No more water. How am I going to-

He heard the spray of a fire extinguisher, Amanda attacking the blaze in another room. But she wasn't in the dining room where flames rose also. Water. Need to find more water. He stared at the open elevator in the exercise room. Ignoring the risk of a shotgun blast, he raced to the elevator and scooped up the five urine bottles that Ronnie had tauntingly returned to them.

Wrong move, you son of a bitch, Balenger thought, tossing urine onto the flames. The ammonia stench made him gag. He dumped more urine. The fire sizzled. A third bottle. A fourth. Drenched by piss, the fire retreated. The fifth bottle put it out.

Another shotgun blast tore through the floor. Running, Balenger felt a chunk of wood sting his face. He found Amanda in the library, where she frantically worked the extinguisher, putting out a blaze. She hurried to the surveillance room, spewed a white cloud onto the flames there, and put them out, also. But an instant later, the cloud stopped, the extinguisher empty.

The floor erupted from another blast, but by then, Balenger tugged Amanda into the bedroom. They crouched next to Vinnie against the outside wall. Theoretically, it was the safest spot-above Danata's living room, the door of which remained barricaded. Smoke drifted around them. Vinnie's charred jeans were stuck to him, the flesh blackened, leaking fluid. Third-degree burns. Balenger had seen plenty of them in Iraq.

"Hurts," Vinnie said.

Balenger knew that Vinnie was going to hurt a lot worse when his nerves recovered from the shock they'd received. Soon, he would be in agony.

"Hurts." Despite the green of Balenger's night-vision goggles, Vinnie's face was ashen.

"I know," Balenger said. "Can you walk?"

"Only one way to find out." Wincing, Vinnie motioned for Balenger to pull him up.

But Vinnie's legs were swollen. His knees refused to bend. Weight on them made him gasp. Balenger feared he'd pass out.

"Okay, not a good idea." Balenger eased him back to the floor. "Amanda." He was surprised to see that she still held the empty fire extinguisher. "Go quietly to the surveillance room and throw the extinguisher as far as possible. Into the library, if you can. But wait until I'm at the door to the medical room.".

"What are you going to-"

"Help with the pain."

Balenger went to the right, toward the medical room. Its candles glowed dimly, surrounded by smoke. He nodded to Amanda, who hurled the fire extinguisher in the opposite direction toward the library. As soon as he heard it crash onto the floor, distracting Ronnie, Balenger shifted into the medical room and reached through the broken glass door of the cabinet. He grabbed a syringe and the vial of morphine, then darted back into the bedroom an instant before pellets exploded from the floor.

He knelt beside Vinnie. "I'm giving you only enough to dull the pain, not put you out."

Vinnie nodded, biting his lip. "Just hurry and do it."

Balenger exposed Vinnie's left wrist and gave him the injection.

Vinnie's face remained rigid with pain. Slowly, it relaxed. "Yes."

55

The smoke hovered.

"It's thicker." Amanda coughed. "I thought all the flames were out."

"Not down there." Balenger pointed toward the open trapdoor in the surveillance room. He stepped warily toward it. Three levels below, the flames were stronger. The only thing he could think to do was shut the trapdoor and lock it.

Surprising him, Amanda rushed in with towels she'd soaked in the remaining water in the toilet tank. She pressed them over the edges of the trapdoor, sealing off the smoke.

With the electricity off and the heating system no longer engaged, the penthouse had rapidly cooled. Amanda hugged herself. Glancing down at her bare feet and the nightgown that gave little protection to her legs, Balenger said, "Maybe I can do something about that."

At the door to the medical room, he stared at Cora's body. I'm sorry, he thought. He gripped Cora's hands and pulled. There were so many holes in the floor, Ronnie would surely hear, he worried. But he needed to keep pulling. He eased Cora's body into the bedroom.

"Here," he said, taking off Cora's shoes and socks. Cora's feet had the terrible coldness of death. "You and she are about the same size. These ought to fit you."

Amanda gazed at what he offered. Madness became normalcy. She took the shoes and socks. "But not the pants." They were soaked with blood. "I won't put on the pants."

Balenger understood. Even desperation had its limits.

The walkie-talkie crackled. Balenger thought, Hit back. You can't let him think he's winning.

He pressed the transmit button. "Why blondes, Ronnie?"

No answer.

"Was your mother a blonde?"

No answer.

"Are you trying to replace your mother? Is that why your girlfriends don't put bounce in you?"

"You piece of shit," the voice said.

Got you, Balenger thought. "What were you saying earlier about vulgarity?"

No answer.

"Iris McKenzie disappeared in 1968," Balenger said. "Your Fourth of July of horrors happened in 1960. Eight years earlier. What's the connection?" A tingle swept through him. Hours ago, Cora had asked what would happen to someone who'd been through what Ronald Whitaker had suffered. Balenger had answered that the boy would have spent eight years in a juvenile facility, receiving psychiatric counseling until he was-

"You were twenty-one," Balenger said into the walkie-talkie. "That photograph of you and Carlisle-it was taken just after you were released. What happened? Did Carlisle show an interest in you? Did he send you letters while you were being treated? Did he phone you? Did he finally behave like a human being and feel sorry for you? Did he ask you to come and stay here? Maybe he arranged for a psychiatrist to help you face the hell of your past. After all, how could you move on if the past kept its hook in you? That's why he stays a respectful distance from you in the photograph. He knows how sensitive you are about men touching you. Or maybe Carlisle never stopped being a twisted S.O.B. He was never a part of life. He only watched it. Maybe he brought you here so he could see how the rest of the story turned out. And you showed him, didn't you, Ronnie? You showed him the rest of the story."

"Don't talk about him like that."

"Carlisle was a monster."

"No. You don't know anything about my father."

"He's not your father. Maybe he sort of adopted you, but he wasn't your father, although he was almost as sick as your real father was."

"My real father?" the voice said with disgust. "No real father would have treated me like that."

"But no real son would have treated Carlisle the way you did," Balenger said. "He suspected what you were doing, but he couldn't prove it, right? He was twisted, but not as twisted as you. So he closed the hotel to take away your hunting territory. He hoped you'd stop, and hey, he wasn't sure to begin with, right? As far as he was concerned, closing the hotel was just a precaution. Hedging his doubts. What did you do, gradually make him a prisoner in this hellhole? Did you threaten to cut him, the thing he most feared? Did you force him to sign documents that put you in charge of the trust? When the riots occurred, did you make it seem that he ordered the metal shutters and doors installed? That way, you could keep tighter control on him at the same time you hid your secrets. But somewhere along the line, he discovered what you'd been doing-not just once but for years. Isn't that what happened, Ronnie? He found the corpses of some of your girlfriends. He managed the strength to break out of here. Something frightened him more than a cut that could make him bleed to death. More than the paralyzing open beach he forced himself to run toward. Something scared him so much he killed himself. You, Ronnie."