NE OF US.

That's how Dellray was looking at Lincoln Rhyme as he walked around the bed. Some people did this. Paralysis was a club and they crashed the party with jokes, nods, winks. You know I love you, man, 'cause I'm makin' funna you.

Lincoln Rhyme had learned that this attitude got tiring very, very quickly.

"Lookit that," Dellray said, poking at the Clinitron, "That's something outa Star Trek. Commander Riker, get your ass in the shuttle."

"Go away, Dellray," Polling said. "It's our case."

"And how's dis here patient doing, Dr. Crusher?"

The captain was stepping forward, a rooster the lanky FBI agent towered over. "Dellray, you listening? Go away."

"Man, I'ma get me one of those, Rhyme. Lay my ass down in it, watcha game. Seriously, Lincoln, how you doin'? Been a few years."

"Did they knock?" Rhyme asked Thom.

"No, they didn't knock."

"You didn't knock," Rhyme said. "So may I suggest that you leave?"

"Gotta warrant," Dellray murmured, flicking papers in his breast pocket.

Amelia Sachs's right index fingernail worried her thumb, which was on the verge of bleeding.

Dellray looked around the room. He was clearly impressed at their impromptu lab but strangled the feeling fast. "We're taking over. Sorry."

In twenty years of policing, Rhyme had never seen a peremptory takeover like this.

UNSUB 823 (page 1 of 3)

Appearance: •Caucasian male, slight build

•Dark clothing

Residence: •Prob. has safe house

•Located near: B'way & 82nd,

Anderson Foods Greenwich & Bank, 34th & Lex,

Vehicle: •Yellow Cab

Other: •knows CS proc.

•possibly has record

•knows FR prints

•gun =.32 Colt

UNSUB 823 (page 2 of 3)

Appearance: •Old gloves, reddish kidskin

•Ski mask? Navy blue?

Residence: ShopRite 2nd Ave.or 72nd-73rd or B'way & 96th,

•Grocery World Battery Park City,

•J&G's Emporium 1709 2nd Ave.,

•Food Warehouse 8th Ave. & 24th,

Vehicle: •Recent model sedan

Other: •Ties vics w/ unusual knots

•"Old" appeals to him

•Called one vic "Hanna"

•Knows basic German

UNSUB 823 (page 3 of 3)

Appearance: •Gloves are dark

Residence: •ShopRite Houston & Lafayette or 6th Ave. & Houston,

•J&G's Emporium Greenwich & Franklin

Vehicle: •Lt. gray, silver, beige

Other: •Underground appeals to him

•Dual personalities

•Maybe priest, soc. worker, counselor

"Fuck this, Dellray," Sellitto began, "you passed on the case."

The agent swiveled his glossy black face around until he was looking down at the detective.

"Passed? Passed? I never got no ring-a-ling about it. D'jou call me?"

"No."

"Then who dropped the dime?"

"Well..." Sellitto, surprised, glanced at Polling, who said, "You got an advisory. That's all we've gotta send you." On the defensive now too.

"An advisory. Yeah. And, hey, how 'xactly was that delivered? Would that have been by Pony Ex-press? Book-rate mail? Tell me, Jim, what's the good of an overnight advisory when there's an ongoing operation?"

Polling said, "We didn't see the need."

"We?" Dellray asked quickly. Like a surgeon spotting a microscopic tumor.

"I didn't see the need," Polling snapped. "I told the mayor to keep it a local operation. We've got it under control. Now fuck off, Dellray."

"And you thought you could wrap it up in time for the eleven o'clock news."

Rhyme was startled when Polling shouted, "What we thought was none of your goddamn business. It's our fucking case." He knew about the captain's legendary temper but he'd never seen it in action.

"Ac-tu-ally, it's ou-ur fuck-ing case now." Dellray strolled past the table that held Cooper's equipment.

Rhyme said, "Don't do this, Fred. We're getting a handle on this guy. Work with us but don't take it away. This unsub isn't like anything you've ever seen."

Dellray smiled. "Let's see, what's the latest I hear about this 'fuck-ing' case? That you've got a civvy doin' the 'rensics." The agent forewent a glance at the Clinitron bed. "You got a portable doing crime scene. You got soldiers out buying groceries."

