'Is this it?' he asked Isabel fervidly. 'Is this the place?'His sister looked around, peering over the top of her mirrored sunglasses. 'Yes,' she confirmed promptly. Climbing down from the Jeep, she pointed toward a craggy ridge about a mile and a half away. 'That's where he went. The cave is up there.'That was all he needed to hear. Without waiting for Michael and the rest, currently parking the Jetta behind the Porsche, Max sprinted across the arid soil into the hills. The more he ran, dodging cacti, boulders, and ditches, the less need he felt for any directions at all. He could sense Liz's presence-and her danger. 'Hang on, Liz!' he whispered, his pounding legs propelling him up a steep mountain trail, while the blazing sun beat down on him, causing the rugged, reddish-brown landscape to ripple before his eyes like a mirage. 'I'm coming!'Max! Wait!' Isabel shouted behind him, her voice already sounding faint and distant. He heard the others chasing after him, with not only his worried sister yelling at him to let them catch up with him.
'Wait up, Max!' Michael called. 'Don't do this alone!'But Max couldn't stop. He couldn't even slow down. He had hesitated before, back in Morton's motel room, and Liz was now paying the price. I can't fail her again, he thought, stricken with remorse. The closer he got to the ridge, the more he could feel Liz's fear and despair, calling out to him via the special bond they shared. Time was running out, he understood, and Liz needed his help. He had to get there in time.
He knew that Michael was worried about him facing Morton alone, afraid that he might do something he would regret later, but Max no longer feared losing control. His overpowering, post-traumatic hatred of the homicidal gunman had been superseded by an even more compelling emotion: concern for Liz's safety. He had his priorities straight at last, and protecting Liz took precedence over any burning desire for revenge. If he had to kill Morton to save Liz, then that's what he would do, but with a cool head, his actions determined by the circumstances, not by stormy emotions beyond his control. This is about Liz now, he affirmed. That's all that matters.
His legs were aching by the time he crested the ridge, where he found the cave entrance just as Isabel had described it: an open mouth in the inhospitable hillside, partially concealed by an overhanging shelf of rock. He could see why it appealed to Morton as a hideaway. Thank goodness Isabel had 'inside' sources of information! He was about to enter the cave when a thunderous rumbling, surging up from deep within the Earth, warned him to leap to one side, only seconds before an explosion of bats erupted from the mouth of the cavern, flapping madly into the daylight. Confused and disoriented, hundreds of bats spiraled upward like a leathery tornado before winging into the hills in search of safer roosts elsewhere.
Max blinked in confusion. He had no idea what would cause the bats to abandon the cave in droves, hours before sunset, but he knew it had to do with Morton and Liz. This can't be good, he thought, wondering briefly whether Michael and the rest had seen the swirling cloud of bats as well. Perhaps one of them would know what it meant.
Ducking his head to avoid smacking it on the top of the gate, he rushed into the cave. Psychic energy crackled around his fingertips, ready to attack or to defend, but all he saw right away was Ramirez's lifeless body, lying at the center of a pool of congealed blood. Glazed brown eyes, now forever beyond fear of blackmail and extortion, stared blindly at the ceiling, while a disguised wire hanger and a torn silver shower cap, both completely worthless, rested on the cavern floor only inches away.
Max wasted little time contemplating the lieutenants corpse, instead searching the dimly-lit cave for clues as to the whereabouts of liz and her abductor. He had no flashlight, but he didn't need one; with a moment's concentration, a silvery halo radiated from his hand, lighting up the area around him. His eyes swiftly spotted footprints in the dust, leading farther into the cave. The smaller prints he recognized as Liz's, while a series of larger bootprints indicated that Morton had gone deeper into the cavern as well.
'Liz!' he called into the shadowy throat of the cave. 'It's Max! Can you hear me?'No one answered, leading him to wonder how far Liz and Morton had descended into the unexplored depths ahead. She's down there somewhere, he knew, convinced by both the footprints and his own undeniable sense that the girl he loved was nearby. He didn't know why the kidnapper and his victim had chosen to disappear into the lower regions of the cave, but he knew without hesitation that he had to follow them.
