Jeffery Deaver - The burning wire

And the claims were realistic-that is, modest. A quad like Rhyme wouldn't be able to walk, but he could improve his lung functioning, perhaps get other digits to work and, most important, get back control of bowel and bladder. This would greatly help in reducing the risk of dysreflexia attacks-that skyrocketing of the blood pressure that could lead to stroke that could render him even more disabled than he was. Or kill him.

"It's helped me a lot. I think in a few years I'll be able to walk again."

Rhyme was nodding. He could think of nothing to say.

"I don't work for them. I'm not a disability rights advocate. I'm an editor who happens to be a paraplegic." This echo made Rhyme offer a faint smile. She continued, "But when Detective Sachs said she was working with you, I thought, Fate. I was meant to come tell you about Pembroke. They can help you."

"I… appreciate it."

"I've read about you, of course. You've done a lot of good for the city. Maybe it's time you did some good for yourself."

"Well, it's complicated." He had no idea what that meant, much less why he'd said it.

"I know, you're worried about the risk. And you should be."

True, surgery would be riskier for him, as a C4, than for her. He was prone to blood pressure, respiratory and infection complications. The question was balance. Was the surgery worth it? He'd nearly undergone an operation a few years ago but a case had derailed the procedure. He'd postponed any medical treatment of that sort indefinitely.

But now? He considered: Was his life the way he wished it to be? Of course not. But he was content. He loved Sachs, and she him. He lived for his job. He wasn't eager to throw all that away chasing an unrealistic dream.

Normally buttoned tight about his personal feelings, he nonetheless told Susan Stringer this, and she understood.

Then he surprised himself further by adding something he hadn't told many people at all. "I feel that I'm mostly my mind. That's where I live. And I sometimes think that's one of the reasons I'm the criminalist that I am. No distractions. My power comes from my disability. If I were to change, if I were to become, quote, normal, would that affect me as a forensic scientist? I don't know. But I don't want to take that chance."

Susan was considering this. "It's an interesting thought. But I wonder if that's a crutch, an excuse not to take the risk."

Rhyme appreciated that. He liked blunt talk. He nodded at his chair. "A crutch is a step up in my case."

She laughed.

"Thanks for your thoughts," he added, because he felt he ought to, and she fixed him with another of those knowing looks. The expression was less irritating now, though it remained disconcerting.

She backed away in the chair and said, "Mission accomplished."

His brow furrowed.

Susan said, "I found you two fibers you might not otherwise have." She smiled. "Wish it were more." Eyes back on Rhyme. "But sometimes it's the little things that make all the difference. Now, I should go."

Sachs thanked her and Thom saw her out.

After she'd left, Rhyme said, "This was a setup, right?"

Sachs replied, "It was sort of a setup, Rhyme. We needed to interview her anyway. When I called about arranging it, we got to talking. When she heard I worked with you she wanted to make her sales pitch. I told her I'd get her in to see the chairman."

Rhyme gave a brief smile.

Then it faded as Sachs crouched and said in a voice that Mel Cooper couldn't hear, "I don't want you any different than you are, Rhyme. But I want to make sure you're healthy. For me, that's all I care about. Whatever you choose is fine."

For a moment Rhyme recalled the title of the pamphlet left by Dr. Kopeski, with Die with Dignity.

Choices.

She leaned forward and kissed him. He felt her hand touching the side of his head with a bit more palm than made sense for a gesture of affection.

"I have a temperature?" he asked, smiling at catching her.

She laughed. "We all have temperatures, Rhyme. Whether you have a fever or not, I can't tell." She kissed him again. "Now get some sleep. Mel and I'll keep going here for a while. I'll be up to bed soon." She returned to the evidence she'd found.

Rhyme hesitated but then decided that he was tired, too tired to be much help at the moment. He wheeled toward the elevator, where Thom joined him and they began their journey upward in the tiny car. Sweat continued to dot his forehead and it seemed to him that his cheeks were flushed. These were symptoms of dysreflexia. But he didn't have a headache and he didn't feel the onset of the sensation that preceded an attack. Thom got him ready for bed and handled the evening detail. The blood pressure cuff and thermometer were handy. "Little high," he said of the former. As to the latter, Rhyme didn't, in fact, have a fever.

Thom executed a smooth transfer to get him into bed, and Rhyme heard in his memory Sachs's comment from a few minutes earlier.

We all have a temperature, Rhyme.

He couldn't help reflecting that clinically this was true. We all did. Even the dead.

HE AWOKE FAST, from a dream.

He tried to recall it. He couldn't remember enough to know whether it had been bad or simply odd. It was certainly intense, though. The likelihood, however, was that it was bad, since he was sweating furiously, as if he were walking through the turbine room at Algonquin Consolidated.

The time was just before midnight, the faint light of the clock/alarm reported. He'd been asleep for a short time and he was groggy; it took a moment to orient himself.

He'd ditched the uniform and hard hat and gear bag after the attack at the hotel, but he'd kept one of his accoutrements, which was now dangling from a chair nearby: the ID badge. In the dim, reflected light he stared at it now: His sullen picture, the impersonal typeface of "R. Galt" and, above that, in somewhat more friendly lettering:

Considering what he'd been up to for the past several days, he appreciated the irony of that slogan.

He lay back and stared at the shabby ceiling in the East Village weekly rental, which he'd taken a month ago under a pseudonym, knowing the police would find the apartment sooner or later.

Sooner, as it turned out.

He kicked the sheets off. His flesh was damp with sweat.

Thinking about the conductivity of the human body. The resistance of our slippery internal organs can be as low as 85 ohms, making them extremely susceptible to current. Wet skin, 1,000 or less. But dry skin has a resistance of 100,000 ohms or more. That's so high that significant amounts of voltage are needed to push that current through the body, usually 2,000 volts.

Sweat makes the job a lot easier.

His skin cooled as it dried, and his resistance climbed.

His mind leapt from thought to thought: the plans for tomorrow, what voltages to use, how to rig the lines. He thought about the people he was working with. And he thought about the people pursuing him. That woman detective, Sachs. The younger one, Pulaski. And, of course, Lincoln Rhyme.

Then he was meditating on something else entirely: two men in the 1950s, the chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, at the University of Chicago. They devised a very interesting experiment. In their lab they created their version of the primordial soup and atmosphere that had covered the earth billions of years ago. Into this mix of hydrogen, ammonia and methane, they fired sparks mimicking the lightning that blanketed the earth back then.

And what happened?

A few days later they found something thrilling: In the test tubes were traces of amino acids, the so-called building blocks of life.