The Coffin Dancer (Lincoln Rhyme 2)

"Have to call you back, Lincoln," Sellitto said. "We gotta do something. There're fire trucks up on the goddamn sidewalks."

"I'll call Amelia myself," Rhyme said.

Sellitto hung up.

The room darkened, curtains drawn.

Percey Clay was afraid.

Thinking of her haggard, the falcon, captured by the snare, flapping her muscular wings. The talons and beak slicing the air like honed blades, the mad screech. But the most horrifying of all to Percey, the bird's frightened eyes. Denied her sky, the bird was lost in terror. Vulnerable.

Percey felt the same. She detested it here in the safe house. Closed in. Looking at--hating--the foolish pictures on the wall. Crap from Woolworth or JCPenney. The limp rug. The cheap water basin and pitcher. A ratty pink chenille bedspread, a dozen threads pulled out in long loops from a particular corner; maybe a mob informant had sat there, tugging compulsively on the pink knobby cloth.

Another sip from the flask. Rhyme had told her about the trap. That the Dancer would be following the van he believed Percey and Hale were in. They'd stop his car and arrest or kill him. Her sacrifice was now going to pay off. In ten minutes they'd have him, the man who'd killed Ed. The man who'd changed her life forever.

She trusted Lincoln Rhyme, and believed him. But she believed him the same way she believed Air Traffic Control when they reported no wind shear and you suddenly found your aircraft dropping at three thousand feet a minute when you were only two thousand feet in the air.

Percey tossed her flask on the bed, stood up and paced. She wanted to be flying, where it was safe, where she had control. Roland Bell had ordered her lights out, had ordered her to stay locked in her room. Everyone was upstairs on the top floor. She'd heard the bang of the explosion. She'd been expecting it. But she hadn't been expecting the fear that it brought. Unbearable. She'd have given anything to look out the window.

She walked to the door, unlocked it, stepped into the corridor.

It too was dark. Like night . . . All the stars of evening.

She smelled a pungent chemical scent. From whatever had made the bang, she guessed. The hallway was deserted. There was slight motion at the end of the hall. A shadow from the stairwell. She looked at it. It wasn't repeated.

Brit Hale's room was only ten feet away. She wanted badly to talk to him, but she didn't want him to see her this way, pale, hands shaking. Eyes watering in fear . . . My God, she'd pulled a seven three seven out of a wing-ice nosedive more calmly than this: looking into that dark corridor.

She stepped back into her room.

Did she hear footsteps?

She closed the door, returned to the bed.

More footsteps.

"Command mode," Lincoln Rhyme instructed. The box dutifully came up on-screen.

He heard a faint siren in the distance.

And it was then that Rhyme realized his mistake.

Fire trucks . . .

No! I didn't think about that.

But the Dancer did. Of course! He'd have stolen a fireman's or medic's uniform and was strolling into the safe house at this moment!

"Oh, no," he muttered. "No! How could I be so far off?"

And the computer heard the last word of Rhyme's sentence and dutifully shut off his communications program.

"No!" Rhyme cried. "No!"

But the system couldn't understand his loud, frantic voice and with a silent flash the message came up, Do you really want to shut off your computer?

"No," he whispered desperately.

For a moment nothing happened, but the system didn't shut down. A message popped up. What would you like to do now?