Static.
Dreading the answer, Balenger forced himself to ask, "What did you do with my wife?"
Static.
"If you surrender, I promise you won't feel pain," the voice said.
Abruptly, Cora grabbed the walkie-talkie. Furious, she yelled into it, "You prick, I promise you something." Pacing angrily in front of the medicine cabinet, she shouted, "When I get my hands on you, I'll-"
The floor exploded.
Balenger lurched back. Wood disintegrated at Cora's feet. As a shotgun roared from below, blood sprayed from Cora's abdomen. Another roar slammed her against the medicine cabinet, shattering glass. A third blast. A fourth, more wood erupting from the floor, buckshot tearing Cora open.
She dropped to her knees, agonized surprise contorting her face. She toppled to the gaping floor, her blood spreading, dripping through the holes. A candle fell with her, but her blood extinguished it.
The startling moment lengthened. As the smell of burnt gunpowder drifted up through the holes, Balenger's reflexes took control. He tugged Amanda and Vinnie to the outside wall, his frenzied heartbeat making him lightheaded. "He's on the balcony below us," he whispered. "Cora shouted so loud, he heard where she was."
From below, through the holes in the floor, Balenger heard a shotgun being reloaded. Cora's headlamp lay on the floor. He stretched to reach it, then gave it to Amanda. He raised a finger to his lips, urging her and Vinnie to be silent. He motioned for them to follow him into the bedroom. His muscles contracted, anticipating more shotgun blasts through the floor.
He reached the bedroom, his headlamp crisscrossing the darkness. Something else was wrong. Tod. Where was… The last Balenger remembered, Tod was groaning on the floor, holding his head where Balenger struck him with the pistol. Now Balenger turned and scanned with his headlamp. Tod was gone.
As Balenger looked at Vinnie to warn him, the longing on Vinnie's face made him pause. Staring toward Cora's body, Vinnie was devastated, tears streaming down his cheeks, the woman he loved gone forever. Vinnie's anguish intensified Balenger's own grief. To lose the person you loved. He understood all too sharply the hell Vinnie suffered.
Balenger tugged Vinnie's sleeve, urging him to move. For her part, Amanda seemed to have passed through an emotional frenzy, incapable of anything except a desperation to survive. She followed Balenger's lead as they crept through the surveillance room and into the library. They'd been forced to abandon the flashlight that Amanda set on the counter next to the examination table. Now all they had were three headlamps.
The lights converged on the library's trapdoor, which to Balenger's surprise was open. Tod must have hurried down the staircase while Ronnie was distracted, Balenger realized. A further thought gave him hope-maybe Tod can be a distraction for us. Maybe he'll make enough noise to lead Ronnie away.
Balenger locked the trapdoor and moved softly into the kitchen. He drew his pistol and aimed toward the trapdoor there. Vinnie lifted it. But the only thing their headlamps revealed was another empty staircase.
51
Balenger descended first. He had to move slowly, probing the air with his pistol to test for razor wire. They crept downward, constantly turning. The revolving flash of headlamps was dizzying. The stairwell amplified the noise from the storm. Approaching the fifth level, Balenger heard water streaming, then realized that the sound didn't come from the rain outside but from something in the stairwell. His headlamp reflected off a torrent rushing along a hidden corridor.
A flash of lightning revealed a huge hole in the roof, the water on the upper levels channeling into it. The crash of water cascading down the stairwell reminded Balenger of a cistern being filled. At once, his headlamp showed an object floating along the corridor. A corpse. Amanda gasped when she saw it. A desiccated woman. Dressed. Holding a purse. Blond. Diane? Balenger wondered in dismay. But before he had a chance to see more, the stream carried the corpse into the stairwell, and it disappeared into the roaring darkness.
We can't get out this way, Balenger realized. For all he knew, Ronnie was on the opposite side of the wall, about to blast a hole with his shotgun. He motioned for Amanda and Vinnie to retreat to the penthouse. They didn't need encouragement, and he followed them as they scrambled through the hatch. In shadows, breathing hoarsely, they sank to the kitchen's floor.
"We'll try another staircase," Amanda murmured.
"Maybe," Vinnie said without conviction. He raised his head slowly. "Or maybe we don't need to do a thing."
"What do you mean?" Balenger asked in confusion.
"The professor left a note with a colleague. When the professor doesn't call him by nine this morning, the colleague's supposed to open the note and tell the police where to send help."
They were so close to the outside wall that the pounding of the rain cloaked their muted voices.
"No," Balenger said. "Bob didn't leave a note."
"But…"
"When Bob got fired, he stopped trusting people in his department. He assumed the colleague would open the note and show it to the dean to get brownie points. Bob was afraid we'd all get arrested."
Vinnie tried another plan. "How about this? The salvagers come on Monday. They'll rescue us. All we need to do is wait for a day."
"Ronnie can arrange plenty of surprises if we give him that much time. I told you before, if we're passive, we'll lose."
"Then what are we going to do?"
Static crackled from the walkie-talkies.
"He's trying to get me to talk." Balenger spoke softly. "He's hoping he'll hear my voice and have something to shoot at."
"That could work the other way around," Amanda murmured. "If you hear him talking, you can shoot at his voice."
Balenger debated. "Tell me more about this bastard. Was he lying when…"
"He never touched me." Amanda shuddered. "He always treated me with terrifying politeness. I had the sense that something was building in him, that he struggled against it. The last time I saw him, when he brought me the nightgown, he stopped being polite. He yelled. He threw things. He called me a bitch and a whore. It was like he hated me because he felt aroused."
From the walkie-talkie, more static taunted Balenger.
He shut off Vinnie's unit, then lowered the volume on his own, put it to his lips, and pressed the transmit button, keeping his voice down. "I don't understand why you use different names, Ronnie. Why do you call yourself 'Walter'?"
Static.
"Is your last name really Harrigan?" Balenger didn't dare remain in one spot too long. He shifted into the dining room. Again, he whispered into the walkie-talkie. "Ronnie, what's your last name?"
No answer.
"What's your last-"
"Carlisle," the voice said.
Amanda and Vinnie crouched, trying to determine where the voice was below them.
"That's not true," Balenger whispered. "Carlisle didn't have children."
"He's my father."
Continuing to move, Balenger eased into the exercise room, where weights propped open the elevator's door.
"No," Balenger said. "He's not your father."
"He acted like one."
"That's not the same thing."
"Sometimes, it's all there is."
"What about you?" Balenger asked. "Did you act like a good son?"
Balenger shut off his headlamp before shifting into the candlelit medical room. Amanda and Vinnie did the same. Otherwise, their lights would show through the holes in the floor. The sight of the two bodies made him feel cold.
"You're moving cautiously," the voice said, "but the candles react to the air you displace. Through the holes, I see them flicker."