Jeffery Deaver - The burning wire

"They almost figured out about the attack at the hotel. How did they know that? They almost got me there. Who's behind this?"

"I don't know. They don't talk to me, Ray. I'm a security guard."

"You're chief of security, Bernie. Of course they talk to you."

"No, I really-"

He felt his wallet coming out of his pocket.

Oh, not that…

A moment later Galt recited Wahl's home address, tucked the wallet back.

"What's the service in your house, Bernie? Two hundred amps?"

"Oh, come on, Ray. My family never did anything to you."

"I never did anything to anybody and I got sick. You're part of the system that made me sick, and your family benefited from that system… Two hundred amps? Not enough for an arc. But the shower, the bathtub, the kitchen… I could just play with the ground fault interrupts and your whole house'd become one big electric chair, Bernie… Now, talk to me."

FRED DELLRAY WAS walking down a street in the East Village, past a row of gardenias, past a gourmet coffee shop, past a clothing store.

My, my… Was that $325 for a shirt? Without a suit, tie and pair of shoes attached?

He continued past storefronts in which sat complicated espresso machines and overpriced art and the sorts of glittery shoes that a girl would lose at 4 a.m. en route from one hazy downtown club to another.

Thinking how the Village had changed in the years since he'd started being an agent.

Change…

Used to be a carnival, used to be crazy, used to be gaudy and loud, laughter and madness, lovers entwined or shrieking or floating sullenly down the busy sidewalks… all the time, all the time. Twenty-four hours. Now this portion of the East Village had the formula and sound track of a homogenized sitcom.

Man, had this place changed. And it wasn't just the money, not just the preoccupied eyes of the professionals who lived here now, cardboard coffee cups replacing chipped porcelain…

No, that wasn't what Dellray kept seeing.

What he saw was everybody on fucking cell phones. Talking, texting… and, Jesus our Savior in heaven, here were two tourists right in front of him using GPS to find a restaurant!

In the East fucking Village.

Cloud zone…

Everywhere, more evidence that the world, even this world-Dellray's world-was now Tucker McDaniel's. Back in the day, Dellray would play dress-up here, looking homeless, pimp, dealer. He was good at pimp, loved the colored shirts, purple and green. Not because he worked vice, which wasn't a federal crime, but because he knew how to fit.

The chameleon.

He fit in places like this. And that meant people talked to him.

But now, hell, there were more people on phones than there weren't. And every one of those phones-depending on the inclination of the federal magistrate-could be tapped into and give up information that it would have taken Dellray days to get. And even if they weren't tapped, there apparently were still ways to get that information, or some of it.

Out of the air, out of clouds.

But maybe he was just overly sensitive, he told himself, using a word that had rarely figured in the psyche of Fred Dellray. Ahead of him he saw Carmella's-the old establishment that may very well have been a whorehouse a long time ago and was presently an island of tradition here. He walked inside and sat down at a rickety table. He ordered a regular coffee, noting that, yes, espresso and cappuccino and latte were on the menu, but of course, they always had been. Long before Starbucks.

God bless Carmella.

And around him, of the ten people here-he counted-only two were on cell phones.

This was the world of Mama behind the cash register, her pretty-boy sons waiting tables and even now, midafternoon, customers twirling pasta, glistening orange not supermarket red. And sipping from small hemispheres of wineglasses. The whole place filled with animated talk, punctuating gestures.

This filled him with comfort. He believed that he was doing this the right way. He believed in William Brent's reassurance. He was about to receive some value, something for the dubious one hundred thousand dollars. Only a tenuous lead, but it would be enough. That was something else about Street Dellray. He'd been able to weave cloth from the tiny treads his CIs delivered, usually they themselves oblivious to the value of what they'd found.

A single hard fact that would lead to Galt. Or to the site of the next attack. Or to the elusive Justice For.

And he was well aware that fact, that find, that save… they'd vindicate him too, Dellray, the old-school street agent, far, far from the cloud zone.

Dellray sipped the coffee and snuck a glance at his watch. Exactly 3 p.m. He'd had never known William Brent to be late, even by sixty seconds. ("Not efficient," the CI had said of being either early or tardy.)

Forty-five minutes later, without as much as a phone call from Brent, a grim-faced Fred Dellray checked his messages once more on the cold phone. Nothing. He tried Brent's for the sixth time. Still straight to the robotic voice telling him to leave a message.

Dellray gave it ten minutes longer, tried once more, then called in a big favor from a buddy of his at one of the mobile providers and learned that the battery had been removed from Brent's phone. The only reason to do that was to prevent tracing, of course.

A young couple approached and asked if Dellray was using the other chair at his table. The responsive glance must have been pretty intimidating because they retreated instantly and the boyfriend didn't even try for a moment of chivalric bravado.

Brent's gone.

I've been robbed and he's gone.

Replaying the man's confidence, his reassurance.

Guarantee, my ass…

One hundred thousand dollars… He should have known that something was going on when Brent had insisted on that huge sum, considering the shabby suit and threadbare argyle socks.

Dellray wondered whether the man had decided to settle in the Caribbean or South America on his windfall.

"WE'VE HAD ANOTHER demand."

Grim Andi Jessen was staring out of Rhyme's flat-screen monitor, on a video conference call. Her blond hair stiff, oversprayed. Or perhaps she'd spent the night in the office and hadn't showered that morning.

"Another one?" Rhyme glanced at Lon Sellitto, Cooper and Sachs, all frozen in various places and attitudes around the lab.

The big detective tossed down half the muffin that he'd snagged from a plate Thom had brought in. "We just had an attack, and he's hitting us again?"

"He wasn't happy we ignored him, I suppose," Jessen said brittlely.

"What does he want?" Sachs asked, at the same time as Rhyme said, "I'd like the note here. ASAP."

Jessen answered Rhyme first. "I gave it to Agent McDaniel. It's on its way to you now."

"What's the deadline?"

"Six p.m."

"Today?"

"Yes."

"Jesus," Sellitto muttered. "Two hours."

"And the demand?" Sachs repeated.

"He wants us to stop all the DC-the direct current-transmission to the other North American grids for an hour, starting at six. If we don't he'll kill more people."

Rhyme asked, "What does that mean?"

"Our grid is the Northeastern Interconnection, and Algonquin's the big energy producer in it. If a power company in another grid needs supply, we sell it to them. If they're more than five hundred miles away, we use DC transmission, not AC. It's more cost effective. Usually it goes to smaller companies in rural areas."

"What's the, you know, significance of the demand?" Sellitto asked.

"I don't know why he's asking. It doesn't make any sense to me. Maybe his point is reducing cancer risk to people near the transmission lines. But I'd guess fewer than a thousand people in North America live near DC lines."