I used my right fingers to yank on the binds one last time, releasing my left hand and then freeing both. My chances of being killed were just as good if I didn't make a dash to get out, once Mona and Ross stopped fighting with each other for the gun.

As fast as I could move, I got to my feet and ran down the steps to the door. I threw myself against it and pounded on it with my fists. Perhaps it was my imagination, but there seemed to be the slightest of cracks where the solid metal panel slid into the wall. I banged again and again, until Mona Berk screamed my name from across the room and fired a shot that glanced off the wall next to my head.

I turned to look and saw Kehoe struggling with her to grab the gun. She was kicking at him but calling out at me. "You'll get us all killed, you bitch," Mona yelled. I dropped to the floor as she let go with another round.

"How could you trust someone who met you in the middle of a double-cross?" I shouted at her. "It's not you he's after, it's the Berk fortune."

"You keep your fucking mouth shut," Kehoe said to me. Then he turned his attention back to Mona, who had run to the far side of the bed. "Give it to me, babe. I can finish them off and still get us out of here."

I was crawling up the stairs on my stomach, ready to make a run for the darker side of the cavernous room. I could see Mona pointing the gun right at Kehoe's chest and I inhaled, ready to give her some more emotional ammunition.

"You must have made a deal with Briggs," I called out to her, crouching at the top of the stairs. "The kid drops the the lawsuit against his father that you two started, in order to get back in Joe's good graces. Then you make a deal with him to get your share of everything he stands to inherit, promising to keep him up to his eyeballs in cocaine and showgirls. But you had to kill Joe to make it work. You two had to kill Joe before he disinherited Briggs for some other indiscretion."

"There aren't enough rounds left for you to fuck with this," Kehoe said to Mona Berk. "Give it back to me."

"He's going to kill you, too, Mona. As soon as he's got your money."

"Shut up," she screamed at me frantically. "I told you to shut up."

"I can shut her up, babe. I want the gun," Kehoe said.

"It doesn't matter now, Ross," I said. "It doesn't matter unless you can boost yourself up and out of that skylight on your red velvet swing. Don't let him fool you again, Mona."

"They can't drill through that door. It's impossible. They'd never be able to get the kind of equipment they'd need to do it up here," Kehoe said to her as she continued to back away.

"They're not drilling. They're opening the door," I said.

He turned from her and looked down the staircase.

"Jaws of life, Ross." The sweetest sound I'd ever heard.

The hydraulic rescue equipment used by police and military under the most dire of circumstances-for excavating bodies from aircraft and automobile accidents, building collapses, military disasters-and occasionally for getting lucky and extricating live ones from the jaws of death. I had seen the Emergency Services Unit use it in the most extreme and dire circumstances, and I knew that it could get the job done here this morning.

Mona Berk held the gun with both hands and pointed it at me. "Stand still. I've got nothing to lose if I shoot you now. You're the reason we're stuck in here, dammit."

The flickering neon shining in from the cityscape above the skylight made the jerky movements of Mona Berk and Ross Kehoe appear like they were caught in the rays of a strobe. I watched from my squat as he lunged at her to get the gun.

Again, Mona screamed as he punched her jaw and the gun fired, by accident more than design.

The bullet must have hit something close to Chet Dobbis, who had tried to flatten himself on the floor. I heard him gasp and saw him struggling to get to his knees, his hands still tied behind his back.

I knew I'd be safer in one of the dark recesses of the domed ceiling, but it would leave Dobbis exposed to the feuding killers.

As he reached behind himself to the chair he'd been sitting on to straighten himself up against it, Mona Berk turned and saw him as clearly as I did in a beam of light that streamed in from overhead.

"Stop moving around, you idiot!" I heard her call to Dobbis as she aimed the gun and discharged another round.

This time he yelled out in pain. He had only been upright for seconds, but Mona had found her mark. Dobbis had been hit.

I pushed up and ran toward him. "Get away from me," he yelled.

There was blood coming from his right shoulder and I grabbed hold of his left elbow to start dragging him with me away from the wildly frantic Mona Berk. I was trying to keep count of the bullets that had been spent, assuming the revolver held six and not knowing how many more Kehoe had in his pocket.

"Give it up," Kehoe said, trying to get his gun away from his out-of-control cohort. "I won't miss."

"We're never going to get out of here, you damn liar," Mona said, refocusing her rage on her partner. "You're going to get us both killed."

I saw the flash of the gun firing and again the sound of the blast echoing within the domed room. Another shot followed immediately and I saw Ross Kehoe fall backward from the impact and heard the crack of his skull against the surface of the floor.

Mona dropped to her knees beside him and ignored me for the moment. Her bloodcurdling screams scattered all the pigeons perched on the edge of the broken skylight. The gunsmoke trailed upward and gave off an acrid smell as it drifted toward the skylight.

I dropped Chet Dobbis's arm and started in the direction of Mona Berk and the fallen Ross Kehoe. The bullet count was in my favor, and the whirring noise at the door behind me continued to give me courage.

As I passed the bar, I grabbed a crystal decanter and cracked it against the marble countertop, holding the jagged glass in my hand by the neck of the broken bottle, and making a run at Mona Berk, who was sobbing now, while Kehoe was silent and still beside her.

"The gun is empty, Mona," I said. "Put it down."

She didn't look up the first time I said it. She was mesmerized, it seemed, by the pool of blood collecting on the floor next to Kehoe's chest, trickling toward her.

"Drop it," I said, determined to get it out of her hands before anyone managed to enter the room.

As I neared them, I could see that Kehoe's chest was moving up and down, but Mona wasn't watching that. She couldn't take her eyes off the blood as the rivulet reached her knee and the crimson stain started to spread on the leg of her pants.

I took a few steps closer to her and she lifted her head, bellowing at me like a shrew, from her kneeling position on the floor. No words came out-only a primal scream. When she picked up her right hand-bringing the gun up with it-I charged at her and knocked her off balance. The revolver dropped onto the floor and slid under the bed a few feet away, while the crystal decanter splintered into hundreds of tiny pieces as I lost my grip, and Mona Berk landed on it as she fell backward.

While she rolled back and forth in pain, trying hopelessly to brush off the shards that were embedded in the skin of her neck, I retrieved the gun and ran to alert my rescuers through the widening crack they were creating in the entryway. Then I untied Chet Dobbis and examined the wound that had grazed his shoulder, reassuring him-and myself-while I waited for the powerful spreader to open the heavy door of the great old forgotten dome of the Mecca Temple.