Rhymes with Prey 1 page

The night was hot, and close, and the midsummer perfume of Central Park West – the odor of melted bubble gum, mixed with discarded cheese pretzels and rotten bananas, or something just like that – seeped into the backseat of the taxi as it cleared Fifty‑seventh Street and headed north.

The taxi driver was Pakistani, from Karachi, he said, a slender, mild‑mannered man who smelled lightly of cumin with an overlay of Drakkar Noir cologne. He listened to what might have been Pakistani jazz, or Afghani rap, or something even more exotic; the couple in the backseat wouldn’t have known the difference, if there was any difference. When the male passenger asked how big Karachi was, the driver said, “More big than New York City, but more small than New York City if includes the suburgers.”

The woman said, “Really,” with an edge of skepticism.

The Pakistani picked up the skepticism and said, “I look in Wiki, and this is what Wiki say.”

The male passenger was from Minnesota and, not knowing any better, or because he was rich and didn’t care, overtipped the driver as he and the woman got out of the cab. As it moved away, he said to her, “I could use a suburger right now. With catsup and fries.”

“You just don’t want to deal with Rhyme,” she said. “He makes you nervous.”

Lucas Davenport looked up at Lincoln Rhyme’s town house, a Victorian pile facing the park, with a weak, old‑fashioned light over the doorway. “I’m getting over it. When I first went in there, I had a hard time looking at him. That pissed him off. I could feel it, and I feel kinda bad about it.”

“Didn’t have any trouble looking at Amelia,” said Lily Rothenburg.

“Be nice,” Lucas said, as they walked toward the front steps. “I’m happily married.”

“Doesn’t keep you from checking out the market,” Lily said.

“I don’t think she’s on the market,” Lucas said. He made a circling motion with an index finger. “I mean, can they–?”

“I don’t know,” Lily said. “Why don’t you ask? Just wait until I’m out of there.”

“Maybe not,” Lucas said. “I’m getting over it, but I’m not that far over it. And he’s not exactly Mr. Warmth.”

“Somebody might say that about you, too,” Lily observed.

“Hey. Nobody said that to me while getting busy in my Porsche.”

Lily laughed and turned a little pink. Way back, back before their respective marriages, they’d dallied. In fact, Lucas had dallied her brains loose in a Porsche 911, a feat that not everyone thought possible, especially for people their size. “A long time ago, when we were young,” she said, as they climbed the steps to Lincoln’s front door. “I was slender as a fairy then.”

Lucas was a tall man, heavy in the shoulders, with a hawk nose and blue eyes. His black hair was touched with a bit of silver at the temples and a long thin scar ran from his forehead across his brow ridge and down onto his cheek, the product of a fishing accident. Another scar, on his throat, was not quite as outdoorsy, though it happened outdoors, when a young girl shot him with a piece‑of‑crap.22 and he almost died.

Lily was dark‑haired and full‑figured, constantly dieting and constantly finding more interesting things to eat. She never gained enough to be fat, couldn’t lose enough to be thin. She’d never been a fairy. She was paid as a captain in the NYPD, but she was more than that: one of the plainclothes influentials who floated around the top of the department, doing things meant to be invisible to the media. As someone said of her, she was the nut cutter they called when nuts seriously needed to be cut.

Like now. She’d brought Lucas in as a “consultant” from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, because she didn’t know who she could trust in her own department. They might have a serial‑killer cop on the loose – or even worse, a bunch of cops. And if that was right, the cops wouldn’t be out‑of‑control dumbass flatfoots, but serious guys, narcotics detectives who’d become fed up with the pointlessness and ineffectiveness of the war on drugs.

The four dead were all female, all illegal Mexicans, all had been tortured, and all had some connection to drug sales – although with two of them, Lucas thought, the connection was fairly thin. Still, if they were dealing with the cartels, and if there was a turf war going on, they could have been killed simply as warnings. And torture was something the cartels did as other people might play cards.

On the other hand, the women may have been tortured not as punishment, or to make a point, but for information. Somebody, the commissioner feared, had decided to take direct action to eliminate the drug problem, with the emphasis on eliminate. The bodies were piling up: so he called his nut cutter and the nut cutter called Lucas. The duo had just been downtown checking out and talking with the honchos that made up the department’s famous Narcotics Unit Four. Or infamous, some said. The trio of shields – two men and a woman – had earned the highest drug‑conviction rate in the city with, the rumors went, less than kosher tactics. Lately they’d been running ops in the area where the women had been killed.

