Jodie. Joe D…

He pictured the thin arms again, the way the man had looked at him.

I’m glad I met you too, partner.

Then Stephen shivered suddenly. Like the time in Bosnia when he’d had to jump into a stream to avoid being caught by guerrillas. The month was March and the water just above freezing.

He closed his eyes and pressed up against the brick wall, smelled the wet stone.

Jodie was -

Soldier, what the fuck is going on there?

Sir, I -

What?

Sir, uhm…

Spit it out. Now, Soldier!

Sir, I have ascertained that the enemy was trying psychological warfare. His attempts have proved unsuccessful, sir. I am ready to proceed as planned.

Very good, Soldier. But watch your fucking step.

And Stephen realized, as he opened the back door to the firehouse and slipped inside, that there’d be no changing the plans now. This was a perfect setup and he couldn’t waste it, particularly when there was a chance not only of killing the Wife and the Friend but of killing Lincoln the Worm and the redheaded woman cop too.

Stephen glanced at his watch. Jodie would be in position in fifteen minutes. He’d call Stephen’s phone. Stephen would answer and hear the man’s high-pitched voice one last time.

And he’d push the transmit button that would detonate the twelve ounces of RDX in Jodie’s cell phone.

Delegate… isolate… eliminate.

He really had no choice.

Besides, he thought, what would we ever have to talk about? What would we ever have to do after we’d finished our coffee?

Hour 26 of 45

WAITING.

Rhyme was now alone in his bed upstairs, listening into the Special Ops frequency. He was dead tired. It was noon on Sunday and he’d had virtually no sleep. And he was exhausted from the most arduous effort of all – of trying to out-think the Dancer. It was taking its toll on his body.

Cooper was downstairs in the lab, running tests to confirm Rhyme’s conclusions about the Dancer’s latest tactic. Everyone else was at the safe house, Amelia Sachs too. Once Rhyme, Sellitto, and Dellray had decided how to counter what they believed would be the Dancer’s next effort to kill Percey Clay and Brit Hale, Thom had checked Rhyme’s blood pressure and asserted his virtual parental authority and ordered his boss into bed, no arguments, reasonable or otherwise, accepted. They’d ridden up in the elevator, Rhyme oddly silent, uneasy, wondering if he’d guessed right again.

“What’s the matter?” Thom asked.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You’re not complaining about anything. No grousing means something’s wrong.”

“Ha. Very funny,” Rhyme grumbled.

After a sitting transfer to get him in bed, some bodily functions taken care of, Rhyme was now leaning back into his luxurious down pillow. Thom had slipped the voice recognition headset over his head and, despite his fatigue, Rhyme himself had gone through the steps of talking to the computer and having it patch into the Special Ops frequency.

This system was an amazing invention. Yes, he’d downplayed it to Sellitto and Banks. Yes, he’d groused. But the device, more than any other of his aids, made him feel differently about himself. For years he’d been resigned to never leading a life that approached normal. Yet with this machine and software he did feel normal.

He rolled his head in a circle and let it ease back into the pillow.

Waiting. Trying not to think of the debacle with Sachs last night…

Motion nearby. The falcon strutted into view. Rhyme saw a flash of white breast, then the bird turned his blue-gray back to Rhyme and looked out over Central Park. It was the male. The tiercel, he remembered Percey Clay telling him. Smaller and less ruthless than the female. He remembered something else about peregrines. They’d come back from the dead. Not too many years ago the entire population in eastern North America grew sterile from chemical pesticides and the birds nearly became extinct. Only through captive breeding efforts and control of pesticides had the creatures thrived.

Back from the dead…

The radio clattered. It was Amelia Sachs calling in. She sounded tense as she told him that everything was set up at the safe house.

“We’re all on the top floor with Jodie,” she said. “Wait… Here’s the truck.”

An armored 4X4 with mirrored windows, filled with four officers from the tactical team, was being used as the bait. It would be followed by a single unmarked van, containing – apparently – two plumbing supply contractors. In fact they were 32-E troopers in street clothes. In the back of the van were four others.

“The decoys’re downstairs. Okay… okay.”

They were using two officers from Haumann’s unit for decoys.

Sachs said, “Here they go.”

Rhyme was pretty sure that given the Dancer’s new plans, he wouldn’t try a sniper shot from the street. Still, he found himself holding his breath.

“On the run…”

A click as the radio went dead.

Another click. Static. Sellitto broadcast, “They made it. Looks good. Starting to drive. The tail cars’re ready.”

“All right,” Rhyme said. “Jodie’s there?”

“Right here. In the safe house with us.”

“Tell him to make the call.”

“Okay, Linc. Here we go.”

The radio clicked off.

Waiting.

To see if this time the Dancer had faltered. To see if this time Rhyme had out-thought the cold brilliance of the man’s mind.

Waiting.

Stephen’s cell phone brayed. He flipped it open.

“ ’Lo.”

“Hi. It’s me. It’s -”

“I know,” Stephen said. “Don’t use names.”

“Right, sure.” Jodie sounded nervous as a cornered ’coon. A pause, then the little man said, “Well, I’m here.”

“Good. You got that Negro to help you?”

“Uhm, yeah. He’s here.”

“And where are you? Exactly?”

“Across the street from that town house. Man, there’re a lot of cops. But nobody’s paying any attention to me. There’s a van just pulled up a minute ago. One of those four-by-fours. A big one. A Yukon. It’s blue and it’s easy to spot.” In his discomfort he was rambling. “It’s really, really neat. It has mirrored windows.”

“That means they’re bulletproof.”

“Oh. Really. It’s neat how you know all this stuff.”

You’re going to die, Stephen said to him silently.

“This man and a woman just ran out of the alley with, like, ten cops. I’m sure it’s them.”

“Not decoys?”

“Well, they didn’t look like cops and they were looking pretty freaked out. Are you on Lexington?”

“Yeah.”

“In a car?” Jodie asked.

“Of course in a car,” Stephen said. “I stole some little shit Jap thing. I’m going to follow them. Then wait till they get to some deserted area and do it.”

“How?”

“How what?”

“How’re you going to do it? Like a grenade or a machine gun?”

Stephen thought, Wouldn’t you like to know?

He said, “I’m not sure. It depends.”

“You see ’em?” Jodie asked, sounding uncomfortable.

“I see them,” Stephen said. “I’m behind them. I’m pulling into traffic now.”

“A Jap car, huh?” Jodie said. “Like a Toyota or something?”

Why, you little asshole traitor, Stephen thought bitterly, stung deeply by the betrayal even though he’d known it was probably inevitable.

Stephen was in fact watching the Yukon and backup vans speed past him. He wasn’t, however, in any Japanese car, shitty or otherwise. He wasn’t in any car at all. Wearing the fireman’s uniform he’d just stolen, he was standing on the street corner exactly one hundred feet from the safe house, watching the real version of the events Jodie was fictionalizing. He knew they were decoys in the Yukon. He knew the Wife and the Friend were still in the safe house.