Sachs put the Smith & Wesson inside and stepped to the door but Nathan was looking at her expectantly. She lifted an eyebrow.

"Well, miss, I understand you got a knife too."

"Oh, sure. I forgot about it."

"Rules is rules, you know."

She handed over the switchblade. He dropped it in beside the gun.

"You want the cuffs too?" She touched her handcuff case.

"Nope. Can't get into much trouble with those. 'Course, we had us a reverend who did once. But that was only 'cause his wife come home early and found him hitched to the bedpost with Sally Anne Carlson atop him. Come on, I'll let you in."

Rich Culbeau, flanked by nervous Sean O'Sarian, stood beside a dying lilac bush at the back of the lockup.

The back door to the place overlooked a large field, filled with grass and trash and parts of old cars and appliances. More than a few limp condoms too.

Harris Tomel drove his sparkling Ford F-250 up over the curb and backed around. Culbeau thought he should've come the other way because this looked a little obvious but there was nobody out on the street and, besides, after the custard stand closed, there was no reason for anybody to come down here. At least the truck was new and had a good muffler; it was quiet.

"Who's in the front office?" O'Sarian asked.

"Nathan Groomer."

"That girl cop with him?"

"I don't know. How the hell do I know? But if she is she'll have her gun and that knife she was tattooing you with in the lockbox."

"Won't Nathan hear if the girl screams?"

Recalling the redhead's eyes and the flash of the blade once more, Culbeau said, "The boy'll be more likely to scream than her."

"Well, then, what if he does?"

"We'll get the bag over him fast. Here." Culbeau handed O' Sarian a red-and-white canister of pepper spray. "Aim low 'cause people duck."

"Does it?… I mean, will it get on us? The spray?"

"Not if you don't shoot yourself in the fucking face. It's a stream. Not like a cloud."

"Which of ' em should I take?"

"The boy."

"What if the girl's closer to me?"

Culbeau muttered, "She's mine."

"But – "

"She's mine."

"Okay," O'Sarian agreed.

They dipped their heads as they went past a filthy window in the back of the lockup and paused at the metal door. Culbeau noticed that it was open a half-inch. "See, it's unlocked," he whispered. Feeling he'd scored some kind of point against O'Sarian. Then wondering why he felt he needed to. "Now, I'll nod. Then we go in fast, spray 'em both – and be generous with that shit." He handed O'Sarian a thick bag. "Then throw that over his head."

O'Sarian gripped the canister firmly, nodded at the second bag, which had appeared in Culbeau's hand. "So we're taking the girl too."

Culbeau sighed, said an exasperated, "Yeah, Sean. We are."

"Oh. Okay. Just wondered."

"When they're down just drag 'em out fast. Don't stop for nothing."

"Okay… Oh, I was meaning to say. I got my Colt."

"What?"

"I got my.38. I brought it." He nodded toward his pocket.

Culbeau paused for a moment. Then he said, "Good." He closed his big hand around the door handle.

Would this be his last view? he wondered. From his hospital bed Lincoln Rhyme could see a park on the grounds of the University Medical Center in Avery. Lush trees, a sidewalk meandering through a rich, green lawn, a stone fountain that a nurse had told him was a replica of some famous well on the UNC campus at Chapel Hill.

From the bedroom in his townhouse on Central Park West in Manhattan, Rhyme could see sky and some of the buildings along Fifth Avenue. But the windows there were high off the floor and he couldn't see Central Park itself unless his bed was shoved right against the pane, which let him look down onto the grass and trees.

Here, perhaps because the facility had been built with SCI and neuro patients in mind, the windows were lower; even the views here were accessible, he thought wryly to himself.

Then wondered again whether or not the operation would have any success. Whether he'd even survive it.

Lincoln Rhyme knew that it was the inability to do the simple things that was the most frustrating.

Traveling from New York to North Carolina, for instance, had been such a project, so long anticipated, so carefully planned, that the difficulty of the journey had not troubled Rhyme at all. But the overwhelming burden of his injury was the heaviest when it came to the small tasks that a healthy person does without thinking. Scratching an itch on your temple, brushing your teeth, wiping your lips, opening a soda, sitting up in a chair to look out the window and watch sparrows bathe in the dirt of a garden…

He wondered again how foolish he was being.

He'd had the best neurologists in the country and was a scientist himself. He'd read, and understood, the literature about the near impossibility of neuro improvement in a patient with a C4 spinal cord injury. Yet he was determined to go ahead with Cheryl Weaver's operation – despite the chance that this bucolic setting outside his window in a strange hospital in a strange town might be the very last image of nature he ever saw in this life.

Of course there are risks.

So why was he doing it?

Oh, there was a very good reason.

Yet it was a reason that the cold criminalist in him had trouble accepting and one that he'd never dare utter out loud. Because it had nothing to do with being able to prowl over a crime scene searching for evidence. Nothing to do with brushing his teeth or sitting up in bed. No, no, it was exclusively because of Amelia Sachs.

Finally he'd admitted the truth: that he'd grown terrified of losing her. He'd brooded that sooner or later she'd meet another Nick – the handsome undercover agent who'd been her lover a few years ago. This was inevitable, he figured, as long as he remained as immobile as he was. She wanted children. She wanted a normal life. And so Rhyme was willing to risk death, to risk making his condition worse, in the hope that he could improve.

He knew of course that the operation wouldn't allow him to stroll down Fifth Avenue with Sachs on his arm. He was simply hoping for a minuscule improvement – to move slightly closer to a normal life. Slightly closer to her. But summoning up his astonishing imagination, Rhyme could picture himself closing his hand on hers, squeezing it and feeling the faint pressure of her skin.

A small thing to everyone else in the world, but to Rhyme, a miracle.

Thom walked into the room. After a pause he said, "An observation."

"I don't want one. Where's Amelia?"

"I'm going to tell you anyway. You haven't had a drink in five days."

"I know. It pisses me off."

"You're getting in shape for the operation."

"Doctor's orders," Rhyme said testily.

"When have those ever meant anything to you?"

A shrug. "They're going to be pumping me full of who knows what kind of crap. I didn't think it would be smart to add to the cocktail in my bloodstream."

"It wouldn't've been. You're right. But you paid attention to your doctor. I'm proud of you."

"Oh, pride – now there's a helpful emotion."

But Thom was a waterfall to Rhyme's rain. He continued, "But I want to say something."

"You're going to anyway whether I want you to or not."

"I've read a lot about this, Lincoln. The procedure."

"Oh, have you? On your time, I hope."

"I just want to say that if it doesn't work this time, we'll come back. Next year. Two years. Five years. It'll work then."

The sentiment within Lincoln Rhyme was as dead as his spinal cord but he managed: "Thank you, Thom. Now, where the hell is that doctor? I've been hard at work catching psychotic kidnappers for these people. I think they'd be treating me a little better than this."