He put the crowbar in his knapsack and entered the corridor. At once, he saw the dangling spiral staircase, its moorings pulled from the wall. My God, I'm under the penthouse dining room. Amanda, Vinnie, and I tried to come down these stairs. They have hardly any support.

He put his weight on the stairs. They wobbled. He eased upward, trying to move smoothly, to keep the staircase steady. Again, it wobbled. Please, he thought. He stepped higher, gripping the curved banister. He felt as if he were on the unsteady deck of a wave-tossed sailboat. Unable to get enough air into his lungs, he reached the trapdoor and pounded. Twice. Three times. Once.

The trapdoor opened, Amanda looking at him in relief. "There's a second fire."

"I know." Balenger crawled from the staircase. The pressure of his shoes pushing him away from the stairs was enough to send them crashing down.

The penthouse was filling with smoke. As they rushed to Vinnie in the kitchen, Amanda said, "I was afraid I'd have to open the shutter and put Vinnie outside, then join him. At least we'd have been able to breathe, even if we got hypothermia or the damned building collapsed."

"Help me get him to the bedroom. We'll take him down to Danata's suite."

"Ronnie. What about-"

"I don't know. Maybe he's dead."

"Maybe?"

"I hope. Can't be sure."

They put Vinnie's arms over their shoulders and dragged him toward the bedroom, no longer caring if they made noise.

They set him down at the bedroom's trapdoor. Then Amanda unlocked and lifted the hatch while Balenger aimed into it. Only two rounds left, he thought. Can't waste them. But all he saw was green-tinted smoke.

The moment he entered the staircase, he hesitated. "Wait a second." He took a step upward and grasped the block of plastic explosive he'd set aside when disarming the bomb.

"What can you do with that?" Amanda asked.

"Don't know."

"You said it was useless without a detonator."

"It is." He stuffed the explosive into his knapsack. Just below the opening, he waited with his back turned. Amanda slid Vinnie onto him. He carried Vinnie down to Danata's living room and again set him on the floor. With effort, he and Amanda tugged the heavy tables and chairs from the door. He aimed as Amanda opened it.

Flames rose on the other side of the hotel's core. They also spread from a room on this side.

"It was dark for so long, I thought I'd give anything if I could see." Vinnie was appalled by what he faced. "Now I wish I couldn't."

"Help me get him on my back," Balenger told Amanda. "Vinnie, hang on to the straps on the knapsack. Can you do that?"

"My legs are messed up, but there's nothing wrong with my hands."

They worked their way into a corridor and reached the entrance to the emergency stairs. Again, Balenger aimed. Again, there wasn't a target. Bent forward with Vinnie, he climbed down as quickly as he could without losing his balance. Fifth level. Fourth. Third.

"I hear water," Amanda said.

"So many roofs to collect it. So many holes. The place is flooding," Balenger told her.

Second level. First.

They were submerged knee-deep as they tugged a door open. The water chilled them, but not as much as what they saw: the chaos of the lobby. Now Balenger understood why furniture piled up, tangled against columns and doors. The force of the water falling from the upper levels was dismaying, the din overwhelming. Any object that wasn't anchored got swept away.

61

"How do we get out?"

The voice startled Balenger, almost making him pull the trigger. It belonged to a man struggling through the current toward them. The figure wore goggles. He had bulging pockets that weighed him down. Tattoos covered his face.

"I tried the tunnel door!" Tod shouted. "The bastard really did weld it shut! I tried every other door and shutter I could find! We're trapped!"

"We'll use the crowbar! We'll try to wedge a door open!"

The instant Balenger stepped into the current, it almost knocked him over. Twenty feet to his right, a waterfall cascaded.

"This whole damned place is about to come down," Tod said.

"Get rid of the coins. If you fall, they'll hold you under the water."

"Then I'd better not fall."

Balenger saw a chair rush by, carrying a rat. He dodged the chair, only to stagger from Vinnie's weight. Amanda grabbed him, holding him up. They waded past a pillar, where rats teemed on a jumble of furniture.

"What happened to him?" Tod said.

"His legs got burned. Ronnie blew the detonators."

"I'd love to shove a detonator down his throat if I ever get my hands on-" Tod gaped in shock.

"What's the matter?"

"A body just floated past. A woman. The woman I saw in the corridor."

Blond hair disappeared in the current. Balenger was sickened by the thought that it could be any of the other corpses that Ronnie hid in the building. Or maybe it's Diane, he thought.

Objects spattered the water. The roar in the lobby was sufficiently loud that Balenger realized only belatedly that a shotgun had gone off behind him. Fighting the current, he reached a pillar, taking cover behind the furniture caught against it.

"Amanda!"

"Here! Behind you!"

"Where's Tod?"

"There!"

She pointed toward a neighboring pillar.

Balenger gave Vinnie to Amanda, drew his pistol, and peered around the furniture jammed against the pillar. The wreckage of the main staircase faced him. Piled next to it was the twisted debris of the balconies that had collapsed, providing a warren of places in which Ronnie could hide.

Leaning as far out as he dared, Balenger thought he saw movement beneath a tangle of railings. Only two rounds left, he thought. Need to be sure. As the water kept rising, he shifted back behind the furniture and the pillar. Pellets tore a chunk from a table next to him. Hiding, he didn't see the muzzle flash.

Eager for a better sense of Ronnie's location, Balenger took the walkie-talkie from his knapsack. "The rain will eventually put out the fire," he said into it. "You can't possibly destroy all the evidence."

He turned the walkie-talkie to a minimum volume and strained to listen for Ronnie's voice across the way. But the roar of the waterfall made it difficult to distinguish any other sound.

Useless to Balenger, Ronnie's voice came from the walkie-talkie. "The fire and the rain will destroy fingerprints. The rest of the evidence can't be linked to me. No one, except you, knows I come here. The police will think intruders did this."

Balenger cocked his head, focusing on Ronnie's voice. He was almost certain that it came from the right, from a pocket in the tangle of railings. Get him to say more.

Ronnie puzzled him by readily talking. "It's just as well the city's forcing me to go. The floods were never this destructive. When a storm came, it used to be all I needed to do was purge the swimming pool. Then the water from the storm would fill it again. The overflow drains would handle the rest."

Yes, definitely from that tangle of railings, Balenger thought. But why is he talking so much? Is he trying to bait me again? Is he shifting his position, hoping I'll waste another shot?

"Do you know the word 'exponential'?" the voice asked.

Balenger decided he had to answer, to encourage Ronnie to keep talking. He spoke into the walkie-talkie. "In the military, I understood it to mean something like a rapidly increasing series of attacks." Immediately, he again reduced the volume.

"Something like that," the voice said across the way.

From the same place. On the right. Among the wreckage. If I don't shoot, will he decide I'm out of ammunition? Balenger wondered. Will he take the risk of coming for me? Can I bait him?