Would he fall into such guilt that his life would be altered forever, turned gray, turned worthless?

Change…

He was close to turning around and returning to the federal building, putting the money back.

But, no. He was doing the right thing. And he'd live with the consequences, whatever they were.

But, goddamn, William, you better come through for me.

Dellray now crossed the street in the Village and wandered right up to William Brent, who blinked in faint surprise, as if he'd believed Dellray wouldn't come. They stood together. This wasn't a set-an undercover operation-and it wasn't a recruiting session. It was just two guys meeting on the street to conduct business.

Behind them an unclean teenage boy, strumming a guitar and bleeding from a recent lip piercing, moaned out a song. Dellray motioned Brent along the sidewalk. The smell and the sound faded.

The agent asked, "You found anything more?"

"Have, yes."

"What?" Once again, trying not to sound desperate.

"It wouldn't do any good to say at this point. It's a lead to a lead. I'll guarantee you something by tomorrow."

Guarantee? Not a word you heard often in the snitch business.

But William Brent was your Armani of CIs.

Besides, Dellray had no choice.

"Say," Brent said casually, "you through with the paper?"

"Sure. Keep it." And handed the folded-up New York Post to Brent.

They'd done this all before, of course, a hundred times. The CI slipped the newspaper into his attache case without even feeling for the envelope inside, much less opening it up and counting the money.

Dellray watched the money disappear as if he were watching a coffin submerge into a grave.

Brent didn't ask the source of the cash. Why should he? It wasn't relevant to him.

The CI now summarized, half musing, "White male, a lot of mediums. Employee or inside connection. Justice For something. Rahman. Terrorism, possibly. But it could be something else. And he knows electricity. And significant planning."

"That's all we have for now."

"I don't think I need anything else," Brent said without a hint of ego. Dellray took the words and this attitude as encouragement. Normally, even parting with a typical snitch gratuity-$500 or so-he felt like he was getting robbed. Now, he had a gut sense that Brent would deliver.

Dellray said, "Meet me tomorrow. Carmella's. The Village. Know it?"

"I do. When?"

"Noon."

Brent further wrinkled his wrinkled face. "Five."

"Three?"

"Okay."

Dellray was about to whisper, "Please," which he didn't think he'd ever said to a CI. He canned the desperation but had a tough time keeping his eyes off the attache case, whose contents might just be the ashes of his career. And, for that matter, his entire life. An image of his son's ebullient face rose. He forced it away.

"Pleasure doing business with you, Fred." Brent smiled and nodded a farewell. The streetlight glinted off his oversized glasses and then he was gone.

The deep bubble of a car engine sounded outside the window and fell to silence.

Rhyme was speaking to Tucker McDaniel and Lon Sellitto, both of whom had arrived not long before-independently-around the time the Death Doctor had exited so abruptly.

Sachs would be throwing the NYPD Official Business placard on the dash and heading toward the house. And, yes, a moment later the door opened and her footsteps, spaced far apart because of her long legs, and because of the urgency she wore like her weapon, resounded on the floor.

She nodded to those present and spent a second longer examining Rhyme. He noted the expression: tenderness blended with the clinical eye typical of those in relationships with the severely disabled. She'd studied quadriplegia more than he had, she could handle all the tasks involved in his intimate, day-to-day routine, and did occasionally. Rhyme was, at first, embarrassed by this but when she pointed out, with humor and maybe a little flirtation, "How's it different from any other old married couple, Rhyme?" he'd been brought up short. "Good point" was his only response.

Which didn't mean her doting, like anyone else's, didn't rankle occasionally and he glanced at her once and then turned to the evidence charts.

Sachs looked around. "Where's the award?"

"There was an element of misrepresentation involved."

"What do you mean?"

He explained to her about Dr. Kopeski's bait and switch.

"No!"

Rhyme nodded. "No paperweight."

"You threw him out?"

"That was Thom. And a very fine job he did of it. But I don't want to talk about that now. We have work to do." He glanced at her shoulder bag. "So what do we have?"

Pulling several large files out, she said, "Got the list of people who had access to the Algonquin computer pass codes. And their resumes and employee files."

"What about disgruntled workers? Mental problems?"

"None that're relevant."

She gave more details of her meeting with Andi Jessen: There was no record of employees in the steam tunnel work area near the substation on Fifty-seventh Street. There had been no obvious terrorist threats but an associate was looking into the possibility. "Now, I spoke to somebody who works in the Special Projects Division-that's alternative energy, basically. Charlie Sommers. Good guy. He gave me the profile of the sort of person who could rig an arc flash. A master electrician, military electrician, a power company lineman or troubleman-"

"Now that's a job description for you," Sellitto remarked.

"It's really troubleshooter, a foreman basically. You need on-the-job experience to make one of these arc flashes happen. You can't just look it up on the Internet."

Rhyme nodded at the whiteboard and Sachs wrote her summary. She added, "As for the computer, you'd need to have classroom training or a fair amount of training on the job. That's pretty tricky too." She explained about the SCADA and EMP programs that the UNSUB would have to be competent in.

She added these details to the chart too.

Sellitto asked, "How many're on the list?"

"Over forty."

"Ouch," McDaniel muttered.

Rhyme supposed that one of the names on the list could be the perp's, and maybe Sachs or Sellitto could narrow it down to a more reasonable number. But what he wanted at the moment was evidence. Of which there was very little, at least little that was productive.

Nearly twelve hours had elapsed since the attack and they were no closer to finding the man who'd been in the coffee shop, or any other suspect.

The lack of leads was frustrating, but more troubling was a simple entry in the UNSUB's profile chart: Possibly same person who stole 75 feet of similar Bennington cable and 12 split bolts. More attacks in mind?

Was he rigging something right now? There'd been no warning about the bus attack. Maybe that was the MO for his crimes. Any moment the networks could report a story that perhaps dozens of people had been killed in a second arc flash explosion.

Mel Cooper made a copy of the list and they divided up the names. Sachs, Pulaski and Sellitto took half, McDaniel the rest, for his federal agents to follow up on. Sachs then looked through the personnel files she'd gotten at Algonquin and kept the ones that corresponded to the names they'd selected, gave the others to McDaniel.

"This Sommers, you trust him?" Rhyme asked.

"Yes. He checked out. And he gave me this." She whipped out a small black electronic device and pointed it toward a wire near Rhyme. She pressed a button and read a screen. "Hm. Two hundred forty volts."

"And how about me, Sachs? Am I fully charged?"