by John Saul
But how could he find out? And if there was something under the house, some kind of hidden laboratory, how could he get into it?
His heart raced as he began to speculate on the possibilities.
And he felt a chill of fear as he thought about once more going down into the dark maze of rooms that lay beneath his feet.
A voice broke through his reverie. A voice that made Josh freeze.
Hildie Kramer’s voice.
Forcing himself to control the panic the mere sound of the housemother’s voice instilled in him, he turned around.
“Josh?” Hildie asked, her eyes seeming to pin him to the wall. “What’s wrong? Don’t you feel weif?”
Josh felt cornered. Had she been watching him staring at the basement door? Did she know what he was thinking?
“I—I was just thinking about Amy, that’s all. I always ate with her, and—” His voice broke with a sob that was only half forced. “I just miss her, that’s all,” he finished.
The penetrating look in Hildie’s eyes softened. “I know,” she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “We all miss her. But sometimes terrible things happen, and we have to learn to bear up under them. We have to go on living, no matter how hard it might seem.” She paused, and Josh had to steel himself not to duck away from the touch of her hand. “Would you like to talk about it?” Hildie asked. “We could go into my office.”
Josh shook his head. “I’ll be okay. And I’ve got a lot of homework to do.”
To his relief, Hildie’s hand dropped away from his shoulder. “Well, if you need me, you know where to find me,” she told him.
Josh slipped by her and hurried through the dining room and into the foyer. As he started up the stairs to the second floor, he paused, hearing the familiar rattle of the elevator as the machinery came to life.
He watched as the car rose slowly up its guides toward the floors above.
When it was gone, though, Josh’s eyes remained on the spot where it had been.
The floor of the shaft was solid, and the elevator could go no farther down.
Or at least, he realized as he stared at the solid mass of the floor, this elevator couldn’t go down any farther.
But what if there was another elevator?
As he mounted the stairs, he continued to think about that.
It was nearly midnight when Jeff Aldrich removed the three sheets of paper from under the mattress, crept out of his room, listened at his parents’ bedroom door until he was certain that they were both sound asleep, then moved silently down the stairs to the darkened lower floor of the house. Turning on the Macintosh in the den, he activated the modem, tapped in a telephone number followed by a security code, and a moment later was in contact with the Croyden computer in George Engersol’s laboratory.
Ill BE HEADY IN FIFTEEN MINUTES, ADAM.
The answer appeared instantly.
I’M HERE.
His bare feet moving soundlessly across the hardwood floor, Jeff went through the kitchen and into the garage, not turning on the lights until the kitchen door was closed behind him. He lifted the hood of his father’s car, studied the first of the drawings Adam had sent him that afternoon, and located the box that contained the automobile’s electronic components. Snapping the plastic latches loose, he studied the second drawing, then used a screwdriver to loosen one of the circuit cards that were arranged in a single tier inside the box, withdrew it from its slot, and reclosed the plastic box. Dropping the hood back down, he froze at the sound of its latch snapping shut, then relaxed when he heard no sound from within the house.
Taking the single circuit board with him, he went back into the den and studied the third drawing, a schematic drawing of the circuit board itself.
Reaching into the pocket of his bathrobe, Jeff pulled out the cable he’d purchased at Radio Shack that afternoon and plugged it into a port at the back of the computer.
He studied the drawing once more, then compared it to the circuit board now sitting on the desk next to the computer’s keyboard.
He carefully attached the leads on the end of the cable to connectors on the circuit board, then typed into the keyboard:
I’M HEADY FOR THE PROGRAM.
A moment later the screen cleared, and then a complex program appeared. Jeff studied it carefully, scrolling down until he found the section he was looking for.
He deleted two lines of instructions, replacing them with two new ones.
He pressed the Enter key, and a message popped up in a window:
REPROGRAM CHIP? (N) Y
Jeff pressed the Y key, then the Enter key. For a moment he wasn’t sure anything had happened, but then another message appeared in the window:
REPROGRAMMING VERIFIED.