"Evidence standards, Frederick," Rhyme reminded stridently. "That's SOP."

Dellray looked disappointed. "But ESU, Lincoln? All those taxpayer dollars. Then there's cutting up people like Texas Chainsaw..."

How had that news got out? Everyone was sworn to secrecy on the dismemberment issue.

"And whatsis I hear 'bout Haumann's boys found the vic but dint go in and save her right away? Channel Five had a Big Ear mike on it. Got her screaming for a good five minutes 'fore you sent somebody in." He glanced at Sellitto with a wry grin. "Lon, my man, would that've been the problem you were just talking about?"

They'd come so far, Rhyme was thinking. They were getting a feel for him, starting to learn the unsub's language. Starting to see him. With a burst of surprise he understood that he was once again doing what he loved. After all these years. And now somebody was going to take it away from him. Anger rippled inside him.

"Take the case, Fred," Rhyme grumbled. "But don't cut us out. Don't do it."

"You lost two vics," Dellray reminded.

"We lost one," Sellitto corrected, looking uneasily at Polling, who was still fuming. "Nothing we coulda done about the first. He was a calling card."

Dobyns, arms crossed, merely observed the argument. But Jerry Banks leapt in. "We've got his routine down now. We aren't going to lose any more."

"You are if ESU's gonna sit around listenin' to vics scream their heads off."

Sellitto said, "It was my —"

"My decision," Rhyme sang out. "Mine."

"But you're civvy, Lincoln. So it couldn't have been your decision. It mighta been your suggestion. It mighta been your recommendation. But I don't think it was your decision."

Dellray's attention had turned to Sachs again. His eyes on her, he said to Rhyme, "You told Peretti not to run the scene? That's mighty curious, Lincoln. Why'd you go and do something like that?"

Rhyme said, "I'm better than he is."

"Peretti's not a happy boy scout. Nosir. He and I had a chin wag with Eckert."

Eckert? The Dep Com? How was he involved?

And with one glance at Sachs, at the evasive blue eyes, framed by strands of mussed red hair, he knew how.

Rhyme nailed her with a look, which she promptly avoided, and he said to Dellray, "Let's see... Peretti? Wasn't he the one opened up traffic on the spot where the unsub'd stood to watch the first vic? Wasn't he the one released the scene before we'd had a chance to pick up any serious trace? The scene my own Sachs here had the foresight to seal off. My Sachs had it right and Vince Peretti and everybody else had it wrong. Yes, she did."

She was gazing at her thumb, a look that bespoke seeing a familiar sight, and slipped a Kleenex from her pocket, wrapped it around the bloody digit.

Dellray summarized, "You shoulda called us at the beginning."

"Just get out," Polling muttered. Something snapped in his eyes and his voice rose. "Get the hell out!" he screamed.

Even cool Dellray blinked and eased back as the spittle flew from the captain's mouth.

Rhyme frowned at Polling. There was a chance they might salvage something of the case but not if Polling had a tantrum. "Jim..."

The captain ignored him. "Out!" he shouted again. "You are not taking over our case!" And startling everyone in the room, Polling leapt forward, grabbed the agent by his green lapels and shoved him against the wall. After a moment of stunned silence Dellray simply pushed the captain back with his fingertips and took out a cellular phone. He offered it to Polling.

"Call the mayor. Or Chief Wilson."

Polling eased instinctively away from Dellray — a short man putting some distance between himself and a tall one. "You want the case, you fucking got it." The captain strode to the stairs and then down them. The front door slammed.

"Jesus, Fred," Sellitto said, "work with us. We can nail this scumbag."

"We need the Bureau's A-T," said Dellray, now sounding like reason itself. "You're not set up for the terrorist angle."

"What terrorist angle?" Rhyme asked.

"The UN peace conference. Snitch o' mine said word was up that something was gonna go down at the airport. Where he snatched the vics."

"I wouldn't profile him as a terrorist," Dobyns said. "Whatever's going on inside him's psychologically motivated. It's not ideological."

"Well, fact is, Quantico and us're pegging him one way. 'Preciate that you feel different. But this's how we're handling it."

