The table plummeted past him. The bureau tilted toward the widening hole. The bed slid in his direction.

Staring down, he saw that the door to the fourth-level room was open. Nearly all the floor was gone, the entire contents having cascaded, hitting subsequent floors and crashing through. At once, Balenger understood that this was the room from which he'd rescued Vinnie after Vinnie dropped.

More of the crater's rim collapsed. The rope dropped him another two feet. With a woosh, the bureau hurtled past. The bed slid nearer. He worked down along the rope. At the same time, he swung his body. His right hand touched the knot that warned him he was near the rope's end. As he swung again, the pressure of the rope made that section of the ceiling give way. The bed plunged toward him. His pendulum's arc sped him toward the open door. His fingers clawed, snagging the jamb. He tightened his grip on the door frame. The bed swooped past him.

The rope held him prisoner, tugging him backward into the chasm while he fought to pull himself around the doorjamb. The bed crashed far below. His right hand released the rope and joined his left hand clinging to the side of the open door. He pulled himself farther through. Although soft, the balcony's floor held. He took another step. Another.

Unwrapping the rope from his hip and shoulder, he freed the knot and tugged one end, trying to pull it down. It snagged on something. Worried that his effort would stress the weak floor, he took a step farther back, then tugged again. The rope refused to budge.

60

The noise, Balenger warned himself. Ronnie can't possibly fail to hear it.

Abandoning the rope, Balenger drew his pistol. But as he aimed along the green-tinted balcony, he became aware of a roar inside the hotel. It came from the storm's vibrations. The sound of the room collapsing was merely part of the larger rumble. It was nothing that Ronnie would have thought suspicious.

Balenger surveyed the hotel's hollow core. Rain from the broken skylight formed a veil. Nonetheless, he was able to see toward the opposite balcony. Flames emerged from the fifth-floor wall over there while smoke wafted from the sixth.

Amanda. Vinnie.

He shifted down the corridor that led to the emergency stairs. The noise of the storm muted any sounds he made climbing the stairs. At the fifth level, he crept to the balcony, hoping to glimpse Ronnie above.

No sign of him.

Something dangled onto Balenger's head. Roots. The tree that grew through the ceiling. Hours earlier, it had seemed strange. Now, compared to everything that had happened, it felt normal.

He returned to the emergency stairs and went higher. The door was open. He left the stairs and inched along a short corridor. Across from him, the smoldering balcony seemed deserted. The flames would soon reach the penthouse. Despite his increasing urgency, he forced himself to go slowly, to make sure he didn't get careless. At the end of the corridor, he peered onto the balcony. Still no sign of Ronnie. Except for Danata's suite, every door was open. Ronnie could be in any of the rooms, listening for sounds above him.

To the left was the tree. In front of it, smoke drifted from a doorway. Ronnie wasn't listening for sounds above him, Balenger realized. He was starting another fire.

Movement separated the smoke. As a figure backed from the room, Balenger tightened his finger on the trigger. A tall man in a suit wore night-vision goggles and held a pump shotgun. Ronnie! Balenger raged at the memory of his futile conversations with the man two years earlier. "And that was the last time you saw her?" "Yes. When she left my office at noon." But somehow the monster looked different, not as thin as Balenger remembered him or when he'd appeared on the surveillance monitor a while ago.

As Ronnie turned in his direction, Balenger shot twice, hitting him in the chest. The reports coincided with thunder, Ronnie jolting back. Before Balenger could shoot a third time, Ronnie's backward momentum lurched him into the tree. Wood cracked. That part of the balcony, weakened by roots, collapsed. Arms flailing, branches snapping, Ronnie and the tree plummeted through the hole.

Balenger hurried to it. Now he realized why Ronnie wasn't as thin as he ought to be. He wore a bullet-resistant vest.

Balenger aimed down through the hole, determined to get a head shot, but the only target was an arm as Ronnie frantically rolled away. Balenger had only three rounds left. He couldn't risk wasting a bullet. He knew that by the time he charged down the emergency stairs to the fifth level, Ronnie would be impossible to find- too many rooms, too many other emergency stairs, too many secret doors.

Balenger acted before he realized what he was doing, jumping through the hole, dropping to the balcony below. Since it hadn't collapsed from Ronnie's impact, he believed it would hold him. He landed, bending his knees to absorb the shock, tucking and rolling the way he'd been taught in jump school. Avoiding the tree, he rose to a crouch and searched for a target. But his unsteady footing alarmed him. The balcony wavered.

Five doors away, he saw Ronnie aim his shotgun. As the balcony swayed, throwing Balenger to his knees, it jerked Ronnie off-balance also. The shotgun roared, pellets whistling over Balenger's head.

Before Ronnie could pump another shell into the chamber, Balenger charged. They collided, crashing to the floor, and at once, Balenger felt his stomach rise, the impact of their combined weights making the balcony drop.

A section tilted, crashing down onto the next level. It formed a slide onto which Balenger and Ronnie tumbled over each other, hitting the bottom. The impact made that balcony waver.

Ronnie's hands found Balenger's throat. He remembered Amanda's insistence on how strong Ronnie was. Ronnie's hands were certainly strong, expertly squeezing Balenger's windpipe, but after all, the monster had years of practice.

The balcony vibrated. Or perhaps Balenger's mind was swaying. As his green-tinted vision turned gray from the effect of strangulation, he tried to shoot, but the only angle available to him was toward Ronnie's chest, toward his bullet-resistant vest.

Balenger pulled the trigger. Although the vest blocked the bullet, it couldn't muffle the shock of the impact. As if struck by a sledge hammer, Ronnie fell back. Balenger dove for the solid floor of a hallway. An instant later, the remainder of the upper balcony collapsed onto this one. Ronnie screamed amid rubble as the balcony fell away, struck the next one, and caused a chain reaction, the rest of the balconies crashing to the lobby, splashing into the water.

From the solid footing of the hallway, Balenger gaped down at the wreckage. Dust rose, only to be flattened by the rain pouring from the open skylight.

Amanda. Vinnie. He holstered his gun and raced for the emergency stairs. One level. Another. Coughing from the smoke, he emerged onto the sixth floor and tried to figure how to get to the penthouse. The door to Danata's suite was barricaded. Were there secret doors in any of the other rooms? Was that how Ronnie got into the stairwells and rigged the traps? Where were the doors?

Choosing a room away from the new fire Ronnie had set, Balenger hurried in. The bureau caught his attention. It would be easy to hide a door behind there. He yanked the bureau down, but all he found was an apparently solid wall. He took the crowbar from his knapsack and whacked it against the wall. He struck again and again, his frenzy mounting, his desperation making him wail. The hole got larger, revealing a gap between two-by-fours, a hidden corridor. He walloped as hard as he could, widening the space. One more fierce blow, and he could squeeze through.