than I’d realized and consequently I’d been running across a bridge of
hope, a high arched span, which now dissolved like gossamer and directed
my attention to the chasm beneath me.
Clutching the pajama top, I returned to the corridor.
I heard the boy’s name, “Jimmy, ” before I realized that I was the one
who had softly spoken it.
I called to him again, not sotto voce this time but at the top of my
voice.
I might as well have spoken in a murmur, because my shout drew no more
response than my whisper. No surprise. I hadn’t expected a reply.
Angrily, I wadded the thin pajama top and stuffed it in a coat pocket.
With the illusion of hope dispelled, I could more clearly see the truth.
The boy wasn’t here, not in any of the rooms along this hallway, not on
the level below this one or on the level above. I’d thought it must have
been difficult for the kidnapper to descend the maintenance ladder with
Jimmy, but Jimmy hadn’t been with him. The yellow-eyed bastard had at
some point realized he was being followed by a ma nand a dog. He had put
Jimmy elsewhere before carrying the pajama top which was saturated with
the boy’s scentinto the rat catacombs under the warehouse, hoping to
mislead us.
I remembered how uncertain Orson had become after leading me so
confidently to the warehouse entrance. He had wandered nervously back
and forth in the serviceway, sniffing the air, as though puzzled by
contradictory spoor.
After I’d entered the warehouse, Orson had remained loyally at my side
as we had been drawn by the noises rising from deeper in the building.
By the time I’d found the Darth Vader action figure, I’d forgotten
Orson’s hesitancy and had become convinced that I was close to finding
Jimmy.
Now I ran toward the elevator alcove, wondering why I hadn’t heard a
bark or a snarl. I’d expected the kidnapper to be surprised when he
found a dog waiting for him on the main level. But if he’d known that he
was being tracked and had taken the trouble to use the pajama top to
establish a false trail, perhaps he was prepared to deal with Orson.
When I reached the alcove, it was deserted. The shaft wasn’t aglow with
the kidnapper’s light, which I had glimpsed just before I’d gone into
the third room and found the pajama top.
I directed my flashlight up toward the warehouse, then down at the
bottom of the shaft, one floor below. There was no sign of my quarry in
either direction.
He might have descended. Maybe he was more familiar with this section of
the Wyvern maze than I was. If he knew of a passage connecting .
the lowest level of the warehouse with another facility, elsewhere on
the military base, he could have left by that back door.
Nevertheless, I intended to go upstairs and find Orson, whose continued
silence worried me.
I could risk climbing with one hand partly encumbered, but I couldn’t
hold both the flashlight and the pistol and still keep my balance.
The Glock wouldn’t be helpful if I wasn’t able to see trouble coming, so
I holstered it and kept the light.
As I ascended from the second subterranean level toward the first, I
became convinced that the kidnapper had not gone all the way up to the
ground floor of the warehouse. He had climbed just one level, halfway.
He was waiting there. I was certain of it. He was waiting there like a
troll with a lemon-sour gaze. Going to ambush me as I clambered past the
next entrance to the shaft. Lean out, smile to reveal all his neat
doll-size teeth, and take a whack at my head with another club.
Maybe he’d even discovered a better weapon this time. An iron pipe.
An ax. A scuba diver’s spear gun loaded with a barbed, explosive-tipped,
shark-killing bolt. A tactical nuclear weapon.
I slowed and finally stopped before I reached the rectangular black hole
in the shaft wall. From a few rungs below, I played the flashlight beam
into the alcove, but I was at an angle that allowed me to see little