Rhyme gave up. Fatigue was spiriting him away. He wished Sellitto and his scar-faced assistant had never shown up this morning. He wished he'd never met Amelia Sachs. Wished he wasn't wearing the ridiculous crisp white shirt, which felt stiff at his neck and felt like nothing below it.

He realized that Dellray was speaking to him.

"I'm sorry?" Rhyme cocked a muscular eyebrow.

Dellray asked, "I mean, couldn't politics be a motive too?"

"Motive doesn't interest me," Rhyme said. "Evidence interests me."

Dellray glanced again at Cooper's table. "So. The case's ours. We all together on that?"

"What're our options?" Sellitto asked.

"You back us up with searchers. Or you can drop out altogether. That's about all that's left. We'll take the PE now, you don't mind."

Banks hesitated.

"Give 'em it," Sellitto ordered.

The young cop picked up the evidence bags from the most recent scene, slipped them into a large plastic bag. Dellray held his hands out. Banks glanced at the lean fingers and tossed the bag onto the table, walking back to the far side of the room — the cop side. Lincoln Rhyme was a demilitarized zone between them and Amelia Sachs stood riveted at the foot of Rhyme's bed.

Dellray said to her, "Officer Sachs?"

After a pause, her eyes on Rhyme, she responded, "Yes?"

"Commissioner Eckert wants ya t'come with us for debriefing 'bout the crime scenes. He said something about starting your new assignment on Monday."

She nodded.

Dellray turned to Rhyme and said sincerely, "Don'tcha worry, Lincoln. We're gonna git him. Next you hear, his head gonna be on a stake at the gates to the city."

He nodded to his fellow agents, who packed up the evidence and headed downstairs. From the hallway Dellray called to Sachs, "You coming, officer?"

She stood with her hands together, like a schoolgirl at a party she regretted she'd come to.

"In a minute."

Dellray vanished down the stairs.

"Those pricks," Banks muttered, flinging his watchbook onto the table. "Can you believe that?"

Sachs rocked on her heels.

"Better get going, Amelia," Rhyme said. "Your carriage awaits."

"Lincoln." Walking closer to the bed.

"It's all right," he said. "You did what you had to do."

"I have no business doing CS work," she blurted. "I never wanted to."

"And you won't be doing it anymore. That works out well, doesn't it?"

She started to walk to the door then turned and blurted, "You don't care about anything but the evidence, do you?"

Sellitto and Banks stirred but she ignored them.

"Say, Thom, could you show Amelia out?"

Sachs continued, "This is all just a game to you, isn't it? Monelle —"

"Who?"

Her eyes flared, "There! See? You don't even remember her name. Monelle Gerger. The girl in the tunnel... she was just a part of the puzzle to you. There were rats crawling all over her and you said, 'That's their nature'? That's their nature? She's never going to be the same again and all you cared about was your precious evidence."

"In living victims," he droned, lecturing, "rodent wounds are always superficial. As soon as the first li'l critter drooled on her she needed rabies vaccine. What did a few more bites matter?"

"Why don't we ask her opinion?" Sachs's smile was different now. It had turned pernicious, like those of the nurses and therapy aides who hated crips. They walked around rehab wards with smiles like this. Well, he hadn't been happy with the polite Amelia Sachs; he'd wanted the feisty one...

"Answer me something, Rhyme. Why did you really want me?"

"Thom, our guest has overstayed her welcome. Would you —?"

"Lincoln," the aide began.

"Thom," Rhyme snapped, "believe I asked you to do something."

"Because I don't know shit," Sachs blurted. "That's why! You didn't want a real CS tech because then you wouldn't be in charge. But me... you can send me here, send me there. I'll do exactly what you want, and I won't bitch and moan."

"Ah, the troops mutiny..." Rhyme said, lifting his eyes to the ceiling.

"But I'm not one of the troops. I never wanted this in the first place."

"I didn't want it either. But here we are. In bed together. Well, one of us." And he knew his cold smile was far, far icier than any she could muster.

"Why, you're just a spoiled brat, Rhyme."

"Hey, officer, time out here," Sellitto barked.

