Critical Judgment (1996) (46 page)

Frightened of getting any nearer to the man, and panicked at losing her advantage so quickly, Abby hoisted the heavy extinguisher to her chin and hurled it
across at him with an awkward chest pass. It struck him on the front of his shoulder and the side of his face, bowling him over backward onto the rapidly flooding tile. But Abby could tell he was not badly injured. She whirled and raced up the stairs, three at a time.

The lower stairs were dangerously slippery. Abby’s foot skidded out from under her. She slammed her shin into the steel edge of the stair above. Electric pain shot up her leg, and for the briefest moment she thought it was broken. She cried out and stumbled, barely managing to keep from falling. But she knew she had been badly gashed. She glanced back. Quinn was on his feet, still pawing at his eyes, but obviously regaining his vision. There were no sprinklers past the ceiling of the Lower Dig, so the stairs were dry. And although Abby’s lungs were beginning to burn, adrenaline enabled her to continue taking two or three steps at a time. Then, just as she passed the locked accordion gate at the first emergency tunnel, she heard the clanging of heavy footsteps from the stairway high above her.

It wasn’t even worth slowing to look back. She knew Quinn was coming. The vise was closing. The only hope she had—a wafer-thin chance, at that—was to make it to the vast Upper Dig and pray she could find a staircase up to the plant.

No
, she realized suddenly. No, that wasn’t her only hope. There was another option—not much better, but possible. The landing at the upper escape tunnel was just a short distance above her. If she could make it there without running into the man who was charging down from above, there would be some confusion between him and Quinn about whether she had gone left to the short flight of stairs leading to the Upper Dig, or right, into the old ventilation shaft. That hesitation might give her time to reach the emergency exit and throw the six bolts holding the door. Once outside, she would just have to improvise. But she had been doing that since she had entered the MRI unit in the first place. From that
point there had to be grips built into the rock to get down to the meadow or up to the mesa.

The man clanging down from above couldn’t have been any farther away than a single loop of the staircase when Abby hunched down and plunged to her right, into the tunnel that the Gardner monograph on the Patience Mine had captioned “Piercing an Imposing Wall of Rock.” The ceiling of the passageway, a foot or so lower than the tunnel to the hospital, was worth maybe another ten or fifteen seconds to her. But even for her the run along the hundred-foot channel was awkward and difficult. What little light penetrated from the main shaft disappeared within a few feet. The darkness was stifling. Again and again she lurched heavily against the rock walls. Her shirt, soaked through from the sprinklers, shredded at the point of her left shoulder, along with the skin underneath it. The pain barely registered.

The burning in her lungs was a wildfire now. The heavy, stale air refused to allow her a decent breath. The hundred feet seemed like a mile. Suddenly she hit the door—a stunning blow off the side of her forehead. She fell backward, dazed. Then, frantically battling dizziness, pain, and a wave of nausea, she scrambled to her knees and pulled Lew’s penlight from the pocket of her sodden jeans. Remarkably, the promotional gift from Ezra Black’s pharmaceutical company was still working. She pulled one bolt back, then another and another. Her knuckles scraped against the rock. From behind her in the tunnel she could hear the continued wailing of the emergency sirens. But now she could hear footsteps as well. Then, as she threw the fourth and fifth bolts, Lyle Quinn’s voice filled the darkness.

“Give it up, Abby! There’s an arrest warrant being put together right now saying that you tried to kill Kelly! Working with us is your only hope! Only we can save you now.”

Desperately, Abby clawed at the last bolt.

“Abby, stay right there! You’ll never get down the rock alive!”

The bolt wouldn’t budge. There were no hinges, so the door had to be removable. But inward or out? Quinn’s footsteps were drawing closer. Abby dropped to her back, drew both knees to her chin, and shot her legs out with all the force she could manage. The door broke free, splintering at the bolt, and flew out into the cool night. Instantly the tunnel was flooded with fresh air … and light.