Lily pushed the doorbell.

Amelia Sachs came to the door, chewing on a celery stalk, and let them in. She was a tall woman, slender and redheaded, a former model, which pushed several of Lucas’s buttons. Given all of that, their relationship had been testy, maybe because of Lucas’s initial attitude toward Lincoln and his disability.

Lincoln was in his Storm‑Arrow wheelchair, peering at a high‑def video screen. Without looking at them, he said, “You got nothing.”

“Not entirely true,” Lucas said. “All three of them were dressed carelessly.”

Lincoln turned his head and squinted at him. “Why is that important?”

Lucas shrugged. “Anyone who dresses carelessly bears watching, in my estimation,” he said. He was wearing a Ralph Lauren Purple Label summer‑weight wool suit in medium blue, a white dress shirt with one of the more muted Hermès ties, and bespoke shoes from a London shoemaker.

Amelia made a rude noise, and Lucas grinned at her, or at least showed his teeth.

“Easy,” Lily said. To Lincoln: “You’re basically right. We got nothing. We weren’t exactly stonewalled, we were know‑nothinged. Like it was all a big puzzle, and why were we there?”

“Were they acting?” Lincoln asked.

“Hard to tell,” Lucas said. “Most detectives are good liars. But if somebody put a gun to my head, I’d say no, they weren’t acting. They didn’t know what we were talking about.”

“Mmm, I like that concept,” Amelia said.

“What?” Lucas asked. “Lying?”

“No. Putting a gun to your head.”

Lily rolled her eyes. “Amelia.”

“Just having fun, Lily,” Amelia said. “You know I love Lucas like a brother.”

“And I hope it stays that way,” Lincoln grumped. “Anyway… while you were out touring the city, we’ve made some significant progress here. There were some anomalies in the autopsy photos that I thought worth revisiting. The bodies were found nude, of course, and so dirt and sand had been comprehensively impressed in the victims’ skins, along with grains of concrete. However, in examining the photos, I noticed that in several of these flecks, we were getting more light return than you might expect from grains of sand or soil or concrete. The photos were taken with flash, of course, a very intense light. The enhanced light return would not have been especially noticeable under the lights of an autopsy table. I sent Amelia to investigate.”

“I found that all four victims had tiny bits of metal ingrained in their skin. The cut surfaces were shiny, which is why Lincoln was able to see them in the high‑res photos,” Amelia said. “There weren’t many of them, but some in each. I recovered them–”

“And brought them here,” Lincoln said. “They were uniform in size, and smaller than the average brown sugar ant. We ran them through the GDS 400A Glow Discharge Spectrometer, a Hewlett Packard Gas Chromatograph, and a JEOL SEM‑scanning electron microscope. Those’re instruments for determining the composition of a liquid, gas, or solid–”

“I know what they are; I’m a cop, not a fucking moron,” Lucas said.

Lincoln continued without acknowledging the interruption. “And found that they were flecks of bronze.”

Lily said, “Bronze. That’s good, right? We need a bronze‑working shop.”

Amelia said, “It’s good in a way. The fact is, bronze has become pretty much a specialty metal – it’s used to make bells, cymbals, some ship propellers, Olympic medals, and bronze wool replaces steel wool for some woodworking applications. It’s used in high‑end weather stripping for doors.”

Lincoln, impatient, said, “Yes, yes, yes. But the flecks are not bronze wool, and they are rounded, with no flat sides, as you would get from weather stripping, and so on. Nor do they appear to be millings, which you would get with propellers and cymbals and such, because the grain size is too consistent.”

“How about sculpture?” Lucas asked.

Lincoln was momentarily disconcerted, then said, “I concluded that since the grains were so uniformly sized, and so sharply cut, they most likely came from a hand‑filing process. The most common hand‑filing process used with bronze involves… sculpture casting.”

Lucas said to Lily, “That was apparent to me as soon as they mentioned bronze.”

“Quite,” Lincoln said.

Lily: “So we’re looking for a foundry.”

“Perhaps not,” Lincoln said. “There is another aspect worth mentioning. There weren’t many of these bronze filings. I surmise that the murders may have taken place not in the foundry area, where you would expect a variety of returns from the casting process – and we have no bronze‑related returns other than these flecks – and probably not even in the filing or grinding area. It appears to me that the grains were tracked into the area where the murders took place. Still, the kill site was near the filing area, or there would have been even fewer grains.”

