James Patterson - Tick Tock

"It's because we got the twisted son of a bitch fired. He got canned 'cause we objected that he was getting his rocks off," Mrs. Morales yelled, standing up.

"Come again?" Emily said.

"He set up a secret video camera in the ladies' room next to the class," Mrs. Cavuto said. She took a tissue out of the box on the table and began shredding it.

"Exactly," Mrs. Morales said. "There were strange noises from time to time in the ladies' room, and finally one day in the cafeteria between classes, Alicia and I and a woman named Stephanie put our heads together and realized we had all heard it. We took it to the administration. A week later, Berger was investigated, found out, and ultimately fired."

"Wait. What about Stephanie? Stephanie Brill, I think it was. Where is she?" Mrs. Cavuto said. "Did he go after Stephanie's family? She signed the complaint as well."

"Stephanie Brill died in the recent bombing at Grand Central," Emily said.

"He comes up to my neighborhood and stabs my daughter?" Mrs. Morales said, staring at us in disgust. "He didn't even have the cojones to come after me?"

"What was the name of this class?" I said.

"Abnormal Psychology," Mrs. Cavuto said, meticulously tearing her tissue.

There was a knock, and my boss threw open the door and gestured for me to come with her.

"This is it, Mike," Miriam said, handing me a printout. "We've got an address on Lawrence Berger. You're heading uptown, the Upper East Side. The son of a bitch lives on Fifth Avenue."

"Ladies, thank you so much for coming," said a linebacker-size Emergency Service Unit sergeant as he folded open the rear of a shiny black Ford Econoline SWAT van in Central Park an hour later.

Two more vans just like it were parked in a wagon circle in our staging area behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. More than two dozen Emergency Service cops and members of the FBI New York Hostage Rescue Team and NYPD Bomb Squad were now ready to close this case with extreme prejudice. With one cop already dead and a perp with sophisticated bomb-making skills, all stops had been pulled out to take Lawrence Berger down.

Emily and I climbed into heavy Kevlar vests as a short, grizzled, wiry black man with huge forearms and a Bic-shaved jarhead shook our hands painfully.

"Agent Hobart!" the Hostage Rescue Team leader introduced himself in a drill sergeant's near-scream. He tilted the Toughbook computer on his lap in our direction.

On it were photographs of Berger's elaborate prewar building a couple of hundred feet to the east. Close-up shots showed its even more impressive stone penthouse. It was amazing, like a monumental baroque palace in the sky, complete with columns and setbacks and gardens.

"Feast your eyes on Berger's quote unquote apartment," Hobart called out. "It's a three-level, seven thousand-square-foot penthouse."

I couldn't believe it. Seven thousand square feet? In the Silk Stocking District? How was that even possible? I thought.

"That's right," Hobart said, eyeing me. "I said seven thousand square feet."

"Shit, boss. I gotta get me a gig at John Jay," called back an Odd Job-looking, stocky Asian cop sitting in the van's passenger seat.

"Shut up, Wong," Hobart said savagely. "These shots were just taken from our scout snipers on the roof of the building across Seventy-seventh Street. As you can see, all the drapes are drawn, so no help for us there. The building super told us there's at least seven bedrooms, three hundred and sixty degrees of outside terraces, two separate staircases, and even an interior elevator. It's basically a maze. A nightmare for a breach and search."

"But great for cocktail parties, I bet," Wong said.

Hobart gave him a dirty look before continuing.

"The super also said Berger's a recluse, and he hasn't seen him in years. Said he hires his own contractors and staff who must have signed confidentiality agreements because they don't even talk to the doormen about what goes on up there. Berger basically does whatever he wants because he's, by far, the largest shareholder in the co-op. We've also been up on his phone for the last hour. No incoming or outgoing calls. Quiet as a mausoleum."

"Kind of looks like one, too, doesn't it?" I said.

Hobart nodded.

"If it were up to me, I'd go in at two a.m. with night vision. As it is, we're going to cut the electrical power to the apartment right before we breach, in case Mr. Mad-Bomber-Ass got something rigged."

Hobart turned and addressed the crowd of black-clad men around us.

"Remember, people, once the door is down," he called out, "three teams will split up. One per apartment floor. Berger Meister could be anywhere, hiding God knows what, so I want room-to-room sweeps that the fucking upstairs maid would be proud of. Also, check with your team's bomb tech before you even think about touching anything. Capiche? Good. Now it's hurry-up-and-wait time. All we need is the green light from the pencil pushers."

For the next fifteen minutes, we listened to the SWAT guys lock and load and exchange terms like "tactical action parameters," "secure coms," and "mission capabilities." Sitting on a greasy steel bench along the wall of the stifling van, Emily and I tested our earpiece radios and quick-checked our own weapons.

I glanced out the van's one-way tinted window a hundred feet to the west, where the Ancient Egyptian stone obelisk known as Cleopatra's Needle stood against Central Park's bright blue sky. On the path beside it, a pudgy female jogger went by, followed by a dog walker pulling a ten-dog pack.

I don't know which was higher, the temperature, my adrenaline, or the tension. I was pumped that we were finally onto Berger, but also wary. I'd seen Berger's meticulous handiwork firsthand. Not only was he smart, efficient, and completely cold-blooded, but we had zero intel about the place where he was holed up.

We weren't pulling a crackhead out of a closet, I thought, staring at the photo of the creepy penthouse. It was more like we were reaching into a black hole in the ground to pull out a viper.

"Alpha One, we have a go," a voice in my earpiece crackled, a long, hot five minutes later. The van roared to life and swung hard to the right with a squeal of tires.

"Woo-hoo! This is it, y'all!" Officer Wong called out with an enormous grin as he adjusted his tactical helmet's chin strap. "We're moving on up to a deluxe apartment in the sky-high!"

What seemed like a rapid heartbeat later, Emily slid into me as the van fishtailed with a shriek of brakes. My head almost hit the ceiling as the van crossed Fifth Avenue and hopped the curb in front of Berger's building.

The back doors popped open, and Emily and I quickly followed the tactical team across the sidewalk and under the hunter green awning. When my eyes adjusted to the dim lobby, I spotted the doorman pressed against the wall beside an immense oil painting, his hat on the floor between his feet, his white-gloved hands in the air. A sign beside him said ALL VISITORS MUST BE ANNOUNCED.

"Not today, friend," Hobart said, handing the guy back his hat.

Everyone froze in place as the wood-paneled elevator door at the far end of the lobby dinged open. Half a dozen laser sights trained on a tall, gorgeous young couple in business attire. Before they could open their mouths, they were taken facedown onto the Oriental carpet.

"They're clean, Chief," Wong said, tossing Hobart the young business guy's wallet.

A broad, black-haired man wearing blue work clothes and wire-rim glasses appeared from a door beside the elevator.

"The back elevator is here, officers. This way," he said in a thick Eastern European accent as he waved at us frantically.

A contingent of men was left to secure the lobby while we went through a dusty back hall and packed into a film noir-era freight elevator.