Abby peered out. She was far above the valley and the town. From beyond the meadow below, at the base of the fence, widely spaced spotlights were illuminating much of the cliff. Steady rain—now windblown—was continuing to fall, making the dark rock glisten. In the distance, near the center of town, she could see the blue strobes of two police cruisers heading toward the plant. If Quinn was telling the truth—and on this she had no reason to doubt him—the drivers of those cruisers had been dispatched with a warrant for the arrest of one Abby Dolan. If Joe Henderson could come up with a bogus but totally legal autopsy report, and George Oleander could arrange to have toxic chemicals instilled into his trusting patients, a mere fraudulent arrest warrant had to be child’s play for the men of Patience.

As far as she could see, there were no man-made handholds on the rock. But to her relieved surprise, although the cliff was frighteningly steep, it wasn’t perfectly sheer. There was more slope than she had appreciated from Lew’s slides or even from looking up the rock. Not much slope, but some. Given optimum conditions on a dry day, if she was in no particular hurry and never looked down, it was likely she could have found enough purchase and footholds to make the descent. But no situation could have been further from optimum than the one she was in now.

She would have done almost anything to keep from stepping out onto the rock face. But measured against
her fear of being killed on the jagged boulders at the base of the cliff was the unthinkable prospect of becoming Lyle Quinn’s captive.

Without hesitating she set her feet on a ledge no more than six inches wide, dug her fingers into a shallow crevice, and pulled herself out onto the slippery rock.

W
illing herself not to look down, Abby clung to the wet rock with her fingertips, moving steadily sideways as swirling gusts threatened, again and again, to tear her away into the blackness. The cliff curved gently to her right. The farther she could move around the bend, the more difficult it would be for Quinn to shoot at her if, in fact, that was his intention. It was hard to imagine that Quinn, or whoever conceived of the laboratory escape routes, had ever tried getting down from here. But, then again, the exit they were probably expecting to use was the one at twenty-five feet.

Abby focused desperately on the rock to her right. Each time it seemed there was no place for her to go, a crack in the rock and foothold would become apparent, and she could move on. She uttered a soft little-girl’s cry with each breath, trying her best to ignore burning pains in her shin and shoulder. A piece of lightbulb glass, embedded in the side of her palm, now felt like a deep needle jab every time she tightened her grip. Still, she moved laterally, trying to put some distance between her and the ventilation shaft opening before Quinn reached it.

She was almost midway between the top of the mesa
and the ground. The slope of the rock was such that while climbing down was a possibility, there was absolutely no way to go up. From far above, the glow from the giant neon COLSTAR sign reflected obscenely off the rain, staining the pitch-black sky crimson.

Finally Abby worked herself to a position that was secure enough for her to pause and look about. She was some fifty feet from the opening in the rock. The spot she had found was in the shadow between two beams knifing upward from the powerful lights below. Quinn was still nowhere to be seen. Wind-whipped rain continued to make even standing motionless treacherous. Abby clung to her hold and scanned the boulders and meadow below. The chain-link fence, topped by barbed wire, was unscalable. To the north it was built up into the cliff itself. No chance there. But the south end looked possible. The fence ended against a high wall of almost sheer rock. There was clearly no way over it from the outside. But the fence had been built to keep intruders
out
The rock on this side looked to be sloped. If she could get to the fence, it might be possible to climb back up the cliff there and slide or tumble down the other side. The prospect of trying that route was only slightly less terrifying than the notion of giving up. In the distance the blue strobes of the police cruisers were moving closer.

Having decided on a course of action, Abby took a single step to her right. Still distracted by Quinn’s failure to appear at the opening, she missed her footing and slipped. Before she could even react, her feet were out from under her. Clawing frantically at the wet rock, she slid downward, scraping her belly, chest, and arms. Ten feet, twenty. Suddenly her feet bounced off a large, jagged spire of rock, slowing her fall enough for her to twist her body and grab hold of the spire as she slid past. Her full weight snapped down, nearly tearing her hands away. Her arms were stretched out painfully straight. Her legs dangled like a doll’s. She locked her fingers around the spire and peered down over her shoulder.
Below her stretched thirty feet or more of rain-slicked rock, ending at the boulders. The glass shard in her right hand was a stiletto now, sending continuous electric shocks up her arm. Her shoulder and chest throbbed unbearably. Still, she managed to hold her grip as she searched frantically with her feet for purchase.

