Robert Walker - Extreme Instinct

She found a stairwell, and exit sign, and a window at the end of this corridor. She heard the exit door below open and she rushed to the window to stare out into the night, hoping to see him come into view, running from the building. She prepared to blow a hole through his damned head when he did so, but no one appeared from the exit below. A noise filtered up to her. Someone pushing through yet another door, a gunshot, and silence.

She raced down the stairs and pushed through a door on yet another corridor leading to the center of the complex, and there, on the floor, lay Sam Fronval, a bullet hole seeping blood from his stomach, his walkie-talkie lying some feet away.

''Bastard run right up on me and fired. I didn't expect-"

"Save your breath, Sam!" she ordered and got on the two-way radio, calling for anyone listening, "Get those medics from room four twenty-two to… to… where the hell are we, Sam? Sam?"

"Main floor, corridor B, near center exit," the old ranger said, moaning now with the pain.

Jessica ripped the leather pouch from the radio and tore Fronval's belt from his pants with an effort. She wrapped the belt around the wound, shoved the leather pouch in tight against the bleeding, small-bore hole, and tightened the belt around wound and makeshift bandage as best she could, all to the complaints of Fronval, who kept saying, "I'm all right, Jessica! Get on after the bastard! Don't let him get away now! Go! Go!"

Jessica wouldn't leave until others arrived on the scene to care for Sam. She raced off in the direction the killer had taken, finding herself in the deserted, stone-silent main hall, off which stood the gift shop, the ranger information station that posted the time for the next eruption of Old Faithful, the massive dining room, a breakfast place, a lounge.

There were exits on all sides and through any number of other rooms. It was before hours, so no one was working here. Not a sound to be heard.

Jessica looked up at the mammoth heart of the old hotel, a living monument to the early interest in Yellowstone and the great white American hunter. This area was the original lodge, the workmanship magnificent, lost to the ages. And everything was on a grand, gaudy Gilded Era scale. She imagined the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, and the Morgans, all the powerful barons of the turn of the century meeting here, settling on prices of goods and services, enjoying themselves in a luxury not even dreamed of by others of their day. The main hall sported a wraparound second floor and elegant balcony, so huge a hundred modern-day tourists could stand upon it and watch Old Faithful blow its fifty-foot plume skyward from this observation point and never leave their seats.

Above the second-floor veranda there were rooms and more rooms and additional floors. All the walls were lined with stuffed animal heads, from bison to elk to bear, and beside these hung great, opulent oil paintings depicting scenes and events of a bygone era. Native American blankets and rugs hung everywhere.

All of it stood stark, silent. She hadn't a clue as to Fey-dor Dorphmann's immediate whereabouts.

Then she heard a noise, a pattering, metallic noise. It seemed to be coming from the dining area. She pushed through the closed double doors to stare in at the elegant, wood-motif dining hall, where a massive fireplace, large enough to house a small family for a portrait picture, stood at the center of the room.

Dorphmann could be hiding on the other side of the fireplace and no one could see him.

She glided into the dark room, its lodge pine interior usually inviting but currently menacing. Again, she heard noise-the sound of muffled music, pots and pans, coming from the kitchen area.

She moved slowly, cautiously, her gun extended in two hands before her.

When all had calmed at the lodge and a fire company had put out the blaze, it was predawn before anyone took a breath. Rideout had come down from the air for good and had found breakfast in the lodge kitchen where he once worked as a boy, before his ranger days. It had finally dawned on him where he'd heard Coran's name before. Old Fronval had spoken of her on occasion when telling a story of how a murder in the park had been uncovered by a young female doctor and himself.

Rideout shook his head and stared out a back window, where he could see the east wing of the lodge, scattered ghost clouds from the geysers drifting by, and through a window, he saw a sudden rush of flame in a room several hundred yards away. He instantly got on the house phone and called Fronval's office, getting some female subordinate of Sam's.

"Fire! There's another fire! He's struck again, east wing, near the end. I'm going after the bastard!" he shouted over the woman's questions.

Rideout dropped the receiver and snatched a high-powered rifle from one wall, cartridges from a drawer, and began loading the weapon when the door burst open and Jessica Coran had him in her sights, shouting, "Drop the weapon! Now!"

Corey Rideout's call had had the effect of instantly recalling the fire trucks into action. He and Jessica now raced together for the east wing, Rideout yelling after her to wait for him as he tried to load the weapon kept at all times in the kitchen by the lodge's number one cook. Rideout had known about the legendary cook, who carried his weapon about the place whenever he felt the need.

When Jessica turned a corner of the multifaceted lodge, she saw the figure of a man rushing away from the east wing, and then her eardrums were split open by the piercing sound of a high-powered rifle. Rideout had fired from behind her, and his shell ricocheted off a brick wall, stunning the fugitive momentarily, making him drop his case. Recovering from her own reaction to the gunshot that whizzed past her, Jessica now saw the running figure drop to the ground, roll about the concrete of a vestibule, and snatch up his case. Jessica raised her gun and aimed, but Dorphmann had kept going, ducking behind the wall. She didn't have a shot.

"Are you nuts?!" she shouted at Rideout. "You might've hit me!"

"Not a chance," countered Rideout.

She momentarily wondered if she shouldn't worry about Rideout, if he could possibly be, like others before him, currently in the employ of one Frank Lorentian.

"Just be careful with that damned elephant gun, will you? Stay here and direct traffic to the fire!"

Rideout frowned and replied, "I'm not letting you go off after that maniac on your own."

"It's my job, not yours!"

She made off for the shadow man. It had to be Dorphmann. Two fires in one night. It would end his kill spree now to conclude with her, number nine, as was his intention from the start, from the very first phone call he'd made in Vegas to show her how easily he could kill Chris Lorentian, to his now eighth victim in this latest fire:

#8 if #2-Lustful.

Jessica made it to the vestibule. Behind her, she heard Rideout calling out to her to wait. She shushed him, her Browning automatic at her cheek as she turned to stare down the vestibule. In the distance, disappearing into the billowing clouds of geyser smoke ahead of her, ran the fire Phantom. Behind her, Jessica could hear the sirens and the firemen going into action, and she saw Rideout's silhouetted figure directing them, the big rifle held over his head. Confused firemen rushed now to a second and distinct fire site here this night, once again waking all the guests.

She knew what the firemen would find in the east wing; she didn't need to see it, not to know that inside the charred room, they would find the fire-blackened corpse of the Phantom's eighth victim and the message #8 is #2- Lustful.

So now Feydor had filled his quota, all save #9 is #1, all save his delivering Jessica to his god.

Ahead of her, his shoes clicked on the boardwalk that led deeper and deeper into the Upper Geyser Basin and toward Hellsmouth. It had become painfully obvious what this fiend wanted of her; for her, by her. He wanted her to be swallowed by the waters of Hell, licked to death by Satan's tongue, to enter Dante's Vestibule. He would have placed one human soul on each level of Dante's Inferno. He was ready to come full circle to #9 as #1, as all his victims shared not only the same fate but also parts of one another, shared in the traits and human frailties that had brought them to this end. That, at least, was the thinking of the madman, the force driving him. He killed only those who deserved to die, those who deserved to die by fire for the savior, Feydor Dorphmann-Moses and messenger to Satan.