'And I love you.'
'You can do this.'
'I hope so.'
'I know His heart was pounding.
'I trust you,' she said.
He realized that if he allowed her to die during the climb, he would
have no right or reason to save himself. Life without her would be an
unbearable passage through guilt and loneliness, a gray emptiness worse
than death. If she fell, he might as well pitch himself after her.
He was scared.
All he could do was repeat what he had already said, 'I love you.'
Taking a deep breath, leaning backward, she said, 'Well ... woman
overboard!'
The corridor was dark and deserted.
Bollinger returned to the elevator and pressed the button for the
twenty-seventh floor.
The instant that Connie slipped backward off the windowsill, she sensed
the hundreds of feet of open space beneath her.
She didn't need to look down to be profoundly affected by that great,
dark gulf. She was even more terrified than she had expected to be.
The fear had a physical as well as a mental impact on her. Her throat
constricted; she found it hard to breathe. Her chest felt tight, and
her pulse rate soared. Suddenly acidic, her stomach contracted
sickeningly.
She resisted the urge to clutch the windowsill before it was out of her
grasp. Instead, she reached overhead and gripped the rope with both
hands.
The wind rocked her from side to side. It pinched her face and stung
the thin rim of ungreased skin around her eyes.
In order to see at all, she was forced to squint, to peer out through
the narrowest of lash-shielded slits. Otherwise, the wind would have
blinded her with her own tears.
Unfortunately, the pile of climbing equipment in the art director's
office had not contained snow goggles.
She glanced down at the ledge toward which she was slowly moving.
It was six feet wide, but to her it looked like a tightrope.
His feet slipped on the carpet.
He dug in his heels.
judging by the amount of rope still coiled beside him, she was not even
halfway to the ledge. Yet he felt as if he had lowered her at least a
hundred feet.
Initially, the strain on Graham's arms and shoulders had been tolerable.
But as he payed out the line, he became increasingly aware of the toll
taken by five years of inactivity. With each foot of rope, new aches
sprang up like sparks in his muscles, spread toward each other, fanned
into crackling fires.
Nevertheless, the pain was the least of his worries. More important, he
was facing away from the office doors. And he could not forget the
vision: a bullet in the back, blood, and then darkness.
Where was Bollinger?
