Breath froze in his chest as his hammer probed the air and felt resistance. He knelt, saw blood on the stairs, and scanned his headlamp. There it was-the tautly strung wire. The dark blood on it made it almost indistinguishable from the shadows.
He sank onto his back and squirmed under the wire. Straightening, he heard another burst of static from his walkie-talkie, but he ignored it and waved the hammer in front of him, searching for more wire while descending toward the darkness at the bottom of the stairs.
Now he allowed himself to consider a thought he'd been avoiding. What if Ronnie took more than the walkie-talkie? What if he also took the night-vision goggles so that no one else could use them? Then we don't have many options left, he thought. Hell, we might not have any.
Leave, a part of his mind told him. While Vinnie distracts Ronnie, try to find a way out.
Abandon them?
Not exactly. Find a way out and go for help.
There isn't a way out. The only way to end this is to kill him.
Even if I could get out, what would I do? On foot? In the middle of the night? In a thunderstorm? A deserted part of the city? It'd take me forever to reach the police station. Vinnie and Amanda could be dead by then.
This is your chance.
Bullshit. I won't leave them.
He reached the bottom, where the limited space made the smell of death even more pronounced. His single beam of light revealed two corpses, Mack and JD surrounded by blood, their throats slit, their legs almost severed. Balenger saw footprints in the blood. Ronnie had evidently approached them, finished them with a knife, and taken the walkie-talkie. The footprints seemed to come and go through a wall. Presumably, it had one of the secret doors Balenger was sure existed, although how the door could be opened he didn't know.
He crouched, studying the gloom-enshrouded bodies. Each corpse did indeed wear night-vision goggles. He reached, then remembered booby-trapped corpses in Iraq and paused, taking a closer look at the bodies. Something was stuck under Mack's left side.
JD, too, had something under him. Not obvious. Not unless you'd been seasoned in the hell of Iraq and you knew not to trust anything at any time. Explosives of some sort. The pressure of the bodies armed the detonators. If Balenger moved the bodies, the triggers would be released and the bombs would explode.
He shifted around to their heads, knelt in blood, and reached under Mack's skull, guiding his fingers toward the strap on Mack's goggles. Do it gently, he warned himself.
Static buzzed from his walkie-talkie.
Balenger eased the strap over Mack's skull, the shaved head providing no resistance. He lifted the goggles from Mack's sightless eyes and attached them to his equipment belt. Then he took a breath, leaning toward JD and the strap on his goggles.
In the distance, he thought he heard a shotgun blast. He removed JD's goggles and put them on. He shut off his headlamp.
In place of the shadows that fought his headlamp, he now saw a green twilight that made everything faintly visible. His breathlessness and the sound of the storm created the feeling he was underwater. With increased vision, he saw a long dark object. The crowbar. He picked it up.
He whirled toward the stairs, desperate to hurry back to the penthouse. But he hesitated and faced the narrow corridor. Despite his apprehension, he entered it. The enhanced light that the goggles provided made it possible to see all the way to the end.
All the way to what Tod had described finding: the corpse of a fully clothed woman seated against the back wall. Shrunken like a mummy. Despite the green of the goggles, it was obvious she had blond hair. She held a purse in her lap and seemed to be waiting patiently to go on a journey. Balenger hated to imagine the terror she must have endured. Her old-style clothes told him that she wasn't Diane, but that knowledge didn't console him. He now took for granted that his beloved wife was dead, and yet he longed to be with her, even if she was lifeless. Amid a sea of green, he stooped and tried to determine how the woman had died.
No signs of violence. Wrong, he thought, focusing on her neck. The larynx and windpipe projected inward, the bones broken. She'd been strangled. He felt paralyzed until static from the walkie-talkie jabbed him into motion. About to hurry back to Amanda and Vinnie, he nevertheless set down the crowbar and reached for the corpse's purse. Its fabric was grimy and dust-covered. He set down the walkie-talkie, using both hands now to open the purse and take out a wallet.
There was a driver's license inside. A shudder swept through him when he saw the name on it. The name told him almost everything.
Need to get back. His thoughts were frenzied. Need to look in Vinnie's knapsack.
He shoved the license in a Windbreaker pocket, then grabbed the crowbar and the walkie-talkie. As thunder rumbled, he raced toward the staircase.
Watch out for the razor wire.
Poking with the crowbar, he found it. He squirmed under and rushed higher. His arm ached from the crowbar's weight as he thrust it up and down ahead of him in case Ronnie had managed to follow him and rig another trap. He thought he heard a distant shotgun blast and then a pistol. Third level. Fourth.
At the fifth, he halted again, unable to restrain himself from peering into the secret corridor. He remembered thinking he'd seen an object propped against a wall in there. Now his night-vision goggles revealed that he was right. Another corpse of a woman. Blond. Fully clothed, this time in slacks, a turtleneck, and a blazer.
No, Balenger thought.
The clothes were familiar to him.
No.
53
He stumbled toward her. When a rat appeared on her shoulder, he swung the crowbar, smashing it against a wall. Overcome with emotion, he sank to his knees. The woman wasn't as shrunken as the corpse on the bottom level. Her eyes were gone. Chunks had been chewed from her, but the face was nonetheless impossible not to recognize.
Diane.
Grief cramped his chest. It took away his breath. Tears burned like acid on his cheeks. Wracked with sobs, he raised a hand, caressing her leathery face. Her blond hair hung below her shoulders, longer than she preferred it-because it had continued growing after her death. Her expression was a grimace of terror. Like the corpse on the bottom level, her neck bones were cracked inward from having been strangled. His Diane. His wonderful Diane.
He knelt, worshiping her, mourning her. Diane. Eleven years together. She never gave up on him, never tired of taking care of him after he came back sick from his first time in Iraq. He had tried to make it up to her, tried to make her realize how much he loved her. Kind, selfless Diane. Beautiful Diane with holes chewed in her face.
A gunshot brought him back to the moment. Continuing to sob, he opened her purse, took out her wallet, and put it in his Windbreaker. He kissed her parched forehead, picked up the crowbar and the walkie-talkie, and stalked up the stairs.
Fury made him want to rush, but that would be playing Ronnie's game, letting the son of a bitch manipulate him into making mistakes. I'm coming for you, Ronnie, he inwardly shouted. Ready with the crowbar, he emerged into the sixth-floor passageway and studied the wreckage of Danata's living room. The furniture still barricaded the entrance.