Balenger was aware of switching from "I" to "you." The psychiatrist called it disassociation. His voice shook.

His heart beat so fast, pressure swelled the veins in his neck. "So now you know I'm not a cop."

"Do we? How did you and the professor get together?"

"I told you I took a course from him." Balenger's clothes were soaked with sweat. "When you live a waking nightmare, how do you get away from the world? Iraq. It's everywhere. How do you get away from fucking Iraq? The past. All I wanted to do was escape into the past. My psychiatrist thought it would help to read old novels, books that made me feel I was in the past. I tried Dickens. I tried Tolstoy. I tried Alexandre Dumas. But that chapter in The Count of Monte Cristo, where the hero's in a sack and gets thrown over a wall into the ocean, was too much like reality to me. So I started reading history books. Biographies about Benjamin Franklin and Wordsworth and the founding of the House of Rothschild. I didn't give a shit about Franklin or Wordsworth or the House of Rothschild, but it was in the safe, unthreatening past. Anything before the twentieth century. Big fat books that almost gave me a hernia. The thicker, the better. The more details, the better. Footnotes. How I love footnotes. The only modern novels I read were by Jack Finney and Richard Matheson. Time and Again. Bid Time Return. Characters who wanted desperately to leave the present. They concentrated so hard they went into the past. If only. I went to the State University at Buffalo and pretended I was a student and took as many history classes as I could sneak into. When the professor realized I wasn't enrolled, we had a conference in his office. I told him about myself. He let me go to more of his classes. We talked more, and a month ago, after he got fired, he asked if I'd help him. He said we'd have so much money, we'd never have to worry about the present."

A faint rumble shifted through the building.

"Sack over your head, huh?" Tod asked.

Balenger nodded.

"All that time in darkness," Mack added.

"Yes."

"And you made yourself go through those tunnels into this hotel, and you made yourself come all the way up here through the darkness," JD said. "You must have been reminded a lot of what happened to you in Iraq."

"A couple of times," Balenger said flatly.

The rumble sounded again.

"You're tough."

"I don't think so."

"Sure, you are. You saved Big Ears over there. You saved the professor."

But God help me, I couldn't save Rick, Balenger thought.

"Yeah, a hero," Tod said.

The rumble was a little louder.

"But if you try to be a hero again…" Tod raised the pistol, aimed at Balenger, and fired.

38

The bullet snapped past Balenger's head. He felt the shock of air it displaced, heard it slam into the wall behind him.

"Jesus!" Vinnie said.

"It didn't come anywhere close," Tod said.

"My ears!" Mack put his hands over them. "For God's sake, why didn't you warn me? They're ringing like crazy!"

So were Balenger's, but not so much that he didn't hear another rumble.

"Don't try to be a hero," Tod said. "Otherwise, that 'now' thing you talked about won't last much longer.

"All I want is to walk out of here."

"We'll see how this goes. So far you've been useless. Where's the vault?"

"What's that noise?" Mack asked.

"The ringing in your ears."

"No," JD said. "I heard it, too. A rumble."

"Thunder," Balenger said.

They stared toward the ceiling.

"Thunder?" Vinnie shook his head. "There aren't any thunderstorms predicted. Only showers around dawn. The professor said…" Vinnie's voice dropped. "Professor?"

No answer.

"Professor?" Vinnie started toward the sofa.

"The crowbar!" Tod warned, aiming. "Put it down before you come near us!"

Vinnie dropped it and crossed the room. He passed Cora, who continued to hum in shock, and reached the professor, whose head was back, his eyes closed.

Vinnie nudged him. "You told us the weather report was for showers around dawn."

Conklin's eyes remained closed.

"You told us-"

"I lied," Conklin said wearily.

"What?"

"Next week, the salvagers are coming. I needed all of you to help me scout the building tonight." Conklin breathed. "Tomorrow night, after we showed Frank how to get into the building and into the vault…" Conklin took another breath. "He was supposed to return and take as many coins as he could carry. Tonight and tomorrow night. That's when it needed to happen."

"You prick."

"I estimated that we'd be out of here before the storm arrived." The professor's bearded face was ravaged with regret. "Apparently I was wrong."

"What's the big deal about a storm?" JD wanted to know.

"Getting out of here," Vinnie said in despair. "Depending on how hard it rains, the tunnels might be flooded."

"Right now, you've got bigger problems than worrying about a flooded tunnel," Tod said. "We'll just have to wait and get more acquainted."

"Yeah," Mack said, putting a hand on Cora's shoulder. "We'll just have to find ways to pass the time."

She was on the floor now, sitting bent forward with her arms around her raised knees and her head braced on them. She didn't seem aware of Mack's touch.

"Leave her alone," Vinnie said.

"Make me."

Balenger tried to distract them. "The vault."

"Your great idea didn't work out, smart guy," Tod said. "The wall on that side sounds hollow, too. If this stuff about the vault and the gold coins turns out to be bullshit…"

Balenger examined the holes in the wall. He went over and peered into the dark bedroom, then studied the doorjamb and the space between the rooms. "Looks like five inches wide. Bob, are you sure the diary didn't say it was a wall safe?"

"A vault," the professor murmured through his pain. "That was what Carlisle always called it."

"Then we're wasting our time on this wall. It's too narrow." Balenger stared at the long living room wall, at the metal shutters and the metal door between them. "No room for the vault there, either."

He tugged open the closet door and saw coats and suits, all in a style that suggested the 1930s. Their smell was nauseating. He yanked the garments off a wooden rod and hurled them across the living room, then entered the closet and pounded on the wall.

"Normal. That leaves the far bedroom wall, or maybe the bathroom."

"Careful, hero," Tod said.

"I'll need light in the bedroom." Balenger picked up the crowbar. "Vinnie, help me."

With an angry look toward Mack, whose hand remained on Cora's shoulder, Vinnie followed Balenger into the bedroom. Their headlamps revealed a lacquered black dresser with red trim, a chrome strip at the bottom and a circular mirror on top. A reading chair had the same black with red trim.

So did the bed, but Balenger hardly noticed as he and Vinnie shoved it away from the wall. Standing in the doorway, Tod and JD aimed their flashlights as Balenger pounded the hollow-sounding wall.

"Black and red," Tod said. "Who did Danata think he was, the Prince of Darkness?"

"I'm sure all the men he shot believed it," Balenger said.

Vinnie took an ashtray off a nightstand. "I'll check the bathroom."

As Balenger swung the crowbar against the wall, he heard Vinnie pounding the wall in the bathroom. Even at a distance, the hollow sound made it obvious nothing was behind the wall. At last, Balenger ran out of surface. He stepped back, breathing heavily, scanning his headlamp along the holes he'd made. "Nothing."

He started back toward the living room.

"Drop the crowbar!" Tod warned from the doorway.

Throwing it onto a chair, Balenger entered the living room.