Ryan hesitated, and the man took a step toward him.
“Run,” he heard his mother’s voice say. “Run as fast as you can.”
Spinning away from the man, Ryan raced down the block.
“Hey!” the man called after him, but Ryan didn’t even look back until he came to the corner of Amsterdam, where the bright lights and stream of traffic made him feel safer. Pausing to catch his breath, he finally looked back.
The man had vanished.
When his breathing evened out, Ryan crossed Amsterdam and continued along 82nd, but now he kept glancing backward in case the man in the tee shirt — or anyone else — was following him. And then, half a block past Broadway, he found it. He almost missed it, because it looked more like a house than anything else, and all that was over the door was the address. But as he was about to go on, a glint of light caught his eye, and he saw the small brass plaque mounted next to the door: ‘The Biddle Institute.’
Now that he’d found it, though, how was he going to find his mother? Just looking at it, he was pretty sure it wasn’t like a hospital, where you could just walk in. But at least he had to try.
Glancing up and down the street — and seeing no one — he scurried up the steps and tried the door.
Locked.
Going back to the sidewalk, he crossed the street, an idea already formulating in his mind.
Maybe he could get into The Biddle Institute the same way he’d gotten out of The Rockwell.
Looking up, he saw that the roof of The Biddle Institute was exactly level with the roof of the building next door. And the building next door was an apartment building.
Apartment buildings were easy to get into — all you had to do was ring a bunch of bells, and wait for someone to buzz you in — he’d seen it on TV lots of times.
Except that when he tried it, only one person answered, and she wouldn’t let him in, even when he said he was there to see his grandmother.
Abandoning the bell panel, he started hunting for a service passage, and found it at the far end of the building. And on the back of the building, he found the same kind of fire escape he’d come down half an hour ago.
But the bottom of the ladder was way out of his reach. Then he saw a row of large, plastic garbage cans lined up along the back of the building. Recently emptied, their lids were lying next to them.
Dragging three of them over to the spot directly below the fire escape, he turned them upside down and lined them up next to each other, then stacked two more on the bottom three. The sixth one was harder, but he finally got it on top of the pyramid. Now, if he could just climb up, he was pretty sure he could reach the ladder.
The first step was easy, but he could feel the can teetering slightly under his feet. Steadying himself against the wall and trying to keep his weight balanced, he managed to climb up onto the second tier.
The ladder hung above him, and now he was sure that if he could just get onto the top garbage can, he could reach it. But if the whole pyramid collapsed under him—
Taking a deep breath, he pulled himself up so his belly was flat on the top can. Then he pulled his right knee up, tucking it under his body, following it with his left. Steadying himself as best he could against the wall, he straightened up so he was kneeling. Taking another deep breath, he lifted his right knee and put his foot on the can, then waited a moment while he gathered his strength. Finally he heaved himself upward and a moment later both his feet were flat on the bottom of the can, his hands on the wall. The makeshift pyramid wobbled, but didn’t collapse.
Reaching up, Ryan’s hands closed on the bottom rung of the fire escape’s ladder, and less than a minute later he was on the apartment building’s roof.
There was no gap at all between the roof he was on and the one next door — all he had to do was climb over the low ramparts of both buildings, and he was almost at his goal.
He found the roof door — an old-fashioned one, but with a lock that was different from the kind the doors The Rockwell had. He tried it, wasn’t surprised to find it locked, and began experimenting with the keys on the ring.
When none of them fit his heart sank, but then, as he was staring at the door — willing it to open, even though he knew it wouldn’t — he noticed a place where the paint on the wood frame was peeling away, and the wood beneath the paint was splitting. Pulling out the knife, he set to work. The wood, exposed to the weather for decades, was not only splitting, but decaying with dry rot as well. The deeper he dug the softer it became, and less than fifteen minutes later he was inside the building. But how was he going to find his mother?
The stairs from the roof led steeply down to a small landing, and below the landing there was a stairwell that went all the way down to the ground floor, with a landing at every floor.
He started down, and when he came to the next floor, found a door that opened onto a long hallway that was dimly lit by fixtures that hung on the wall every twenty feet or so. He stayed where he was, listening, but heard nothing. Finally he ventured out into the hall, moving quickly down its length, his feet making no sound at all on the carpeted floor.
A dozen doors opened off the hall, and each door bore the kind of little metal frame he’d seen on the drawers of the old-fashioned desks in the antique shop, that you could put a card into so you’d know what was in the drawer.
But none of the frames held any cards at all, and finally Ryan tried one of the doors. Finding it unlocked, he pushed the door open and peered inside. Enough light came in from the street outside that he could see a hospital bed, and a table, and a chest of drawers. But the bed was empty, and there was nothing on either the table or the chest.
He moved on, checking all the rooms.
All of them were empty.
Going back to the stairs, he went down to the next floor.
And halfway down the dimly lit hall found a door with a label in its metal frame.
Caroline Fleming.
His heart pounding, he tried the door.
Locked.
Pulling the key ring out of his pocket yet again, he set to work. This time he got lucky, and on the fourth try the lock clicked open and he pushed the door open.
Just enough light came in through the doorway so he could see his mother lying in bed, her eyes closed. After glancing up and down the hall, he slipped into the room, closed and relocked the door, and started toward the bed.
“Mom?” he whispered.
It’s a dream, Caroline thought. In spite of her determination to stay awake and find some way to escape whatever hospital to which Tony had committed her — and committed was the right word, for she was certain she wasn’t ill, either mentally or physically — she’d fallen asleep, and now she was dreaming.
Dreaming she heard Ryan calling her.
“Mom?”
She heard him again, a little louder this time, but when she opened her eyes she saw nothing more than the dim glow cast by the small night-light plugged into a socket near the floor. But then a shadow passed over the ceiling.
A shadow with a human form.
Someone was in the room! But she hadn’t heard the door open, hadn’t heard anything until Ryan’s voice had disturbed her sleep.
The shadow grew larger, and now she could feel the presence in the room hovering close to the bed. Then, as her heart began to pound, she heard Ryan yet a third time. This time the whisper was almost vocalized.