'Max! Where are you? Wait!' Michael's voice invaded the primitive confines of Morton's hideout. Max heard his best friend, who had obviously taken the lead among the others, scrabble up the gravelly ridge outside. 'Hang on, Max! Wait for me! I'm right behind you!'Sorry, Michael, Max thought. No time, liz needs me now.
Like an alien Orpheus, braving the underworld in search of his Eurydice, he charged into the waiting darkness, using his gleaming hand as a torch to light the way.
'I'm coming, Liz! I'm coming!'
28.
The deeper she descended, the colder it got. Liz knew from her goose bumps and trembling arms that she must be several hundred feet beneath the surface. She was lost as well, not at all certain that she could ever find her way back uptop, even if she wasn't being hunted by a crazed, gun-wielding killer.
She could hear Morton rampaging down the sloping passages behind her, perhaps following her oozing footprints through the bewildering network of tunnels. She had hoped that her trick with the bats would have discouraged him for good, but instead it only seemed to have made him even more insanely driven to kill her and regain his merchandise. 'Run, you alien slut! Run while you can!' he bellowed, completely out of his mind. 'You can't get away!'The beam of his flashlight nipped at her heels, and Liz constantly had to shift directions to avoid giving him a clear line of fire. She darted left, right, then left again, taking any turn offered by this never-ending limestone labyrinth. I really have become a mouse in a maze, she realized, remembering what she had written in her journal many hours ago. According to her watch, it was almost five p.m., which meant that Morton had been chasing her through the uncharted caverns for at least an hour and forty-five minutes. How much longer can I keep this up? she thought, exhausted and scared. Or do I have to keep on running through these endless catacombs forever? Max's palm print blazed upon her bare stomach, its phosphorescent radiance warning her right before she ran over the edge of a dangerous subterranean cliff. Yikes, Liz thought. That was close. No helpful guardrails protected travelers from the sudden drop-off, whose ultimate depth Iiz couldn't even begin to guess. The yawning abyss stretched before her farther than her meager light could penetrate. Looking both left and right, Iiz was dismayed to discover that the only way remaining to her appeared to be a narrow ledge running along the length of the chasm, at the base of a towering wall of petrified limestone draperies. The ledge was maybe a foot wide at best, making it extremely risky to venture out onto.
She looked back quickly over her shoulder, hoping she could still backtrack to a more promising escape route. In horror, she saw instead the darting beam of Morton's flashlight. He was only minutes behind her! There was no time to look for another path, nowhere else to go. Swallowing hard, her back pressed tightly against the overlapping limestone drapes, Liz eased onto the ledge, trying with all her might not to look down. The darkness concealing the height of the chasm was a blessing, sparing her from vertigo, as, facing the abyss, she inched along the ledge, the tips of her sneakers actually extending an inch past the brink of the precipice. She felt like some silent-movie comedian climbing around outside the top windows of a twenty-story skyscraper, except that there was nothing at all humorous about her dire situation. Don't look down, she warned herself. Short, fearful breaths misted before her lips in the chilly subterranean atmosphere. Even if you can't see anything, don't look down! Mortons cowboy boots pounded the floor of an adjacent tunnel. 'I'm getting closer!' he threatened loudly. He sounded practically just around the corner. 'I can smell your fear, you glowing freak!'Liz looked down at her luminous belly, wondering if she dared cover her only available source of light. I guess it's too much to hope for, she thought bleakly, that Morton will accidently fall over the edge of the cliff. Alas, the batteries in his flashlight still seemed to have plenty of juice in them.
Creeping sideways along the narrow sftelf, with Morton closing in and no place else to go, she experienced a brief surge of hope as the ledge eventually widened beneath her feet, so that she could actually face forward witnout toppling over the brink, thus allowing her to flee faster and less gingerly. Her relief was short-lived, however, when she abruptly ran into a dead end straight ahead.
'Oh my God,' she whispered. Her precarious trek along the ledge had led her only to a couch-sized limestone balcony overlooking the bottomless crevasse. Walls of solid rock blocked her path on her left and to the front, while the deadly precipice dropped away on her right. She was trapped, with no way out except the way she
