The Steel Kiss (Lincoln Rhyme 12)

I reflect: It will have to be done at some point. Won't it?

Just do it now. Get it over with...

Yes, no?

I'm frozen.

The buzzer sounds. I leave the Toy Room and go to the front door.

Then have a fast thought, a terrible thought.

What if it's not Alicia but Red?

No, no. Could that have happened? Red has such sharp eyes, which means a sharp brain. And she did find me at the mall.

Get my bone cracker from the shelf and walk to the door.

I push the intercom button. And pause. "Hello?"

"Vernon. It's me?" Alicia ends many sentences with question marks. She is such a bundle of uncertainty.

Relaxing, I put the hammer down and hit the outside door release button and a few minutes later I see Alicia's face framed in the video screen, looking up at the tiny security camera above the doorjamb. She enters and we step into the living room. I smell her odd perfume, which has to me a faint scent of sweet onions. I'm sure it's not. But that's my impression.

She avoids my eyes. I tower over her; she's tiny and slim but not as bean as me. "Hey."

"Hi."

We embrace, an interesting word, and I always thought it meant you brace yourself to touch somebody you don't want to touch. Like my mother near the end. My father, always. The word doesn't mean that, sure, but it's what I think.

Alicia shucks her jacket. Hangs it up herself. She's not comfortable with people doing things for her. She's around forty, some years older than me. She's in a blue dress, which has a high neck and long sleeves. She rarely wears polish on her nails. She's comfortable with that image: schoolteacherish. I don't care. It's not her fashion choices that draw me to her. She was a schoolteacher when she was married.

"Dinner?" I ask.

"No?" Again, a question when what she means is: No. Worried that one wrong word, one wrong punctuation mark will ruin the evening.

"You're not hungry?"

She glances toward the second bedroom. "Just... Is it all right? Can we make love, please?"

I take her hand and we walk through the living room, toward the far wall. To the right is the Toy Room. The left, the back bedroom, the door open and the carefully made bed illuminated by a soft glow of night-light.

I pause for just a moment, eyes on the Toy Room door. She looks up at me, curious, but would never dream of asking, Is something wrong?

I make a decision and turn toward the left, leading her after me.

CHAPTER 5

What happened?" Lincoln Rhyme asked. "The scene in Brooklyn?"

This was his way of tapping the maple tree. Sachs was not normally forthcoming with details, or even clues, about what was troubling her--just like him. Nor was either of them inclined to say, "So what's wrong?" But camouflaging the question about her state of mind under the netting of specifics concerning, say, a crime scene sometimes did the trick.

"Kind of a problem." And fell silent.

Well, gave it a shot.

They were in the parlor of his town house on Central Park West. She dropped her purse and briefcase onto a rattan chair. "Going to wash up." She strode up the hall to the ground-floor bathroom. He heard pleasantries exchanged between Sachs and Rhyme's aide, Thom Reston, preparing dinner.

The smells of cooking wafted. Rhyme detected poaching fish, capers, carrots with thyme. A touch of cumin, probably in the rice. Yes, his olfactory senses--those clever ligands--were, he believed, enhanced following the crime scene accident years ago that had severed his spine and rendered him a C4 quad. However, it was an easy deduction; Thom tended to make this particular meal once a week. Not a foodie, by any means, Rhyme nonetheless enjoyed the dish. Provided it was accompanied by a crisp Chablis. Which it would be.