Lucas said, “So, what, we’re looking for a room off a studio? Maybe even living quarters?”

“Not living quarters. I think we’re looking for a loft of some kind. A loft with a concrete floor. All four victims had flecks of concrete buried in their skin, but two of them were found lying on blacktop, not concrete. And it’s an empty building. Probably an abandoned warehouse.”

“Where do you get that?” Lucas asked.

Lincoln twitched his shoulders, which Lucas had learned was a shrug. “The women weren’t gagged. Whoever killed them let them scream. Either because it didn’t bother them, or because they enjoyed it. And they felt safe in letting them scream.”

Lucas nodded at him: “Interesting,” he said.

Lily ticked it off on her fingers. “We’re looking for a male, probably, because they’re the ones who do this kind of thing; either a sculptor, or somebody who works with a sculptor, who has a studio or a workshop in an empty warehouse.”

“Either that, or somebody picked the building without knowing about the bronze filings,” Amelia said. “They have nothing to do with bronze, except that they happened to pick a place with bronze filings on the floor. Could have been there forever.”

“I doubt that,” Lincoln said.

“It’s a logical possibility, though,” Lily said.

Lucas: “I’m with Lincoln on this.”

Lily asked, “Why?”

Lincoln looked at Lucas and said, “You tell them.”

“Because the particles are still shiny enough that Lincoln picked them up on the bodies. They’re new.”

Lily nodded and Amelia said, “Okay.”

“And he’s a freak. He’s a sadomasochist who knows what he’s doing. He’s got a record,” Lucas said. He turned to Lily. “Time to fire up the computers.”

And the computers were fired up, not by Lucas, Lily, Amelia, or Lincoln, but by a clerk in the basement of the FBI building in Washington. Lily spoke quietly into the shell‑like ear of the chief of detectives, Stan Markowitz, who spoke to a pal in the upper strata of the FBI, who wrote a memo that drifted down through several layers of the bureaucracy, and wound up on the desk of an inveterate war‑game player named Barry.

Barry read the note, and punched in a bunch of keywords, and found, oddly enough, that there were four bronze sculptors in the United States who had been arrested for sex crimes involving some level of violence, and two of them had had studios in New York.

One of them was dead.

But James Robert Verlaine wasn’t.

* * *

“James Robert Verlaine,” Lily read the next morning. They were in Lincoln’s crime lab, once a parlor.

“Or as we know him, ‘Jim Bob,’ ” Lucas said.

“Has a fondness for cocaine, has been arrested twice for possession of small amounts, did no time. Also arrested years ago for possession of LSD, did two months. Four years ago, he was charged with possession of thirty hits of ecstasy, but he’d wiped the Ziploc bag they were in and he’d thrown it into the next toilet stall, where it landed in the toilet and wasn’t fished out for a while. Quite a while – somebody hadn’t flushed. The prosecutor dumped it for faulty chain of evidence. Last year he was arrested in an apartment over on skid row in a raid on a meth cooker, but he was released when it turned out the actual cooker was the woman who was renting the apartment. Verlaine said he was just an innocent visitor. The prosecutor dumped it again, insufficient evidence.”

“Get to the sex,” Lucas said.

“He’s never been arrested for a sex crime, but he’s been investigated,” Lily said, reading from the FBI report. “He’s known for sculptures with slave themes involving bondage, whipping, various kinds of subjugation of women. A woman named Tina Martinez – note the last names here – complained to police that he’d injured a friend of hers named Maria Corso, who was supposedly modeling for one of these bondage sculptures. Corso refused to prosecute, said there’d been a misunderstanding with her friend. The investigators say they believe she was paid off.”

“He’s a bad man,” Amelia said.

“Bad,” Lincoln agreed. “With a substantial interest in drugs.”

“And probably with the kind of brain rot you get from meth,” Lucas said.

“Do you have a plan?” Lincoln asked.

“I plan to spend some time with him today. Just watching. Amelia and Lily can help out. See what he does, who he talks to, where he hangs out.”

“Do we know where he lives?” Lincoln asked.

“We do,” Lily said.

Lincoln said to Lucas, “I wonder if the women could handle the surveillance and keep you informed, of course.”

