He tapped softly at the window of Linda's room, then a little harder. From inside he heard a sound, then the curtains parted a fraction of an inch and Linda peered out, squinting into the darkness.
"It's me," Mark whispered. "Come out."
"Mark?" Linda asked. She opened the window. "What are you doing out there?''
"I have to talk to you," Mark whispered. "Please?"
Linda hesitated, but the urgency in his voice made up her mind. "Just a minute," she said. "I have to get dressed."
A couple of minutes later she slipped out the back door, holding a finger to her lips as she led him quickly back up the driveway to the street. "What's wrong?" she asked when they were safely away from the house.
Mark tried to tell her what had happened, his voice choking as he recounted how he'd strangledChivas.
She turned to stare at him. "You killedChivas?"
Mark nodded mutely, his eyes flooding with tears. "I didn't want to," he sobbed. "And I didn't want to hurt Mom, either. But I was going to! I know I was going to!"
At his words, an unbidden image of JeffLaConner flashed into Linda's mind, and she remembered the night he had put his hands on her arms, squeezing her so hard that it hurt. She'd slapped him, and then he looked surprised, almost as if he didn't realize what he'd done.
And she was almost certain he'd begun crying as he turned away from her and ran off into the night.
"Wh-What are you going to do?" Linda asked.
Mark shook his head helplessly.
Linda reached out to take his hand, but Mark pulled away from her. "D-Don't do that," he said, his voice shaking. "That's what my mom did. All she did was touch me, and I almost went crazy!"
Linda withdrew her hand, then met Mark's eyes. "It's like Jeff, isn't it?" she asked. "Like the night he beat you up. You didn't do anything to him, or say anything to him, or anything. He just came after you."
Mark stared at Linda in the darkness.
"M-Maybe it's Dr. Ames," Linda said finally. "Maybe he did something to Jeff, and now he's done something to you."
"But he's helping me," Mark protested. "Hell, I even made the football team this afternoon."
"You what?" Linda asked, staring at him blankly.
"I made the football team," Mark repeated. "I was going to tell my folks tonight, before…" His voice trailed off.
"But you don't even like football," Linda protested.
Mark shook his head. "I-I guess maybe I've changed."
A faint glow from a streetlamp down the block barely illuminated Mark's face, but even in the dim light, Linda could now see that Mark had, indeed, changed.
His face looked heavier, and his gentle features seemed to have become harder. His eyes, sunken deep in his sockets, had a wild look to them, and his mouth-the full lips that had always looked so soft-had a harshness about it now.
Once again the image of JeffLaConner came into her mind.
"I'm going to talk to my father," she said suddenly. "Tomorrow morning I'm going to tell him everything that happened, and he'll know what to do. Okay?"
Jeff looked at Linda uncertainly for a moment, then nodded. "Okay," he said.
They turned and began walking back toward theHarrises '. When they were in front of the house, Mark put his arms around Linda and held her close. "I don't want to hurt you," he murmured, burying his face in her hair. "I don't want to hurt anyone."
"And you won't," Linda told him. "You're not like Jeff, and you won't hurt anyone."
She stepped back then, and for a moment thought she felt Mark's grip on her tighten. But he abruptly released her and turned away. She almost called out to him, but changed her mind as she remembered JeffLaConner once more.
She waited until he'd turned the corner and disappeared, then hurried back into the house. Tomorrow, after she told her father what was happening to Mark, everything would be all right.
After all, her father ranTarrenTech, didn't he?
If anyone could help Mark, surely he could.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When she woke up the next morning, Sharon thought for a moment that it had all been a bad dream. She would reach out to Blake, as she did every morning, and slip her arms around him for a moment, snuggling close to him before slipping out of bed to begin the day. Mark would already be up, and she would hearChivas snuffling at his door as she passed it on her way down to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee.
But then she reached out to Blake, and he wasn't there, and she realized that it hadn't been a dream.
She was exhausted this morning, as if she hadn't slept a wink, but when she finally forced herself to peer groggily at the clock on her nightstand, she saw that she'd not only slept-she'd overslept. It was almost eight o'clock. She started to haul herself out of bed, then flopped back on the pillow, a wave of despair washing over her.
For a few moments last night, after Mark had left, she thought the rift between her and Blake might heal, and for a little while it had, as the two of them waited in the den for their son to come home. Her first instinct had been to call the police, but Blake convinced her to wait, at least for an hour.
"He's not going to get into trouble," he'd told her. "He's just upset. When he calms down, he'll come home."
Of course, Blake had been right-it was a little less than an hour later that they heard the back door open quietly, then close again. Mark had appeared in the hall, and started up the stairs. It wasn't until Blake spoke to him that he'd realized they were both there, sitting in the near darkness of the living room, waiting for him.
He hadn't come in, but had instead remained in the shadows of the hall. His voice strained, he'd apologized once more for what had happened earlier. When Blake asked him where he'd gone, he hesitated for a moment, then shrugged. "Nowhere," he said. "I just walked around for a while, then came home."
He'd gone upstairs, and for a moment neither Blake nor Sharon had spoken. Then Blake uttered the words that started the argument all over again: "You see? He's fine, honey. He just had to be by himself."
It had gone back and forth for almost another hour until Sharon had finally come upstairs again, leaving Blake to sleep in the den, and crawled into bed, her body exhausted but her mind still whirling with conflicting thoughts. At some point she'd drifted into a restless sleep.
Now she got up, slipped into a robe, and went downstairs. The house was quiet, and for a split-second she found herself wondering whereChivas was. She wandered into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot Blake had left for her, then glanced at the note he'd written. It was a strange note, sounding like nothing so much as a quick report from a husband who had simply decided to let his wife sleep late one morning. He'd fixed the kids breakfast, he had scrawled, and sent them off to schooclass="underline"
P.S. Mark seems fine this morning. He made the football team yesterday! Isn't that great?
Mark seems fine. That was it, after all that had happenedyesterday?Markseems fine! She crushed the note into a ball and hurled it across the kitchen. If Mark was so fine, how did Blake account for the condition of his room? She'd glanced into it on her way downstairs this morning, then quickly turned away from the mess, as if by ignoring it, she could pretend the episode had never happened.
She glanced at the clock, wondering if it was too early to call Dr.MacCallum at the hospital, and told herself that it was. If he had anything to report, he'd have called her.
She cleared the dishes off the table where her family had left them-atleastthat was normal-and began scraping the remains into the sink. Automatically, her eyes roamed out to the backyard, falling on the rabbit hutch.
The rabbits, too, looked perfectly normal, huddled together as always in the corner of the cage.
Then she saw a layer of frost still on the ground from last night-even the sky itself looked cold-and she frowned. What were the rabbits doing outside? For the last few days they'd come out only to eat, then scurried back into the warmth of their shelter.