The Kill Room (Lincoln Rhyme 10)

Four Jims, two Sallys.

Jim from California was below, neither the patch nor Dramamine working well, and so he would not be included in the picture.

Jim from New Jersey lined everyone up against what he said was a gunwale, though nobody knew exactly what that was--he didn't either--but it seemed very nautical and fun to say.

"Nobody sing the Titanic song."

There'd been a lot of that, especially as the bars remained open late into the night, but the truth was that very few people, men or women, could bring off the treacly song like Celine Dion.

"Is that Florida?" somebody asked. One of the Sallys, Jim from New Jersey believed.

He saw a dim line on the horizon but that was probably just a layer of clouds.

"Not yet, I don't think."

"But what's that? It's a building."

"Oh, that's the oil rig. The first one in this part of the Atlantic. Didn't you see the news? A year ago or so. They found some oil between Nassau and Florida."

"They? Who's they? Everybody always says 'they.' Are you going to take the picture? My margarita's melting."

"U.S. Petroleum. American Petroleum Drilling. I don't remember."

"I hate those things," Sally from Chicago muttered. "Did you see the birds in the Gulf? All covered with oil. It was terrible. I cried."

"And we couldn't get good shrimp for months."

The photog marshaled his subjects into line against the gunwale and tapped down on the Canon shutter.

Click, click, click, click, click...

Enough to make sure that there'd be no blinks.

The proof of vacation burned into a silicon chip, the tourists turned to gaze at the sea and conversation meandered to dinner and shopping in Miami and the Fontainebleau hotel and was Versace's mansion still open to the public?

"I heard he had an eight-person shower," said Jim from London.

Claire disputed that.

"Holy shit," Jim from New Jersey gasped.

"Honey!" chided his wife.

But the camera was up once more and by the time the sound of the explosion reached them, everyone had turned and was focused on the massive mushroom cloud rising perhaps a thousand feet in the air.

"Oh, Jesus. It's the oil rig!"

"No, no!"

"Oh, my God. Somebody call somebody."

Click, click, click, click...

CHAPTER 96

W HAT'S THE DAMAGE ASSESSMENT?"

Shreve Metzger, in blue jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt that was partly untucked amidships, was leaning over a computer monitor, staring, staring at the smoke and haze hovering over the Caribbean Sea, a thousand miles away.