Lucas said, “No reason they couldn’t, I guess. Easier with three of us. Why?”

“I have an idea, but I want to speak to you privately about it. Just to avoid the inevitable question of conspiracy.”

“Oh, shit,” Lily said.

* * *

Well, now, here’s a pretty.

Tasty, this one.

Oh, he could picture her on her back, arms outstretched, yeah, yeah, lying on something rough – concrete or wood. Or metal.

Metal’s always good.

Sweat on her forehead, sweat on her tits, sweat everywhere. Mewing, gasping, pleading.

For a luscious moment, every other person in the club vanished from James Robert Verlaine’s consciousness as his eyes, his artist’s eyes, lapped up the brunette in black at the end of the bar.

Tasty…

Raven hair, tinting from red to blue to green to violet in the spotlights. Disco décor, punk music. Rasta’s could never make up its mind.

Hair. That aspect of the human form fascinated him. A sculptor of hard materials, he could reproduce flesh and organ, but hair remained ever elusive.

She glanced toward him once, no message in the gaze, but then a second time, which was, possibly, a message in itself.

Studying her more closely now, the oval face, the sensuous figure, the provocative way she leaned against the bar as she carried on a conversation on her cell phone.

It irritated him that her attention was now on some asshole a mile or ten miles or a hundred miles away. A smile. But not at Verlaine.

Mona Lisa, he reflected. That’s who she reminded him of. Not a compliment, of course. Da Vinci’s babe was a smirky bitch. And, Lord knew, the painting was way overrated.

Hey, look over here, Mona.

But she didn’t.

Verlaine flagged down the bartender and ordered. Like always, here or at one of the other clubs where he hung out, Verlaine drank bourbon, straight, because girls liked it when men drank liquor that wasn’t ruined with fruit juice. Beer was for kids, wine for the bedroom after fucking.

Mona looked in his direction once again. But didn’t lock eyes.

He was getting angry now. Who the hell was she talking to?

Another scan. Little black dresses were a coward’s choice – worn by women afraid to make a statement. But in Mona’s case, he forgave her. The silk plunged and hovered just where it ought to and the cloth clung like latex paint to her voluptuous figure.

And what hands! Long fingers, tipped in black nails.

Hair was tough to duplicate, but hands were the most arduous of sculptors’ challenges. Michelangelo was a genius at them, finding perfect palms and digits and nails in the heart of marble.

And James Robert Verlaine, who knew he was an artistic, if not blood, descendant of the great master, created the same magic, though with metal, not stone.

Which was much, much tougher to accomplish.

The crowd in Rasta’s, Midtown, was typical for this time of night – artsy sorts who were really ad agency account managers, nerds who were really artists, hipsters pathetically clinging to their fading youth like a life preserver, players from Wall Street. Packed already. Soon to be more packed.

Finally, he caught Mona’s eye. Her gaze flickered. Could be flirt, could be fuck off.

But Verlaine doubted the latter. He believed she liked what she saw. Why wouldn’t she? He had a lean, wolfish face, which looked younger than his forty years. His hair, a mop, thick and inky. He worked hard to keep the do in a state of controlled unruliness. His eyes were as focused as lasers. Thin hips, encased in his trademark black jeans, tight. His work shirt was DKNY, but suitably flecked and worn. The garment was two‑buttons undone with the pecs just slightly visible. Verlaine humped ingots and bars of metal around his studio and the junkyards where he bought his raw materials. Carried oxygen and propane and acetylene tanks, too.

Another glance at Mona. He was losing control, as that familiar feeling rippled through him from chest to crotch.

Picking up his Basil Hayden’s, he pushed away from the bar to circle Mona’s way. He tried to get past a knot of young businessmen in suits. They ignored him. Verlaine hated people like this. He detested their conformity, their smugness, their utter ignorance of culture. They’d judge art by the price tag; Verlaine bet he could wipe his ass with a canvas, spray some varnish on it, and set a reserve price of a hundred thousand bucks – and philistines like this’d fight to outbid themselves at Christie’s.

L’art du merde.

He pushed through the young men.

“Hey,” one muttered. “Asshole, you spilled my–”

Verlaine turned fast, firing off a searing gaze, like a spurt of pepper spray. The businessman, though taller and heavier, went still. His friends stirred, but chose not to come to his defense, returning quickly to a stilted conversation about the game.