Jeff detached the cable from both the circuit board and the computer, shoved it back in his pocket, then, without bothering to type a last message to Adam, turned off the computer.
Hurrying back to the garage, he reinstalled the circuit board in the electronics box under the hood, then closed the hood for the last time. The three sheets of paper joined the cable in the pocket of his bathrobe.
He switched the garage lights off, slipped back into the house, and was about to start back upstairs when he heard a movement overhead.
Footsteps.
He froze for a moment, then knew what to do. Turning on the kitchen lights, he opened the refrigerator and quickly pulled out a jar of mayonnaise, a block of cheese, and the mustard. By the time his father appeared in the kitchen doorway a few seconds later, he was already in the process of making himself a sandwich. Glancing over his shoulder, Jeff forced a guilty-looking grin.
“Caught me,” he said. “You gonna tell Mom I was sneaking a sandwich, or should I make you one, too?”
Chet hesitated, then returned his son’s grin. “Make me one, too. If we both get caught, well take our punishment like men.” He pulled a quart of milk out of the refrigerator, poured them each a glass, then sat down at the kitchen table. “Couldn’t sleep?”
Jeff shrugged. “Uh-uh.”
“Maybe you could if you just got all this off your chest and put it behind you. I’m not saying what you did wasn’t lousy, but it’s not the end of the world, either. All you have to do is own up and tell me who helped you, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“Yeah,” Jeff said, his voice edged with anger. “And I’ll still be grounded for the rest of my life, and won’t be able to go back to the Academy, right?”
“There’s no point in talking about that until you decide to confess to what you did.”
“What if I don’t?” Jeff challenged. “What if I won’t tell you?”
“Then I suppose you’ll sit in the house for a while,” Chet replied amiably, refusing to give in to the anger that was rising in him at his son’s insolence. “But I’m not backing down on this one, Jeff. You can tell me tonight, or tomorrow, or next week. But you’re going to tell me.”
Jeff picked up his sandwich. “And a minute ago I was thinking maybe you weren’t so pissed off at me anymore,” he said sourly. “Your sandwich is on the counter. I’m taking mine up to my room.”
Almost involuntarily, Chet rose half out of the chair. All he wanted to do was grab Jeff by the back of the neck and shake him: Shake him until he apologized for what he’d done to his mother, apologized for the way he’d been talking to him, apologized for the whole attitude he’d been displaying lately.
But he didn’t. Instead he thought of Jeanette. Tonight, for the first time since Adam had died, she was sleeping peacefully. If he confronted Jeff now, it would only wake her up and deprive her of what little rest she was getting.
He held his peace, took a bite of his sandwich, tried to chew it, then spit it out into the garbage disposal and tossed the rest of it in, too.
Sometimes, being a father was the most difficult thing in the world, he decided as he turned the kitchen lights off and started back upstairs. Yet despite the way Jeff had been acting since Adam died,
he still loved the boy. They would get through this. Things would get better again.
In the end, they would wind up being as close as a father and son should be.
In his room, Josh stared at the file on the screen of his computer. He didn’t know exactly what it meant or what it was for.
-&it he knew where it had come from.
All evening he’d peen accessing computers, searching for some trace of Adam Aldrich or Any Carlson.
Until a few minutes ago he had had no success whatsoever.
And then, on a whim, he’d decided to try to hack into the computer at the Aldriches’ house.
He’d found the number in Jeff’s desk in the room next door. When he’d tried to call it, the line was busy.
Which meant someone in the house was already using the modem.
Jeff?
His heart suddenly racing, Josh had gone to work, hacking directly into the computer at the telephone switching station. A minute after that he’d succeeded in tapping into the Aldriches’ modem line.
And recorded the file that was now on his computer screen.
Just a few lines, which looked like Adam and Jeff were talking to each other, doing something with some kind of program.
