He rushed to the trapdoor in the surveillance room. "Cora, free the bolt!"

Holding the belt with his left hand, he drew his pistol with his right. "Open the trapdoor. Maybe this is a trick. Maybe we're watching a video. Maybe Ronnie's actually waiting under this trapdoor." Balenger aimed. "If he is, I'll blow him to hell. Vinnie, shine your flashlight at the opening. Ready? Cora, do it. Open the trapdoor!"

Cora pulled it up. Vinnie's flashlight blazed into the darkness of another spiral staircase. Balenger reached under the curved hand-rail and dropped the belt and the box. They plummeted, clattering off metal.

Cora slammed the trapdoor shut. While she locked it and Balenger darted back, Tod said, "The bastard's doing something else."

Balenger whirled toward the monitor. There, Ronnie continued to display his neutral smile as he pointed toward something indistinct on a wall to the side.

"What's that on the floor?" Vinnie asked.

"It's moving," Tod said.

"Water from the storm," Cora realized.

Ronnie stepped sideways through the rippling water and reached the object on the wall. It was so far to the side that the camera hardly showed it. The object had a handle.

"No!" Amanda said, realizing what it was: an electrical transformer.

Looking surreal in his goggles, suit, and tie amid the water rippling in the utility room, Ronnie waved again, almost looking enthusiastic now, definitely communicating good-bye. He pulled down the lever.

The lights went out. The monitors became blank. The rain pounding the roof seemed to get louder as the group found itself for the first time in absolute darkness. Not even the skylight was available to show flashes from the storm. To Balenger, the darkness seemed to have density and weight, compressing around him, squeezing.

Cora gasped.

Fabric rustled, the sound of Vinnie's arm moving as he turned his headlamp on. So did Balenger and Cora, the beams darting around the surveillance room.

"Give me the flashlight," Tod told Vinnie.

It gleamed. For the previous four and a half hours, Balenger had been in semi-darkness. He had almost gotten used to it. By contrast, the bright lights of the penthouse had at first seemed unnatural, paining him. But how quickly he had adjusted to them. And now how quickly the semi-darkness was hateful.

"Amanda?" Cora asked.

"I'm okay. Fine." But she didn't sound fine at all. "I can handle this. I can handle this," she said unconvincingly.

Unseen lightning cracked.

"I've been through worse." She spoke rapidly. "Being in the vault was worse. Being alone was worse."

"Alone?" Vinnie said, puzzled. "But-"

"Now's our chance," Tod said.

"Chance?" Balenger asked. "What do you mean?"

"He's down in the basement. We can use one of these staircases to get to the ground floor."

"I hate to agree with this creep," Vinnie said, "but he's right. We've got seven staircases to choose from. Ronnie can be in only one at a time." -

"But which staircase?" Cora asked. "You said you couldn't find an exit down there."

"And he said"-Tod indicated Balenger-"there must be secret doors."

"Which staircase?" Cora repeated. "The one we already used is too obvious."

"Or maybe it's so obvious, Ronnie won't think of it," Tod said.

"I'm not going down that one." Vinnie pointed toward the trapdoor where Balenger had thrown the metal box. "All Ronnie needs to do is press a remote detonator and-"

"That sound. What is it?" Amanda said.

"Just the storm. It's bugging my nerves, too."

"Something else. From in there." Amanda pointed toward the bedroom.

"I hear it, too." Cora turned.

"Not the bedroom. The exercise room," Balenger said.

"The elevator!" Tod blurted.

Lights zigzagging, they ran toward the medical room, where they stared through the doorway into the exercise room. Despite the pounding of the rain, Balenger heard the whir of cables and gears. The whir got louder.

Behind the closed door, the elevator rose.

49

"If Ronnie's in the elevator, he can't stop us from going down the stairs," Tod said.

Vinnie scowled at the closed door. "How do we know he's in there?"

"He's gotta be. Somebody's gotta be in there to run the controls."

"But what if the elevator works like a dumbwaiter?" Balenger asked. "What if Carlisle arranged for outside controls so his meals could be sent up without a waiter intruding on him?"

"Well, if that jerkoff isn't in the elevator, who is?"

"Or what is? I'm not sure I want to hang around and find out," Vinnie said.

The elevator stopped below them. Although the rain persisted, the absence of the whir made the room seem tensely quiet.

Then the whir began again, the elevator rising.

"Must be on a separate electrical circuit," Cora murmured.

"When it gets here, shoot the door," Tod urged. "It's wood. The bullets will-"

"I don't shoot what I can't see," Balenger told him. "There might be a policeman behind that door."

"You want to open it and find out?"

The group stared at the door, concentrating on the stillness behind it. Then the stillness changed to the rattle of the interior gate being pushed aside.

"Shoot!" Tod yelled.

"You in the elevator!" Balenger aimed. "Identify yourself!"

"Pussy! Give me that gun!" Tod grabbed for it, but Balenger whacked the barrel against his forehead, knocking him to the floor.

Balenger whirled and realigned his aim as something thumped against the door. He motioned everyone into the medical room. Then he pushed the weights from the door and took cover behind the treadmill.

The door budged outward.

He tensed his finger on the trigger as the door opened slightly, revealing a portion of what seemed to be an empty compartment.

Tod groaned on the floor.

The door opened farther.

Balenger saw motion. Tod's flashlight remained in his hand, gleaming across the floor. It revealed rats scurrying from the elevator, three, eight, a dozen, some with open sores, others with no ears or two tails or only one eye. Squealing in the lights from the headlamps, some leapt under the stationary bike or onto the treadmill, veering when they saw Balenger, following others that scrambled into the other rooms.

Cora screamed. But not because of the rats. A figure stumbled from the elevator.

Balenger almost fired but suddenly recognized the bloody jeans and Windbreaker, the muscular torso bent forward in pain, the blood, so much blood, a wooden spike sticking into the figure's chest.

"Rick!" Cora ran to him.

"Wait!" Balenger said.

But his warning was too late. Rick tripped over Tod's squirming body, lurched into Cora, and knocked both of them to the floor. Cora's hard hat clattered away.

Balenger rushed to the empty compartment. Aiming, he shouldered the door all the way open. As his headlamp dispelled the shadows, he studied the ceiling but didn't see a trapdoor through which Ronnie could have squeezed up and hidden himself. He now realized that the compartment wasn't totally empty, though. On the floor, in a corner, mocking him, were the five bottles of urine that had been abandoned on the fourth level.

"Vinnie, use the weights to keep this door and the gate from closing! As long as they're open, the elevator can't go down." Balenger turned toward Cora and Rick. Rick was on top of her, gasping from pain. She struggled to get free. Balenger turned Rick over and saw that the fall had rammed the spike deeper into his chest. Rick's lung made a whistling sound. His front teeth were broken away. His lower left arm projected at a right angle to his side.

"Jesus," Cora said. "Rick." She wiped his blood-smeared forehead. "Baby."