Creepers

  Balenger braced himself at the trapdoor’s opening. Ronnie couldn’t get a shot at him there. “I found the explosives you planted under the bodies,” Balenger said into the walkie-talkie.

  “Well, there’s one you didn’t find,” the voice said.

  A rumble shook the building. For a moment, Balenger thought it was another strong burst of thunder. But as the walls trembled, it was obvious that the reverberation came from inside. He had to grip the edge of the trapdoor’s opening to steady himself. He felt a shock wave slam his ears.

  Above him, Amanda yelled, “Over here! The surveillance room!”

  Balenger surged up through the hatch. He ran to the surveillance room and opened its trapdoor. Smoke made him cough. As it cleared, the goggles showed him that the staircase had been blown apart three floors down. The twisted steel remnants vibrated, swaying. Far below, there were flames.

  Balenger raised the walkie-talkie. “If you’re talking about the metal box you strapped to Amanda, we did find it. I threw it down the surveillance room’s staircase. A fire’s trying to get started down there.”

  “Tomorrow, I planned to burn this place to the ground anyhow. The coins are worthless to me.”

  The abrupt change of topic made Balenger uneasy. “The coins?”

  “A fortune, but I couldn’t use them to pay the taxes on this place,” the voice said bitterly. “I went to different coin dealers in different cities. Never more than a couple of coins at a time. Never the priceless ones. But you need to sell a lot of seven-hundred-dollar coins to try to pay fifty thousand dollars in property taxes. One day, in Philadelphia, a dealer I’d never met looked at what I offered and said, ‘So you’re the guy with all the double eagles. The other dealers are talking about you.’ And that was the last coin I dared try to sell.”

  Why is he talking so much? Balenger wondered. He’s stalling for time. What’s he up to?

  Abruptly, Balenger recalled what he’d said to Ronnie seconds earlier: I threw it down the surveillance room’s staircase. A fire’s trying to get started down there. Jesus, I told him where I am.

  Balenger charged from the open trapdoor, lunging toward the bedroom. Something exploded behind him, but there wasn’t any shrapnel. What the blast sent was a flash of heat that filled the surveillance room. The detonator next to the trapdoor, Balenger realized. Ronnie triggered it by remote control. Smoke blossomed.

  Amanda and Vinnie rushed ahead of him. But Vinnie’s direction made it clear that he didn’t understand what caused the small blast.

  “Vinnie, get away from—”

  In the bedroom, Vinnie stopped and turned.

  “The trapdoor!” Balenger shouted. “Get away from—”

  Stunned, Vinnie glanced down at where he’d stopped.

  The trapdoor.

  The detonator.

  The blast was small but deafening. It sent a flash up Vinnie’s legs. His jeans burst into flames. Screaming, he fell to the floor, swatting at his pants.

  Balenger grabbed the bedspread and flailed at Vinnie’s legs, desperately smothering the fire. Vinnie’s screams continued.

  In rapid succession, detonators exploded throughout the penthouse. Balenger saw their flashes, saw flames in the surveillance room and the medical room.

  “A fire extinguisher!” Amanda yelled. “The kitchen!” She ran through the surveillance room, dodging the fire.

  Balenger grabbed a decorative pitcher from a bureau and hurried into the bathroom. He twisted a knob on the sink, but no water came out. The electricity’s off! The pump isn’t working! he remembered. He scooped water from the toilet bowl, ran into the medical room, and dumped the pitcher onto the flames. A shotgun blast tore another hole in the floor, but by then Balenger was racing back to the bathroom. He yanked off the toilet-tank lid and scooped water. This time, he didn’t enter the medical room but stopped at its entrance, hurling the water onto the flames. The fire hissed and shrank. The toilet tank again. He scooped out all the water he could get and ran to the medical room. Now, when he threw the water, the flames went out.

  No more water. How am I going to—

  He heard the spray of a fire extinguisher, Amanda attacking the blaze in another room. But she wasn’t in the dining room where flames rose also. Water. Need to find more water. He stared at the open elevator in the exercise room. Ignoring the risk of a shotgun blast, he raced to the elevator and scooped up the five urine bottles that Ronnie had tauntingly returned to them.