Then there was a mass of what looked to Josh like nothing more than gibberish.
Then one more line:
REPROGRAMMING VERIFIED.
Reprogramming of what? What did it mean?
He shut off his computer, the words still etched in his mind.
Reprogramming verified.
The words, in the darkness of the night, seemed somehow ominous.
Ominous—and dangerous.
26
“It’s almost five-thirty,” Chet said, draining the last of A his coffee and putting the cup in the sink. “If we’re going to be at the Brodys’ by six, we’ve got to get going.”
“Maybe I ought to call Frieda and cancel,” Jeanette suggested. “I’m not sure I want to leave Jeff by himself. When he wakes up—”
“We’ll be leaving him by himself all day,” Chet reminded her. “And if we don’t go, it’s just letting him manipulate us one more time. Besides, Curt and Frieda are leaving for London this afternoon. That was the whole point of the game this morning, remember? It’s been planned for a month—a bon voyage match, which I intend for us to win.”
“I know,” Jeanette sighed. “It’s just—”
“We’re going,” Chet declared, his tone leaving no more room for argument.
Jeanette knew he was right—she’d been looking forward to the game this morning as much as Chet had. The whole idea of getting up at dawn, driving up to Stratford and playing a set of tennis before work had seemed like a lark when they’d set it up last month. Indeed, they’d even talked about making it a regular thing after Curt and Frieda Brody got back from their trip. “Great way to fight off middle age,” Curt had said, to which Chet had darkly replied that it was an equally great way to drop dead of a heart attack before breakfast. “Well, at least let me go wake him up and say good-bye,” she said.
Chet hesitated, then decided to tell her what had happened the previous night As she listened to his retelling of the conversation he’d had with their son, her face paled and she bit her lip. “If you want to let him ruin your morning with his attitude, I suppose I can’t stop you,” he finished. “But right now, I’d just let him sleep. By the time we get back, he’ll be up, and I might have had enough exercise that I can control my temper if he gets snotty again.”
This is a mistake, Jeanette suddenly thought, the idea coming unbidden into her head. We shouldn’t be going up to Stratford at all. We should be staying here and dealing with Jeff, no matter how painful it is. But the look on Chet’s face told her very clearly that if she insisted on canceling the tennis game, whatever confrontation developed with Jeff would be even worse than it had to be. She made up her mind. “Then let’s go,” she agreed, forcing a bright smile even though she had the distinct feeling the morning was already ruined for her.
Picking up their rackets and a can of balls, they went into the garage, tossed their things into the backseat of the car, and a few seconds later were gone.
Neither of them saw Jeff peering out the window of his room on the second floor, a tiny smile playing around the corners of his mouth.
Five minutes later Chet and Jeanette left Barrington behind. Chet pressed down on the accelerator as they started up the coast highway. The sun was just rising over the hills to the east, and the morning fog had already retreated from the coastline, the billowing clouds glowing a golden orange in the dawn light. As she watched the panorama of the sea, Jeanette began to feel a little better. “Maybe you were right, after all,” she said, sighing, relaxing into the seat. “Maybe this is just what we both needed.”
Chet reached out and squeezed her hand reassuringly, pressing his foot a little harder on the accelerator and inclining his head toward the view of the Pacific. “On a morning like this, there’s nothing like it in the whole world, is there?” The needle on the speedometer crept up slowly, edging past fifty, and Chet eased his foot back on the accelerator, knowing that in another mile or so he’d have to begin slowing down again for the series of hairpin turns that curled along the convoluted coastline between Barrington and Stratford.
Instead of slowing down, the car continued to accelerate.
Chet felt a rush of adrenaline flow through him at the car’s strange behavior, but then figured out what must have happened.
The cruise control. He must have left it on and accidentally touched the Resume button.
But even as he pressed the brake to cut the speed controller out automatically and begin slowing the car, he realized that the cruise system didn’t work that way.
