The Steel Kiss (Lincoln Rhyme 12)

Rhyme laughed out loud.

The letter "e."

THURSDAY III

EXPLOIT

CHAPTER 16

Morning, a Chelsea morning. Chelsea light streams through the open shutters.

I'm in the Toy Room, transcribing the diary once again. Sister Mary Frances's diligence is revealed in the perfectly scripted words I form on the thick paper.

We played Alien Quest today. Long time, the three of us. Sam and Frank and me. The popular boys and me! Sam's dad has money. He sells things, medical stuff I don't know what it is but the company pays well and even gives him a car! So Sam has all the games and all the platforms.

Funny, even before I ran into them that day outside of Cindy's house, coming home a different route, the safe route, they never gave me any shit. But that didn't mean they'd be interested in hanging out. But they ARE. They're A Team, ha, don't mean on teams even though they are. Mean the top crowd, the clique crowd, the A Team crowd. Handsome, cool, they could have any girl, any time. But they want to hang with me.

It's Tye Butler, Dano, their friends, sort of goth sort of redneck, yeah even in Manhasset, Long Island. It's THEM who push and gawk and say, Bean Pole and Dick Freak. Stuff like that. Sam heard about Butler saying something and he went to find him and said, Leave G

riffith alone. And Butler did.

Don't see them real often. Sam and Frank. The teams, the girls. But that's what makes it real. They're like, Hey, Griffith, what's going on? And it's epic cause they use my last name, what the in people do. Hey, Griffith, you want a Coke? Then we go separate ways for a few days or a week.

Can't talk to them serious. Of course. I'd like to, talk about being/feeling different. Can't talk to anybody, really. Dad, yeah right. In between games. Which is never. Mom, sometimes. But she doesn't get it. She has baking and her friends and her crafts and her food and after six thirty, forget it. My brother's okay but off doing other things.

But talking to Sam and Frank?

I decided no. Might break something is how I feel.

I put the diary and the recorder away. I stretch and stand up and walk to the futon, look down, scanning Alicia's body. Pale, really pale. Mouth kind of open, eyes kind of shut.

Pretty, even in the messy clothes, the twisted sheets.

Beside the bed is a band saw, which is really quite a wicked piece of machinery. If they had one during the Middle Ages, imagine how many people would have renounced the devil. Slice, slice, off with a finger.

Off with whatever.

A voice makes me jump. "Vernon."

I turn. Alicia is stirring. Blinking against the halogen lights.

She sits up, blinking and stretching too. "Morning," she says, shy and cautious.

This is a word she's never said to me before. A first, staying over.

A first, her seeing the Toy Room. Which no one else has ever done--and which I thought would never, ever happen.

Letting someone into my sanctuary, letting someone see the real me was hard to do, so very hard. I could never explain it right but it was like risking everything to let her in. One-night stands, fucking to exhaustion, that's easy. But, like, taking a woman to a gallery exhibition showing paintings you're hopelessly passionate about--that's a chance that's so risky. What if she laughs, what if she looks bored, what if she decides you miss her mark completely?

And wants to go away.

But last night, walking into the Toy Room and, on my command, opening her eyes, Alicia was as delighted as I've ever seen her. She gazed over the workbench, the saws, the tools, the hammers, the chisels. My new implement, the razor with the tiny teeth, my favorite. My child. I loved seeing her pale brow and cheeks, lit by the blue-white reflections shooting from all the steel surfaces.

But what really entranced her was what I constructed with those tools.

"You made these?" she asked last night.

"Did," I told her uncertainly.