  Wrong move, you son of a bitch, Balenger thought, tossing urine onto the flames. The ammonia stench made him gag. He dumped more urine. The fire sizzled. A third bottle. A fourth. Drenched by piss, the fire retreated. The fifth bottle put it out.

  Another shotgun blast tore through the floor. Running, Balenger felt a chunk of wood sting his face. He found Amanda in the library, where she frantically worked the extinguisher, putting out a blaze. She hurried to the surveillance room, spewed a white cloud onto the flames there, and put them out, also. But an instant later, the cloud stopped, the extinguisher empty.

  The floor erupted from another blast, but by then, Balenger tugged Amanda into the bedroom. They crouched next to Vinnie against the outside wall. Theoretically, it was the safest spot—above Danata’s living room, the door of which remained barricaded. Smoke drifted around them. Vinnie’s charred jeans were stuck to him, the flesh blackened, leaking fluid. Third-degree burns. Balenger had seen plenty of them in Iraq.

  “Hurts,” Vinnie said.

  Balenger knew that Vinnie was going to hurt a lot worse when his nerves recovered from the shock they’d received. Soon, he would be in agony.

  “Hurts.” Despite the green of Balenger’s night-vision goggles, Vinnie’s face was ashen.

  “I know,” Balenger said. “Can you walk?”

  “Only one way to find out.” Wincing, Vinnie motioned for Balenger to pull him up.

  But Vinnie’s legs were swollen. His knees refused to bend. Weight on them made him gasp. Balenger feared he’d pass out.

  “Okay, not a good idea.” Balenger eased him back to the floor. “Amanda.” He was surprised to see that she still held the empty fire extinguisher. “Go quietly to the surveillance room and throw the extinguisher as far as possible. Into the library, if you can. But wait until I’m at the door to the medical room.”

  “What are you going to—”

  “Help with the pain.”

  Balenger went to the right, toward the medical room. Its candles glowed dimly, surrounded by smoke. He nodded to Amanda, who hurled the fire extinguisher in the opposite direction toward the library. As soon as he heard it crash onto the floor, distracting Ronnie, Balenger shifted into the medical room and reached through the broken glass door of the cabinet. He grabbed a syringe and the vial of morphine, then darted back into the bedroom an instant before pellets exploded from the floor.

  He knelt beside Vinnie. “I’m giving you only enough to dull the pain, not put you out.”

  Vinnie nodded, biting his lip. “Just hurry and do it.”

  Balenger exposed Vinnie’s left wrist and gave him the injection.

  Vinnie’s face remained rigid with pain. Slowly, it relaxed. “Yes.”

  The smoke hovered.

  “It’s thicker.” Amanda coughed. “I thought all the flames were out.”

  “Not down there.” Balenger pointed toward the open trapdoor in the surveillance room. He stepped warily toward it. Three levels below, the flames were stronger. The only thing he could think to do was shut the trapdoor and lock it.

  Surprising him, Amanda rushed in with towels she’d soaked in the remaining water in the toilet tank. She pressed them over the edges of the trapdoor, sealing off the smoke.

  With the electricity off and the heating system no longer engaged, the penthouse had rapidly cooled. Amanda hugged herself. Glancing down at her bare feet and the nightgown that gave little protection to her legs, Balenger said, “Maybe I can do something about that.”

  At the door to
the medical room, he stared at Cora’s body. I’m sorry, he thought. He gripped Cora’s hands and pulled. There were so many holes in the floor, Ronnie would surely hear, he worried. But he needed to keep pulling. He eased Cora’s body into the bedroom.

  “Here,” he said, taking off Cora’s shoes and socks. Cora’s feet had the terrible coldness of death. “You and she are about the same size. These ought to fit you.”

  Amanda gazed at what he offered. Madness became normalcy. She took the shoes and socks. “But not the pants.” They were soaked with blood. “I won’t put on the pants.”

  Balenger understood. Even desperation had its limits.

  The walkie-talkie crackled. Balenger thought, Hit back. You can’t let him think he’s winning.

  He pressed the transmit button. “Why blondes, Ronnie?”

  No answer.

  “Was your mother a blonde?”

  No answer.

  “Are you trying to replace your mother? Is that why your girlfriends don’t put bounce in you?”

