Creature

Blake hesitated, then nodded. "I know," he said. "Tell you what. You stay here, and I'll go on over to theHarrises and pick up Kelly." He was silent for a moment, then added: "Walk me to the door?"

For a moment he thought Sharon was going to refuse, but then she stood up, reached down and touched Mark's cheek gently, and nodded. Neither of them spoke again until they had reached the nurses' station. The waiting room beyond was now deserted.

"How's he doing?" Karen Akers asked, looking up from the computer terminal mat glowed on the desk in front of her.

Sharon managed a wan smile. "Still asleep."

"You really should go home, Mrs. Ta

Sharon and Blake stood in silence at the door, then Blake drew her close, kissing her softly. "It's going to be all right," he assured her. "In a few days you'll hardly know anything happened to him."

Sharon nodded automatically, though she didn't agree. She knew that the sight of Mark lying on the stretcher, his face bruised and bloodied, would never leave her. As Blake was about to leave, a thought that had been lurking in the back of her mind almost since the moment she'd left the waiting room to take up her vigil at Mark's bedside suddenly emerged.

"Blake…" she said. "Do… do you know exactly what happened to the Ramirez boy?"

Blake hesitated, then nodded. "I saw the tape," he said, and braced himself for the question he knew was coming next, the question he'd been trying to answer for himself since he had first heard of the fight between Jeff and Mark.

"Well?" Sharon asked. "Wasitan accident? Or did Jeff deliberately hurt the Ramirez boy?"

Blake didn't answer for a moment, letting his mind rerun the cassette Jerry Harris had played for him the day after he'd begun working on the Ramirez case. "I don't know," he said at last. "It could have been. But there's the possibility it wasn't."

Sharon said nothing, but even before she kissed him once again and sent him on his way, Blake could see the shadow come into her eyes. Invariably that look meant that she had zeroed in on something and would now begin to examine it, worrying at it until she'd solved whatever her problem might be to her own particular satisfaction.

When he was gone, Sharon leaned against the heavy glass of the front door for a while. Then, her mind made up, she started back down the hall. But instead of returning to Mark's room, she let herself into the room across the way.

The room where Ricardo Ramirez lay, his body still held rigid in the grotesque mechanism of the Stryker frame, was nearly identical to her son's, and the similarities sent a chill through Sharon's body.

That's what could have happened to Mark tonight, she thought. She sca

What was happening inside the boy's mind? she wondered. Was he aware of anything? Was he dreaming, suffering from nightmares from which he could never escape? Or was he simply lost somewhere in a gray void, suspended from all reality, unaware of anything? She didn't know- couldn't know.

Perhaps no one could ever know.

"Mrs. Ta

Sharon nodded. Turning away from Ricardo Ramirez, she stepped into the corridor, blinking against its brightness. "I-I just wanted to see him," she said, her voice quavering. "It's so horrible."

"And it could have been your son," Karen said, voicing the thought that had been so powerful in Sharon's mind a few moments before. "But Rick's not your son, Mrs. Ta

Sharon nodded, then forced a tiny smile as she gratefully took the mug of steaming coffee from the nurse's hands. "Of course he is," she said. She went back to Mark's room and once more took up her vigil next to his bed. But as the minutes slowly crept by, she found herself still thinking about Ricardo Ramirez.

She knew whatTarrenTech was doing for the boy, and until tonight had never thought to question the company's generosity and sincerity. Now she found herself wondering.

Her mind went back over the football games she'd watched over the past weekends, and she had an image of the Silverdale team trotting out onto the field like a troop of gladiators.

They were big boys-all of them-and now she recalled noticing, as each game began, how unevenly matched the opposing sides appeared to be. The Silverdale boys, towering over their opponents, easily overwhelmed them by the sheer force of their size alone.

And they played rough, too. No matter how far ahead the Wolverines might be on the Scoreboard, they never eased up, never stopped pressing their opposition, never waited out the clock at the end of the game.

She shivered in the darkness of the hospital room as she thought about it.

Big, strong, healthy boys.

And, apparently, dangerous boys as well.

For ifTarrenTech truly believed mat what had happened to Ricardo Ramirez was an accident, why were they so willing to pay any price in order to avoid a lawsuit against the school, or possibly even against theLaCo

Was it because a lawsuit, in the end, would turn onTarrenTech itself?

Suddenly Sharon Ta

ChuckLaCo

"What is it?" she demanded. "That was about Jeff, wasn't it? Is he in jail?"

At Ames's suggestion, Chuck had been careful not to reveal to whom he was speaking, and now he shook his head, at the same time rising to his feet. "He's not in jail," he told her. "He's had some kind of breakdown. Apparently he lost his temper completely this time, and they've taken him to the doctor." He moved out to the hall closet, with Charlotte following right behind.

"I'm going with you," she said. But to her unbelieving dismay, Chuck shook his head.

"Not now," he said. "They specifically asked me to come out alone. I guess-" he began, then stopped, unwilling to repeat to Charlotte what Ames had told him. "I guess it's pretty bad," he said at last. "They… well, they said Jeff might have to be in the hospital for a while."

Charlotte sagged against the wall. "And I can't even see him?" she whispered hoarsely. "But he's my son!"

"It's just for tonight," Chuck promised her. "They just want to get him calmed down a little, that's all." He reached out and touched Charlotte's chin, notungently, tipping her head up so she couldn't avoid looking into his face.

"It's going to be all right, sweetheart," he promised her. "We're going to get this thing straightened out. But you've just got to trust me. Okay?"

Her mind too numb to think clearly, Charlotte automatically nodded. It wasn't until she heard Chuck's car starting up a minute later that she slowly began to come back to life.

She and Chuck had been sitting by the fireplace for hours, ever since DickKe