The Coffin Dancer

change the plans. There were still alternatives. Plenty of alternatives.
    Thinking about Jodie. About what he’d said to Stephen. Hell, maybe they could get coffee after the job was over.
    They could go to Starbucks. It would be like whenhe was talking to Sheila, only this would be real. And he wouldn’t have to drink that pissy little tea but he’d have real coffee, double strong like the kind Stephen’s mother made in the morning for his stepfather, water at a rolling boil for exactly sixty seconds, exactly two and three-quarters level tablespoons per cup, not a single black ground spilled anywhere.
    And was fishing or hunting totally out of the question?
    Or the campfire . . .
    He could tell Jodie to abort the mission. He could take the Wife and the Friend on his own.
    Abort, Soldier? What’re you talking about?
    Sir, nothing, sir. I am considering all eventualities regarding the assault, as I have been instructed, sir.
    Stephen climbed off the bus and slipped into the alley behind the fire station on Lexington. He rested the book bag behind a Dumpster, slipped his knife from the sheath under his jacket.
    Jodie. Joe D . . . .
    He pictured the thin arms again, the way the man had looked at him.
    I’m glad I met you too, partner.
    Then Stephen shivered suddenly. Like the time in Bosnia when he’d had to jump into a stream to avoid being caught by guerrillas. The month was March and the water just above freezing.
    He closed his eyes and pressed up against the brick wall, smelled the wet stone.
    Jodie was—
    Soldier, what the fuck is going on there?
    Sir, I—
    What?
    Sir, uhm . . .
    Spit it out. Now, Soldier!
    Sir, I have ascertained that the enemy was trying psychological warfare. His attempts have proved unsuccessful, sir. I am ready to proceed as planned.
    Very good, Soldier. But watch your fucking step.
    And Stephen realized, as he opened the back door to the firehouse and slipped inside, that there’d be no changing the plans now. This was a perfect setup and he couldn’t waste it, particularly when there was a chance not only of killing the Wife and the Friend but of killing Lincoln the Worm and the redheaded woman cop too.
    Stephen glanced at his watch. Jodie would be in position in fifteen minutes. He’d call Stephen’s phone. Stephen would answer and hear the man’s high-pitched voice one last time.
    And he’d push the transmit button that would detonate the twelve ounces of RDX in Jodie’s cell phone.
    Delegate . . . isolate . . . eliminate.
    He really had no choice.
    Besides, he thought, what would we ever have to talk about? What would we ever have to do after we’d finished our coffee?

IV
Monkey Skills
    [Falcons’] capacity for aerial acrobatics and foolery is matched only by the clowning of ravens, and they seem to fly for the pure hell of it.
    A Rage for Falcons ,
Stephen Bodio        

 . . . Chapter Twenty-six
    Hour 26 of 45
    W aiting.
    Rhyme was now alone in his bed upstairs, listening into the Special Ops frequency. He was dead tired. It was noon on Sunday and he’d had virtually no sleep. And he was exhausted from the most arduous effort of all—of trying to out-think the Dancer. It was taking its toll on his body.
    Cooper was downstairs in the lab, running tests to confirm Rhyme’s conclusions about the Dancer’s latest tactic. Everyone else was at the safe house, Amelia Sachs too. Once Rhyme, Sellitto, and Dellray had decided how to counter what they believed would be the Dancer’s next effort to kill Percey Clay and Brit Hale, Thom had checked Rhyme’s blood pressure and asserted his virtual parental authority and ordered his boss into bed, no arguments, reasonable orotherwise, accepted. They’d ridden up in the elevator, Rhyme oddly silent, uneasy, wondering if he’d guessed right again.
    “What’s the matter?” Thom asked.
    “Nothing. Why?”
    “You’re not complaining about anything. No grousing means something’s wrong.”
    “Ha. Very funny,” Rhyme grumbled.
    After a sitting transfer to get him in bed, some bodily functions taken care of, Rhyme was now leaning back into his luxurious down pillow. Thom had slipped the voice recognition headset over his head and, despite his fatigue, Rhyme himself had gone through the steps of talking to the computer and having it patch into the Special Ops frequency.
    This system was an amazing invention. Yes, he’d downplayed it to Sellitto and Banks. Yes, he’d groused. But the device, more