  “You piece of shit,” the voice said.

  Got you, Balenger thought. “What were you saying earlier about vulgarity?”

  No answer.

  “Iris McKenzie disappeared in 1968,” Balenger said. “Your Fourth of July of horrors happened in 1960. Eight years earlier. What’s the connection?” A tingle swept through him. Hours ago, Cora had asked what would happen to someone who’d been through what Ronald Whitaker had suffered. Balenger had answered that the boy would have spent eight years in a juvenile facility, receiving psychiatric counseling until he was—

  “You were twenty-one,” Balenger said into the walkie-talkie. “That photograph of you and Carlisle—it was taken just after you were released. What happened? Did Carlisle show an interest in you? Did he send you letters while you were being treated? Did he phone you? Did he finally behave like a human being and feel sorry for you? Did he ask you to come and stay here? Maybe he arranged for a psychiatrist to help you face the hell of your past. After all, how could you move on if the past kept its hook in you? That’s why he stays a respectful distance from you in the photograph. He knows how sensitive you are about men touching you. Or maybe Carlisle never stopped being a twisted S.O.B. He was never a part of life. He only watched it. Maybe he brought you here so he could see how the rest of the story turned out. And you showed him, didn’t you, Ronnie? You showed him the rest of the story.”

  “Don’t talk about him like that.”

  “Carlisle was a monster.”

  “No. You don’t know anything about my father.”

  “He’s not your father. Maybe he sort of adopted you, but he wasn’t your father, although he was almost as sick as your real father was.”

  “My real father?” the voice said with disgust. “No real father would have treated me like that.”

  “But no real son would have treated Carlisle the way you did,” Balenger said. “He suspected what you were doing, but he couldn’t prove it, right? He was twisted, but not as twisted as you. So he closed the hotel to take away your hunting territory. He hoped you’d stop, and hey, he wasn’t sure to begin with, right? As far as he was concerned, closing the hotel was just a precaution. Hedging his doubts. What did you do, gradually make him a prisoner in this hellhole? Did you threaten to cut him, the thing he most feared? Did you force him to sign documents that put you in charge of the trust? When the riots occurred, did you make it seem that he ordered the metal shutters and doors installed? That way, you could keep tighter control on him at the same time you hid your secrets. But somewhere along the line, he discovered what you’d been doing—not just once but for years. Isn’t that what happened, Ronnie? He found the corpses of some of your girlfriends. He managed the strength to break out of here. Something frightened him more than a cut that could make him bleed to death. More than the paralyzing open beach he forced himself to run toward. Something scared him so much he killed himself. You, Ronnie.”

  “A lot of questions,” the voice said.

  “You destroyed two fathers—the one you hated and the one you wanted.”

  “Questions that don’t have answers.”

  Balenger peered into the surveillance room. Wisps of smoke squeezed their way past the towels around the trapdoor. I’ve bought enough time, he thought. The morphine should be working by now. He crouched next to Vinnie. “How’s the pain?”

  “Better. Floaty.”

  “Good. Because we need to get you on your feet.”

  Vinnie’s eyes widened.

  “No choice,” Balenger said. “We can’t stay here. The fire will get to us if he doesn’t.”

  Which trapdoor? Balenger thought. If we use the staircase in Danata’s suite, Ronnie will see us through the holes in the wall. He’ll shoot.

  The staircase from the surveillance room was in flames. The one in the kitchen was flooded. Balenger took for granted that the elevator was a death trap. As soon as Ronnie heard its whir, he’d shoot through the door and kill everyone in the compartment. Or else he’d shut off the electricity to it, trap his quarry in the shaft, and let the fire take care of them.

  Balenger crept to the library. When he raised its trapdoor, he heard water, the equivalent of another cistern being filled. He shut the trapdoor, locked it, and eased through the kitchen into the dining room. Opening the trapdoor there, he exhaled when he didn’t hear water.

  He moved back to the bedroom. Vinnie’s charred legs were more bloated, leaking more fluid.

  “Just go along for the ride, Vinnie. Amanda and I will do the heavy lifting.” Balenger looked at her. “Ready?”

  “Always,” Amanda said.