Whenever you came to a complete stop, the speed preset was automatically canceled. And if the engine was shut off, surely that would do it, too.
His right foot pressed down on the brake pedal, but instead of feeling the minute jerk as the cruise control disengaged and the engine, as well as the brakes, began to slow the car, he felt the engine fighting the brakes.
Jeanette glanced over at him worriedly. “Aren’t we going a little fast?”
Chet said nothing, pressing harder on the brakes. The car began slowing down, and the tension that had built up inside him began to ease. “Accelerator’s stuck, I think,” he muttered. “Probably something loose in the linkage. It won’t take more than a minute to fix if I’ve got a pair of pliers or a crescent wrench in the trunk.”
“Oh, Lord,” Jeanette groaned. “All we need right now is a big car repair bill.”
“There won’t be a bill,” Chet replied, his foot pressing yet harder as the engine continued to battle against the brakes. “If it’s the linkage, it’s hardly a problem at all.”
Suddenly he realized that the problem was more serious than he’d thought, for as the brakes heated up, they began to slip, and now the car was accelerating again.
Half a mile ahead of them was the first of the curves, as the road began snaking along a narrow cut carved out of the rock cliff that rose out of the sea.
“Honey, slow down!” Jeanette demanded. “You can’t—”
“I’m trying to!” Chet snapped. “But the brakes are heating, and I’ve got to let up on them for a second.” He eased off on the brakes, and the car surged ahead, the engine roaring as it was freed of the drag provided by the brakes.
As Chet stared at it in sudden fear, the speedometer rose past sixty, then seventy.
“Chet, slow down!” Jeanette cried, sitting up straight in the seat and staring out the windshield at the sharp curve to the left that was only a few hundred yards ahead now.
Chet slammed his foot on the brake pedal, and the car once more began slowing, but within a few seconds the brakes had overheated once more, and he felt them starting to fade away.
The speedometer needle dipped below seventy for a second, then once more began creeping upward.
Frantical
ly, Chet jerked on the transmission lever, and when it failed to respond, tried to switch off the ignition.
The key refused to turn. The car seemed to be operating under its own volition.
They hit the first curve at seventy-five, Chet’s knuckles white as he clutched the steering wheel. The tires screamed in protest as they went into the turn, but the road was banked here, and the wheels held. Fifty yards farther on, the road twisted back to the right, and then, if Chet remembered right, went into the first of the hairpins, turning a full 180 degrees to head out on the northern wall of a deep cleft in the coastline.
The car survived the second curve, too, but both the Aldriches heard a violent grinding sound as they slued to the left, the rear fenders scraping against the low rock guard wall, the only thing protecting them from shooting off into the sea.
“Stop!” Jeanette screamed. “For God’s sake, do something!”
Chet got the car back into the right lane, but it was fully out of control now, still accelerating as it shot down a grade toward the hairpin turn and the narrow bridge that spanned the gap of the cleft at its tightest point.
“We’re not going to make it!” he shouted. “Get your head down!”
The car was doing nearly ninety when they hit the turn. Though Chet turned the wheel all the way to the lock, it wasn’t enough.
The front of the car nosed onto the bridge, but at almost the same instant, the rear wheels lost their traction and the big sedan spun out of control.
Jeanette’s side of the car slammed into the end of the concrete railing on the right side of the bridge, the door buckling in, the seat belt mounted in the doorpost giving way instantly.
Jeanette was hurled across the front seat almost into Chet’s lap as the car continued to spin, the rear end whipping off the road while the sedan pivoted on the edge of the bridge. A second later it tumbled over the edge, flipping in midair before slamming into the rock face of the cliff.
By the time it came to rest on the floor of the gorge and burst into flames, Chet and Jeanette Aldrich, mercifully, were already dead.
As the sun rose higher and the autumn morning brightened, a billow of smoke rose from the burning wreckage lying a hundred feet below the bridge.