But she kept going. "You can't walk your crime scenes anymore and I'm sorry about that. But you're risking an investigation just to massage your ego and I say fuck that." She grabbed her Patrol hat and stormed out of the room.

He expected to hear a slamming door from downstairs, maybe breaking glass. But there was a faint click and then silence.

As Jerry Banks retrieved his watchbook and thumbed through it with more concentration than was needed, Sellitto said, "Lincoln, I'm sorry. I —"

"Nothing to it," Rhyme said, yawning excessively in the false hope that it would calm his stinging heart. "Nothing at all."

The cops stood beside the half-empty table for a few moments, difficult silence, then Cooper said, "Better get packed up." He hefted a black 'scope case onto the table and began to unscrew an eyepiece with the loving care of a musician disassembling his saxophone.

"Well, Thom," Rhyme said, "it's after sunset. You know what that tells me? Bar's open."

Their war room was impressive. It beat Lincoln Rhyme's bedroom hands down.

Half a floor at the federal building, three dozen agents, computers and electronic panels out of some Tom Clancy movie. The agents looked like lawyers or investment bankers. White shirts, ties. Crisp was the word that came to mind. And Amelia Sachs in the center, conspicuous in her navy-blue uniform, soiled with rat blood, dust and grainy shit from cattle dead a hundred years.

She was no longer shaking from her blowup with Rhyme and though her mind kept reeling with a hundred things she wanted to say, wished she had said, she forced herself to concentrate on what was happening around her.

A tall agent in an immaculate gray suit was conferring with Dellray — two large men, heads down, solemn. She believed he was the special agent in charge of the Manhattan office, Thomas Perkins, but she didn't know for certain; a Patrol officer has as much contact with the FBI as a dry cleaner or insurance salesman does. He seemed humorless, efficient, and kept glancing at a large map of Manhattan pinned to the wall. Perkins nodded several times as Dellray briefed him then he stepped up to a fiberboard table filled with manila folders, looked over the agents and began to speak.

"If I could have your attention... I've just been in communication with the director and the AG in Washington. You've all heard about the Kennedy Airport unsub by now. It's an unusual profile. Kidnapping, absent a sexual element, is rarely the basis for serial activity. In fact this's the first unsub of the sort we've had in the Southern District. In light of the possible connection with the events at the UN this week we're coordinating with headquarters, Quantico and the secretary-general's office. We've been told to be completely proactive on this case. It's getting prioritization at the highest level."

The SAC glanced at Dellray, who said, "We've taken over the case from the NYPD but we'll be using them for backup and person power. We have the crime scene officer here to brief us on the scenes." Dellray sounded completely different here. Not a shred of Superfly.

"Have you vouchered the PE?" Perkins asked Sachs.

Sachs admitted that she hadn't. "We were working on saving the vics."

The SAC was troubled by this. At trial, otherwise solid cases tanked regularly because of slipups in recording the chain of custody of the physical evidence. It was the first thing the perps' defense lawyers wailed on.

"Make sure you do that before you leave."

"Yessir."

What a look on Rhyme's face when he guessed I bitched to Eckert and got them shut down. What a look...

My Sachs figured it out, my Sachs preserved the scene.

She worried a nail again. Stop it, she told herself, as she always did, and continued to dig into the flesh. The pain felt good. That's what the therapists never understood.

The SAC said, "Agent Dellray? Could you brief the room as regards the approach we'll be taking."

Dellray looked from the SAC to the other agents and continued, "At this moment we have field agents hitting every major terrorist cell in the city and pursuing whatever leads we can find that'll get us to the unsub's residence. All CIs, all undercover agents. It'll mean compromising some existing operations but we've decided it's worth the risk.

"Our job here is to be rapid response. You'll break out into groups of six agents each and be ready to move on any lead. You'll have complete hostage-rescue and barricade-entry support."

"Sir," Sachs said.

Perkins looked up, frowning. Apparently one didn't interrupt briefings until the approved Q&A break. "Yes, what is it, officer?"

"Well, I'm just wondering, sir. What about the victim?"

"Who, that German girl? You think we should interview her again?"

"No, sir. I meant the next victim."

