Amanda's face tensed in concentration. "How far to the ground?"

"Seven levels."

"Slide down the rope? It's called 'rappeling,' right?"

"Yes."

"It's not as easy as you make it sound. Even if I manage to reach the bottom, what happens next? Where do I find help?"

"There's nobody in this area. You'll need to go to the police station. I'll give you directions."

"How far?"

"A mile."

The smoke made Amanda cough. "In this storm? As weak as I am from being in that vault? With my legs protected only by this nightgown? I'll collapse from hypothermia before I get there. You go."

"But-"

"You're the strongest. I'll stay with Vinnie."

He studied her. Blond hair. Determined, lovely features. So much like Diane.

The idea abruptly seemed futile. "By the time I bring help, it might be too late," he said.

"Then what are we going to do?"

Balenger listened to the rain against the shutter. "Maybe there's only one chance."

She watched him, trying to control her desperation.

"I need to go after him," Balenger said.

"Yes." The cold made Amanda's lips pale.

An apron hung next to the sink. He wrapped it around her unprotected legs.

Something made her frown toward a corner. When he looked in that direction, he saw a rat. Other rats stated in from the dining room.

"They're attracted to the smell of Vinnie's legs," Amanda said.

More rats appeared at the door to the library. One had a single eye.

Balenger went to the bedroom and took an object from Cora's jacket. When he returned, he showed Amanda what it was.

The water pistol.

"Vinegar." He squirted a rat. It darted away.

She took the pistol.

Static came from the walkie-talkie. "The smoke's thicker down here," Ronnie's voice said.

"Then maybe you should leave the building," Balenger replied.

He turned off the walkie-talkie and put it into his knapsack. He shoved the crowbar in also. Facing Amanda, he promised, "I'll come back as soon as I can."

But he didn't move, couldn't turn away from her. Each felt the same impulse. They put their arms around each other.

Balenger tried to draw strength from her, possibly the last friendly person he would ever see. His chest swelling with emotion, he slid the shutter open. The rain pelted him. Just before he eased onto the roof, he peered back into the kitchen and saw Amanda sink to the floor, where she cradled Vinnie's head on her lap. The green-tinted rats formed a semi-circle at the edge of the room. She aimed the water pistol. He settled his weight on the roof and closed the shutter.

59

The wind threatened to suck air from his lungs as he worked his way toward the ventilation pipe. With each step, he feared that his foot would again break the surface. Drenched, he studied rain-swept puddles, deciding that the roof would be weakest where water collected. But the next spongy section he encountered was in a raised area that turned out to be a blister. He stepped back and veered around it.

A crack of lightning struck the tip of the pyramid. It reminded him of an artillery shell exploding. Despite his urge to run, he forced himself to be cautious. Rain obscured the pipe. He looped the rope over it and pulled, again testing. Designed for mountain climbing, the rope had a standard length of 150 feet, reduced now to 75 because it was doubled. Although thin and lightweight, it was exceptionally strong, its polyester sheath protecting a core of silk fibers.

Earlier, Rick had questioned him about his familiarity with heights and rope. Needing an innocent explanation, Balenger had responded that he was a rock climber. In truth, he knew about heights and rope because of his Ranger training. He knotted the rope about four feet from its tips. The knot would warn him when he was almost at the end. He dropped the doubled rope off the roof. Straddling it, he pulled it up behind him, over his right hip. He looped it across his chest, over his left shoulder, and down his back, making sure the rope was cushioned by his jacket and wouldn't cut into his neck. He used his left hand to grip the forward part of the rope while his right gripped the section behind and below him. The arrangement allowed his body to act as a brake.

Somewhere, somehow, he'd lost his gloves. As a consequence, he risked rope burns on his hands. Straining to be optimistic, he told himself that the gloves would have been slippery in the rain, that under the circumstances exposed skin was safer.

Right. Be positive. Look on the bright side.

In green-tinted darkness.

It keeps getting worse, he thought. Yet his emotions puzzled him. The Gulf War syndrome from his tour of duty in Desert Storm was suddenly so distant a memory that it seemed not to have happened. The post-traumatic stress disorder from his near-beheading no longer weighed on him. After the hell of the previous six hours, after so many deaths, after discovering the corpse of his beloved wife, a grim rage overtook him. It was so expansive and powerful that it left no room for fear. Vinnie depended on him. The woman who resembled his wife depended on him. They mattered. Punishing Ronnie. That mattered.

He tested the rope one final time, then stepped backward off the roof. Swaying in chaos, he eased the rope through his right hand behind him while his left hand gripped the forward section. The rope slid around his body. With his shoes pushing against the wall, he walked horizontally backward and downward, approaching the crater in the patio below.

The rope jerked. Had the pipe bent? Friction burning his cold fingers, he eased more rope through his right hand. The rope jerked again. Don't think about it. Keep going. Keep thinking about Amanda and Vinnie. Through rain-streaked goggles, he saw that the surviving edge of the patio was just below him. A moment later, he set down on it, holding the rope around him so he wouldn't drop if the remainder of the patio gave way.

He was braced against a closed, rusted shutter on the sixth level. There was no way inside. To re-enter the hotel, to get to Ronnie, he needed to descend farther. Into the crater of a room on the fifth level. His soaked clothes weighing on him, he walked to the edge of the crater and leaned back, settling into it. Without a wall to brace his feet against, he grimaced from the strain of lowering himself, the rope biting into his hip, chest, and shoulder. Now the moisture falling around him was thicker, not only rain but also water accumulating on the roof. It poured over him. Below, he saw a canopied bed, a bureau, a Victorian table, the basic arrangement he'd found in most of the other rooms. The middle of the floor was another crater, water crashing farther down.

He kicked his legs. The motion started a pendulum effect that he increased by kicking several more times. Swinging, he neared the remainder of the floor across from him, kicked again, and suddenly his breath was taken away as he dropped. The pipe's breaking, he thought. He jerked to a stop.

The rope constricted his chest. Still breathless, he exhaled through his mouth and inhaled through his nostrils, trying for a calming rhythm. Staring up, he saw that the reason the rope had dropped was that it had dug into the crater's edge and broken away a portion of the roof. Six feet of ceiling had crumbled. That was how far he had fallen. Now he hung below the hole, dangling into a fourth-level room. He tried to pull himself up, to lift his legs over the edge.

But the rim of this crater now began to disintegrate. As the floor gave way, he sank lower, dangling farther into the fourth-level room. Water fell past him. Then a chair. It brushed past his jacket sleeve.

Jesus, the whole ceiling's collapsing. The furniture's going to-