When it was clear Mr. Brooks Brothers wasn’t going to do something stupid and get a finger or face broken, or worse, Verlaine gave him a condescending smile and moved on.

Easing up to Mona, Verlaine hovered. He wasn’t going to play the let’s‑ignore‑each‑other game. He was too worked up for that. He whispered, “I’ve got one advantage over who you’re talking to.” A nod at the phone.

She stopped speaking and turned to him.

Verlaine grinned. “I can buy you a drink and he can’t.”

Tense. Would she balk?

Mona looked him over. Slow. Not smiling now. She said into the phone, “Gotta go.”

Click.

His index finger crooked for the bartender.

“So, I’m James.”

Playing it coy, of course. She said something. He couldn’t hear. The music at Rasta’s was a one‑hundred‑decibel remix of groups from twenty years ago, the worst of CBGBs.

He leaned closer and smelled a luscious floral scent rising from her skin.

Man, he wanted her. Wanted her tied down. Wanted her sweating. Wanted her crying.

“What’s that?” he called.

Mona shouted, “I said, so what do you do, James?”

Of course. This was Manhattan. That was always question number one.

“I’m a sculptor.”

“Yeah?” A faint Brooklyn lilt. He could tolerate that. The skepticism in her eyes, no.

His iPhone appeared and, shoving it her way, he flipped through the pictures.

“Jesus, you really are.”

Then Mona looked past him. He followed her gaze and saw a tall redhead, smiling as she made her way through the crowd. A stunner. His eyes did the triplet glance: face, tits, ass. And he didn’t care that she saw him doing it.

As tasty as Mona.

And no LBD for her. Leather miniskirt, fishnets, low‑cut dark‑blue sequined top, strapless.

The arrivee tossed her beautiful hair off her shoulders, glistening with sweat. She cheek‑kissed Mona. Then pitched a smile Verlaine’s way.

Mona said, “This is James. He’s a real sculptor. He’s famous.”

“Cool,” the redhead said, eyes wide and impressed – just the way he liked the pretties to be.

He shook their hands.

“And you are?” he asked the redhead.

“I’m Amelia.”

Mona turned out to be Lily.

Verlaine got Amelia a Pinot gris and a refill of his bourbon.

Conversation wandered. Protocol demanded that, and Verlaine had to play the game a little longer before he could bring up the subject. You had to be careful. You could ruin an evening if you moved too fast. A girl by herself? You got her drunk enough, you could usually get her to “try something different” back at your place without too much effort.

But two together? That took a lot more work.

In fact, he wasn’t sure he could pull this one off. They seemed, fuck it, smart, savvy. They weren’t going to fall for lines like, “I can open up a whole new world for you.”

No, may have to write this evening off. Hell.

But just then Lily leaned forward and whispered, “So what’re you into, James?”

“Hobbies, you mean?” he asked.

The women regarded each other and broke out in laughs. “Yeah, hobbies. You have any hobbies?”

“Sure. Who doesn’t?”

“If we tell you about our hobby, will you tell us about yours?”

When a sultry raven‑haired pretty in a tight LBD asks you that question, there’s only one answer: “You bet.”

The redhead reached into her tiny purse and displayed a pair of handcuffs.

Okay, maybe the night was going to be easier than he thought.

* * *

James Robert Verlaine had a certain charm, Amelia Sachs gave him that.

The clothes were weird– Midnight Cowboy meets Versace – and he probably owned more hair products than she did. But, despite that, his witty attention was completely on her and Lily.

With Lincoln Rhyme as a romantic as well as professional partner, Amelia had been freed from the madness of the dating world. But before him there’d been innumerable evenings in restaurants and bars with men who were anything but present. Their thoughts kept zipping back to Nokias or BlackBerrys in jacket pockets, to business deals sitting on office desktops, to girlfriends or wives they’d forgotten to mention.

A woman knows right away when a man’s with her or not.

And Jim Bob – she loved Lucas Davenport’s nic for him – definitely was. His sniper eyes bored into theirs, he touched arms, he asked questions, made jokes. He inquired.

Of course, this wasn’t typical bar meeting talk – about family and exes, about the Mets, the Knicks, politics, and the latest retreads from Hollywood. No, the theme for tonight was such esoterica as describing the type of rope he enjoyed tying “girls” up with, where to get the best mouth gags, and what kind of whips and canes caused the most pain but left the fewest marks.

