Jeffery Deaver - The burning wire

Ten feet away.

Looking up, picking the best window to go through. Hoping the stairs and platform wouldn't clank. Galt couldn't be more than forty feet from them.

Still, the sound of the diesel engine would cover up most squeaks.

Five feet.

Pulaski examined his heart and found its beat steady. He was going to make Lincoln Rhyme proud of him again.

Hell, he was going to collar this sick bastard himself.

He reached for the ladder.

And the next thing he knew he heard a snap and every muscle in his body contracted at once. In his mind he was looking at all the light of heaven, before his vision dissolved to yellow then black.

STANDING TOGETHER BEHIND the school, Amelia Sachs and Lon Sellitto watched the place being swept by ESU.

"A trap," the lieutenant said.

"Right," she replied grimly. "Galt hooked up a big generator in a shed behind the school. He started it and then left. It was connected to the metal doors and the fire escape."

"The fire escape. That's the way Pulaski was going."

She nodded. "Poor kid. He-"

An ESU officer, a tall African American, interrupted them. "We've finished the sweep, Detective, Lieutenant. It's clean. The whole place. We didn't touch anything inside, like you asked."

"A digital recorder?" she asked. "That's what I'm betting he used."

"That's right, Detective. Sounded like a scene from a TV show or something. And a flashlight hanging by a cord. So it looked like somebody was holding it."

No hostage. No Galt. Nobody at all.

"I'll run the scenes in a minute."

The officer asked, "There was no portable called it in?"

"Right," Sellitto muttered. "Was Galt. Probably on a prepaid mobile, I'd bet. I'll check it."

"And he just did this"-a wave at the school-"to kill some of us."

"That's right," Sachs said somberly.

The ESU officer grimaced and headed off to gather his team. Sachs had immediately called Rhyme to give him the news about the school. And about Ron Pulaski.

But, curiously, the phone went right to voice mail.

Maybe something had heated up in the case, or in the Watchmaker situation in Mexico.

A medic was walking toward her, head down, picking his way through the trash; the yard behind the school looked like a beach after a garbage spill. Sachs walked forward to meet him.

"You free now, Detective?" he asked her.

"Sure."

She followed him around to the side of the building, where the ambulances waited.

There, sitting on a concrete stoop, was Ron Pulaski, head in his hands. She paused. Took a deep breath and walked up to him.

"I'm sorry, Ron."

He was massaging his arm, flexing his fingers. "No, ma'am." He blinked at his own formality. Grinned. "I should say, thank you."

"If there'd been any other way, I would've done it. But I couldn't shout. I assumed Galt was still inside. And had his weapon."

"I figured."

Fifteen minutes earlier, as Sachs had waited at the door, she'd decided to use Sommers's current detector once more to double check that there was no electricity in the school.

To her horror she saw the metal door she was inches away from contained 220 volts. And the concrete she was standing on was soaking wet. She realized that whether or not Galt was inside, he'd rigged wires to the metal infrastructure of the school. Probably from a diesel-powered generator; that was the racket they'd heard.

If Galt had rigged the door he would have rigged the fire escape as well. She'd leapt to her feet then and charged after Pulaski as he approached the ladder. She didn't dare call his name, even in a whisper, because if Galt was in the school, he'd hear and start shooting.

So she'd used Taser on Pulaski.

She carried an X26 model, which fired probes that delivered both high- and low-voltage charges. The X26 had a range of about thirty-five feet, and when she saw that she couldn't tackle the officer in time, she'd hit him with the double probes. The neuromuscular incapacitation dropped him where he stood. He'd fallen hard on his shoulder, but, thank God, hadn't struck his head again. Sachs dragged him, gasping and quivering, to cover. She'd found and shut the generator off just as the ESU officers arrived, blowing open the chain on the front gate and storming the school.

"You look a little woozy."

"Was quite a rush," Pulaski said, breathing deeply.

She said, "Take it easy."

"I'm okay. I'm helping the scene." He blinked like a drunk. "I mean helping you search the scene."

"You're up for it?"

"Long as I don't move too fast. But, listen, keep that thing of yours, that box that Charlie Sommers gave you? Keep it handy, okay? I'm not touching anything until you go over it."

The first thing they did was walk the grid around the generator behind the school. Pulaski collected and bagged the wires that had carried the charge to the door and fire escapes. Sachs herself searched around the generator. It was a big unit several feet high and about three long. A placard on the side reported that its maximum output was 5,000 watts, producing 41 amps.

About four hundred times what was needed to kill you.

Nodding at the unit. "Could you pack it up and get it to Rhyme's?" she asked the crime scene team from Queens, who'd just joined them. It weighed about two hundred pounds.

"You bet, Amelia. We'll get it there ASAP."

She said to Pulaski, "Let's walk the grid inside."

They were heading into the school when Sachs's phone rang. "Rhyme" popped up on caller ID.

"About time," she said good-naturedly as she answered. "I've got some-"

"Amelia." It was Thom's voice, but the tone was one she'd never heard before. "You better come back here. You better come now."

BREATHING HARD, SACHS hurried up the ramp and pushed open the door to Rhyme's townhouse.

Jogging across the foyer, boots slapping hard, she ran into the den, to the right, opposite the lab.

Thom looked toward her from where he was standing over Lincoln Rhyme in his wheelchair, eyes closed, face pale and damp. Between them was one of Rhyme's doctors, a solidly built African American, a former football star in college.

"Dr. Ralston," she said, breathing hard.

He nodded. "Amelia."

Finally Rhyme's eyes opened. "Ah, Sachs." The voice was weak.

"How are you?"

"No, no, how are you?"

"I'm fine."

"And the rookie?"

"He nearly had a problem, but it worked out okay."

Rhyme said in a stiff voice, "It was a generator, right?"

"Yes, how did you know? Did Crime Scene call?"

"No, I figured it out. Diesel fuel and herbs from Chinatown. The fact that there didn't seem to be any juice in the school. I figured out it was a trap. But had a little problem before I could call."

"Didn't matter, Rhyme," she said. "I figured it out too."

And didn't tell him how close Pulaski had come to getting electrocuted.

"Well, good. I… Good."

She understood that he was thinking how he'd failed. How he'd nearly gotten one or both of them injured or killed. Normally he'd have been furious; a tantrum might have ensued. He'd want a drink, he'd insult people, he'd revel in sarcasm, all of which was directed toward himself, of course, as she and Thom knew very well.

But this was different. There was something about his eyes, something she didn't like one bit. Oddly, for someone with such a severe disability, there was rarely anything vulnerable about Lincoln Rhyme. Now, with this failure, he radiated weakness.

She found she had to look away and turned to the doctor, who said, "He's out of danger. Blood pressure's down." He then turned to Rhyme; even more than most patients, spinal cord injury victims hate being discussed in the third person. Which happens a lot. "Stay in the chair and out of bed as much as you can, and make sure bladder and bowel are taken care of. Loose clothes and socks."