The Steel Kiss (Lincoln Rhyme 12)

"The game, it was elegant." Lincoln Rhyme was a loser gracious on the surface but filled with knobby resolve not to be one again. "A rematch soon?"

After he'd practiced.

"Love to."

"But now--the bar's open! Thom!"

She laughed. "You're teaching me forensics. You're teaching me how to be a productive gimp. But I think you're also teaching me some bad habits. I'll pass."

"You're not driving," Rhyme said. "Well, not exactly." A nod at the Storm Arrow motor, which could propel her along the pavement at a zippy seven mph.

"Better keep a clear head anyway. I'm seeing my son tonight."

Thom poured Rhyme's Glenmorangie and glanced at Archer, who shook her head. The doorbell hummed. It was Archer's brother, who, when Thom escorted him into the parlor, greeted them cheerfully. He seemed like a nice guy. "Fellow" was the word that fit. Rhyme wouldn't want to spend much time with him, but he seemed the rock that his sister would need facing life as a quad.

She wheeled toward the archway. "I'll be back early tomorrow," she said, echoing Sachs's farewell.

He nodded.

She wheeled out the door, her brother behind her.

The door closed. Rhyme was suddenly aware of the immense silence of the room. He had a curious feeling. "Hollowness" was the word that came to him.

Thom was back in the kitchen. The sound of metal against metal, wood against ceramic, water filling pots, emanated from there into the parlor. But no sound of human voices. Unusual for him, Rhyme didn't care for this manifestation of solitude.

A sip of the scotch. Rhyme was aware of the scent of garlic, meat and the perfume of vermouth, heated.

Something else too. A fragrant smell. Appealing, comforting. Ah, Sachs's perfume.

But then he recalled that she didn't wear any--why give the perp a clue as to your position in a potential firefight? No, the scent would have to be that, of course, of whatever Juliette Archer had worn that day.

"Dinner is served," Thom said.

"On my way," Rhyme said and left the parlor, instructing the controller to shut out the lights as he did so. He wondered if the voice-controlled lighting system in the town house happened to be embedded with a DataWise5000.

CHAPTER 37

Just a fast one."

"Honey, no."

Her husband persisted, "Twenty minutes. Arnie said he's got a new scotch. From the Isle of Skye. Never heard of it before."

If there was a scotch that Henry was unfamiliar with it must've been something.

They'd finished dinner, Ginnie surprised that he'd actually complimented her on the chicken fricassee (though there had been: "Good fix over last time, dear"), and she was rinsing dishes.

"You go," Ginnie told him.

"Carole wanted you to come too. They're starting to think you don't like them."

I don't, Ginnie thought. While she and Henry were transplants to the Upper East Side, Arnie and Carole were natural products of the effete neighborhood. She found these neighbors up the hall arrogant and pretentious.

"I really don't want to. I've got to clean up here. There's that project for work."

"Just thirty, forty-five minutes."

Double what it had been a moment ago.