It was Bishop who said, "You don't know which side they're in."

"No. I'm sorry." She felt as if she'd been apologizing to this man since she met him. Hell, she had been.

Hollis was scowling. To Bishop, she said, "Great. That's just great. You're psychically blind, the storm has all my senses scrambled, and we're in a huge burning building without a freakin' map."

"Which is why Dani is here." Those pale sentry eyes were fixed on her face.

Dani felt wholly inadequate. "I-I don't-All I know is that he's down there somewhere."

"And Miranda?"

The name caused her a queer little shock, and for no more than a heartbeat, Dani had the dizzy sense of something out of place, out of sync somehow. But she had an answer for him. Of sorts. "She isn't-dead. Yet. She's bait, you know that. She was always bait, to lure you."

"And you," Bishop said.

Dani didn't want to think about that. Couldn't, for some reason she was unable to explain, think about that. "We have to go, now. He won't wait, not this time." And he's not the only one.

The conversation had taken only brief minutes, but even so the smoke was thicker, the crackling roar of the fire louder, and the heat growing ever more intense.

Bitterly, Hollis said, "We're on his timetable, just like before, like always, carried along without the chance to stop and think."

Bishop turned and started toward the rear of the building and the south corner. "I'll go down on this side. You two head for the east corner."

Dani wondered if instinct was guiding him as well, but all she said, to Hollis, was, "He wouldn't take the chance if he had it, would he? To stop and think, I mean."

"If it meant a minute lost in getting to Miranda? No way in hell. That alone would be enough, but on top of that he blames himself for this mess."