"You came all the way out here to tell me that?" he asked. "That Charlotte's had a breakdown? Honey, we both saw that coming a couple of days ago."

"It's not that," Sharon said nervously. "At least not quite. It's whatshesaid. That 'they' had done something to Jeff. I think she must have been referring to the sports center."

"Or the great communist conspiracy," Blake observed archly. At the hurt he saw in Sharon's eyes, he tried to soften his words. "I didn't mean that," he said apologetically. "But we know Charlotte was getting paranoid, and with paranoia-"

"Was she?" Sharon interrupted. "I don't think we know that at all. We know she was upset, and she had every right to be. After what happened with Jeff, why wouldn't she be?"

Blake took a deep breath, then lowered himself into the chair behind his desk. "All right," he said. "What's on your mind? It's not just Charlotte, is it?"

Sharon hesitated, then shook her head. "I guess not," she said. "It's all kinds of things-things that wouldn't have bothered me at all if it were only one or two of them. But I keep getting the feeling that something's wrong out here, Blake." She made an expansive gesture, her trembling hands betraying her worry. "It's the whole thing-the town, the school, even the kids. Everything is too perfect."

Blake smiled wryly. "Apparently JeffLaConner isn't perfect," he interjected. Then his expression turned serious. "The Ramirez boy died this morning," he went on. "I understand his mother is still trying to blame Jeff."

Sharon's eyes clouded with tears as she remembered the sad form of Rick Ramirez, but then her thoughts shifted back to JeffLaConner. "But Jeff's gone, isn't he?" she asked. "And Charlotte started making a fuss about Jeff, and now she's gone, too."

"Now wait a minute," Blake began. "It's starting to sound like you're buying into-"

Sharon didn't let him finish. "I'm saying I'm not sure we did the right thing in coming here," she said. "At first, everything was fine. But now even Mark is starting to change. And it's happened since he started going to Dr. Ames."

"He's doing some exercises, and building himself up."

But again Sharon cut him off. "Yesterday he got into a fight with Robb Harris. That's not like Mark-he's never fought with anyone in his life."

Blake's jaw tightened and his arms folded over his chest. "What is it you want?" he asked. "You want me to pull Mark out of the sports center? Maybe we shouldn't stop there. Maybe I should quitTarrenTech and we should move back to California."

"Maybe we should," Sharon heard herself blurt out. Was that what she'd really been thinking all along? She wasn't sure.

Suddenly she thought she saw Blake's eyes flick nervously around the room, almost as if he were afraid that even in the privacy of his own office they were being observed. He fumbled in his pocket a moment and tossed her his key ring. "Look," he said. "I know you're upset right now, and maybe you even have a right to be. But this is something we can discuss later, when we're at home. Okay? Take the car-I'll either walk or hitch a ride with Jerry this evening."

It was a dismissal. For a moment Sharon was tempted to argue with him, to demand that they talk it out right now. But the expression on his face-and the strange flicker of nervousness in his eyes-made her keep silent. "All right," she said at last. She went over to kiss him, and for a fraction of a second thought he started to duck away from the gesture. "But I'm not kidding," she whispered into his ear. "Something's going on around here, Blake. I don't know what it is, but I'm going to find out."

A moment later Blake walked her to the door and kissed her good-bye. Even as she left the office, she had the strange feeling that he hadn't really meant the kiss, that it had been given more for the benefit of some unseen audience than as a gesture of affection for her.

In his office next to Blake Tanner's, Jerry Harris switched off the tiny machine that had been recording every word spoken in the office next door. He leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head as he thought over what he'd just heard. Finally coming to a decision, he leaned forward and picked up the phone, dialing a series of digits from memory. A moment later Marty Ames came on the line.

"We may have another problem on our hands," he said, neither speaking Ames's name nor identifying himself. "I'll be out there within the hour. We can talk about it then."

"I've got a couple of things scheduled-" Ames began, but Harris cut him off abruptly.

"Change them." Harris hung up the phone, then removed the tinymicrocassette from the recorder in the bottom drawer of his desk and slipped it into his pocket.

CharlotteLaConner had been dealt with.

And if it came to that, Sharon Tanner could be dealt with, too.

Sharon wasn't certain if she'd deliberately turned the wrong way when she left Blake's office, but she suspected she had. Nor did she know exactly why it was that she wanted to explore the offices ofTarrenTech. Was she really looking for something specific, expecting to find some clue that would trigger the answers to all the vague and indefinable questions churning in her mind?

Of course not.

The building, like any other office complex, was just that: a maze of corridors with doors leading off them, some of them open, most of them closed. But still she moved on, wandering in the halls until even she was no longer certain where she was.

Then, in the distance, she heard a sound, as if some kind of an animal were in pain.

She hurried her step, moving toward it. A few seconds later it was repeated. She was in a wide corridor now, and ahead of her was a closed door with a wire-meshed window mounted in it at eye level; a few feet from the door was an elevator. Sharon paused for a moment, waiting for the sound to come again. While she was waiting, the elevator doors opened and a man dressed in what looked like a lab coat stepped out.

He was carrying a cardboard box-no more man a foot square-but even from where she stood, Sharon could clearly read a single word printed on its side in large red letters:

INCINERATE

As she watched, the eerie sound came again. The man frowned, then glanced toward the door with the reinforced window in it. When the sound came again, he set the box down on the floor, used a key to unlock the door, and pushed his way through.

Barely even considering her action before carrying it out, Sharon hurried to the box and picked it up. Lifting the lid, she peered inside, then nearly dropped the box as a gasp of surprise burst from her lungs.

She hesitated a split-second, her eyes flicking toward the ceiling as she searched for security cameras.

She saw none.

Making up her mind, she rummaged in her purse for the packet of Kleenex she always carried with her. Taking a deep breath, she reached into the box with trembling fingers, removed two of the objects it contained, and carefully wrapped them in a wad of tissue. Finally she gingerly placed the two wrapped objects in her purse. Putting the lid back on the box, she carefully replaced it on the exact spot from which she had picked it up a few seconds before, and hurried down the corridor.

She had just disappeared around the corner when the door near the elevator opened again and the lab technician emerged, picked up the box, and continued on his errand to the incinerator at the rear of the building.

Sharon had turned two more corners when she saw a man in a guard's uniform coming toward her. Her first instinct was to duck through the nearest door, but she thought better of it.

"Excuse me," she said, only slightly too loudly, as the guard came near.

He eyed her suspiciously, then seemed to figure out what her problem was. "Lost?"

Sharon called forth an embarrassed smile. "I feel like a fool," she said. "I'm Mrs. Tanner. I stopped in to speak to my husband, and I must have turned the wrong way…" She shrugged helplessly, and the guard's expression softened into an amused grin.