barely hear his faltering heartbeat anymore.
His eyes opened, making contact with hers. 'Isabel?'She dived into his deep brown orbs, the portals to his soul, and instantly landed inside his head, looking out through those same eyes at the craggy ceiling of the cave. Darkness closed in perilously, obscuring his/her view, but Isabel found what she was looking for in the churning recesses of his memory. Yes! she thought ecstatically, swimming back toward the rapidly shrinking light. Time to go.
Part of her regretted leaving Ramirez to face the ultimate blackness alone, but then she remembered how, on the phone, the blackmailed lieutenant had worried only about his security, not Liz's. She decided not, to lose too much sleep over Ramirez's tragic end, despite the intimate bond they had just shared.
'Good-bye, David,' she whispered, using his own quivering lips, then woke herself up…
Max was there, right where she'd left him, watching her with eyes so naked in their agonized hope that she had to look away. The rest of her friends were there as well, seated around the empty pizza trays. Alex took her hand and offered her a sip of water. 'How did it go?' he asked gently.
She appreciated the tender treatment, but declined the water, unwilling to let her tormented brother suffer in suspense an instant longer.
'I did it,' she told them, the salvaged memories and impressions still fresh in her mind. 'I know where they are.'
26.
“I'm coming for you, space-girl! You can't get away from me! Give me back that case or I'll dissect you myself!'Morton's threats reverberated through the twisting labyrinth of underground chambers, the echoes making it impossible to guess just how near or far away he was. Hiding in a chapel-like grotto, carved out eons ago by seeping water and sulfurous gases, Liz kept her eye out for the telltale gleam of Morton's flashlight, which she assumed he had appropriated from Lieutenant Ramirez, who had no doubt joined the gunman's ever-growing list of victims. Periodically, over however long she had been fleeing through the convoluted caverns, she had glimpsed the leading edge of the beam falling upon a glistening limestone wall nearby, spurring her onward through yet more branching tributaries and tunnels.
The incandescent handprint upon her belly, which seemed to glow all the brighter the more frightened she became, was an extremely mixed blessing. On the one hand, it helped her navigate, albeit randomly, through this light-less subterranean realm, helping her avoid stumbling into solid walls or yawning chasms; on the other hand, it made her visible to her relentless pursuer, advertising her location like a neon sign on a moonless night.
For the moment, however, she seemed to have gained a slight lead on Morton, who must have taken a wrong turn somewhere amid the diverging corridors. Liz took advantage of this lull in the chase to do something about the sticky tape binding her wrists together. Locating a sturdy stalagmite with a notably jagged tip, she backed against the stony fang, using it as a saw to gnaw away at the overlapping strips of duct tape. Doing so meant dropping the purloined attache case, but Liz decided she needed her hands free even more than she wanted to hang onto the coveted spacecraft debris.
'I know you're in here, Tess!' Morton called out, still laboring under the false impression that that was her name. Liz wasn't sure how she felt about facing death with that particular name on her would-be killer's lips. Do I want to spend my final moments on Earth mistaken for a trampy blond homewrecker from anotherpla.net? The duct tape was maddeningly durable and hard to cut through, but she eventually succeeded in poking a hole in the tape between her wrists, then used that tiny gash as a starting point for tearing away at the gluey fibers holding the tape together. It was taking way too long, though, and Morton sounded like he was getting closer.
'Don't be stupid!' his booming voice railed at her. 'It won't do you any good to get hopelessly lost down here. You're just going to starve to death in the dark!'He had a point, Liz realized, but the alternative, putting herself back in Morton's bloodstained hands, was even less appealing. She'd cope with finding her way out if and when she finally got away from the murderous gunman. Tom and Becky ultimately made it out of the caves, she recalled, clinging to that storybook happy ending for comfort. So can I.
