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Me They were careless for aout of the van I tried toto stop

He wiped his eyes with one hand Three of the fingers, once having been broken, were larger than they should have been and misshapen by excess bone

I shouldn’t have stopped, he said I should’ve kept running All they could have done was shoot me in the back Then ouldn’t be here

I went to hi bolt on the front of his black T-shirt Noin that direction, soon you’ll find yourself drowning in self-pity That isn’t you, Danny

Shaking his head, he said, What a mess

Self-pity isn’t you, and it never has been We’re a couple of tough little virgin geeks, and don’t you forget it

He couldn’t suppress a s of tears I still have -centipede card

Are we sentimental fools, or what?

That crack about De out there to have a look around After I’ht think you can just tip over your chair and set off the bomb

His evasive eyes revealed that self-sacrifice had indeed crossed hisyourself into pâté would get me off the hook, then I’d call Wyatt Porter for help, but you’d be rong, I assured hiet all three of them myself I wouldn’t leave this place until I did You understand that, Danny?

What a ot to live for your dad Don’t you think so?

He sighed, nodded Yeah

You’ve got to live for your dad That’s your job now

Danny said, He’s a good ht, I said, If Datura checks on you before I get back, she’ll see your arht Just tell her I’ed You know

THIRTY

STEPPING OUT OF ROOM 1242 AND PULLING THE DOOR shut behindthe corridor Still deserted Silent

Datura

That sounded like a naiven but instead chosen She had been born Mary or Heather, or so equally common, and she had taken Datura later It was an exotic ith so that she was amused to apply to herself

I visualized ht, her na upon the water, floating for a moment Saturated, the leaf sank Currents moved it around the pool, deeper, deeper

Datura

In seconds, I felt drawn north toward--and beyond--the elevator alcove in which I had arrived earlier by way of the shaft ladder If the woman waited on this floor, she was in a room distant from 1242

Perhaps she didn’t keep Danny with her because she, too, had sensed in hihts about having strapped hih I could have allowed ently compelled to locate her She was Medusa, with a voice--instead of eyes--that could turn men to stone, but for the , and fallible flesh

Ideally, I would find soain possession of the reer the explosives When they were no longer a threat, I could call Chief Porter

My chances of overpowering three dangerous people, especially if all of theamblers in the burned-out casino could win their lives back with a roll of the fire-yellowed dice

Other than ignoringin the police would be the certain death of Danny, the only alternative to disabling the kidnappers was to disable the bomb I had less desire to fiddle with that complex detonator than I had to French-kiss a rattlesnake

Nevertheless, I had to prepare for the possibility that events would leadAnd if I freed Danny, ould still have to get out of the Panain with, exhausted by the trek froood day, in peak forh to dare to rush down a flight of stairs

To get to the ground floor of this hotel, he would be required to descend twenty-two flights Then he would have to h treacherous rubble-strewn public areas--while three homicidal psychopaths pursued us

Throw in a few dumb, manipulative, scantily clad wouys, include the requirement to eat a bowl of live worms, and we pretty much had the premise for a new reality-TV show

I quickly searched several roo for a place where Danny could hide in the unlikely event that I proved able to separate him fro hi us down, and if he was beyond easy discovery, I would be better able to deal with our eneht even feel that circu in Chief Porter

Unfortunately, one hotel room is pretty es to a deterh them as quickly as I did and would be aware of the sahta jumble of quake-tossed furniture and decorative items to create a hollohich Danny could be tucked out of sight An unstable htstands was likely to shift noisily when I tried to reconfigure it, drawing unwanted attention before I could colanced out aand saw that the land had grown darker, shadowed by a warship fleet of iron clouds that had expanded their dominion to three-quarters of the sky The landscape flickered as if with muzzle flashes, and a cannonade, still distant but closer than before, shook the day

Re the eerie quality of the thunder that earlier had echoed down through the elevator shaft, I turned from the

The corridor was still deserted I hurried north, passing Room 1242, and returned to the alcove

Nine of the ten sets of stainless-steel lift doors were shut For safety, to facilitate rescue, they would have been designed in such a way that they could be forced open manually in the event of a loss of power froenerators

They had been closed for five years Suht-hand bank The first pair of doors were ajar I wedged ap and tried to pull the doors apart The one on the right moved a little; initially, the other resisted, but then slid aside with a raspy noise that wouldn’t have traveled far

Even in the diht, I had to pry the doors apart only four inches to discern that no cab waited beyond It was at another floor

Sixteen stories, ten elevators: The mathematics allowed that none of them had coht conceal empty shafts

Perhaps, when poas lost, the elevators were programmed to descend on backup batteries to the lobby If that was the case, my hope was that this safety mechanism had failed--just as others in the hotel had failed

When I let go of the doors, they eased back into the position in which I had found thehter than the first The leading edges were bull-nosed, however, to facilitate prying in an e in their tracks, they opened with a creaking that made me nervous

No cab

These doors re evidence ofes of rime that filmed the stainless steel Frohtly to obscure the prints, feather theht raise suspicion

The third pair of doors would not budge

Behind the fourth set, which opened quietly, I found a waiting cab I pushed the doors fully apart, hesitated, then stepped into the lift