatable that anyone might actually hear him from the other side.

The monitor flickered and changed to a view of the lab, where Dr. Childs was hunched over the console of his electron microscope. Jake let the image change without trying to freeze it. He would keep an eye on the basement whenever it came around, but he wasn't going to bother anyone about some kid throwing a tantrum. It was hardly grounds for an emergency.

The monitor flickered again, from the lab to the conference room on the second floor this time. All was quiet.

[136].

The door opened on the other side of the room, and Childs looked up from his work, disappointed to find that he hadn't escaped D.C. after all. The man came through with Mitch at his side, where he seemed to have been permanently attached.

"Got a problem," D.C. said, pulling out a nearby chair and plopping down. "That Knight woman and her boyfriend showed up. We've got 'em downstairs, locked in an office."

"Oh, Christ."

D.C. glanced at Mitch and they were like two hungry vultures contemplating their next meal. Jesus, Childs thought. They want to kill them. He looked from D.C. to Mitch, trying to find something in there that might assure him he was wrong. But these eyes-they had lied before, many times before, and effortlessly. They had learned to keep their secrets.

"You aren't thinking about-"

"Lighten up, doc. We aren't going to hurt anyone."

"Not unless we have to," Mitch added.

Childs looked at him, then said, "Your fangs are showing, Mitch."