Pushed open the door. Fired twice into the darkness. Leaped inside,
crouched, fumbled for the wall switch, turned on the overhead lights.
The first of the three rooms was deserted. He proceeded cautiously to
search the. other two.
The tension went out of the line.
Connie had reached the ledge five stories below.
Nevertheless, he kept his hands on the rope and was prepared to belay
her again if she slipped and fell before she had anchored her safety
tether.
He heard two muffled shots.
The fact that he could hear them at all above the bowling wind meant
that they were frighteningly close.
But what was Bollinger shooting at?
The office behind Graham remained dark; but suddenly, lights came on
beyond the windows of the office next door.
Bollinger was too damned close.
Is this where it happens? he wondered. is this where I get the bullet
in the back?
Sooner than he had expected, the signal came on the line: two sharp
tugs.
He reeled in the rope, wondering if he had as much as a minute left
before Bollinger found the correct office the broken window-and him.
li he was going to reach that ledge five stories below before Bollinger
had a chance to kill him, he would have to rappel much faster than he
had done the first time.
Once more, the rope passed over regularly spaced windows. He would have
to be careful not to put his feet through one of them.
Because he’d have to take big steps rather than little ones, and because
he’d have to descend farther on each arc and take less time to calculate
his movements, avoiding the glass would be far more difficult than it
had been from the fortieth to the thirty-eighth floor.
His prospects rekindled his terror. Perhaps it was fortunate that he
needed to hurry. If he’d had time to delay, the fear might have grown
strong enough to immobilize him again.
Harris and the woman were not in the offices of Dentonwick Mail Order
Sales.
Bollinger returned to the corridor. He fired two shots into the door of
the Boswell Patent Brokerage suite.
Boswell Patent Brokerage Gccupied three small rooms, all of them
shabbily furnished-and all of them deserted.
At the broken window, Bollinger leaned out, looked both ways along the
snow-swept six-foot-wide setback. They weren’t there either.
Reluctantly, he brushed the shards of glass out of his way and crawled
through the window.
The storm wind raced over him, pummeled him, stood his hair on end,
dashed snowflakes in his face and shoved them down his shirt, under his
collar, where they melted on his back. Shivering, he regretted having
taken off his overcoat.
Wishing he had handholds of some sort, he stretched out on his belly.
The stone was so cold that he felt as if he had lain down bare-chested
on a block of ice.
He peered over the edge. Graham Harris was only ten feet below,
swinging away from the building on a thin rope, slipping down the line
as he followed his arc, swinging back to the building: rappelling.
He reached down, gripped the piton. It was so cold that his fingers
almost froze to it. He tried to twist it loose but discovered it was
well planted.
Even in the pale, almost nonexistent light, he could see that there was
a gate in the snap link that was fixed to the piton. He fingered it,
tried to open it, but couldn’t figure out how it worked.
Although he was right on top of Harris, Bollinger knew he could not get
off an accurate shot. The cold and the wind had brought tears to his
eyes, blurring his vision. The light was poor. And the man was moving
too fast to make a good target.
Instead, he put down the Walther PPK, rolled onto his side, and quickly
extracted a knife from his trousers pocket. He flicked it open.
It was the same razor-sharp knife with which he had murdered so many
women. And now, if he could cut the rappelling line before Harris got
down to the ledge, he would have claimed his first male victim with it.
Reaching to the piton, he began to saw through the loop of the knot that