He was looking around. Taking stock.

He was lying on an air mattress, in the corner of a windowless room — a basement, he guessed.

The stark lighting was from a single overhead bulb. The door was metal — and, surely, locked.

He struggled to rise, which sent a new pinwheel of agony through his head, and his vision began to crinkle to black once more. He lay back. Then rose and checked the door.

Locked tightly, yes.

Then back to bed.

Remembering the minutes leading up to the blackness.

The ski mask.

The muzzle of the animal control tranq gun, the projectile apparently containing enough drug to knock a fair-sized horse to the ground.

During a case he’d worked with Lincoln and Amelia a few years ago, Pulaski had learned that the drug in question — used by wife on husband — was a mixture of etorphine and acepromazine. The side effects upon waking had not been part of that investigation, but Pulaski could now attest to one: it left you feeling really shitty.

He slowly sat up then, in relative control once more, rose to his feet again. Woozy, but he’d stay awake.

And upright.

Looking around more carefully now. On the floor on the other side of the mattress sat the medical records he’d stolen from the hospital. His phone and wallet, though, were missing. The first because it was Kidnapping 101 to take the victim’s means of communicating with the outside world. The second so that they could prove they’d got him.

And who was they?

Hale was behind it, but he probably wasn’t the ski-masked tranq shooter.

And there would be another player too. Lincoln had told him on several occasions that Charles Hale never worked for himself only. He always had a client.

And that person or entity?

High up, pulling strings. But no point in guessing their identity.

Not enough facts.

Pulaski noted there was no bottled water, no food, no toilet. The stay was going to be short.

Released soon.

Or they had more permanent plans in mind.

No windows or other doors, much less secret panels.

In the center of the chamber was a cage housing the HVAC system. But it was secured to the floor with thick padlocks. Still, he made his way to it, and feeling dizzy once more, he sat on the mesh, lowering his head.

Then he studied the cage.

No way to open it.

But wait. It wasn’t HVAC at all. It was some kind of improvised device. He noted a sealed quart jar made of some kind of thick plastic. Inside was a liquid, reaching nearly to the top.

Pulaski sighed and scanned the label on the jar.

HF

Hydrofluoric acid.

Pulaski squinted and studied the assembly. Attached to the jar was a metal box about two by two by three inches. A short antenna protruded. Upon receiving a signal, the explosive charge in the box would detonate and shatter or melt the plastic, sending the corrosive liquid flowing into the room.

He recalled Lincoln Rhyme describing what the acid and the gas it created did to the human body.

He thought it wise to find a better place to sit and returned to the mattress.

Though he supposed the distance made no difference. Nowhere in the cell would be safe when the jar blew open.

Ron Pulaski lay back on the mattress and turned his thoughts to his family: Jenny and his children: Brad, Martine and, of course, Claire.

65

Lincoln Rhyme was now alone.

Sellitto had left.

Sachs was downtown. And Thom was out as well.

Just before he’d left, the aide had poured a healthy dose of twelve-year-old single malt into a crystal glass. Rhyme’s right hand now gripped the Waterford. While it wasn’t a social sin to drink scotch out of a plastic tumbler through a straw, as he’d had to do for years, the beverage seemed to taste better in a glass. No double-blind study for this, but Rhyme was convinced.

He sipped and turned his attention back to the letter that had been in the package. Sellitto had taken a picture through the Plexiglas of the biotox container and the image now sat on Rhyme’s tablet.