melia Sachs had no choice. She had to attack. Immediately. Using Jorgensen’s body as a shield, she lunged toward hunched-over, bleeding Gordon, grabbed the Taser from the floor and fired it in his direction.

The probes don’t have the velocity of bullets and he fell backward just in time; the barbs missed. She snatched Jorgensen’s metal bar and charged toward him. Gordon rose to one knee. But when she was just ten feet away he managed to bring the gun up and fire a round directly at her, just as she flung the bar at him. The bullet slammed into the American Body Armor vest. The pain was stunning but the round had struck her well below the solar plexus, where a hit would have knocked the breath from her lungs and paralyzed her.

The crowbar spun into his face, colliding with a nearly silent thonk, and he cried out in pain. He didn’t go down, though, and still held the gun firmly. Sachs turned in the only direction she could flee—to her left—and sprinted through a canyon of artifacts filling the creepy place.

“Maze” was the only way to describe it. A narrow path through his collections: combs, toys (a lot of dolls—one of which had probably sloughed off the hair recovered at an early crime scene), old toothpaste tubes, carefully rolled up; cosmetics, mugs, paper bags, clothing, shoes, empty food cans, keys, pens, tools, magazines, books… She’d never seen so much junk in her life.

Most of the lamps were off here, though a few faint bulbs cast a yellow pall on the place, and pale illumination from streetlights filtered in through stained shades and newspapers taped over the glass. The windows were all barred. Sachs stumbled several times and caught herself just before sprawling into a stack of china or a massive bin of clothespins.

Careful, careful…

A fall would be fatal.

Close to vomiting from the blow to her belly, she turned between two towering stacks of National Geographics and gasped, ducking just in time as Gordon turned the corner forty feet away, spotted her and, wincing in pain from his shattered arm and the blow to the face, fired two shots, left-handed. Both went wide. He started forward. Sachs wedged her elbow behind a tower of the glossy magazines and sent them cascading into the aisle, blocking it completely. She scrabbled away, hearing two more shots.

Seven fired—she always counted—but it was a Glock, still fat with eight rounds. She looked for any exit, even an unbarred window she could fling herself through, but this side of the town house had none. The walls contained shelves filled with china statuettes and knickknacks. Sachs could hear him furiously kicking aside the magazines, muttering to himself.

His face emerged over the piles as he tried to climb over the stack but the coated covers were slick as ice and he slipped twice, crying out as he used his broken arm to steady himself. Finally he scrabbled to the top. But before he could raise the gun he froze in horror, gasping. He shouted, “No! Please, no!”

Sachs had both hands on a bookcase filled with antique vases and china figurines.

“No, don’t touch it. Please!”

She had recalled what Terry Dobyns had said about losing anything in his collection. “Throw the gun out here. Do it now, Peter!”

She didn’t believe he would but, faced with the horror that he was about to lose what was on the shelf, Gordon was actually debating.!!!Knowledge is power.

“No, no, please…” A pathetic whisper.

Then his eyes changed. In an instant, they turned to dark dots and she knew he was going to go for the shot.

She shoved the shelf into another and two hundred pounds of ceramics turned to shards on the floor, a painful cacophony—which Peter Gordon’s eerie, primal howl drowned out.

Two more shelves of ugly figurines and cups and saucers joined the destruction.

“Throw the gun down or I’ll break every goddamn thing in here!”

But he’d lost control completely. “I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll kill you I’ll—” He fired twice more but by then Sachs had dived for cover. She knew he’d be coming after her as soon as he surmounted the pile of National Geographics and she assessed their positions. She’d circled back toward the closet door at the front, while he was still at the back of the town house.

But to make it to the door and safety would mean a run past the doorway of the room where he was now—to judge from the sound—scrabbling over the shelves and shattered ceramics. Did he realize her predicament? Was he waiting, gun aimed at the shooting gallery she’d have to traverse in order to make it to the closet door and safety?

Or had he bypassed the roadblock and snuck around her via a route she didn’t know about?

Creaks sounded throughout the murky place. Were they his footsteps? The wood settling?

Panic tickled and she spun around. She couldn’t see him. She knew she had to move, fast. Go! Now! She took a deep, silent breath, willed away the pain in her knees and, keeping low, charged forward, directly past the blockade of magazines.

No shots.

He wasn’t there. She stopped fast, pressing her back against the wall and forcing herself to calm her breathing.

Quiet, quiet…

Hell. Where, where, where? Down this aisle of shoe boxes, down this one of canned tomatoes, down this one of neatly folded clothing?

More creaks. She couldn’t tell where they were coming from.

