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The s burned, not because the cli, but because I had ascended in a state of extrerinding my teeth

I preferred not to transition from the shaft to the elevator alcove in darkness But I dared risk using the light only briefly, to locate the first of the recessed handholds and footholds that allowed transfer from the service ladder to the doorway

I switched on the flashlight, quickly studied the situation, and switched it off

Although I had repeatedly blotted them on my jeans, my hands were slippery with sweat

No matter how ready I may be to join Stormy in service, I do not have nerves of steel If I’d been wearing boots instead of sneakers, I would have quaked in theloorips, which was like an in-wall holder for a roll of toilet paper, but three tiht hand, hesitated as I was overcorill and the deep-fryer, then grabbed it with my left hand, as well, and stepped off the ladder

For athe wall in search of the footholds When it see left the ladder, the act of leaving the ladder now struck me as folly

The top of the elevator cab was in the sub-base fall in any lighting condition, but the prospect of plunging that far in inky darkness strucka safety harness, I also did not have a sturdy tether to snap to the handhold Or a parachute I had co other items in my rucksack were Kleenex, a couple of coconut-raisin protein bars, and foil packets of le priorities had seemed entirely sensible at the time

If I plummeted thirteen floors onto the roof of the elevator cab, at least I would be able to blow my nose, have a last snack, and scrubwith snotty nostrils and sticky fingers

By the time that I had fumbled sideways fro across the threshold into the elevator alcove, the conetism, the irresistible insistence of it had been forcefully ih not for the first ti void at , forRepeatedly I flexed and extended my left arm to work a mild cramp out of the biceps

Beyond the shadow-cloaked alcove, there appeared to be sources of watery-gray light both fro the public hallway

No voices If I could judge by her performance on the phone, the mystery woman was a talker She liked the sound of herself

When I eased to the open end of the alcove and peered cautiously around the corner, I saw a long, deserted hall Here and there, open doorways on both sides aduest rooms, as I had expected

The I-shaped hotel featured a shorter hall with uarded stairs that I had chosen to avoid were in those secondary wings

Left or right would have been a choice to ponder for any other searcher, but not for me Less equivocal here than it had been in the storht, south

Frohest level, the floors of the hotel were steel-reinforced concrete The fire had not been intense enough to buckle let alone collapse theh the structure by way of plu and electrical chases Only about sixty percent of those internal pathways had been fully fireproofed and sprinklered as specified by the construction documents

This resulted in a hopscotch pattern of destruction Soutted, while others fared far better

The twelfth story had suffered extensive s eaten by fla scorched CarpetA few glass shades had been shaken loose of ceiling lights; sharp shards required wariness

A Mojave vulture evidently had swooped in through one shatteredor another and had not been able to find its way out In its frantic search, it had broken a wing against a wall or a door fra half rotted before it desiccated in the dry heat, lay with tattered pinions spread in the center of the corridor

Although the twelfth floor ood shape by comparison to other levels of the hotel, you wouldn’t want to check in for your next vacation

Ieach from its threshold None was occupied

The furniture violently redistributed by the quake, tipped on its side, jammed the same end of each roo was soiled and sagging and not worth the effort to salvage

Beyond those s that were broken out or that were free of soot, the lowering sky revealed aonly in the south, and even there succu

The closed doors didn’t concern me I would be warned by a rasp of rusted knob and a screech of corroded hinges if one began to open Besides, these were neither white nor paneled, as were the mortal doors of my dream

Halfway between the elevator alcove and the intersection with the next corridor, I came to a closed door that I was not able to pass Tarnished uided by a puppet ht hand reached for the knob

I restrained ainst the ja at a door is always a waste of time You listen and listen, and when you feel confident that the way ahead is safe, you open the door, whereupon souy with born TO die tattooed on his forehead shoves a monster revolver in your face It’s almost as reliable as the three laws of thermodynamics

When I eased open the door, I encountered no tattooed thug, which ravity would soon fail and that bears would henceforth leave the woods to toilet in public lavatories

Here as elsewhere, the earthquake five years ago had rearranged the furniture, shoving everything to one end of the space, stacking the bed on top of chairs, on top of a dresser Search dogs would have been needed to certify that no victims, either alive or dead, had rele chair had been retrieved from the scrap heap and placed in the quake-cleared half of the room In the chair, secured to it by duct tape, sat Danny Jessup

TWENTY-EIGHT

EYES CLOSED, PALE, UNMOVING, DANNY LOOKED DEAD Only the throb of a pulse in his temple and the tension in his jaw rip of dread

He resee of heroin-addict glaive him true star quality in contemporary Hollywood

Past the face, the resemblance to any actor drops to zero Danny has a lot better brain than any movie star of the past few decades

His left shoulder is so of a fracture That arm twists unnaturally fro straight at his side, and the hand twists away fro is shorter than the other The right tibia thickened and bowed as it healed froht ankle contains so much excess bone that he has only forty percent function in that joint

Strapped to the hotel-room chair, dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt with a yellow lightning bolt on the chest, he could have been a fairy-tale character The handso under a witch’s spell The love child of a forbidden romance between a princess and a kind troll

I closed the door behind et out of here?

His blue eyes opened, owlish with surprise Fear made room for mortification, but he didn’t appear to be at all relieved

Odd, he whispered, you shouldn’t have co it open, I whispered, What aood on TV

I knew you’d come, but you shouldn’t, it’s hopeless

Fro knife, flipped the blade out of the handle ‘Always the optimist

Get out of here while you can She’s crazier than a syphilitic suicide bomber with mad-cow disease

I don’t know anybody else who says stuff like that Can’t leave you here when you talk that good

His ankles were bound to the chair legs with numerous turns of duct tape Bonds of tape wound around his chest, securing him to the back of the chair In addition, his arms were taped to the arms of the chair at the wrists and at the crooks of the elbows

I started sawing rapidly at the loops of tape that bound his left wrist

Odd, stop it, listen, even if you have ti’s broken or so place