The Kill Room

precision.
    “For you, I will round downward. Four fifteen to seven thirty. That’s three hours and fifteen minutes.”
    And that’s some speedy calculation.
    “What’s the hourly rate?”
    “That would be ninety dollars.”
    “An hour?” she asked before remembering she’d added the qualifier with her prior question.
    A smile. “That’s three hundred and eighty-two dollars and fifty cents.”
    Shit, Sachs thought, she’d assumed it would be about a quarter of that. So, one more reason not to be a limo girl.
    He added, “And of course…”
    “I agreed to double it.”
    “That is a grand total of seven hundred and sixty-five dollars.”
    A sigh. “Will you give me one more ride?” Sachs asked.
    “Well, if it won’t take too much time.” A nod toward the house. “Supper, you know.”
    “Just to the nearest ATM.”
    “Ah, yes, yes…And I won’t charge you for that trip at all!”

CHAPTER 20
    I MAGINATION OR NOT?
    No.
    Cruising back into Manhattan, in the Torino Cobra, Sachs was sure she was being followed.
    Glances into the rearview mirror as she exited the Midtown Tunnel suggested that a car—a light-colored vehicle whose make and model she couldn’t nail down—was following. Nondescript. Gray, white, silver. Here and on the streets leaving Farada’s house.
    But how was this possible? The Overseer had assured them that NIOS, Metzger and the sniper didn’t know about the investigation.
    And even if they did find out, how could they identify her personal car and locate it?
    Yet Sachs had learned from a case she and Rhyme had run a few years ago that anyone with a rudimentary datamining system could track someone’s location pretty easily. Video images of tag numbers, facial recognition, phone calls and credit cards, GPS, E-ZPass transponders, RFID chips—and NIOS was sure to have much more than a basic setup. She’d been careful but perhaps not careful enough.
    That was easily remedied.
    Smiling, she executed a series of complicated, fast and extremely fun turns, most of which involved smoking tires and cracking sixty mph in second gear.
    By the time she performed the last one and stabilized the marvelous Cobra, offering a sweet smile of apology to the Sikh driver she’d skidded around, she was convinced that she’d lost whatever tail might have been after her.
    At least until datamining caught up with her again.
    And even if this was surveillance did the tailer represent a true threat?
    NIOS might want information about her and might try to derail or slow down the case but she could hardly see the government physically hurting an NYPD officer.
    Unless the threat wasn’t from the government itself but an anger-driven psychotic who happened to be working for the government, using his position to play out some delusional dream of eliminating those who weren’t as patriotic as he liked.
    Then too this threat might have nothing to do with Moreno. Amelia Sachs had helped put a lot of people in jail and none of them, presumably, was very pleased about that.
    Sachs actually felt a shiver down her spine.
    She parked just off Central Park West, on a cross street, and tossed the NYPD placard on the dash. Climbing out, Sachs tapped her Glock grip to orient herself as to its exact position. Every nearby car, it seemed, was light-colored and nondescript and contained a shadowy driver looking her way. Every antenna, water tower and pipe atop every building in this stretch of the Upper West Side was a sniper, training the crosshairs of his telescopic sight on her back.
    Sachs walked quickly to the town house and let herself in. Bypassing the parlor, where Nance Laurel was still typing away, exactly as the detective had left her hours ago, she walked into Rhyme’s rehab room—one of the bedrooms on the first floor—where he was working out.
    With Thom nearby as a spotter, Rhyme was in a sitting position, strapped into an elaborate stationary bicycle, a functional electrical stimulation model. The unit sent electrical impulses into his muscles via wires to mimic brain signals and made his legs operate the pedals. He was presently pumping away like a Tour de France competitor.
    She smiled and kissed him.
    “I’m sweaty,” he announced.
    He was.
    She kissed him again, longer this time.
    Although the FES workout would not cure his quadriplegia it kept the muscles and vascular system in shape and improved the condition of his skin, which was important to avoid sores that were common among those