My God,itis a prison, she thought as one of the guards gagged her and both of them hustled her along the corridor. It was a prison, and now she was a prisoner.
She knew now that it had indeed been a mistake to come here.
But she also knew it was too late.
Blake Tanner sat staring at the computer terminal in front of him, but his mind refused to focus on the columns of figures that covered the screen. Finally he leaned back, stretched, stood up and walked to the window. He gazed out at the mountains rising to the north and east, their jagged, forbidding peaks covered with snow. In another couple of weeks the skiing season would begin. It had been years since he'd taken the time to go skiing in California, and he was looking forward to it now. In fact, on the coming weekend he might take Mark shopping and get him outfitted for the winter sports ahead.
Mark.
His son had been on his mind all morning. Indeed, he'd gotten little sleep the night before as he'd lain restlessly on the sofa in the den, his head propped up at an awkward angle by the hard pillow that had never been intended to serve as anything more than an armrest. But it was more than the discomfort of the sofa that kept him awake, for despite the stance he'd taken with Sharon, he was beginning to worry about his son, too.
That morning he'd once again gone over the material waiting for him the morning after Mark had been beaten up, when Jerry Harris had first suggested putting his son under Martin Ames's care. And this morning all the data he'd reviewed still looked totally innocuous.
There was a lot of theoretical work, speculating on the relationship between vitamins and hormone production within the human body, and even more data-not all of which Blake had understood-that purported to demonstrate the factual basis of the theorizing. All of it, this morning as well as when he'd first studied it, seemed totally harmless.
Too harmless?
He tried to reject the question but found he couldn't. For if the compounds being administered to Mark were truly as innocuous as the data made them out to be, how could the changes in Mark have taken place so quickly and been so radical?
Nor was it simply a matter of the physical changes- perhaps, if there'd been nothing more, Blake could have accepted them at face value. But the personality changes?
About those Blake wasn't nearly so comfortable, despite the assurances he'd made over and over to Sharon that their son was merely going through the normal vacillations and inconsistencies of adolescence. Indeed, as the night had worn on, he'd begun to wonder whom he'd truly been trying to convince: his wife or himself.
This morning, his eyes heavy with lack of sleep, he'd tried to study Mark as the boy gulped down his orange juice and gobbled a bowl of cold cereal before departing for school, but he still wasn't convinced he'd actually seen anything.
Perhaps, after the argument with Sharon, he'd only imagined that Mark's features looked coarser and his eyes sunken. For a moment he'd thought that Mark's fingers looked oddly oversized, too, but he decided that was ridiculous and dismissed it from his mind.
And yet…
The intercom buzzed, rousing him from his thoughts. He turned away from the window, returned to his desk and pressed a key beneath a flashing light. "Tanner."
"It's Jerry, Blake. Can you come over to my office?"
Though the words were innocent enough, there was something in Jerry Harris's voice that made Blake frown. "Problem?" he asked.
There was an empty silence for a moment, then the speaker in the intercom crackled to life again. "You might say that," Harris finally replied. "Just get over here, will you?"
Blake released the switch and saw the light go out. Leaving his computer screen still glowing with the report he'd been staring at all morning, he headed for the door to the corridor, then changed his mind and went toward his secretary's office instead. As he came out of the inner office, Meg Chandler glanced up at him. "Shall I hold your calls or forward them?"
"Hold them, I guess," he said. Then: "Anything going on this morning?"
The young woman shrugged. "Nothing that I know of. Why?"
Now it was Blake who shrugged. "Who knows? Harris just called me and he sounds sort of…" He hesitated, searching for the right word. "I don't know-sort of funny."
Meg shook her head. "Don't ask me. One thing that's not in my job description is to know what's going on in Jerry Harris's mind."
"Remind me to revise your job description, then," Blake observed darkly as he left the office to go to the suite next door.
Jerry Harris's secretary waved him directly into the inner office, and when he entered, Harris himself waved him to a chair. His voice dropped as he quickly finished the phone conversation he'd been involved in. When he finally turned to face Blake, his eyes were grave.
"I'm afraid we do have a problem," he said. His eyes met Blake's, and suddenly Blake was certain the problem concerned his son.
"It's Mark, isn't it?" he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
Harris nodded. "I'm afraid he got sick at school this morning," he said. "He's at the sports center right now, and Marty Ames is taking care of him."
"Sick?" Blake echoed. "But-But he was fine this morning." He glanced at his watch. It was barely ten-thirty. "Christ, I only saw him three hours ago! What's wrong?"
Harris took a deep breath, then stood up and came around his desk. He leaned against it, gazing down at Blake. "I'm afraid something's gone wrong with his treatment," he began.
Blake felt a sudden chill. "I-I'm not sure I understand," he replied.
Harris's hands spread in a gesture of helplessness. "I'm not sure I can explain it to you precisely," he said. "As I told you, Ames is doing experimental work and-"
But Blake didn't let him finish. He was on his feet now, his eyes sparkling angrily. "Now, just a minute, Jerry. You told me that what he was doing was perfectly harmless."
Harris shook his head doggedly. "No, I didn't. I said there was an element of risk to it. Slight, yes, but there."
Blake's jaw tightened. "All right," he said, regaining his composure. "Let's not argue about that right now. What's wrong with Mark, and why were you told even before I was?"
Harris's tongue ran nervously over his lower lip. "I guess Ames thought I should be the one to break it to you."
Blake sank back into his chair, his face ashen. His voice desolate, he whispered, "He-He's dead, isn't he?"
Harris took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "Not yet," he said, and saw the tension in Blake ease slightly. "But I'm not going to tell you it can't still happen. In fact," he went on, "you're going to have to prepare yourself for that possibility."
Blake stared up at Harris. "No…"he breathed. "You told me-"
Harris's voice turned cold. "I told you there was an element of risk involved," he said heavily. "And it was you who signed the releases allowing Ames to treat Mark. Nobody forced you."
The words struck Blake like a series of blows. So Sharon had been right all along that something was wrong with the sports center, that whatever they were doing out there wasn't nearly as harmless as Harris had claimed. "Sharon," he said out loud, "I've got to talk to her."
He started to get to his feet, but Harris stopped him with a gesture. "She's at the sports center now, Blake."
For a split-second Blake felt relieved. At least she was there, at least she already knew. Then he realized that Jerry Harris had spoken in the same icy tones he'd used only a moment ago. Before he could say anything else, Harris continued.
"She's out there trying to make trouble." His eyes fixed on Blake. "When we talked about this, you told me there'd be no trouble from Sharon. You assured me that she'd go along with what we're trying to do here!"
Blake's mind reeled. What the hell was Harris talking about? Was he only worried about the company's project? And then, with terrible clarity, he realized that that was exactly the case. He'd been used, manipulated into allowingTarrenTech to use his own son as a guinea pig. But it wasn't possible. The others-