too fast to make a good target.
Instead, he put down the Walther PPK, rolled onto his side, and quickly
extracted a knife from his trousers pocket. He flicked it open.
It was the same razor-sharp knife with which he had murdered so many
women. And now, if he could cut the rappelling line before Harris got
down to the ledge, he would have claimed his first male victim with it.
Reaching to the piton, he began to saw through the loop of the knot that
was suspended from the jiggling carabiner.
The wind struck the side of the building, rose along the stone, buffeted
his face.
He was breathing through his mouth. The air was so cold that it made
his throat ache.
Completely unaware of Bollinger, Harris pushed away from the building
once more. Swung out, swung back, descended six or eight feet in the
process. Pushed out again.
The carabiner was moving on the piton, making it difficult for Bollinger
to keep the blade at precisely the same cutting point on the rope.
Harris was rappelling fast, rapidly approaching the ledge where Connie
waited for him. In a few seconds he would be safely off the rope.
Finally, after Harris had taken several more steps along the face of the
highrise, Bollinger's knife severed the nylon rope; and the line snapped
free of the carabiner.
As Graham swooped toward the building, his feet in front of him,
intending to take brief possession of a narrow window ledge, he felt the
rope go slack.
He knew what had happened.
His thoughts accelerated. Long before the rope had fallen around his
shoulders, before his forward momentum was depleted, even as his feet
touched the stone, he had considered his situation and decided on a
course of action.
The ledge was two inches deep. Just the tips of his boots fit on it. It
wasn't large enough to support him.
Taking advantage of his momentum, he flung himself toward the window and
pushed in that direction with his toes-up and in, with all of his
strength-the instant he made contact with the window ledge. His
shoulder hit one of the tall panes. Glass shattered.
He had hoped to thrust an arm through the glass, then throw it around
the center post. If he could do that, he might hold on long enough to
open the window and drag himself inside.
However, even as the glass broke, he lost his toehold on the icy
two-inch-wide sill. His boots skidded backward, sank through empty air.
He slid down the stonework. He pawed desperately at the window as he
went.
His knees struck the sill. The granite tore his trousers, gouging his
skin. His knees slipped off the impossibly shallow indention just as
his feet had done.
He grabbed the sill with both hands as gravity drew him over it.
He held on as best he could. By his fingers. Dangling over the street.
Kicking at the wall with his feet. Trying to find a toehold where there
