SOMETHING STRUCK HER FOREHEAD. Hard. She felt the thump but no pain.

What, what? His shovel? A brick? Maybe in an instant of compassion 823'd decided that this slow death was more than anyone could bear and was striking for her throat to sever her veins.

Another blow, and another. She couldn't open her eyes, but she was aware of light growing around her. Colors. And air. She forced the mass of dirt from her mouth and sucked in tiny breaths, all she could manage. Began coughing in a loud bray, retching, spitting.

Her lids sprang open and through tearing eyes she found herself looking up at the muddy vision of Lon Sellitto, kneeling over her, beside two EMS medics, one of whom dug into her mouth with latex-clad fingers and pulled out more gunk, while the other readied an oxygen mask and green tank.

Sellitto and Banks continued to uncover her body, shoving the dirt away with their muscular hands. They pulled her up, leaving the robe behind like a shed skin. Sellitto, old divorcé that he was, looked chastely away from her body as he put his jacket around her shoulders. Young Jerry Banks did look of course but she loved him anyway.

"Did... you...?" she wheezed, then surrendered to a racking cough.

Sellitto glanced expectantly at Banks, who was the more breathless of the two. He must've done the most running after the unsub. The young detective shook his head. "Got away."

Sitting up, she inhaled oxygen for a moment.

"How?" she wheezed. "How'd you know?"

"Rhyme," he answered. "Don't ask me how. He called in 10-13s for everybody on the team. When he heard we were okay he sent us over here ASAP."

Then the numbness left, snap, in a flash. And for the first time she realized what had nearly happened. She dropped the oxygen mask, backed away in panic, tears streaming, her panicky keening growing louder and louder. "No, no, no..."

Slapping her arms and thighs, frantic, trying to shake off the horror clinging to her like a teeming swarm of bees.

"Oh God oh God... No..."

"Sachs?" Banks asked, alarmed. "Hey, Sachs?"

The older detective waved his partner away. "It's okay." He kept his arm around her shoulders as she dropped to all fours and vomited violently, sobbing, sobbing, gripping the dirt desperately between her fingers as if she wanted to strangle it.

Finally Sachs calmed and sat back on her naked haunches. She began laughing, softly at first then louder and louder, hysterical, astonished to find that the skies had opened and it had been raining — huge hot summer drops — and she hadn't even realized it.

Arm around his shoulders. Face pressed against his. They stayed that way for a long moment.

"Sachs... Oh, Sachs."

She stepped away from the Clinitron and scooted an old armchair from the corner of the room. Sachs — wearing navy sweatpants and a Hunter College T-shirt — flopped down into the chair and dangled her exquisite legs over the arm like a schoolgirl.

"Why us, Rhyme? Why'd he come after us?" Her voice was a raspy whisper from the dirt she'd swallowed.

"Because the people he kidnapped aren't the real victims. We are."

"Who's we?" she asked.

"I'm not sure. Society maybe. Or the city. Or the UN. Cops. I went back and reread his bible — the chapter on James Schneider. Remember Terry's theory about why the unsub'd been leaving the clues?"

Sellitto said, "Sort of making us accessories. To share the guilt. Make it easier for him to kill."

Rhyme nodded but said, "I don't think that's the reason though. I think the clues were a way to attack us. Every dead vic was a loss for us."

In her old clothes, hair pulled back in a ponytail, Sachs looked more beautiful than any time in the past two days. But her eyes were tin. She'd be reliving every shovelful of dirt, he supposed, and Rhyme found the thought of her living burial so disturbing he had to look away.

"What's he got against us?" she asked.

"I don't know. Schneider's father was arrested by mistake and died in prison. Our unsub? Who knows why? I only care about evidence —"

"— not motives." Amelia Sachs finished the sentence.

"Why'd he start going after us directly?" Banks asked, nodding at Sachs.

"We found his hidey-hole and saved the little girl. I don't think he expected us so soon. Maybe he just got pissed. Lon, we need twenty-four-hour babysitters for all of us. He could've just taken off after we saved the kid but he stuck around to do some damage. You and Jerry, me, Cooper, Haumann, Polling, we're all on his list, betcha. Meanwhile, get Peretti's boys over to Sachs's. I'm sure he kept it clean but there might be something there. He left a lot faster than he'd planned to."

"I better get over there," Sachs said.

"No," Rhyme said.

