won't knock you off the ladder if I fall.'
For the same reason, he had insisted on going first when they descended.
She put her arms around him, kissed him, then turned and started to
climb.
As soon as he got off the elevator on the twentyseventh floor, Bollinger
investigated the stairs at the north end of the building.
They were deserted ' He ran the length of the corridor and opened the
door to the south stairs. He stood on the landing for almost a minute,
listening intently for movement. He heard none.
In the corridor again, he searched for an unlocked office door until he
realized they might have gone back into the elevator shaft.
He located the maintenance supply room; the red door was ajar.
He approached it cautiously, as before. He was opening the door all the
way when the shaft beyond was filled with the sound of another door
closing on it.
On the platform, he bent over the railing. He stared down into the
vertiginous depths, wondering which one of the doors they had used.
How many floors had they gained on him?
Dammit!
Cursing aloud, overcoat flapping around his legs, Bollinger went back to
the south stairs to listen for them.
By the time they had climbed two flights on the north stairs, Graham was
wincing with each step. From sole to hip, pain coruscated through his
bad leg. In anticipation of each jolt, he tensed his stomach. Now his
entire abdomen ached. If he had continued to work out and climb after
his fall on Mount Everest, as the doctors had urged him to do, he would
have been in shape for this.
He had given his leg more punishment tonight than it ordinarily received
in a year. Now he was paying in pain for five years of inactivity.
'Don't slow down,' Connie said. 'Trying not to.'
'Use the rail as much as you can. Pull yourself along.
'How r are we going?'
'One more floor.'
'Eternity.
'After that we'll switch back to the elevator shaft.'
He liked the ladder in the shaft better than he did the stairs.
On the ladder he could use his good leg and pull with both hands to keep
nearly all of his weight off the other leg. But on the stairs, if he
didn't use the lame leg at all, he would have to hop from one step to
the other; and that was too slow.
'One more flight,' she said encouragingly.
Trying to surprise himself, trying to cover a lot of ground before the
pain transmitted itself from leg to brain, he put on a burst of speed,
staggered up ten steps as fast as he could. That transformed the pain
into agony. He had to slow down, but he kept moving.
Bollinger stood on the landing, listening for sound in the south
stairwell.
Nothing.
He looked over the railing. Squinting, he tried to see through the