At the moment when she felt she could hold on no longer, the toe of her right sneaker landed on a tiny prominence and held. Gingerly, she pushed upward, taking some of the strain off her hands. Six or eight inches above her right foot, her left connected with a more substantial ledge—twelve inches wide at least and sloped downward into the cliff. She planted her full weight on that ledge, released her hands one at a time, and slowly worked them into cracks in the cliff face.

She clung there, gasping in air until gradually her breathing eased. Tears mixed with the rainwater cascading over her face—tears of relief and anger and pain. The bruises over the front of her body were throbbing mercilessly—worse than what she remembered from the broken arm she had suffered in a high-school soccer game. But she was much closer to the ground now. The rock below her seemed craggier and may have even had a bit more slope. She could almost completely visualize her path of descent. If she could stay focused and careful, she could make it down. But where in the hell was Quinn?

Suddenly, through the darkness and the downpour, from far to her left, he hollered out to her.

“That was a close one, Abby! Good thing you eat your Wheaties!”

He had unlocked the accordion gate and gone through the lower escape tunnel. Now he was out on the rock, about thirty yards to her left. A spotlight was directly on him. He had discarded his black sports jacket, but his turtleneck and trousers blended in totally with the cliff face. The light shimmered eerily off his face, hands, and especially his hair.

Abby glanced down at the fence. If she could get to the south corner, there was the very definite possibility of climbing back up the rock and vaulting over. As quickly as she dared, she began moving diagonally downward.

“I could shoot you, Abby! Right here, right now! Wanna see?”

There was a firecracker snap, and a bullet pinged off the rock three feet from her face. A second shot sprayed her with chips. She cringed and reflexively slowed, then, helpless and wondering what it felt like to be shot, she continued lowering herself toward the meadow.

“You’re better off up there than down below!” Quinn called out.

He was moving toward her now, and fairly rapidly. He paused long enough to fire twice more, the first time just above her head, and the second time ricocheting off the rock and actually tearing across the back of her calf. The sharp sting was nearly lost among a dozen other, much deeper, pains.

So now you’ve been shot
, she thought. The sight of the bastard moving confidently toward her brought as much anger as terror. Abby tried to shut him out of her mind and concentrate on each placement of her feet and hands. But she knew she wasn’t going to come close to making it. Once she reached the bottom of the cliff, she would be scrambling over huge boulders for fifty yards before she reached the corner of the fence. Then she would have an almost impossible fifteen-foot climb up the rock and a drop down the other side at least that far. She was moving on adrenaline, but the heavy humidity, plus her gashed leg, multiple bruises, and mediocre conditioning, were all working against her.

“Abby, you’d better listen to me! The guards aren’t going to like you invading their turf!”

Abby was no more than ten feet from the ground and just a few feet from the top of the largest boulder. For the moment she was out of Quinn’s line of sight.
She squinted up through the rain. The Colstar cliff looked like a windowless skyscraper. Above it the garish neon sign, hidden by the jutting edge of the mesa, bloodied the night. Her best bet, she decided, was to go around the boulders, not over them. If Quinn’s guards showed up, then that would be that. But Quinn wouldn’t have warned her to stop if he was confident they were going to reach her.

When she was six feet above the ground, Abby dropped, landing in some muddy dirt between a boulder and the cliff. She huddled there for a few seconds, catching her breath and listening for Quinn or his guards.

“Abby—!”

Quinn’s voice still seemed some distance away. Abby felt renewed hope that if she could skirt the huge rocks, stay low, and steer clear of his line of sight, she might actually make it to the end of the fence.

“Allee, allee in free! … Come out, come out, wherever you are.… Our guards are going to be very annoyed—”

Abby stayed in a crouch and moved quickly around the boulder. There was almost no way that Quinn could spot her unless he came off the cliff and stepped away from it into the meadow, toward the fence. If he did that, and he spotted her, it would be a race. There was still no sign of Quinn’s guards.