Ralph heard the door shut behind him, but he paid it no mind. His only concern for the moment was finding the mail room, and the door was conveniently marked. He let himself in. The large, darkened mail room consisted of rows and rows of steel shelving six or seven feet high. Obviously it doubled as a supply area. Cartons of stationery and envelopes lined the shelves. It was impossible to see beyond the ends of the rows, and Ralph wandered up and down the maze-like arrangement looking for the mail chute, feeling very much like a large rat in a psychology experiment.

There it was. Ralph felt his heart skip a beat; there was the chute, and the arm of the red suit extending from the bottom of it. He grabbed the sleeve and pulled first the top, then the pants out. He began to unbutton his oxford shirt.

All of a sudden he heard one thing he didn't want to hear: a voice. "We start down here and work up." A man's voice, and it sounded like they were in the same room. "Someone is here."

Ralph yanked the cape out of the chute and ducked low. He glanced around furtively for a place to hide. Unless he was a manila envelope he was out of luck. To add to the confusion, his communicator beeped to life. "Ralph," Bill's voice called. "Where are ya?"

Ralph groaned. "Not now."

"Get a move on, kid," Bill continued. "They picked the Counselor. She's first in line. She's got fifteen minutes tops."

00o00

Pam, listening at the door for Rahim's return, looked toward Bill. "What does he say?"

Shaking his head, Bill replied, "He's not sayin' anything… I dunno if he can hear me."

00o00

Ralph saw motion at the end of the aisle and flattened himself against the wall out of sight. It was Aram… one man, so where was the other one? Ralph was willing to bet that with luck the other was guarding the door. He wondered briefly if he had time to get the suit on. Probably not. Fifteen minutes to get to Pam.

Again, any plan was better than no plan. Ralph took a small parcel out of the bin beneath the chute and tossed it as far as he could to the opposite side of the room, away from the entrance to the room. He heard shouts and the scurrying of both men toward the source of the sound. While their backs were turned and their attention elsewhere, Ralph made a run for the doorway and the corridor beyond. His luck failed at that point and he was spotted. Both terrorists gave chase.

Ralph yanked open the door to the stairwell and bounded up the first flight, the suit tight in his hands. Just a few minutes, that was all he needed; just enough time to get the suit on and he could take both of those guys out and still pull Pam and Bill out of the fire. From behind he could hear the two men, no longer bothering to keep silent, pounding up the stairs after him. They sounded close.

He had reached the fourth floor landing when from above he heard another man start down. There was nowhere for him to go but the fourth floor itself. He pulled the fire door open and ran through, pausing long enough to pull it closed behind him this time.

The floor was deserted, having been evacuated by the police earlier in the day. Just a lot of desks and cubicles and glowing green computer screens. Looked to be the secretarial pool. He ducked around the corner of one of the work stations and started again to remove his shirt. From out on the landing he could hear voices.

"He can't be far."

A new voice, probably the guy who'd been coming down from the fifth floor.

When he heard the door open, Ralph scooped up the suit and started to run again. He hadn't so much as gotten the cape on yet. "Damn…" Footsteps were soon closing in on him, even though he couldn't see his pursuer because the Port-A-Walls formed yet another rat's maze of dead ends and cul-de-sacs. He wanted to get back to the stairwell, but…

Ralph peered around the corner to see Aaronson still standing by the door. Trying the play that had worked so well downstairs occurred to him. Back by special request, Ralph Hinkley will now attempt to distract three armed men by throwing a high-heeled shoe for distance, but he threw the idea away instead. There was no way they would fall for that old trick twice, and even if two of them did, that still left this barn door standing in front of the only exit. He couldn't get out that way.

A bullet pierced the fabric of the wall just in front of him and Ralph ran in another direction. He was running out of directions with not the slightest idea where he was going.

He found out shortly – he was going to be trapped. He found himself at the end of the line with windows on one side, walls on two sides, and pursuers close behind to the rear. That was it, then.

Surrendering occurred to him in the next moment. It would be very easy to stand there with his hands in the air and wait for them to catch up to him. They would bring him downstairs, maybe, if they didn't shoot him on the spot. Maybe there would be time to get into the suit. Maybe together he and Bill could…

Ralph put those thoughts out of his head. Something inside told him he'd be shot on sight, and even if he was wrong about that, he was positive they would not allow him the chance to get into the suit. He had one more option besides waving the white flag. Ralph raised the window and leaned out. Why did four floors look like forty when he tried to picture himself standing on that narrow ledge? To avoid any arguments with himself, Ralph put a leg over the ledge and climbed out onto the ten-inch-wide shelf that surrounded the building below the fourth floor. Want to be a hero? he asked himself. Well, go for it.

The three men chasing Ralph came up on the office Ralph had just vacated like gangbusters, guns ready to fire. "Where is he?" demanded Aram of thin air. "Where did he go?"

"He could not possibly have gotten past us," Aaronson said.

"Do you see an intruder here? Do you?" he screamed.

The two men looked at each other silently. Their leader was flipping out, and it was probably best for them if they said nothing. They studied their shoes, the view, anything, as Aram continued his tirade.

