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.
He climbed to the trapdoor. Beyond it, he heard a commotion, hurried footsteps, a gunshot. Frenzied, he knocked twice, three times, once.
No response. What if they think I'm Ronnie? What if they shoot through the trapdoor?
As he knocked again, he heard the lock being freed. The trapdoor was lifted. A headlamp blazed toward his face, stressing the sensor in his goggles, creating a flare that made him temporarily blind. The headlamp jerked away, allowing his night vision to return. He hurried up and locked the trapdoor behind him.
The smell of burnt gunpowder was everywhere. Vinnie stood in the doorway to the surveillance room, aiming toward two jagged holes in the floor. He saw Balenger and retreated to him. "I did what you said. I counted to fifty. Then I turned up the volume on my walkie-talkie and set it on the floor. He blew it apart."
"How many rounds did you fire?" Balenger took the pistol.
"Three. I hope you don't think I wasted-"
"You did your job. You distracted him. Nine rounds left. We'll need to make them last."
"He's been shooting at random through the floors."
"He can't get into Danata's living room and shoot at us from there. We're safe for a moment. Give me your knapsack."
Balenger raised the walkie-talkie to his lips. "Hey, asshole, guess what?"
Static.
"I asked you a question, jerkoff."
"What am I supposed to guess? Are the vulgarities necessary?"
"When it comes to you? Absolutely. I found my wife, you piece of shit."
Static.
"You strangled her. You strangled them all."
Balenger took the knapsack from Vinnie and pulled the police report from the compartment in back. He reached into his pocket for the driver's license from the corpse on the bottom level.