The Burning Wire (Lincoln Rhyme 9)

The special project manager kept his guard up, though. There's a seamy side to invention. The creation of the lightbulb had been a fierce battle--not only technologically but legally. Dozens of people were involved in knockdown, drag-out battles for credit for--and the profit from--the lightbulb. Thomas Edison and England's Joseph Wilson Swan emerged as the victors but from a field littered with lawsuits, anger, espionage and sabotage. And destroyed careers.

Sommers was thinking of this now because he'd seen a man in glasses and a cap not far from the Algonquin booth. He was suspicious because the guy had been lingering at two different booths nearby. One company made equipment for geothermal exploration, devices that would locate hot spots deep in the earth. The other built hybrid motors for small vehicles. But Sommers knew that someone interested in geothermal would likely have no interest in hybrids.

True, the man was paying little attention to Sommers or Algonquin, but he could easily have been taking pictures of some of the inventions and mockups on display at the booth. Spy cameras nowadays were extremely sophisticated.

Sommers turned away to answer a woman's question. When he looked back, the man--spy or businessman or just curious attendee--was gone.

Ten minutes later, another lull in visitors. He decided to use the restroom. He asked the man in the booth next to his to keep an eye on things and then headed down a nearly deserted corridor to the men's room. One advantage of being in the cheaper, small-booth area was that you had the toilets largely to yourself. He stepped into a corridor whose stylish steel floor was embossed with bumps, presumably to simulate the flooring of a space station or rocket.

When he was twenty feet away his cell phone started to ring.

He didn't recognize the number--from a local area code. He thought for a moment then hit the IGNORE button.

Sommers continued toward the toilet, noticing the shiny copper handle on the door and thinking, They sure didn't spare any expense here. No wonder it's costing us so damn much for the booth.

Chapter 72

"PLEASE," SACHS MUTTERED out loud, hovering over the speakerphone. "Charlie, pick up! Please!"

She'd called Sommers just a moment befor

e but the phone rang only once and then went to voice mail.

She was trying again.

"Come on!" Rhyme too said.

Two rings . . . three . . .

And finally, in the speaker, a click. "Hello?"

"Charlie, it's Amelia Sachs."

"Oh, did you call a minute ago? I was on my way--"

"Charlie," she broke in, "you're in danger."

"What?"

"Where are you?"

"In the convention center, about to . . . What do you mean, danger?"

"Are you near anything metal, anything that could produce an arc flash or something that could be rigged with a hot line?"

He gave an abrupt laugh. "I'm standing on a metal floor. And I was just about to open a bathroom door with a metal handle." Then the humor faded from his voice. "Are you saying they might be booby-trapped?"

"It's possible. Get off the metal floor now."

"I don't understand."

"There's been another demand and a deadline. Six-thirty. But we think the attacks--the hotel, the elevator--don't have anything to do with the threats or demands. They're cover-ups to target certain people. And you might be one of them."

"Me? Why?"

"First of all, get someplace safe."

"I'll go back to the main floor. It's concrete. Hold on." A moment later he said, "Okay. You know, I saw somebody here, watching me. But I don't think it was Galt."