The Kill Room (Lincoln Rhyme 10)

A pause. No flicker in her eyes.

She flung the switchblade.

He squinted and ducked.

But the throw was wide. The knife hit a china cabinet two feet from Swann and shattered a small pane. A plate inside, on a display rack, fell and broke. He was instantly back in stance, but--another mistake--she didn't follow through.

He relaxed and turned back to face her, as she stood leaning forward, arms at her sides, breathing hard, coughing.

She was his now. He'd get the Glock, negotiate some kind of escape. They could use the chopper for a ride out, of course.

He whispered, "Okay, what you're going to do is--"

He felt the muzzle of a pistol pressing against his temple. His eyes shifted to the side.

The young officer, Ron apparently, had returned. No, no...Swann understood. He'd never left at all. He'd been making his way through the smoke, carefully seeking a target.

She'd never been planning to skewer him with the switchblade at all. She was just buying time and talking, to guide the cop here through the smoke. She'd never intended Ron to leave. Her words earlier meant just the opposite and he'd understood completely.

"Now," the young man said ominously. "Drop it." Swann knew he was fully prepared to send a bullet into his brain.

He looked for a place where the Kai Shun wouldn't get dented or chipped. He tossed it carefully onto the couch.

Sachs eased forward, still wincing, and retrieved it. She noted the blade with some appreciation. The young cop cuffed Swann, and Sachs strode forward, gripped the Nomex hood and yanked it off him.

CHAPTER 89

THE DISABLED-ACCESSIBLE VAN wove through the emergency vehicles and parked at the curb near Spencer Boston's house. Lincoln Rhyme had been at the staging area a few blocks away. Given his inability to wield a weapon, as he'd learned in the Bahamas, Rhyme thought it best to remain clear of the potential battlefield.

Which, of course, Thom would have insisted on anyway.

Old mother hen.

In a few minutes he was freed from the vehicle and he wheeled his new chair, which he quite liked, up to Amelia Sachs.

Rhyme regarded her with some scrutiny. She was in pain, though trying to cover. But her discomfort was obvious to him.

"Where's Ron?"

"Walking the grid in the house."

Rhyme grimaced as he looked at the smoldering trees and boxwood and the smoke trickling out of the expensive Colonial. Fire department fans had largely exhausted the worst of the fumes. "Didn't anticipate a diversionary charge, Sachs. Sorry."

He was furious with himself for not considering it. He should have known Unsub 516 would try something like that.

Sachs said only, "Still, you came up with a good plan, Rhyme."

"Well, had the desired result," he conceded with some, but not too much, modesty.

The criminalist had never suspected Spencer Boston of anything more than leaking the STO order. True, as Sachs had pointed out, both Boston and Moreno had a Panama connection. But even if Boston had been involved in the invasion, Moreno was just a boy then. They couldn't have known each other. No, Panama was just a coincidence.

But Rhyme had decided that Metzger's administrations director would make excellent bait, because whoever was behind the plot--the unsub's boss--would want to kill the whistleblower too.

This was the help he'd enlisted Shreve Metzger for. Ever since he'd learned of the investigation last weekend, Metzger had been contacting everyone involved in the STO drone project and telling them to stonewall and dump evidence. These encrypted texts, emails and phone calls were sent to people within NIOS but also to private contractors, military personnel and Washington officials. This was how Unsub 516's boss had known so much about the case. Metzger had been feeding everyone virtually real-time intelligence about what was going on, so passionate was he about keeping the STO program going. The boss, in turn, briefed the unsub.

But who exactly was that person?

At Rhyme's insistence, Metzger had called these same people an hour ago and told them the whistleblower had been identified as Spencer Boston and they should destroy any evidence linking them to the man.