The Steel Kiss (Lincoln Rhyme 12)

Sachs hugged Sellitto. She and Rhyme saw the detective and his girlfriend Rachel with some frequency but, now that Rhyme wasn't doing criminal work and Sellitto had been on medical leave, they hadn't worked together for a long time.

"Ah." His eyes glowed as Thom brought a tray of Danish into the parlor. Sellitto scarfed. Thom handed him a coffee.

"Thanks."

"You don't want sugar? Right?"

"Yeah, I do. A couple." Sellitto's idea of losing weight had been to choose black coffee to accompany the doughnuts. Now slim, he was indulging.

The Major Cases detective looked over the parlor with a critical eye, half the equipment covered with plastic. The dozen whiteboards, turned against a far wall. "Jesus, I take a break and everything goes to hell." Then he smiled. "And you, Amelia, heard about your big-game hunting, escalators in BK malls."

"What exactly do you hear? I got the incident report to the team on time."

"All good," the detective added. "They're holding you up as Miss Ingenuity. And better'n good. Madino's got cred--he just got tapped for a spot at One PP--so you've got a power hitter rooting for you."

Rhyme said sourly, "Fans root for hitters, Lon, not the other way around."

"Jesus. Did kids in school regularly beat the crap out of you, Mr. Hand-Up-First-With-The-Right-Answer?"

"Let's get caught up later on irrelevant issues, shall we? Lon, you were saying, big picture?"

"I read what you sent."

Sellitto was the expert Rhyme had uploaded the Unsub 40 case file to. He smiled to himself at the man's laconic response.

Yah, yah. Tomorrow...

"First, this is one sick fuck."

Accurate but irrelevant. Rhyme said with subdued impatience, "Lon?"

"So. What we have. He's got this thing for products, for consumer products that we bring into our houses and turn on us. Now, my take? He's agendizing in two ways."

"What did you say?" Rhyme started, reflexively.

"I'm fucking with you, Linc. Couldn't resist. Been months without you breaking my balls with a grammar lesson. Pardon my French." Directed at Archer.

She smiled.

Sellitto continued: "Okay. He's got two agendas. Using the controller things to make a statement or to target rich people who buy expensive shit or whatever. That's his weapon of choice. Fucked up but there it is. Agenda two

: self-defense. He needs to stop people who're after him. I.e., us. Well, you. He's been at the scenes to type in the code to work the controller, right?"

"Right," Archer said. "You can hack into the cloud server from anywhere in the world. But he seems to want to be close. We think he may have some moral element--making sure he doesn't hurt kids or maybe poorer folks who don't spend lots of money on indulgent products."

"Or," Sachs said, "he gets turned on by watching."

"Well, that means he might've stayed around to see who was after him. The Evidence Collection Team, you--Amelia and Ron."

"I was at a scene too," Rhyme said. "When he destroyed the office of the man who taught him how to hack the controllers." He grimaced. "And he saw Evers Whitmore there."

"He on the force?" Sellitto asked.

"No, a lawyer. I was working with him--the civil case, the escalator accident. Before we knew it was a homicide."

Sellitto sipped coffee, then added another sugar. "Wouldn't be hard for your unsub to ID him. And you, you're too public, Linc. Easy to track you down and all your little chickies. I'd get protective details on everybody. I can handle that."

Rhyme ordered the computer to print out Whitmore's address and phone. Sellitto reminded him that he had Cooper's and Sachs's personal information and he'd get a detail to their residences. Archer said it was unlikely she was at risk but Rhyme was emphatic. "I want somebody at your brother's anyway. Unlikely doesn't mean impossible. From now on, we all have to assume we're in his sights."