  Her spirit reminded him so much of Diane’s that for a moment, in the smoke haze, he thought he was actually looking at his wife. He shook his head to clear it.

  “You’re hurt,” she said, pointing toward his right arm.

  Balenger was surprised to see that his Windbreaker sleeve had blood on it. “Shotgun pellet, I think.”

  “And your left cheek.”

  He touched it and felt blood. “Flying wood splinter maybe. Here.” He unstrapped the spare night-vision goggles from his belt. “You’ll need these.”

  As she put them on, he told Vinnie, “It’ll get dark now.”

  In pain, Vinnie nodded. “Just do what you need to.”

  Balenger switched off the lamps on Amanda’s and Vinnie’s hard hats. He prayed Vinnie had enough strength to keep from panicking in the darkness that would come when they took him from the candlelight. While Amanda adjusted to the green glow of her goggles, Balenger put on the knapsack. He holstered his pistol and shoved the crowbar under his utility belt.

  Amanda took Vinnie’s left arm, Balenger his right. When they lifted, Vinnie groaned.

  “Lean on us,” Balenger whispered. “Don’t try to walk. Let us carry you.”

  But the moment they started, Balenger knew it wasn’t going to work—Vinnie’s shoes scraped along the floor.

  They paused.

  “Maybe if he puts his arms around our necks,” Amanda murmured. “If he helps to lift, we can support him with our arms around his back and our other hands under his thighs.”

  They tried it, raising Vinnie’s hips so that he was now in a kind of chair formed by their hands, his knees bent painfully. Inching ahead, they reached the trapdoor in the dining room and set Vinnie down.

  Balenger aimed as Amanda unlocked and opened the hatch. His goggles detected only a green-tinted stairwell. The only sound was the rain outside.

  He studied the opening. It wasn’t large enough for two people, so he descended the stairs until his head was below the trapdoor. Amanda went to Vinnie’s shoulders and pushed him legs-first toward the opening. The pain made Vinnie hiss, but otherwise he had the resolve to keep silent. Balenger gripped Vinnie’s belt and pulled him into the staircase, trying to be gentle, aware of what Vinnie suffered.

  The stench of scorched flesh made him gag. He set Vinnie’s hips on the steps and waited for
Amanda to enter the stairwell. Then he turned his back to Vinnie and felt Amanda place Vinnie’s arms around his neck. Clutching them, Balenger stood and bent forward so that Vinnie’s torso was over his back, the injured legs dangling behind him.

  About to descend, Balenger suddenly thought, No, we’re doing this wrong. “Squeeze past me,” he whispered to Amanda. His voice was almost inaudible, but it made him cringe, as if he were shouting. “Wave the hammer in front of you. Check for wire.”

  Her goggles hiding whatever apprehension was in her eyes, she took the hammer from his belt and edged past him. Vinnie tensed from the pain. As they moved in a downward circle, Balenger became aware of their hoarse breathing. Too loud. Ronnie’ll hear us. His stomach hardened. He had to balance himself carefully, lest Vinnie’s weight topple him forward.

  Ahead, Amanda stopped. They were almost at a corridor on the sixth level, and Balenger stared down past her shoulder. Her hammer tapped on something.

  Razor wire.

  Balenger saw it tremble.

  He leaned back and set Vinnie on the stairs, momentarily grateful to be free of the weight. “Lie on your back,” he whispered to Amanda. “Squirm under it. Then I’ll slide Vinnie down the steps.”

  Without hesitation, she proceeded, then turned, and this time did hesitate when she understood that she’d be reaching for Vinnie’s charred legs. But the hesitation lasted only for an instant. Readying herself, she waited as Balenger eased Vinnie under the wire.

  But Vinnie’s body thumped on the stairs. To Balenger, it seemed that the excruciating sound came from a loudspeaker.

  He shoved his hands under Vinnie to cushion the impact. Vinnie couldn’t see the obstacle and didn’t know why it was necessary to slide him. But Balenger gave him credit. Vinnie didn’t resist. He followed orders.

  Then Vinnie was through, and it was Balenger’s turn to go under the wire. Seconds later, he rose beyond it, put Vinnie’s arms around his neck, and stooped forward once more with Vinnie’s weight on his back.

  Amanda continued downward, using the hammer to check for more wire.