Only a few gooey strands held together the tape confining her arms. She tugged her wrists apart with every ounce of strength she could muster, while simultaneously sawing away at the last fraying filaments. All at once, her wrists sprang apart and Liz discovered she could see her own hands for the first time in hours. At last! she thought gratefully, savoring this one small victory over Mortons brutality. Eager fingers peeled away the rest of the tape, revealing wrists that were red and chafed, yet blissfully free.
Moving quickly, to get farther away from Morton, she rescued the briefcase from the floor and headed away from the sound of his approaching voice. Feeling like some exotic bioluminescent lifeform, evolved to exist far below the Earth's surface or at the bottom of the sea, she turned her silver light upon the escape route ahead of her.
Two separate pathways-one wide, one narrow-diverged before her. Iiz hesitated, uncertain which natural aperture to take. Morton might have trouble squeezing his bulk through the skinny crevice, but what if that aisle kept on thinning until it ceased to exist? She shuddered at the thought of getting wedged into a dead end, unable to turn around and go back the way she came without running straight into Morton; all the killer would have to do is wait right where she was standing now for thirst or starvation to drive her back into his clutches. Okay, she decided, the wide door it is.
'There you are!' Before she could even act on her choice, Morton suddenly rounded a curve, less than twenty yards behind her, his flashlight beam sweeping across both Liz and the juncture ahead. Liz looked back in surprise, squinting into the glare of the flash, and spotted Mortons intimidating bulk charging toward her, only seconds away. 'Give me that case!' he yelled. 'Give it back, you alien freak!'Changing her plan at the last minute, Liz raced through the narrower opening. Swinging behind her at the end of her arm, the briefcase caught in the doorway, holding her back, and she had to stop and turn the case sideways before making it completely through the gate. The delay cost her precious seconds, so that Morton was almost upon her by the time she got the briefcase loose. His body slammed into the limestone walls of the skinny archway, but, just as Liz had prayed, he was too large to pass through the gap in his entirety. An arm and one shoulder squeezed into the shallow corridor, groping wildly for the escaping teenager. 'Come back here! Come back or I'll shoot!'He drew back from the slender opening, aiming both his flashlight and his gun at the murky passage into which Liz had fled. Hearing his threats, and knowing from experience that Morton had no qualms about gunning down those who crossed him, Liz quickened her pace, looking frantically for a turn in the corridor. Straight lines were her enemy right now; only a more crooked path would keep her out of Morton's line of fire.
No! Not again! she thought, unable to hold back painful recollections of the first and only time a bullet tore through her body. The jarring impact, the searing agony, rose like restless phantoms from the memories lodged in her flesh and bones. The handprint upon her stomach, where the mortal wound should have been, flared all the brighter for her terror. Please, no! Not again! At the last minute, the confining wall fell away to her left, and Liz ducked into the much-needed detour, only an instant before the blast of a gunshot disturbed the sepulchral quiet of the caverns. Jagged chips and flakes exploded from the end of the improvised shooting gallery she had just abandoned, followed by the dancing beam of Morton's flashlight as he feverishly sought to see if Liz had been hit or not. A volcanic curse erupted from the enraged killer when he discovered that no humanoid body, alive or otherwise, lay in the path of the searching beam.
(Liz had to wonder just how Morton had expected to retrieve his precious attache case from the far end of the skinny corridor, in the event that his angry shot had killed her instantly. Then she realized that the bad-tempered gunman was beyond reason at this point; as his behavior at the Crashdown had proven years ago, he was more than capable of shooting first and dealing with the consequences later.) 'Where the hell are you?' he roared in frustration. His hate-crazed voice echoed through the winding catacombs. 'Don't think you're getting away from me for good, space girl. I'm not leaving this godforsaken hellhole until I've got that briefcase-and your alien hide!'The side-tunnel she had so luckily discovered was no wider than the narrow passage she had just escaped, and it continued to constrict inch by inch, until Liz had to turn sideways just to squeeze her way forward. Increasingly afraid that she had trapped herself with no way out, except past Morton, she was forced to slide with excruciating slowness between the unyielding cavern walls, which, she recalled from her science courses, consisted mostly of
