Her head jerked up, and she met his eyes at last. 'Oh, no,' she said, frowning. She did not speak with anger or impatience but with a warmth, eager to correct what she saw as his misapprehension of the dead man's character. 'Oh, no. Not Willy. There was no one like Willy. He was wonderful. There wasn't anything I wouldn't have done for Willy. Not anything. He was so special. You didn't know him, or you wouldn't say a word against him. Not against Willy. You couldn't. Not if you'd known him.'

'There are those who did know him who don't speak so highly of him. I'm sure you're aware of that.'

She lowered her gaze to her hands again. 'They're all just envious, jealous, lying bastards,' she said, but in the same soft, sweet, breathlessly feminine manner, as if she had been forbidden to mar her perfect femininity with a shrill tone of voice or any other display of anger.

'He was thrown out of UCLA.'

She said nothing.

'Because of what he did to you.'

Regine still said nothing, continued to avert her eyes, but she shifted uneasily again. Her robe fell open to reveal one perfectly formed calf. A bruise the size of a half dollar marred the creamy flesh. Two smaller bruises were visible at the ankle.

'I want you to talk about Willy.'

'I won't.

'I'm afraid you must.'

She shook her head.

'What was he doing with Dylan McCaffrey in Studio City?'

'I'll never say a word against Willy. I don't care what you do to me. Throw me in jail if you want. I don't care. I don't care.' This was said quietly but with fierce emotion. 'Too many hard things have been said about poor Willy by people not good enough to lick his shoes.'

Dan said, 'Regine, look at me.'

She raised one hand to her mouth, put a knuckle to her teeth, and gently chewed on it.

'Regine? Look at me, Regine.'

Nervously sucking-chewing at that knuckle, she raised her head, but she didn't meet his eyes. She stared over his shoulder, past him.

'Regine, he beat you up.'

She said nothing.

'He put you in hospital.'

'I loved him,' she said, speaking around the knuckle upon which her attention was becoming increasingly fixated.

'He used sophisticated brainwashing techniques on you, Regine. He somehow got in your mind, and he changed you, twisted you, and that is not the work of a sweet and wonderful man.'

Tears sprang from her and streamed down her cheeks, and her face contorted in grief. 'I loved him so much.'

The sleeve of Regine's robe slid up her arm when she brought her hand to her mouth. Dan saw a small bruise on the meaty part of her forearm—and what appeared to be rope abrasions on her wrist.

She had told him that she hadn't seen Willy Hoffritz for a year, but someone had been playing bondage games with her, and recently.

Dan studied the ornately framed photographs on the coffee table, the thin smile on the dead psychologist's face. The air suddenly seemed thick, oily, unclean. A desire for fresh air almost propelled him from the chair, almost sent him stumbling toward the door.

He stayed where he was. 'But how could you love a man who hurt you so?'

'He freed me.'

'No, he enslaved you.'

'He freed me to be ...'

'To be what?'

'What I was meant to be.'

'And what were you meant to be?'

'What I am.'

And what is that?'

'Whatever is wanted of me.'

Her tears had stopped.

A smile flickered at the corners of her mouth as she considered what she had said. 'Whatever is wanted of me.' And she shivered, as though the very thought of slavery and degradation sent a current of physical pleasure through her.

With growing frustration and anger, he said, 'Are you telling me that you were born to be only what Willy Hoffritz wanted you to be, born to do anything he wanted you to do?'

'Whatever is wanted,' Regine repeated, looking directly into his eyes now.

He wished that she had continued staring into space beyond him, for he saw—or imagined that he saw—grave torment, self-loathing, and desperation of an intensity that made his heart clutch up. He glimpsed a soul in rags: a tattered, wrinkled, frayed, and soiled spirit. Within this woman's ripe, full, exquisitely sensuous body, and within the outwardly visible persona of the submissive child-woman, there was another Regine, a better Regine, trapped, buried alive, existing beyond whatever psychological blocks Hoffritz had implanted but unable to escape or even to imagine any hope of escape. In that brief moment of contact between them, Dan saw that the real woman, the woman who had existed before Hoffritz had come along, was like a withered straw doll, dried out by all these years of ceaseless abuse, now a juiceless, miserable creature who'd been transformed into kindling by a nightmare of humiliation and torture; she longed for the match that would ignite and, mercifully, extinguish her.

