The Burning Wire (Lincoln Rhyme 9)

Dellray was encouraged by the extent of his knowledge. Even Dellray hadn't known exactly where Jeep was going.

"So, Fred, you know I'm a working man now. Legitimate. What'm I doing here?"

"Because you listen."

"Listen?"

"Why I liked running you. You always listened. You heard things. Got this feeling you hear things still."

"This about that explosion at the bus stop?"

"Uh-huh."

"Some electrical malfunction." Brent smiled. "The news said that. I've always wondered about this obsession we have with the media. Why should I believe anything? They tell us that untalented actors and twenty-nine-year-old pop stars with excessive tits and cocaine problems behave badly. Why does that merit more than a millisecond of our consciousness? . . . That bus stop, Fred. Something else happened there."

"Something else happened." Dellray had been assuming one role with Jeep. That was a made-for-TV movie, melodramatic. But here, with William Brent, he was a Method actor. Subtle and real. The lines had been written over the years but the performance came from his heart. "I really need to know what."

"I liked working with you, Fred. You were . . . difficult but you were always honest."

So, I'm one quarter of the way to dharmic enlightenment. The agent said, "Are we going to keep going here?"

"I'm retired. Being a snitch can be detrimental to your health."

"People come outa retirement all the time. Economy's fucked. Their social security checks don't go as far as they thought." Dellray repeated, "We going to keep going here?"

Brent stared at the elm tree for a long, long fifteen seconds. "We'll keep going. Give me some deets and I'll see if it's worth my time and the risk. To both of us."

To both of us? Dellray wondered. Then continued, "We don't have many details. But there's maybe a terror group called Justice For we don't know what. The leader might be somebody named Rahman."

"They were behind it, the bus stop?"

"Possibly. And somebody who might be connected with the company. No ID yet. Man, woman, we don't know."

"What exactly happened that they aren't saying? A bomb?"

"No. The perp manipulated the grid."

Brent's eyebrow rose behind the archaic glasses. "The grid. Electricity . . . think about it. That's worse than an IED. . . . With the grid, the explosive's already there, in everybody's house, in everybody's office. All he has to do is pull a few switches. I'm dead, you're dead. And not a pretty way to go."

"Why I'm here."

"Justice For something . . . Any idea what's on their to-do list?"

"No. Islamic, Aryan, political, domestic, foreign, eco. We don't know."

"Where'd the name come from? Translated?"

"No. Was intercepted that way. 'Justice.' And 'For.' In English. Other words too. But

they didn't get 'em."

" 'They.' " Brent gave a furrow of a smile, and Dellray wondered if he knew exactly what Dellray was doing here, that he'd been tweaked aside by the brave new world of electronics. SIGINT. "Anybody take credit?" the man asked in his soft voice.

"Not yet."

Brent was thinking, hard. "And it would take a whole lot of planning to put something like this together. Lot of strands to get woven."

"Would, sure."