The Broken Window (Lincoln Rhyme 8)

Whitcomb put them on the screen. They were in a quiet block on the Upper East Side. "Two hits at stores. The duration of the first RFID scan was two seconds. The next was slightly longer, eight seconds. Maybe she was pausing to check an address."

"Call Bo Haumann now!" Rhyme shouted.

Pulaski hit speed dial and a moment later the head of Emergency Service came on the phone.

"Bo, I've got a lead on Amelia. She went after Five Twenty-Two and she's disappeared. We've got a computer monitoring her whereabouts. About twenty minutes ago she was near six forty-two East Eighty-eighth."

"We can be there in ten minutes, Linc. Hostage situation?"

"That's what I'd say. Call me when you know something."

They disconnected.

Rhyme thought back to her message on voice mail. It seemed so fragile, that tiny bundle of digital data.

In his mind he could hear her voice perfectly: "I have a lead, a good one, Rhyme. Call me."

He couldn't help wondering if it would be their last communication.

*

Bo Haumann's Emergency Service Unit A Team was standing near a doorway of a large town house on the Upper East Side: four officers in full body armor, holding MP-5s, compact, black machine guns. They were carefully staying clear of the windows.

Haumann had to admit he hadn't seen anything like this in all his years in the military or the police department. Lincoln Rhyme was using some kind of computer program that had tracked Amelia Sachs to this area, only it wasn't through her phone or a wire or GPS tracker. Maybe this was the future of police work.

The device hadn't given the actual location where the teams now were--a private residence. But a witness had seen a woman pause at both shops where the computer had spotted her, then she'd headed to this town house across the street.

Where she was presumably being held by the perp they were calling 522.

Finally, the team in the back called in. "B Team to One. We're in position. Can't see anything. Which floor is she on, K?"

"No idea. We just go in and sweep. Move fast. She's been in there a while. I'll hit the bell and when he comes to the door, we move in."

"Roger, K."

"Team C. We'll be on the roof in three or four minutes."

"Move it!" Haumann grumbled.

"Yes, sir."

Haumann had worked with Amelia Sachs for years. She had more balls than most of the men who served under him. He wasn't sure he liked her--she was pigheaded and abrupt and often bluffed her way onto point when she should have held back--but he sure as hell respected her.

And he wasn't going to let her go down to a rapist like this 522. He nodded an ESU detective up to the porch--dressed in a business suit so that when he knocked on the door, a glance through the peephole wouldn't tip off the killer. Once he opened the door, officers crouching against the front of the town house would leap up and rush him. The officer buttoned his jacket and nodded.

"Goddamnit," Haumann radioed impatiently to the team in the back. "You in place yet or not?"

Chapter Forty-seven The door opened and she heard the killer's footsteps enter the stinking, claustrophobic room.

Amelia Sachs was in a crouch, her knees in agony, struggling to get to the handcuff key in her front pocket. But surrounded by the towering stacks of newspapers, she hadn't been able to turn far enough to reach into her front pocket. She'd touched it through the cloth, felt its shape, tantalizing, but couldn't slip her fingers into the slit.

She was racked with frustration.

More footsteps.

Where, where?

One more lunge for the key . . . Almost but not quite.