The Empty Chair

now.”
    “Damn bugs,” Tomel said, swatting a mosquito.
    “Whatta you think somebody’s shooting for this time of night? It’s almost one.”
    “Raccoon in the garbage, black bear in a tent, man humping somebody else’s wife.”
    Culbeau nodded. “Look—Sean’s asleep. That man sleeps anytime, anyplace.” He kicked through the embers to cool them.
    “He’s on fucking medication.”
    “He is? I didn’t know that.”
    “That’s why he sleeps anytime, anyplace. He’s acting funny, don’tcha think?” Tomel asked, glancing at the skinny man as if he were a snoozing snake.
    “Liked him better when you couldn’t figure him out. Now he’s all serious, it scares the shit outa me. Holding that gun like it’s his dick and all.”
    “You’re right ’bout that,” Tomel muttered then stared into the murky forest for several minutes. He sighed then said, “Hey, you got the Six-Twelve? I’m getting eaten alive here. And hand me that bottle of ’shine while you’re at it.”

    Amelia Sachs opened her eyes at the sound of the pistol shot.
    She looked into the bedroom of the trailer, where Garrett was asleep on the mattress. He hadn’t heard the noise.
    Another shot.
    Why was somebody shooting this late? she wondered.
    The shots reminded her of the incident on the river—Lucy and the others firing at the boat they thought Sachs and Garrett were under. She pictured the geysers of water flying into the air from the stunning shotgun blasts.
    She listened carefully but heard no more shots. Heard nothing other than the wind. And the cicadas, of course.
    They live this totally weird life. . . . The nymphs dig into the ground and stay there for, like, twenty years before they hatch. . . . All those years in the ground, just hiding, before they come out and become adults.
    But soon her mind was occupied once again with what she’d been considering before the gunshots interrupted her thoughts.
    Amelia Sachs had been thinking of an empty chair.
    Not Dr. Penny’s therapy technique. Or what Garrett had told her about his father and that terrible night five years ago. No, she was thinking of a different chair—Lincoln Rhyme’s red Storm Arrow wheelchair.
    That’s what they were doing down here in North Carolina, after all. Rhyme was risking everything, his life, what was left of his health, his and Sachs’s life together, so that he could move closer to climbing out of that chair. Leaving it behind him, empty.
    And, lying here in this foul trailer, a felon, alone in her own knuckle time, Amelia Sachs finally admitted to herself what had troubled her so about Rhyme’s insistence on the operation. Of course, she was worried that he’d die on the table. Or that the operation would make him worse. Or that it wouldn’t work at all and he’d be plunged into depression.
    But those weren’t her main fears. That wasn’t why she’d done everything she could to stop him from having the operation. No, no—what scared her the most was that the operation would succeed.
    Oh, Rhyme, don’t you understand? I don’t want you to change. I love you the way you are. If you were like everyone else what would happen to us?
    You say, “It’ll always be you and me, Sachs.” But the you and me is based on who we are now. Me and my bloody nails and my itchy need to move, move, move. . . . You and your damaged body and elegant mind that roams faster and further than I ever could in my stripped and rigged Camaro.
    That mind of yours that holds me tighter than the most passionate lover ever could.
    And if you become normal again? When you’re your own arms and legs, Rhyme, then why would you wantme? Why would you need me? I’d become just another portable, a beat cop with some talent for forensics. You’ll meet another one of the treacherous women who’ve derailed your life in the past—another selfish wife, another married lover—and you’ll fade away from me the way Lucy Kerr’s husband left after her surgery.
    I want you the way you are. . . .
    She actually shuddered at how appallingly selfish this thought was. Yet she couldn’t deny it.
    Stay in your chair, Rhyme! I don’t want it empty. . . . I want a life with you, a life the way it’s always been. I want children with you, children who’ll grow up to know you exactly the way you are.
    Amelia Sachs found she was staring at the black ceiling. She closed her eyes. But it was an hour later before the sound of the wind and the cicadas, their