The Twelfth Card (Lincoln Rhyme 6)

"What's that noise, Sachs?"

"Gail's here. Her dog's got a problem with the site."

"Anything specific?" Sachs asked Davis.

"Nope. Could be sensing anything."

Vegas then growled and pawed Sachs's leg. Davis had told Sachs that another skill of briards was battlefield triage--they'd been used by corpsmen to determine which of the wounded could be saved and which could not. She wondered if Vegas was marking her for the latter ahead of time.

"Keep close," Sachs said to Davis, with an uneasy laugh. "In case I need digging out."

Yu volunteered to go down into the pit (he said he liked tunnels and caves, a fact that astonished Amelia Sachs). But she said no. This was, after all, a crime scene, even if it was 140 years old, and the sphere and strongbox, whatever they might be, were evidence to be collected and preserved, according to CS procedure.

The city workers lowered a ladder into the shaft, which Sachs looked down into, sighing.

"You okay?" Yu asked.

"Fine," she said cheerfully and started into the hole. Thinking: The claustrophobia in the Sanford Foundation's archives was nothing compared to this. At the bottom she took the shovel and pickax Yu had given her and began the excavation.

Sweating from the effort, shivering from the waves of panic, she dug and dug, picturing with every scoop the foxhole collapsing and trapping her.

Pulling out rocks, dislodging the dense earth.

Forever hidden beneath clay and soil . . .

"What's in view, Sachs?" Rhyme asked through the radio.

"Dirt, sand, worms, a few tin cans, rocks."

She progressed about one foot under the building, then two.

Her spade gave a tink and stopped cold. She scraped away soil and found herself facing a rounded brick wall, very old, the mortar clumsily smeared between the bricks.

"Got something here. The side of the cistern."

Dirt from the edges of the foxhole skittered to the floor. It scared her more than if a rat had traipsed across her thigh. A fast image came to mind: being held immobile while dirt flooded around her, crushing her chest, then filling her nose and mouth. Drowning on dirt . . .

Okay, girl, relax. Sachs took several deep breaths. Scraped away more soil. Another gallon or so of it spilled out on her knees. "Should we shore this up, you think?" she called to Yu.

"What?" Rhyme asked.

"I'm taking to the engineer."

Yu called, "I think it'll probably hold. The soil's damp enough to be cohesive."

Probably.

The engineer continued, "If you want we can, but it'll take a few hours to build the frame."

"Never mind," she called to him. Into the speaker she asked, "Lincoln?"

There was a pause.

She felt a jolt, realizing she'd used his first name. Neither of them was superstitious but there was one rule they stuck to: It was bad luck to use their first names on the job.

The hesitation told her that he too was aware she'd broken the rule. Finally he said, "Go ahead."

Gravel and dry dirt again trickled down the side of the foxhole and sprayed her neck and shoulders. It hit the Tyvek suit, which amplified the sound. She jumped back, thinking the walls were coming down. A gasp.