The Cold Moon (Lincoln Rhyme 7)

"I think he's after us."

Duncan turned quickly down a narrow street and sped up. At the next intersection he turned south. "What do you see?"

"I don't think. . . . Wait. There he is. He's after us. Definitely."

"That street there--up a block. On the right. You know it? Does it go through to the West Side Highway?"

"Yeah. Take it." Vincent felt his palms sweating.

Duncan turned and sped down the one-way street, then turned left onto the highway, heading south.

"In front of us? What's that? Flashing lights?"

"Yep." Vincent could clearly see them. Heading their way. His voice rose. "What're we going to do?"

"Whatever we have to," Duncan said, calmly turning the wheel precisely and making an impossible turn seem effortless.

Lincoln Rhyme struggled to tune out the droning of Sellitto on his cell phone. He also tuned out the rookie, Ron Pulaski, making calls about Baltimore mobsters.

Tuning it all out so he could let something else into his thoughts.

He wasn't sure what. A vague memory kept nagging.

A person's name, an incident, a place. He couldn't say. But it was something he knew was important, vital.

What?

He closed his eyes and swerved close to the thought. But it got away.

Ephemeral, like the puff balls he would chase when he was a boy in the Midwest, outside of Chicago, running through fields, running, running. Lincoln Rhyme had loved to run, loved to catch puff balls and the whirlygig seeds that spiraled from trees like descending helicopters. Loved to chase dragonflies and moths and bees.

To study them, to learn about them. Lincoln Rhyme was born with a fierce curiosity, a scientist even then.

Running . . . breathless.

And now the immobilized man was also running, trying to grasp a different sort of elusive seed. And even though the pursuit was in his mind only, it was no less strenuous and intense than the footraces of his youth.

There . . . there . . .

Almost have it.

No, not quite.

Hell.

Don't think, don't force. Let it in.

His mind sped through memories whole and memories fragmented, the way his feet would pound over fragrant grass and hot earth, through rustling reeds and cornfields, under massive thunderheads boiling up miles high and white in the blue sky.

A thousand images from homicides, and kidnappings and larcenies, crime scene photos, department memos and reports, evidence inventories, the art captured in microscope eyepieces, the mountain peaks and valleys on the screen of a gas chromatograph. Like so many whirlygigs and puff balls and grasshoppers and katydids and robin feathers.

Okay, close . . . close . . .

Then his eyes opened.

"Luponte," he whispered.

Satisfaction filled the body that could feel no sensation.