Perkins responded, "Oh, we'll certainly stay cognizant of the fact that there may be other targets."

Sachs continued, "He's got one now."

"He does?" The SAC glanced at Dellray, who shrugged. Perkins asked Sachs, "How do you know?"

"Well, I don't exactly know, sir. But he left clues at the last scene and he wouldn't've done that if he didn't have another vic. Or was just about to snatch one."

"Noted, officer," the SAC continued. "We're going to mobilize as fast as we can to make sure nothing happens to them."

Dellray said to her, "We think it's best to focus on the beast himself."

"Detective Sachs —" Perkins began.

"I'm not a detective, sir. I'm assigned to Patrol."

"Yes, well," the SAC continued, looking at the stacks of files. "If you could just give us some of your bullet points, that would be helpful."

Thirty agents watching her. Two women among them.

"Just tell us whatcha saw," Dellray said, gripping an unlit cigarette between prominent teeth.

She gave them a synopsis of her searches of the crime scenes and the conclusions Rhyme and Terry Dobyns had come to. Most of the agents were troubled by the unsub's curious MO.

"Like a goddamn game," an agent muttered.

One asked if the clues had any political messages they could decipher.

"Well, sir, we really don't think he's a terrorist," Sachs persisted.

Perkins turned his high-powered attention toward her. "Let me ask you, officer, you concede he's smart, this unsub?"

"Very smart."

"Couldn't he be double-bluffing?"

"How do you mean?"

"You... I should say the NYPD's thinking is that he's just a nutcase. I mean, a criminal personality. But isn't it possible he's smart enough to make you think that. When something else's going on."

"Like what?"

"Take those clues he left. Couldn't they be diversions?"

"No, sir, they're directions," Sachs said. "Leading us to the vics."

"I understand that," quick Thomas Perkins said. "But by doing that he's also leading us away from other targets, right?"

She hadn't considered that. "I suppose it's possible."

"And Chief Wilson's been pulling men off UN security detail right and left to work the kidnapping. This unsub might be keeping everyone distracted, which leaves him free for his real mission."

Sachs remembered that she'd had a similar thought herself earlier in the day, watching all the searchers along Pearl Street. "And that'd be the UN?"

"We think so," Dellray said. "The perps behind the UNESCO bombing attempt in London might want to try again."

Meaning Rhyme was going off in the completely wrong direction. It eased the weight of her guilt somewhat.

"Now, officer, could you itemize the evidence for us?" Perkins asked.

Dellray gave her an inventory sheet of everything she'd found and she went through it item by item. As she spoke Sachs was aware of bustling activity around her — some agents taking calls, some standing and whispering to other agents, some taking notes. But when, glancing down at the sheet, she added, "Then I picked up this fingerprint of his at the last scene," she realized that the room had fallen utterly silent. She looked up. Every face in the office was staring at her in what could pass for shock — if federal agents were capable of that.

She glanced helplessly at Dellray, who cocked his head, "You saying you gotchaself a print?"

"Well, yes. His glove fell off in a struggle with the last vic and when he picked it up he brushed against the floor."

"Where is it?" Dellray asked quickly.

"Jesus," one agent called. "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Well, I —"

"Find it, find it!" somebody else called.

A murmur ran through the room.

Her hands shaking, Sachs dug through the evidence bags and handed Dellray the Polaroid of the fingerprint. He held it up, looked carefully. Showed it to someone who, she guessed, was a friction-ridge expert. "Good," the agent offered. "It's definitely A-grade."

Sachs knew that prints were rated A, B and C, the lower category being unacceptable to most law enforcement agencies. But whatever pride she felt in her evidence-gathering skills was crushed by their collective dismay that she hadn't mentioned it before this.

Then everything started to happen at once. Dellray handed off to an agent who jogged to an elaborate computer in the corner of the office and rested the Polaroid on a large, curved bed of something called an Opti-Scan. Another agent turned on the computer and started typing in commands as Dellray snatched up the phone. He tapped his foot impatiently and then lowered his head as, somewhere, the call was answered.

"Ginnie, s'Dellray. This's gonna be a true-blue pain but I needya to shut down all AFIS Northeast Region requests and give the one I'm sending priority... I got Perkins here. He'll okay it and if that ain't enough I'll call the man in Washington himself... It's the UN thing."

