The Skin Collector (Lincoln Rhyme 11)

'I told you to pack, woman.' He wanted to hit her. But there was no time for corrections at this point. Besides, corrections with Harriet didn't always go as planned. 'Billy can take care of himself. The story didn't say he was captured. It just said they've uncovered a plot. Now. Move.'

Five minutes later Matthew had filled his suitcase and was zipping up his computer bag.

Harriet was wheeling her luggage behind her into the living room. Her face was a grim mask, nearly as unsettling as the latex one Billy had showed them, the one he'd been wearing when he attacked his victims.

'How did it happen?' she asked, fuming.

The answer was the police, the answer was Lincoln Rhyme.

Billy had described him as the man who anticipated everything.

'I want to find out what happened,' she raged.

'Later. Let's go,' Matthew snapped. Why was it God's will that he ended up with a woman who spoke her mind? Would she never learn? Why had he stopped with the belt? Bad mistake.

Well, they'd escape, they'd regroup, go underground once more. Deep underground. Matthew bellowed, 'Joshua, are you packed?'

'Yessir.' Matthew's son twitched into the room. His sandy hair was askew and his face was streaked with tears.

Matthew growled, 'You. You act like a man. Understand me?'

'Yessir.'

Matthew reached into his computer bag, shoved aside the Bible and extracted two pistols, 9mm Smith & Wessons (he wouldn't think of buying a foreign weapon, of course). He handed one to Josh, who seemed to relax when he took hold of it. The boy was comfortable with weapons; they seemed to offer a familiarity that soothed. At least there was that about him. Guns, of course, weren't a woman's way and so Matthew didn't offer one to Harriet.

He said to his son, 'Keep it hidden. And don't use it unless I use mine. Look for my cue.'

'Yessir.'

The weapons were merely a precaution. Lincoln Rhyme had stopped the plan but there was nothing that would lead back to Matthew and Harriet. The Commandments had taken care to insulate them. It was like what Billy had explained: the two zones in a tattoo parlor, hot and cold. They should never meet.

Well, they'd be in their car and out of the city in thirty minutes.

He surveyed the hotel suite. They had not brought much with them - two suitcases each. Billy and Joshua had moved all the heavier equipment and supplies ahead of time.

'Let's go.'

'A prayer?' Joshua offered.

'No fucking time,' Matthew snapped.

Clutching and wheeling their satchels, the three of them stepped into the corridor.

The good news about using a hotel as a safe house for an operation of this sort was that you didn't have to sweep it down afterward, Billy's Commandments had reported - the hotel politely and conveniently supplied a staff of folks to do that for you, disgusting illegals though they undoubtedly were.

Ironically, though, having had that thought, Matthew noted that the two women on the cleaning staff near the elevators, chatting beside their carts, were of the white race.

God bless them.

With Joshua behind them, the husband and wife walked down the corridor. 'What we'll do is head north,' Matthew explained in a whisper. 'I've studied the map. We'll avoid the tunnels.'

'Roadblocks?'

'What would they be looking for?' Matthew snapped, pushing the elevator button. 'They don't know us, don't know anything about us.'

Though this turned out not to be the case.

As Matthew stabbed impatiently at the elevator button, which refused to illuminate, the two God Bless Them They're White maids reached into their baskets, pulled out machine guns and pointed them at the family.