Horrified, he could not look away.

She lowered her eyes first.

He was relieved. And sick.

His lips were dry. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. 'Do you know what research Willy was doing after he was booted out of UCLA?'

'No.'

'What project were he and Dylan McCaffrey working on?'

'I don't know.'

'Did you ever see the gray room in Studio City?'

'No.'

'Do you know a man named Ernest Andrew Cooper?'

'No.'

'Joseph Scaldone?'

'I wish you would go away.'

'Ned Rink?'

'No. None of them.'

'What did those men do to Melanie McCaffrey? What did they want from her?'

'I don't know.'

'Who was funding their project?'

'I don't know.'

Dan was sure she was lying. Along with her self-assurance and self-respect and independence, she had also lost the ability to prevaricate with confidence or conviction.

Now that he'd seen Regine and knew the amazing, monstrous thing that had been done to her, Dan had no respect for Hoffritz as a man, but more than ever he feared Hoffritz's manipulative abilities, his vicious cruelty, and his dark genius, and more than ever he realized the need to arrive at a timely solution in this case. If Hoffritz had transformed Regine this completely, what might he have achieved in his research with Dylan McCaffrey, for which he'd had more time and resources? Dan had a new sense that time was swiftly running out, a growing urgency. Hoffritz had set some terrible engine in motion, and it would crush many more people, soon, unless it was understood, located, and stopped. Regine was lying to him, and he couldn't allow that. He had to find some answers quickly, before he was too late to help Melanie.

24

They retreated from the flower- and dirt-strewn kitchen, but Laura felt no safer. One weirdness had followed another since they had come home that afternoon. First, Melanie had awakened from her nap, screaming in terror, clawing and punching herself as if she were a penitent religious fanatic scourging the devil from her flesh. Then the radio had come to life, followed by the whirlwind that had burst through the back door. If someone had told her that the house was haunted, she would not have scoffed.

Apparently, the move from kitchen to living room didn't make Earl feel any safer. He shushed Laura when she tried to talk. He led her and Melanie into the study, found a pad of paper and a pen in the desk drawer, and quickly scribbled a message.

Baffled by his mysterious behaviour, Laura stood beside him and read what he wrote: We're leaving the house.

Laura wasn't reluctant to comply. She vividly remembered the warning that had been delivered to them through the radio: It was coming. The flower-filled whirlwind had seemed to be another warning with the same message. It was coming. It wanted Melanie. And it knew where they were.

Earl wrote more: Pack a suitcase for yourself and one for Melanie.

Evidently, he was prepared to believe that someone had planted listening devices in the house.

Apparently, he also believed he might not be able to spirit Laura and Melanie away if the listeners knew that they planned to leave. That made sense. Whoever had financed Dylan and Hoffritz would want to know where Melanie was at all times, so they would eventually have a chance to either kill her or snatch her away. And the FBI would want to know where she was at all times, so they would be able to nab the people who tried to nab Melanie. Unless it was the FBI that wanted her in the first place.

Laura had that trapped-in-a-nightmare feeling again.

Maybe everyone in the world wasn't out to get them, but it sure seemed that way. Worse, it wasn't only someone out to get them—it was something.

Hide. That was all they could do right now. They had to go where no one could follow or find them.

Laura grabbed the pencil and wrote: Where will we go?

'Later,' he said softly. 'Now, we've got to hurry.'

It was coming.

In the bedroom, he helped Laura pack two suitcases, one for Melanie and one for herself.

It was coming. And the fact that she didn't know what It was—that she even felt slightly foolish for believing It existed in the first place—did nothing whatsoever to alleviate her fear of It.

When the bags were packed, when they had their coats on, Laura repeatedly called Pepper. The cat wouldn't respond to her, and a quick tour of the house didn't turn it up anywhere. Pepper was hiding, being difficult, as any self-respecting cat would have been in those circumstances.

'Leave it,' Earl whispered. 'Someone can stop by to feed it tomorrow.'

They went through the laundry room into the garage. They didn't switch off any lights behind them, because that might have signaled their intentions. Earl put the suitcases in the trunk of Laura's blue Honda.