Ralph could hear them from outside. Ralph could hear a lot of things. His hearing had become more acute since he'd closed his eyes, and they'd been closed since he'd pulled the window shut behind him. He tried telling himself that he was only three inches above the ground, walking on the curb and pretending it was a high-wire like he'd done when he was a little boy. The problem with that was that when he'd been small there had never been those traffic noises wafting up on the breeze from Wilshire Boulevard, and he didn't recall the wind ever being this stiff. He still clutched the suit, in the wild hope that it might offer him some protection even clenched in his fist… perhaps allow him to stick to the building. If sweat were glue, he would have no trouble at all. He stood absolutely still, eyes shut tight, plastered against the wall. Maybe surrendering wouldn't have been so bad. Maybe even getting shot wouldn't have been so bad.

"I hate this…" Ralph muttered, forcing his dry mouth to form words. "I hate this."

Above the whistle of the wind, his communicator clicked on and Bill's voice reached his ears. "Ralph, where are you? Come on, kid, we can't keep this up forever. They're gonna…"

Anger gave Ralph the strength to rebut. "Will you shut up?" he demanded. "Don't look down," he reminded himself. "That's it. That's all you have to remember. Don't look down."

The communicator droned on. "… any minute now, you know; we're not playin' penny ante up here…"

Ralph grabbed at the communicator and nearly lost his balance. His knees locked and for a moment he even stopped breathing. He remained motionless, sure that at any moment the vibration from his pounding heart would push him right off the ledge. He broke his own first commandment and opened his eyes. Reflexively, the first direction they turned was down. Those cars looked so small…

"I can't…" Ralph forced through clenched teeth. "I can't… that's it. Okay, come get me. Come get me. I give up…"

00o00

Bill listened for a reply. He'd heard the 'shut up' part, and planned to deal with that later, but nothing else. Ralph's soliloquy hadn't been loud enough to carry through the transmitter. "Uh, Ralph," Bill continued, "I don't know what you're doin', but you think maybe you could tear yourself away long enough to get us outta here? Can you hear me, kid?"

Pam moved over to join him and looked over his shoulder for a moment before he realized she was there. "Why doesn't he answer?"

"If he's trying to keep us on edge, he's doing a real good job of it," Bill replied curtly.

"Maybe he's in trouble."

"He's got the suit. We're in trouble." The Maxwell logic once again. Pam grabbed the communicator out of his hand.

"Give me that thing," she snapped. Holding it to her lips, she asked, "How does this work?" Then she found the switch. "Never mind. Ralph, honey, where are you? Are you all right? Ralph, answer me."

Ralph could hear her, but he couldn't answer. He was still stuck, unable to go ahead or move back, afraid to move even enough to get his hand on the communicator and answer. "Ralph?" Pam's voice called again. For the first time in his life Ralph found that he understood the old adage, 'So near and yet so far.'

00o00

Bill motioned for Pam to keep trying. "See if you can get anything out of him. I've been dialing 911 on that thing for as long as I can…"

A round of gunfire cut him off in mid-complaint. Pam dropped the communicator when Bill grabbed her and pulled her to the floor behind Carlisle's desk. The sharp hot flash of pain that surged through his shoulder told him that Rahim had been faster. The terrorist leader stood in the doorway, pistol pointed at the spot where the two of them had been standing a moment before.

00o00

Ralph was also startled by the sound, which he could hear both inside the building and via the communicator. Motivated at last, he forgot his own predicament and grabbed for the transmitter. "Pam!" he called into it desperately. "Pam!"

Silence.

00o00

"Up," ordered Rahim coldly. "Both of you. Get up."

Pam started to do so, edging slowly to her feet with a wary eye on Rahim, then realized that Bill was doing a very awkward job of it. The sleeve of his white shirt showed a small tear, and a dark bloodstain where the slug had gone in. That, added to the fact that he was still handcuffed, made movement very difficult. Bill wasn't going anywhere in a hurry.

"Oh, my God…" escaped her. "Bill…"

Bill resisted her attempt to keep him from standing. He knew he was in for a lot of pain later, but for now the adrenalin was flowing, helping him focus on a fantasy of Rahim tied between two Mack trucks going in opposite directions. "Okay," he said at last, "you've got our attention. Now what do you want?"

Rahim gestured to the communicator on the floor. "What is that?" When neither of them answered, Rahim posed the next question to Bill. "Do you wish to be the first to die?"

"Well, it would kinda ruin my weekend, to tell you the truth." Steady, Maxwell, he warned himself. It would be altogether too easy to lose what control he had left. He had to stay on his feet. This wasn't the worst one he had ever taken. When Pam took his arm, Bill tried to pull away but she clung even tighter. "It's nothing," he told her in an aside. "Just a scratch."

Some scratch. Pam didn't buy that for a minute, not the way he was bleeding. She wracked her brain for some way to help, almost missing Rahim's next words.

"Over there." She looked up to see him pointing at her. "Move."

"But…"

Pam's protest died unspoken when Rahim raised his pistol and trained the sight on her. She moved, very slowly and cautiously, away from Bill.

Fuming helplessly, Bill watched Pam, knowing what was coming next. And Pam's shoulder would not be the target of Rahim's next shot. For the first time in his memory, his mind was a blank, not a single scenario to be found.