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Then his steps moved closer. She gave up.
Okay, it was time to fight. Fine with her. She'd seen his eyes, the lust, the hunger. She knew he'd be coming for her at any moment. She didn't know how she'd hurt him, with her hands cuffed behind her and the terrible pain in her shoulder and face from the fight earlier. But the bastard'd pay for every touch.
Only, where was he?
The footsteps had stopped.
Where? Sachs had no perspective on the room. The corridor he'd have to come through to get to her was a two-foot-wide path through the towers of moldy newspapers. She could see his desk and the piles of junk, the stacks of magazines.
Come on, come for me.
I'm ready. I'll act scared, shy away. Rapists are all about control. He'll be empowered--and careless--when he sees me cower. Then when he leans close, I'll go for his throat with my teeth. Hold on and don't let go, whatever happens. I'll--
It was then that the building collapsed, a bomb detonated.
A massive crushing tide tumbled over her, slamming her to the floor and pinning her immobile.
She grunted in pain.
Only after a minute did Sachs realize what he'd done--maybe anticipating that she was going to fight, he'd simply pushed over stacks of the newspapers.
Legs and hands frozen, her chest, shoulders and head exposed, she was trapped by hundreds of pounds of stinking newspaper.
The claustrophobia grabbed her, the panic indescribable, and she barked a scream with staccato breath. She struggled to control the fear.
Peter Gordon appeared at the end of the tunnel. She saw in one of his hands the steel blade of a razor. In the other was a tape recorder. He studied her closely.
"Please," she whimpered. The panic was only partly feigned.
"You're lovely," he whispered.
He began to say something else but the words were lost in the sound of a doorbell, which chimed in here as well as the main part of the town house.
Gordon paused.
Then the bell rang again.
He rose and walked to the desk, typed on the keyboard and studied the computer screen--probably a security camera showing the image of the visitor. He frowned.
The killer debated. He glanced at her and carefully folded the razor, then slipped it into his back pocket.
He walked to the closet door and stepped through it. She heard the click of the latch behind him. Once more her hand began to worm closer to her pocket and the tiny bit of metal inside.
*
"Lincoln."
Bo Haumann's voice was distant.
Rhyme whispered, "Tell me."
"It wasn't her."
"What?"
"The hits--from that computer program--they were right. But it wasn't Amelia." He explained that she gave her friend, Pam Willoughby, her credit card to buy groceries in hopes they could have dinner that night and talk about some "personal stuff." "That's what the system read, I guess. She went to a store, did some window-shopping and then she stopped here--it's a friend's house. They were doing their homework."
Rhyme's eyes closed. "Okay, thanks, Bo. You can stand down. All we can do is wait."
