Now, he heard the radio report on the futile pursuit of the perp.

Hearing, tap, tap, tap…

Fuck, I just want to go home.

He wanted to be with Rachel, have a beer with her on their porch in Brooklyn. Well, too early for beer. A coffee. Or maybe it wasn’t too early for a beer. Or a scotch. He wanted to be sitting there, watching the grass and trees. Talking. Or not saying anything. Just to be with her. Suddenly the detective’s thoughts shifted to his teenage son, who lived with Sellitto’s ex. He hadn’t called the boy for three or four days. Had to do that.

He -

Shit. Sellitto realized that he was standing in the middle of Elizabeth Street with his back to the building he was supposed to be guarding, lost in thought. Jesus Christ! What’re you doing? The shooter’s loose around here somewhere, and you’re fucking daydreaming? He could be waiting in that alley there, or the other one, just like he was that morning.

Crouching, Sellitto turned back, examining the dark windows, smudged or shaded. The perp could be behind any one of them, sighting down on him right now with that fucking little gun of his. Tap, tap…The needles from the bullets tearing flesh to shreds as they fanned out. Sellitto shivered and stepped back, taking refuge between two parked delivery trucks, out of sight of the windows. Peering around the side of one van, he watched the black windows, he watched the door.

But those weren’t what he saw. No, he was seeing the brown eyes of the librarian in front of him, a few feet away.

I didn’t…

Tap, tap…

Life becoming no life.

Those eyes…

He wiped his shooting hand on his suit trousers, telling himself that he was sweating only because of the body armor. What was with the fucking weather? It was too hot for October. Who the hell wouldn’t sweat?

“I can’t see him, K,” Sachs whispered into her microphone.

“Say again?” was Haumann’s staticky reply.

“No sign of him, K.”

The warehouse into which Unsub 109 had fled was essentially one big open space divided by mesh catwalks. On the floor were pallets of olive oil bottles and tomato sauce cans, sealed in shrink-wrap. The catwalk she stood on was about thirty feet up, around the perimeter – level with the unsub’s apartment in the building next door. It was a working warehouse, though probably used only sporadically; there were no signs that employees had been here recently. The lights were out but enough illumination filtered through greasy skylights to give her a view of the place.

The floors were swept clean and she could find no footprints to reveal which way Unsub 109 had gone. In addition to the front door and back loading-dock door, there were two others on the ground-floor level, to the side. One labeled Restroom, the other unmarked.

Moving slowly, swinging her Glock ahead of her, her flashlight beam seeking a target, Amelia Sachs soon cleared the catwalks and the open area of the warehouse. She reported this to Haumann. ESU officers then kicked in the loading-dock door of the warehouse and entered, spreading out. Relieved for the reinforcements, she used hand signals to point to the two side doors. The cops converged on them.

Haumann radioed, “We’ve been canvassing but nobody’s seen him outside. He might still be inside, K.”

Sachs quietly acknowledged the transmission. She walked down the stairs to the main floor, joining up with the other officers.

She pointed to the bathroom. “On three,” she whispered.

They nodded. One pointed to himself but she shook her head, meaning she was going in on point. Sachs was furious – that the perp had gotten away, that he had a rape pack in a smiley-face bag, that he’d shot an innocent simply for diversion. She wanted this guy nailed and she wanted to make sure she had a piece of him.

She was in the armored vest, of course, but she couldn’t help thinking about what would happen if one of those needle bullets hit her face or arm.

Or throat.

She held up a single finger. One…

Go in fast, go in low, with two pounds of pressure on the two-and-a-half-pound trigger.

You sure about this, girl?

An image of Lincoln Rhyme came to mind.

Two…

Then a memory of her patrolman father imparting his philosophy of life from his deathbed, “Remember, Amie, when you move they can’t getcha.”

So, move!

Three.

She nodded. An officer kicked the door open – nobody was going near any metal doorknobs – and Sachs lunged forward, dropping into a painful crouch and spraying the flashlight beam around the small, windowless bathroom.

Empty.

She backed out and turned to the other door. The same routine here.

On three, another powerful kick. The door cracked inward.

Guns and flashlights up. Sachs thought, Brother, never easy, is it? She was looking down a long stairway that descended into pitch-black darkness. She noted that there were no backs on the stairs, which meant that the unsub could stand behind them and shoot into their ankles, calves or backs as they descended.

“Dark,” she whispered.

The men shut out their flashlights, mounted to the barrels of their machine guns. Sachs went first, knees aching. Twice she nearly tumbled down the uneven, loose steps. Four ESU officers followed her.

“Corner formation,” she whispered, knowing she wasn’t technically in charge, but unable to stop herself at this point. The troops didn’t question her. Touching one another’s shoulders to orient themselves, they formed a rough square, each facing outward and guarding a quadrant of the basement.

“Lights!”

The beams of the powerful halogens suddenly filled the small space as the guns sought targets.

She saw no threat, heard no sounds. Except one fucking loud heartbeat, she thought.

But that’s mine.

The basement contained a furnace, pipes, oil tanks, about a thousand empty beer bottles. Piles of trash. A half dozen edgy rats.

Two officers probed the stinking garbage bags, but the perp was clearly not here.

She radioed Haumann what they’d found. No one else had seen a sign of the unsub. All the officers were going to rendezvous at the command post truck to continue the canvass of the neighborhood, while Sachs searched the scenes for evidence – with everybody keeping in mind that, as at the museum earlier, the killer might still be nearby.

…watch your back.

Sighing, she replaced her weapon and turned toward the stairs. Then paused. If she took the same flight of steps back up to the main floor – a nightmare on her arthritic knees – she’d still have to walk down another flight to street level. An easier alternative was to take the much shorter stairway directly to the sidewalk.

Sometimes, she reflected, turning toward it, you just have to pamper yourself.

Lon Sellitto had become obsessed with one particular window.

He’d heard the transmission that the warehouse was clear, but he wondered if ESU had actually gotten into all the nooks and crannies. After all, everybody’d missed the unsub that morning at the museum. He’d easily gotten within pistol range.

Tap, tap, tap.

That one window, far right, second floor…It seemed to Sellitto that it had quivered once or twice.

Maybe just the wind. But maybe the motion was from somebody trying to open it.

Or aiming through it.

Tap.

He shivered and stepped back.

“Hey,” he called to an ESU officer, who’d just come out of the herbal importer’s. “Take a look – you see anything in that window?”

“Where?”

“That one.” Sellitto leaned out of cover just a bit and pointed to the black glass square.

“Naw. But the place’s cleared. Didn’t you hear?”

Sellitto leaned out from cover a bit farther, hearing tap, tap, tap, seeing brown eyes going lifeless. He squinted and, shivering, looked the window over carefully. Then in his periphery he suddenly saw motion to his left and heard the squeal of a door opening. A flash of light as the cold sun reflected off something metallic.