Creepers

50

"You took a walkie-talkie from one of the men you killed," Balenger said.

"As you'll learn, I'm resourceful." The voice was smooth, calm, neutral, in the tenor range, its pronunciation precise, with a hint of an elitist accent. It made Amanda jerk a hand to her mouth. "Your friend didn't drop all the way to the lobby. I found him in a pile of wreckage two levels down. He actually had the strength to help me put him in the elevator. Remarkable. How is he progressing?"

"He isn't," Balenger said into the walkie-talkie.

"Ah," the voice said.

Static.

"You're violating my home," the voice said.

"It's not as if you had any No Trespassing signs around the place. The only good thing is, if we hadn't come in, we never would have been able to rescue Amanda."

Cora raised her tear-streaked face from Rick's body.

"Amanda has no need of being rescued," the voice said. "I treat her with the greatest respect. Many women would envy her."

"Except for being molested."

"I never touched her that way ever." For the first time, the voice contained a hint of emotion. "If she told you I did, she lied."

Balenger frowned. He remembered several puzzled questions Vinnie had tried to ask her. Was Ronnie telling the truth?

"What about your other girlfriends?" Balenger asked into the walkie-talkie. "What are their names? Iris, Alice, Vivian." Abruptly, something about the list troubled him. The names. Something about the names. But so much was happening, he didn't have time to figure out what bothered him.

"I've been honored with an abundance of female companionship."

"Is that one of them dead in the downstairs corridor?"

Static.

Dreading the answer, Balenger forced himself to ask, "What did you do with my wife?"

Static.

"If you surrender, I promise you won't feel pain," the voice said.

Abruptly, Cora grabbed the walkie-talkie. Furious, she yelled into it, "You prick, I promise you something." Pacing angrily in front of the medicine cabinet, she shouted, "When I get my hands on you, I'll-"

The floor exploded.

Balenger lurched back. Wood disintegrated at Cora's feet. As a shotgun roared from below, blood sprayed from Cora's abdomen. Another roar slammed her against the medicine cabinet, shattering glass. A third blast. A fourth, more wood erupting from the floor, buckshot tearing Cora open.

She dropped to her knees, agonized surprise contorting her face. She toppled to the gaping floor, her blood spreading, dripping through the holes. A candle fell with her, but her blood extinguished it.

The startling moment lengthened. As the smell of burnt gunpowder drifted up through the holes, Balenger's reflexes took control. He tugged Amanda and Vinnie to the outside wall, his frenzied heartbeat making him lightheaded. "He's on the balcony below us," he whispered. "Cora shouted so loud, he heard where she was."

From below, through the holes in the floor, Balenger heard a shotgun being reloaded. Cora's headlamp lay on the floor. He stretched to reach it, then gave it to Amanda. He raised a finger to his lips, urging her and Vinnie to be silent. He motioned for them to follow him into the bedroom. His muscles contracted, anticipating more shotgun blasts through the floor.

He reached the bedroom, his headlamp crisscrossing the darkness. Something else was wrong. Tod. Where was… The last Balenger remembered, Tod was groaning on the floor, holding his head where Balenger struck him with the pistol. Now Balenger turned and scanned with his headlamp. Tod was gone.

As Balenger looked at Vinnie to warn him, the longing on Vinnie's face made him pause. Staring toward Cora's body, Vinnie was devastated, tears streaming down his cheeks, the woman he loved gone forever. Vinnie's anguish intensified Balenger's own grief. To lose the person you loved. He understood all too sharply the hell Vinnie suffered.

Balenger tugged Vinnie's sleeve, urging him to move. For her part, Amanda seemed to have passed through an emotional frenzy, incapable of anything except a desperation to survive. She followed Balenger's lead as they crept through the surveillance room and into the library. They'd been forced to abandon the flashlight that Amanda set on the counter next to the examination table. Now all they had were three headlamps.

The lights converged on the library's trapdoor, which to Balenger's surprise was open. Tod must have hurried down the staircase while Ronnie was distracted, Balenger realized. A further thought gave him hope-maybe Tod can be a distraction for us. Maybe he'll make enough noise to lead Ronnie away.

Balenger locked the trapdoor and moved softly into the kitchen. He drew his pistol and aimed toward the trapdoor there. Vinnie lifted it. But the only thing their headlamps revealed was another empty staircase.