Back at Lincoln’s loft, the four investigators had decided the way to Verlaine’s psyche was through his fly. His sado‑sexual history would give them entry. Lily had gone to the bar first – strategizing that a single bulb might draw the moth less suspiciously. Yep on that one. Then Amelia – in an outfit she’d had to purchase an hour earlier – had arrived to seal the deal. And it had taken a whole sixty seconds to find out that Verlaine usually came to Rasta’s before heading to his fave S&M dives.

Thank you, Facebook.

Verlaine’s phone appeared again and he punched in a passcode. A private photo album opened. And he leaned forward to show off his prize shots.

Amelia struggled not to show her disgust. She heard Lily inhale fast, but the senior detective turned the sound into a whisper of admiration. Verlaine missed her dismay.

The first image was of a naked woman, wearing only a necklace, blindfolded, with her hands taped or tied behind her. She was kneeling on a slab of concrete. Interesting, Amelia thought, and caught Lily’s eye. Concrete, just like the victims.

The woman in the picture had been crying – her makeup had run to her chin – and her breasts were streaked with ugly welts.

Verlaine, obviously aroused, eagerly scrolled through more images, which Amelia found increasingly hard to look at. It took all her willpower to appear aroused by the images of cruelty.

He gave a running narrative of the “partners.” Amelia only heard the word “victims.”

Ten minutes.

Fifteen.

At that point Verlaine said, “Excuse me, ladies. I need to run to the little boy’s room. Behave while I’m away. Or not!” He laughed. “Back in a sec.”

“Wait,” Lily said.

Verlaine turned.

“Always wondered something.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“What’s the plural of sec?”

* * *

“That son of a bitch,” Lily said. She wasn’t smiling.

“God, that was awful,” Amelia added. “What do you think?” She was nodding back toward the toilets where Jim Bob might be emptying his bladder but was sure to be filling his nostrils.

“Sleazy, scummy, I want to take a shower in hand sanitizer.”

“Agreed. But is he a killer?”

“Those pictures,” Lily whispered. “I’ve worked sex crimes but that’s about the worst I’ve seen. From some of those wounds, I guarantee he put one or two of them in the hospital.” She considered the question. “Yeah, I could see him taking it a step further and killing somebody. You?”

“I think so.”

Lily continued, “I hope so. Man, I really do. I don’t want the crew from Narcotics Four to be behind this.”

Amelia didn’t much care for the detectives running the elite unit – Martin Glover, Danny Vincenzo, and Candy Preston all had egos like runaway stallions – but no cop wants to think that colleagues are torturing and killing wits just to up their conviction rate, however noble their cause.

Amelia looked over her friend. “So. You and Lucas, you had a thing, right?”

“A while ago, yeah. In Minnesota and when he came here. Really clicked between us. Still does. But not that way. We’ve moved on. And you and Lincoln seem like a good fit.”

“Just like you were saying. It clicks. Can’t explain it, don’t think about it.”

“Lucas has some problems with him. You know, being in the chair.”

“Happens some.” Amelia laughed. “Of course, Lincoln rides people hard and then they get fed up and go, ‘You’re such an asshole.’ Or, ‘Fuck you.’ They forget he’s a quad. That breaks the ice and it’s all good.”

“With Lucas, I think it’s something more. He won’t talk about it.” Lily lowered her voice. “For me, I have to say, when Lucas and I met, it was, a lot of it was physical. I need that. You and Lincoln?”

“Oh, yeah. Believe it or not, it’s good. Different obviously. But good… Ah, here comes our lord and master.”

Wiping his nose with his fingers, Verlaine was oozing his way through the crowd. Amelia was sure he turned sideways intentionally to rub against an ass or two.

One of his “accidental” victims – a petite redhead in a leather skirt and black blouse – turned fast and, eyes dark angry disks, shouted words they couldn’t hear. Fast as a gun hammer falling on a primer, he wheeled and shoved his face into hers.

“Christ,” Amelia muttered, reaching toward her purse, where a baby Glock rested. “He’s going to hurt her.”

“Wait. We move in, that fucks up the whole op.”

They watched closely. A cold smile blossomed on Verlaine’s face as the woman looked at him warily. She was attractive and her figure was perfect, though it was clear she’d had acne in her youth or some illness that left scarring.