Loose ends

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 tu

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 tu

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 came. What do I do now? she despaired. I've run out ojcavel "Liz!"The unmapped caverns were a labyrinthine network of detours and false trails. In theory, it should have been impossible to track a missing person through all these convoluted tu

He also knew that she was in terrible danger. The silver nimbus around his left hand, the same hand that had once brought Liz back from the verge of death, flared brighter than it ever had before, as if urging him onward to ever greater speed. Through some sort of subliminal psychic link, he felt her raw terror and hopeless desperation as though they were his own. At least she's still alive, he thought emphatically, hanging onto that conviction as he descended deeper and deeper into the underworld. But for how long? A bullet hole defacing the wall of one limestone corridor proved that he was following in his quarry's footsteps, as well as confirming that Joe Morton was indeed armed and dangerous. Max gulped apprehensively, but did not slow his pursuit of the vicious killer and his captive. Squeezing through an u