She didn't need to ask why they were taking her car instead of his. His was parked outside, at the curb, and if those FBI agents across the street saw Laura and Melanie heading for it, they'd want to know where they were going and why; they might even prevent them from leaving.

Of course, their hurried flight might be a mistake because the FBI might want nothing more than to help. Or it might not. In either case, their best hope was to trust only in Earl Benton.

He put Melanie in the backseat and fastened the belt across her lap.

From the front seat, Laura glanced back and was startled by her daughter's appearance. In the closed garage, illuminated only by the car's ceiling light, the girl's gaunt face was fleshed out by shadows; the harsh lines and sharp bones were softened by the moon-pale glow. For the first time, Laura realized how very pretty her little girl would be when she had gained some weight. She would be utterly and miraculously transformed by a few pounds and by peace of mind, both of which would come with time. Abruptly, Laura was able to see the potential within the battered clay, the familiar within the alien, the beauty within the grayness. Time, like a painter's brush, would layer other experiences and emotions over Melanie's now-bright agony, and when the paint of days and weeks and years had become sufficiently thick to all but conceal the horror of her ordeal with her father, she would no longer be a skeletal, angular, strange creature with death-pale skin and wounded eyes; she would, in fact, be quite lovely. That realization made Laura's breath catch, and it renewed her hope.

More important, the kind light and caressing shadows allowed her to perceive much of herself in her daughter, and that perception had an even more profound effect on her. Intellectually, she had known that Melanie resembled her—evidence of her genes was clear in the child's haunted face, in spite of the abuse that had pulled it into a tortured mask—but until now she had not quite related to that likeness on a deep emotional level. Seeing herself in her daughter, she had a more intense awareness that her child's suffering was her own suffering, that her child's future was her own future, and that she could have no happiness until Melanie was happy too. Whereas the realization of the girl's underlying beauty had renewed Laura's hope, this second insight renewed her determination to find the truth and to beat their enemies even if the whole damned world was aligned against them.

Earl got behind the wheel. He looked over at Laura and said, 'It's going to get a little wild for the next few minutes.'

'It's already gotten wild,' she said, buckling her seat belt.

'I've had a driving course that teaches avoidance of terrorists and kidnappers, so I'm not being as reckless as it's going to seem.'

'Recklessness won't bother me in the least,' she said. 'Not after seeing that wind-thing smash its way into my kitchen. Besides, I've always thought it would be a lot of fun to drive like James Bond.'

He smiled at her. 'You've got grit.'

As he started the engine, she picked up the automatic garage-door opener that lay on the console tray between the seats.

He said, 'Now.'

Laura pressed the button on the remote-control device, and the garage door started to swing up. Before the door had lifted all the way, Earl threw the car into reverse and backed under it with only an inch to spare, moving fast.

Laura expected to crash through the rising door, but they slipped out of the garage and reversed away from the house at high speed. They slowed where the driveway met the street, but not much, and Earl pulled the steering wheel hard right, so they were facing down the long hill.

The FBI, in its fake telephone-company van, had not yet reacted. Earl hit the brakes, shifted the Honda out of reverse into drive, jammed his foot down on the accelerator. Tires squealed, and the car seemed to stick to the pavement, but then they rocketed forward, down the dark and sloping street.

Two blocks downhill, Earl glanced at the rearview mirror and said, 'They're coming.'

Laura looked through the rear window, and saw the van just pulling away from the curb.

Earl tapped the brakes and swung the steering wheel hard to the right, and the Honda half turned, half slid around the corner, into the cross street. At the next intersection, he turned left, then right again at the end of that block, speeding and weaving through the quiet residential neighborhood, finally out of Sherman Oaks altogether, to the top of the valley wall, over the ridge line, into Benedict Canyon, and down the forested slopes, through the darkness, toward the distant lights of Beverly Hills and Los Angeles beyond.

'We've lost them,' he said happily.

Laura was not completely relieved. She wasn't convinced that they could lose their inhuman enemy—the unseen It—as easily as they had shaken the FBI van.

25

Dan watched Regine closely, trying to figure how he could force her to tell him what she knew. She was so pliable that he could surely bend her to his purposes if he could only determine how and where to apply pressure.