Sam sighed. “Eric is doing better than I. Slick, I’m so tired. Maybe I’m just one of those people who will never have superb upper-body strength. I can’t make it to the top. Ten toe-and handholds on the climb, and I slip. My arms can’t hold out. Same thing with the rope. Eric scaled the wall twice. He’s on par with me on the rope, though. I hope he succeeds. I don’t think I’m going to make it, Slick.”

All was forgiven once Slick was reassured that Sam didn’t have any romantic designs on Eric Hawkins. “Sure you will. Just don’t give up. I’m still exercising my hands and fingers. Yeah, I get discouraged, and I wonder how many times in my life I’ll have to use an Uzi. How many times are you going to have to scale a fifty-foot wall and climb a fifty-foot rope? None, that’s how many. I even understand the endurance part, I really do. I’m not giving up, and I don’t want you to either. Promise me, Sam.”

“Okay. Only ten and a half more months to go. How do you think I’ll do out there when it’s twenty degrees and the rope is frozen?” Sam asked, tongue in cheek.

Slick laughed as she headed for the bedroom. “Good luck tonight.”

Sam jumped up to hug her friend. “Night, Slick.”

“Night, Sam.”

It was a few minutes to midnight when Sam and Hawkins prepared to leave their building. They both noticed that the wolf-dog was gone. They looked at each other in the dim moonlight. Sam started down the steps and backed up immediately when the pack of guard dogs appeared out of the night. She turned around. “Guess we aren’t going anywhere this evening. Alpha’s services must be needed somewhere else. I think that fact alone confirms our theory that there’s company tonight on this mountain. I didn’t hear the helicopter, so they must have come up in the cable car. The other possibility is they aren’t here yet.”

Hawkins moved backward. He sat down on the wooden bench under the front window. “Want a cigarette, Sam?”

Sam shrugged. There was a time back in college when she smoked. Not a lot, but she’d given it up with no trouble. “I didn’t know you smoked, Hawkins.”

“I don’t. I keep a pack handy for some reason. It lasts me a whole year. Sometimes you just need that little crutch. To me, this is one of those times. So, do you want one or not?”

“Nah. I’m going to bed so I can dream about us winning the game tomorrow.”