The Burial Hour (Lincoln Rhyme 13)

"Really?"

"There's our blood, our heartbeat. There's our breath. The sound of our clothing against itself and our skin. I can't hear yours and you can't hear mine but the sounds are there. A scooter--that one's hard because it's an echo of an echo. A tapping. Water, I'd guess. There! That shutter. Somebody took a picture. An old iPhone Four."

"Wow. You can tell that? And it was so far away. I didn't hear a thing."

"You have to allow yourself to hear things. You can hear sounds everywhere."

"Everywhere?"

"Well, not exactly. Not in a vacuum. Not in outer space." Stefan recalled a movie, Alien (not a bad flick, by any means). And the advertising line was: In space no one can hear you scream.

He told Lilly about this now. And added, "You know in space movies, when you hear ray guns and spaceships colliding and exploding? Well, that's wrong. They'd be completely silent. All sounds--a gunshot, a scream, a baby's laugh--need molecules to bump against. That's what sound is. That's why the speed of sound varies. At sea level it's seven hundred sixty miles an hour. At sixty thousand feet, it's six hundred fifty miles an hour."

"Wow, that's way different! Because of the thinner molecules?"

"Right. In space there are no molecules. There's nothing. So if you opened your mouth and vibrated your vocal cords no one would hear you. But say you were with somebody else and he put his hand on your chest while you were screaming, he'd hear you."

"Because the molecule in his body would vibrate."

"Exactly."

"I like it when people're excited about their jobs. When you first said 'sound engineer,' I thought, hm, pretty dull. But you're, you know, totally into it. That's cool."

Funny when the one thing that makes you crazy keeps you sane.

He was looking over her now, as she turned and walked closer to an inscription in Latin, carved in stone.

Tap, tap, tap.

Her boots.

This isn't a good idea...

Stefan said to himself: Leave. Tell her goodbye. It's been fun. Have a nice trip back home.

But Stefan felt Euterpe hovering over him now, looking out, giving him permission to do what he had to do. Anything to keep the Black Screams away. She'd understand.

To the right the cave disappeared into a dim recess.

"Let's go in the back there." He pointed that way.

"There? It's pretty dark."

Yes, it was. Pretty dark but completely deserted.

Stefan wondered for a moment if he'd have to convince her but apparently Lilly believed she was in no danger. He was a little quirky maybe, he sweated a bit much, he was pudgy, but he was a sound engineer who didn't mind conversation and who said interesting things.

Women always fell for men who talked.

Oh, and he was an American. How much danger could he be?

"Okay, sure." A sparkle in her eyes.

They started in the direction he'd indicated.

On the pretense of looking around, he fell slightly behind her.

Hearing her boot soles and heels snapping: Tap, tap, tap...