A faint sound like the wind, like a breath.

Finally Sachs made a decision—just run for it. Now! All out for the front door!

And hope he’s not behind you or hasn’t snuck toward the front via a different passageway.

Go!

Sachs pushed off, sprinting past more corridors, canyons of books, glassware, paintings, wires and electronic equipment, cans. Was she going the right way?

Yes, she was. Ahead of her was Gordon’s desk, surrounded by the yellow pads. Robert Jorgensen’s body was on the floor. Move faster. Move! Forget the phone on the desk, she told herself after briefly considering calling 911.

Get out. Get out now.

Speeding toward the closet door.

The closer she got, the more fierce the panic. Waiting for the gunshot, any moment.

Only twenty feet now…

Maybe Gordon believed she was hiding in the back. Maybe he was on his knees, mourning madly the destruction of his precious porcelain.

Ten feet…

Around a corner, pausing only to grab the crowbar, slick with his blood.

No, out the door.

Then she stopped, gasping.

Directly in front of her, she saw him, in silhouette, backlit by the glare from the closet doorway. He apparently had taken another route here, she realized in despair. She lifted the heavy iron rod.

For a moment, he didn’t see her but her hope of going undetected vanished as he turned her way and dropped to the floor, lifting the gun her way, as an image of her father, then one of Lincoln Rhyme, filled her thoughts.

There she is, Amelia 7303, clear in my sights.

The woman who destroyed hundreds of my treasures, the woman who would take everything away from me, deprive me of all my future transactions, expose my Closet to the world. I have no time for fun with her. No time for recorded screams. She has to die. Now.!!!I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her I hate her…

No one is going to take anything away from me, never again.

Aim and squeeze.

Amelia Sachs stumbled backward as the gun in front of her fired.

Then another shot. Two more.

As she fell to the floor, she covered her head with her arms, numb at first, then aware of growing pain.

I’m dying… I’m dying…

Only… only the only painful sensation was in her arthritic knees, where she’d landed hard on the floor, not from where the bullets must have struck her. Her hand rose to her face, her neck. No wound, no blood. He couldn’t have missed her from this range.

But he had.

Then he was running forward toward her. Her eyes cold, her muscles tense as iron, Sachs gasped and gripped the crowbar.

But he continued past her, not even glancing her way.

What was this? Sachs slowly rose, wincing. Without the backlight of glare from the open closet door she saw the silhouette become distinct. It wasn’t Gordon at all but a detective she knew from the nearby 20th Precinct—John Harvison. The detective held his Glock steady as he moved cautiously to the body of the man he’d just shot to death.

Peter Gordon, Sachs now understood, had been moving up silently behind her and been about to shoot her in the back. From where he’d been stalking her, he hadn’t seen Harvison, low in the closet doorway.

“Amelia, you all right?” the detective called.

“Yeah. Fine.”

“Other shooters?”

“Don’t think so.”

Sachs rose and joined the detective. All the rounds from his gun had apparently hit their target; one of them had struck Gordon’s forehead directly. The resulting wound was massive. Blood and brain matter flecked Prescott’s American Family painting above the desk.

Harvison was an intense man in his forties who’d been decorated several times for courage under fire and collaring major drug dealers. He was pure professional now and paid no attention to the bizarre setting as he secured the scene. He lifted the Glock out of Gordon’s bloody hand and locked it open, slipping the gun and clip into his pocket. He moved the Taser safely aside too, though it was unlikely there’d be any miraculous resurrections.

“John,” Sachs whispered, staring at the killer’s ruined body. “How? How on earth did you find me?”

“Got an any-available squawk about an assault in progress at this address. I was a block away on a drug thing so I headed over.” He glanced at her. “It was that guy you work with who called it in.”

“Who?”

“Rhyme. Lincoln Rhyme.”

“Oh.” The answer didn’t surprise her, though it left more questions than it settled.

They heard a faint gasp. They turned. The sound had come from Jorgensen. Sachs bent down. “Get an ambulance here. He’s still alive.” She put pressure on the bullet wound.

Harvison pulled out his radio and called for medics.

A moment later two other officers, from Emergency Service, burst through the doorway, guns drawn.

Sachs instructed, “The main perp’s down. Probably no others. But clear the place just to make sure.”

“Sure, Detective.”

One ESU cop joined Harvison and they started through the packed corridors. The other paused and said to Sachs, “This is a goddamn spook house. You ever see anything like this, Detective?”

Sachs wasn’t in the mood for banter. “Find me some bandages or towels. Hell, with everything he’s got here, I’ll bet there’s a half dozen first aid kits. I want something to stop the bleeding. Now!”