Under the house?
Could that be where Adam was, and Amy, too?
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.