“But?” she’d asked.

“But he’ll keep after you. And even after the grand jury you’ll still be a threat to Phillip Hansen because you’ll have to testify at trial. That could be months away.”

“The grand jury might not indict him, no matter what we say,” Percey’d pointed out. “Then there’s no point in killing us.”

“It doesn’t matter. Once the Dancer’s been hired to kill someone he doesn’t stop until they’re dead. Besides, the prosecutors’ll go after Hansen for killing your husband and you’ll be a witness in that case too. Hansen needs you gone.”

“I think I see where you’re heading.”

He’d cocked an eyebrow.

“Worm on a hook,” she’d said.

His eyes had crinkled and he’d laughed. “Well, I’m not going to parade you around in public, just put you into a safe house here in town. Fully guarded. State-of-the-art security. But we’ll dig in and keep you there. The Dancer’ll surface and we’ll stop him, once and for all. It’s a crazy idea, but I don’t think we have much choice.”

Another tipple of the scotch. It wasn’t bad. For a product not bottled in Kentucky. “Crazy?” she’d repeated. “Let me ask you a question. You have your role models, Detective? Somebody you admire?”

“Sure. Criminalists. August Vollmer, Edmond Locard.”

“Do you know Beryl Markham?”

“No.”

“Aviatrix in the thirties and forties. She – not Amelia Earheart – was an idol of mine. She led a very dashing life. British upper class. The Out of Africa crowd. She was the first person – not first woman, the first person – to fly solo across the Atlantic the hard way, east to west. Lindbergh used tailwinds.” She’d laughed. “Everybody thought she was crazy. Newspapers were running editorials begging her not to try the flight. She did, of course.”

“And made it?”

“Crash-landed short of the airport, but, yeah, she made it. Well, I don’t know if that was brave or crazy. Sometimes I don’t think there’s any difference.”

Rhyme’d continued, “You’ll be pretty safe, but you won’t be completely safe.”

“Let me tell you something. You know that spooky name? That you call the killer?”

“The Dancer.”

“The Coffin Dancer. Well, there’s a phrase we use in flying jets. The ‘coffin corner.’ ”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the margin between the speed your plane stalls at and the speed it starts to break apart from Mach turbulence – when you approach the speed of sound. At sea level you’ve got a couple hundred miles per hour to play with, but at fifty or sixty thousand feet, your stall speed’s maybe five hundred knots per hour and your Mach buffet’s about five forty. You don’t stay within that forty-knots-per-hour margin, you turn the coffin corner and you’ve had it. Any planes that fly that high have to have autopilots to keep the speed inside the margin. Well, I’ll just say that I fly that high all the time and I hardly ever use an autopilot. Completely safe isn’t a concept I’m familiar with.”

“Then you’ll do it.”

But Percey hadn’t answered right away. She’d scrutinized him for a moment. “There’s more to this, isn’t there?”

“More?” Rhyme had asked, but the innocence in his voice had been a thin patina.

“I read the Times Metro section. You cops don’t go all out like this for just any murder. What’d Hansen do? He killed a couple of soldiers, and my husband, but you’re after him like he’s Al Capone.”

“I don’t give a damn about Hansen,” quiet Lincoln Rhyme had said, sitting in his motorized throne, with a body that didn’t move and eyes that flickered like dark flames, exactly like the eyes of her hawk. She hadn’t told Rhyme that she, like him, would never name a hunting bird, that she’d called the haggard merely “the falcon.”

Rhyme had continued. “I want to get the Dancer. He’s killed cops, including two who worked for me. I’m going to get him.”

Still, she’d sensed there was more. But she hadn’t pushed it. “You’ll have to ask Brit too.”

“Of course.”

Finally, she’d said, “All right, I’ll do it.”

“Thank you. I -”

“But,” she interrupted.

“What?”

“There’s a condition.”

“What’s that?” Rhyme lifted an eyebrow and Percey had been struck by this thought: once you overlooked his damaged body you saw what a handsome man he was. And, yes, yes, realizing that, she felt her old enemy – the familiar cringe of being in the presence of a good-looking man. Hey, Troll Face, Pug Face, Troll, Trollie, Frog Girl, gotta date for Saturday night? Betcha don’t…

Percey’d said, “That I fly the U.S. Medical charter tomorrow night.”

“Oh, I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”

“It’s a deal breaker,” she’d said, recalling a phrase Ron and Ed had used occasionally.

“Why do you have to fly?”

“Hudson Air needs this contract. Desperately. It’s a narrow-margin flight and we need the best pilot in the company. That’s me.”

“What do you mean, narrow margin?”

“Everything’s planned out to the nth degree. We’re going with minimum fuel. I can’t have a pilot wasting time making go-arounds because he’s blown the approach or declaring alternates because of minimum conditions.” She’d paused, then added, “I am not letting my company go down the tubes.”

Percey’d said this with an intensity that matched his, but she’d been surprised when he nodded. “All right,” Rhyme had said. “I’ll agree.”

“Then we have a deal.” She’d instinctively reached forward to shake his hand but caught herself.

He’d laughed. “I stick to solely verbal agreements these days.” They’d sipped the scotch to seal the bargain.

Now, six-thirty on Saturday morning, she rested her head against the glass of the safe house. There was so much to do. Getting Foxtrot Bravo repaired. Preparing the nav log and the flight plan – which alone would take hours. But still, despite her uneasiness, despite her sorrow about Ed, she felt that indescribable sense of pleasure; she’d be flying tonight.

“Hey,” a friendly voice drawled.

She turned to see Roland Bell in the doorway.

“Morning,” she said.

He walked forward quickly. “You have those curtains open you better be keepin’ low as a bedbaby.” He tugged the drapes shut.

“Oh. I heard Detective Rhyme was springing some trap. Guaranteed to catch him.”

“Well, word is Lincoln Rhyme is all the time right. But I wouldn’t trust this particular killer behind a dime. You sleep decent?”

“No,” she said. “You?”

“I dozed a couple hours back,” Bell said, peering with sharp eyes out through the curtain. “But I don’t need much sleep. Wake up full of git most days. Havin’ youngsters does that to you. Now, just you keep that curtain closed. Remember, this is New York City, and think what’d happen to my career if you got yourself winged by some gangsta shootin’ stray bullets in the air. I’d have the dry grins for a week, that happened. Now how about some coffee?”

Here were a dozen punchy clouds reflected in the windows of the old town house early this Sunday morning.

Here was a hint of rain.

Here was the Wife standing in a bathrobe at the window, her white face surrounded by dark curly hair mussed from just waking.

And here was Stephen Kall, one block away from the Justice Department’s safe house on Thirty-fifth Street, blending into the shadows beneath a water tower on the top of an old apartment building, watching her through his Leica binoculars, the reflection of the clouds swimming across her thin body.

He knew that the glass would be bulletproof and would certainly deflect the first shot. He could place another round within four seconds, but she’d stumble backward in reaction to the shattering glass even if she didn’t realize she was being fired at. The odds were he couldn’t inflict a mortal wound.

Sir, I will stick to my original plan, sir.