Creepers

52

The coppery odor of the professor's blood filled the exposed passageway and Danata's living room. Balenger counted the seconds just as Vinnie did: three, four, five. Guided by only one source of light, feeling the darkness crowd him, Balenger crept lower. The furniture remained piled in front of the door, giving him slight encouragement. He unholstered the hammer from his utility belt and descended from the sixth level toward the fifth and its secret corridor, waving the hammer in front of him, testing for razor wire. He listened for water streaming into the stairwell but didn't hear it, the roofs in this section of the hotel evidently remaining intact.

He aimed his headlamp along the darkness of the fifth corridor. Something seemed to be in there, something seated motionless that filled him with suspicion, but he didn't have time to investigate. He kept counting: eighteen, nineteen, twenty. The air felt colder as he reached the fourth level and went lower.

Static crackled from his walkie-talkie, Ronnie taunting him again. No doubt, Ronnie hoped to hear a response and use it as a target. But Balenger was too far away now.

He kept counting. Twenty-five. Twenty-six.

He pressed the pulse button on his walkie-talkie. Ronnie would hear a similar buzz of static, Balenger knew.

"So you're still alive," the voice said. Although Balenger's walkie-talkie was at minimum volume, the stairwell's echo amplified the words. "I wondered if I'd hit you."

The light from his headlamp turning dizzily on the spiral staircase, Balenger reached the third level and continued to wave the hammer into the shadows before him.

Static.

Balenger pressed the transmit button and put the walkie-talkie directly against his mouth, cupping a hand around his lips, working to shut out the stairwell's echo. "Carlisle had agoraphobia. I kept asking myself why a man terrified of the outdoors would leave the hotel and shoot himself on the beach."

Forty-seven. Forty-eight.

"It didn't make sense. But now I understand. Something else terrified him more."

Balenger was certain the count was past fifty. Vinnie, for God's sake, do what I told you!

"I didn't hurt him," the voice said.

"You weren't a good son."

"Your voice sounds different."

Balenger imagined Vinnie following directions, turning up the volume on his walkie-talkie, and setting it on the floor. He imagined Ronnie peering up toward Balenger's suddenly amplified voice. Abruptly, he heard a shotgun blast from his walkie-talkie. He listened fiercely for the distant sound of a handgun firing in response. But thunder rumbled through the hotel, vibrating through the stairwell, and he heard nothing else, not even static from his walkie-talkie.

Breath froze in his chest as his hammer probed the air and felt resistance. He knelt, saw blood on the stairs, and scanned his headlamp. There it was-the tautly strung wire. The dark blood on it made it almost indistinguishable from the shadows.

He sank onto his back and squirmed under the wire. Straightening, he heard another burst of static from his walkie-talkie, but he ignored it and waved the hammer in front of him, searching for more wire while descending toward the darkness at the bottom of the stairs.

Now he allowed himself to consider a thought he'd been avoiding. What if Ronnie took more than the walkie-talkie? What if he also took the night-vision goggles so that no one else could use them? Then we don't have many options left, he thought. Hell, we might not have any.

Leave, a part of his mind told him. While Vinnie distracts Ronnie, try to find a way out.

Abandon them?

Not exactly. Find a way out and go for help.

There isn't a way out. The only way to end this is to kill him.

Even if I could get out, what would I do? On foot? In the middle of the night? In a thunderstorm? A deserted part of the city? It'd take me forever to reach the police station. Vinnie and Amanda could be dead by then.

This is your chance.

Bullshit. I won't leave them.

He reached the bottom, where the limited space made the smell of death even more pronounced. His single beam of light revealed two corpses, Mack and JD surrounded by blood, their throats slit, their legs almost severed. Balenger saw footprints in the blood. Ronnie had evidently approached them, finished them with a knife, and taken the walkie-talkie. The footprints seemed to come and go through a wall. Presumably, it had one of the secret doors Balenger was sure existed, although how the door could be opened he didn't know.

He crouched, studying the gloom-enshrouded bodies. Each corpse did indeed wear night-vision goggles. He reached, then remembered booby-trapped corpses in Iraq and paused, taking a closer look at the bodies. Something was stuck under Mack's left side.

JD, too, had something under him. Not obvious. Not unless you'd been seasoned in the hell of Iraq and you knew not to trust anything at any time. Explosives of some sort. The pressure of the bodies armed the detonators. If Balenger moved the bodies, the triggers would be released and the bombs would explode.

He shifted around to their heads, knelt in blood, and reached under Mack's skull, guiding his fingers toward the strap on Mack's goggles. Do it gently, he warned himself.

Static buzzed from his walkie-talkie.

Balenger eased the strap over Mack's skull, the shaved head providing no resistance. He lifted the goggles from Mack's sightless eyes and attached them to his equipment belt. Then he took a breath, leaning toward JD and the strap on his goggles.

In the distance, he thought he heard a shotgun blast. He removed JD's goggles and put them on. He shut off his headlamp.

In place of the shadows that fought his headlamp, he now saw a green twilight that made everything faintly visible. His breathlessness and the sound of the storm created the feeling he was underwater. With increased vision, he saw a long dark object. The crowbar. He picked it up.

He whirled toward the stairs, desperate to hurry back to the penthouse. But he hesitated and faced the narrow corridor. Despite his apprehension, he entered it. The enhanced light that the goggles provided made it possible to see all the way to the end.

All the way to what Tod had described finding: the corpse of a fully clothed woman seated against the back wall. Shrunken like a mummy. Despite the green of the goggles, it was obvious she had blond hair. She held a purse in her lap and seemed to be waiting patiently to go on a journey. Balenger hated to imagine the terror she must have endured. Her old-style clothes told him that she wasn't Diane, but that knowledge didn't console him. He now took for granted that his beloved wife was dead, and yet he longed to be with her, even if she was lifeless. Amid a sea of green, he stooped and tried to determine how the woman had died.

No signs of violence. Wrong, he thought, focusing on her neck. The larynx and windpipe projected inward, the bones broken. She'd been strangled. He felt paralyzed until static from the walkie-talkie jabbed him into motion. About to hurry back to Amanda and Vinnie, he nevertheless set down the crowbar and reached for the corpse's purse. Its fabric was grimy and dust-covered. He set down the walkie-talkie, using both hands now to open the purse and take out a wallet.

There was a driver's license inside. A shudder swept through him when he saw the name on it. The name told him almost everything.

Need to get back. His thoughts were frenzied. Need to look in Vinnie's knapsack.

He shoved the license in a Windbreaker pocket, then grabbed the crowbar and the walkie-talkie. As thunder rumbled, he raced toward the staircase.

Watch out for the razor wire.

Poking with the crowbar, he found it. He squirmed under and rushed higher. His arm ached from the crowbar's weight as he thrust it up and down ahead of him in case Ronnie had managed to follow him and rig another trap. He thought he heard a distant shotgun blast and then a pistol. Third level. Fourth.

At the fifth, he halted again, unable to restrain himself from peering into the secret corridor. He remembered thinking he'd seen an object propped against a wall in there. Now his night-vision goggles revealed that he was right. Another corpse of a woman. Blond. Fully clothed, this time in slacks, a turtleneck, and a blazer.

No, Balenger thought.

The clothes were familiar to him.

No.