"I have to work the scene."

"You have to get some rest," he ordered. "That's what you have to do, Sachs. You don't mind my saying, you look lousy."

"Yeah, officer," Sellitto said. " 'S'an order. I told you to stand down for the rest of the day. We've got two hundred searchers looking for him. And Fred Dellray's got another hundred and twenty feebies."

"I got a crime scene in my own backyard and you're not gonna let me walk the grid?"

"That's it," Rhyme said, "in a nutshell."

Sellitto walked to the doorway. "Any problems with that, officer?"

"Nosir."

"Come on, Banks, we got work to do. You need a lift, Sachs? Or're they still trusting you with vehicles?"

"No thanks, got wheels downstairs," she said.

The two detectives left. Rhyme heard their voices echoing through the empty hall. Then the door closed and they were gone.

Rhyme realized the glaring overhead lights were on. He clicked through several commands and dimmed them.

Sachs stretched.

"Well," she said, just as Rhyme said, "So."

She glanced at the clock. "It's late."

"Sure is."

Rising, she walked to the table where her purse rested. She picked it up. Clicked it open, found her compact and examined her cut lip in the mirror.

"It doesn't look too bad," Rhyme said.

"Frankenstein," she said, prodding. "Why don't they use flesh-colored stitches?" She put the mirror away, slung the purse over her shoulder. "You moved the bed," she noticed. It was closer to the window.

"Thom did. I can look at the park. If I want to."

"Well, that's good."

She walked to the window. Looked down.

Oh, for Christ's sake, Rhyme thought to himself. Do it. What can happen? He blurted quickly, "You want to stay here? I mean, it's getting late. And Latents'll be dusting your place for hours."

He felt a mad bolt of anticipation deep within him. Well, kill that, he thought, furious with himself. Until her face blossomed into a smile. "I'd like that."

"Good." His jaw shivered from the adrenaline. "Wonderful. Thom!"

Listening to music, drinking some Scotch. Maybe he'd tell her more about famous crime scenes. The historian in him was also curious about her father, about police work in the '60s and '70s. About the infamous Midtown South Precinct in the old days.

Rhyme shouted, "Thom! Get some sheets. And a blanket. Thom! I don't know what the hell he's doing. Thom!"

Sachs started to say something but the aide appeared in the doorway and said testily, "One rude shout would've been enough, you know, Lincoln."

"Amelia's staying over again. Could you get some blankets and pillows for the couch?"

"No, not the couch again," she said. "It's like sleeping on rocks."

Rhyme was stabbed with a splinter of rejection. Thinking ruefully to himself: Been a few years since he'd felt that emotion. Resigned, he nonetheless smiled and said, "There's a bedroom downstairs. Thom can make it up for you."

But Sachs set down her purse. "That's okay, Thom. You don't have to."

"It's no bother."

"It's all right. Good night, Thom." She walked to the door.

"Well, I —"

She smiled.

"But —" he began, looking from her to Rhyme, who frowned, shook his head.

"Good night, Thom," she said firmly. "Watch your feet." And closed the door slowly, as he stepped back out of the way into the hall. It closed with a loud click.

Sachs kicked off her shoes, pulled off the sweats and T-shirt. She wore a lace bra and baggy cotton panties. She climbed into the Clinitron beside Rhyme, showing every bit of the authority beautiful women wield when it comes to climbing into bed with a man.

She wriggled down into the pellets and laughed. "This is one hell of a bed," she said, stretching like a cat. Eyes closed, Sachs asked, "You don't mind, do you?"

"I don't mind at all."

"Rhyme?"

"What?"

"Tell me more about your book, okay? Some more crime scenes?"

He started to describe a clever serial killer in Queens but in less than one minute she was asleep.

Rhyme glanced down and noted her breast against his chest, her knee resting on his thigh. A woman's hair was banked against his face for the first time in years. It tickled. He'd forgotten that this happened. For someone who lived so in the past, with such a good memory, he was surprised to find he couldn't exactly remember when he'd experienced this sensation last. What he could recall was an amalgam of evenings with Elaine, he supposed, before the accident. He did remember that he'd decided to endure the tickle, not push the strands away, so he wouldn't disturb his wife.

Now, of course, he couldn't brush away Sachs's hair if God Himself had asked. But he wouldn't think of moving it aside. Just the opposite; he wanted to prolong the sensation until the end of the universe.