The Steel Kiss (Lincoln Rhyme 12)

So she'd float like an angel. As smoke ganged around her, heat too, she stumbled to the window in the hallway and kicked this one out too. Unlike the door downstairs, which left jagged shards, the window here vanished into cascading splinters, opening a wide entrance into the void. Cool air rushed past her. She inhaled deeply, relieved at the oxygen, but--from the suddenly increasing roar behind her--she realized she'd just fed the inferno, as well.

She looked out and down, Not a wide sidewalk of a ledge, but sufficient. And the window into the blogger's office was a mere five or six feet away from the open rectangle Sachs now climbed into. She was luxuriating in the clean air, sucking it voluptuously into her stinging lungs. She glanced down to the ground. Nobody beneath her. This was the back of the building, opposite from where Rhyme and the others were waiting and, she hoped, the fire department was arriving to squelch the flames.

Yes, she heard sirens. But silently commanded them: Get closer, if you don't mind.

Looking behind her. The billows of smoke were growing denser.

Coughing and retching. God, her chest hurt.

So, onto the ledge.

Sachs's animal fear was claustrophobia, not heights, yet she was in no hurry to tumble fifty feet to slick cobblestones. The ledge was a good eight inches wide, and she had to traverse only two yards to get to Williams's office. Better without shoes but she'd have to break that window too to get inside and litter the floor with razors. Keep the footware.

Go. No time.

Her phone was ringing.

Not hardly answering at the moment....

Onto the ledge, gripping the window frame, and turning to face the building's exterior wall. She then eased to her right, weight on her toes, fingers digging into the seams between the soot-stained stones. Cramps radiated through her wrists.

From within the building a groan. Something structural was failing.

How bad an idea was this?

Not a question to be asking at the moment.

One yard, then the second, and she arrived at Williams's window. Inside there was a faint patina of smoke but visibility seemed good. Placing her hands on the side of the frame, gripping hard, she eased back her knee and kicked. The pane shattered into a thousand pieces, littering the floor in the tiny, dim office.

Getting inside, however, was trickier than she'd thought. A center-of-gravity issue. Lowering her head and shoulders to duck in sent her rear into the void and that started to tilt her backward.

Nope...

At least her hands had good purchase on the frame--the parts where no glass remained. Try sideways. Angling to her right, easing her left leg in and then shifting her weight to that limb. Sachs reached inside, seeking something to grip. A metal square, a file cabinet, she guessed. Smooth, no handle. She could feel only the side of the furniture. But recalling a Discovery Channel or some such show about rock climbing, she pictured free climbers working their fingers into the tiniest of crevices and supporting their full weight. She moved her hand to the back of the cabinet, wedged fingers between metal and the wall and started to shift her weight inside.

Tipping point.

A few inches, balanced.

Push. Now.

Sachs tumbled inside, falling on the glass-encrusted floor.

No cuts. Well, none serious. She felt a bit of sting in her knee--the joint that had tormented with arthritic pain, until the surgery. Now the ache was back, thanks to the fall. But she rose and tested. The mechanism functioned. She glanced at the smoke rolling inside from under the door. The whole office now felt hot. Could the flames have risen this fast and be roasting the oak under her feet?

She coughed hard. Found an unopened bottle of Deer Park, unscrewed the cap and chugged. Spat again.

Scanning fast, Sachs noted three file cabinets, shelves filled with paper in all forms: magazines, newspapers, printouts, pamphlets. All extremely combustible, she noted. Riffling, she saw they were mostly generic articles about the dangers of data mining, government intrusion into privacy, identity theft. She didn't immediately see anything related to the controllers Rhyme and Whitmore had been talking about or anything else that might have motivated their unsub to murder Williams, nor evidence he might have left.

In the corner, flames teased their way out from under a baseboard. And ignited a bookshelf. Across the room, another tongue of fire lapped at a cardboard box and, with no delay at all, set it on fire.

The building groaned again and the door began to sweat varnish.

Gasped at another sound: The window opposite the one she'd climbed through, the front of the building, crashed inward. In a lick of a second her Glock was out, though the draw was mere instinct; she knew the intruder wasn't a threat but was in fact what she'd counted on for salvation all along. Sachs nodded to the New York City firefighter, perched nonchalantly on a ladder, connected to a truck forty-some odd feet below.

The woman guided the top of the ladder to a hover about two feet fro

m the windowsill. She called, "Building's gonna drop, Detective. You leave now."