was none. Gasping.
The setback where Connie waited was only fifteen feet from the sill to
which he clung, just seven or eight feet from the bottoms of his boots.
Eight feet. It looked like a mile to him.
As he contemplated the long fall to Lexington Avenue, he hoped to God
that his vision of a bullet in the back had been correct.
His gloves were too thick to serve him well in a precarious position
like this. He lost his grip on the icesheathed stone.
He dropped onto the yard-wide setback. Landed on his feet. Cried out
in pain. Tottered backward.
Connie shouted.
With one foot he stepped into space. Felt death pulling at him.
Screamed. Windmilled his arms.
Connie was tethered to the wall and willing to test the piton that she
had hammered between the granite blocks. She jumped at Graham, clutched
the front of his parka, jerked at him, tried to stagger to safety with
him.
For what must have been only a second or two but seemed like an hour,
they swayed on the brink.
The wind shoved them toward the street.
But at last she proved sufficiently strong to arrest his backward fall.
He brought his foot in from the gulf. They stabilized on the last few
inches of stone. Then he threw his arms around her, and they moved back
to the face of the building, to safety, away from the concrete canyon.
ML 37 'He may have cut the rope,' Connie said, 'but he isn't up there
now.'
'He's coming for us.'
'Then he'll cut the rope again.'
'I guess he will. So we'll just have to be too damned fast for him.'
Graham stretched out on the yard-wide ledge, parallel to the side of the
building.
His bad leg was filled with a steady, almost crippling pain from ankle
to hip. Considering all the rappelling he would have to do to reach the
street, he was certain the leg would give out at some crucial point in
the climb, probably just when his life most depended on surefootedness.
He took a piton from one of the accessory straps at his waist. He held
out one hand to Connie. 'Hammer.'
She gave it to him.
He twisted around a bit, lay at an angle to the building/ his head and
one arm over the edge of the setback.
Far below, an ambulance moved cautiously on Lexington Avenue, its lights
flashing. Even from the thirtythird floor, the street was not entirely
visible. He could barely make out the lines of the ambulance in the
wash f its own emergency beacons. It drew even with the Bowerton
Building, then drove on into the snowy night.
He found a mortar seam even without removing his bulky gloves, and he
started to pound in a piton.
Suddenly, to one side, two floors below, movement caught his eye.
A window opened inward. One of two tall panes. No one appeared at it.
However, he sensed the man in the darkness of the office beyond.