Sachs knew the Bureau's Automated Fingerprint Identification System was used by police departments throughout the country. That's what Dellray would be braking to a halt at the moment.

The agent at the computer said, "It's scanned. We're transmitting now."

"How long's it gonna take?"

"Ten, fifteen minutes."

Dellray pressed his dusty fingers together. "Please, please, please."

All around her was a cyclone of activity. Sachs heard voices talking about weapons, helicopters, vehicles, anti-terror negotiators. Phone calls, clattering keyboards, maps unrolling, pistols being checked.

Perkins was on the phone, talking to the hostage-rescue people, or the director, or the mayor. Maybe the president. Who knew? Sachs said to Dellray, "I didn't know the print was that big a deal."

"S'always a big deal. Least, with AFIS now it is. Used to be you dusted for prints mostly for show. Let the vics and the press know you were doing something."

"You're kidding."

"Naw, not a bit. Take New York City. You do a cold search — that's when you don't have any suspects — you do a cold search manually, it'd take a tech fifty years to go through all the print cards. No foolin'. An automated search? Fifteen minutes. Used to be you'd ID a suspect maybe two, three percent of the time. Now we're running close to twenty, twenty-two percent. Oh, yup, prints're golden. Dincha tell Rhyme about it?"

"He knew, sure."

"And he didn't get all hands on board? My oh my, the man's slipping."

"Say, officer," SAC Perkins called, holding his hand over the phone, "I'll ask you to complete those chain-of-custody cards now. I want to get the PE off to PERT."

The Physical Evidence Response Team. Sachs remembered that Lincoln Rhyme had been the one the feds hired to help put it together.

"I'll do that. Sure."

"Mallory, Kemple, take that PE to an office and get our guest some COC cards. You have a pen, officer?"

"Yes, I do."

She followed the two men into a small office, clicking her ballpoint nervously while they hunted down and returned with a pack of federal-issue chain-of-custody cards. She sat down and broke the package open.

The voice behind her was the hip Dellray, the persona that seemed the eagerest to break out. In the car on the way here someone had referred to him as the Chameleon and she was beginning to see why.

"We call Perkins the Big Dict. Nyup — not 'dick' like you're thinking. 'Dict' like dictionary. But don' worry over him. He's smarter'n an agent sandwich. And better'n that he's pulled strings all the way to D.C., which is where strings gotta be pulled in cases like this." Dellray ran his cigarette beneath his nose as if it were a fine cigar. "You know, officer, you're foxy smart doing whatch're doing."

"Which is?"

"Getting out of Major Crimes. You don't want it." The lean black face, glossy and wrinkled only about the eyes, seemed sincere for the first time since she'd met him. "Best thing you ever did, going into Public Affairs. You'll do some good there and it won't turn you to dust. That's what happens, you bet. This job turns you to dust."

One of the last victims of James Schneider's mad compulsion, a young man named Ortega, had come to Manhattan from Mexico City, where political unrest (the much-heralded populist uprising, which had begun the year before) had made commerce difficult at best. Yet the ambitious entrepreneur had been in the city no more than one week when he vanished from sight. It was learned that he was last seen in front of a West Side tavern and authorities immediately suspected that he was yet another victim of Schneider's. Sadly, this was discovered to be the case.

The bone collector cruised the streets for fifteen minutes around NYU, Washington Square. Plenty of people hanging out. But kids mostly. Students in summer school. Skateboarders. It was festive, weird. Singers, jugglers, acrobats. It reminded him of the "museums," down on the Bowery, popular in the 1800s. They weren't museums at all of course but arcades, teeming with burlesque shows, exhibits of freaks and daredevils, and vendors selling everything from French postcards to splinters of the True Cross.

He slowed once or twice but nobody wanted a cab, or could afford one. He turned south.

Schneider tied bricks to Señor Ortega's feet and rolled him under a pier into the Hudson River so the foul water and the fish might reduce his body to mere bone. The corpse was found two weeks after he had vanished and so it was never known whether or not the unfortunate victim was alive or had full use of his senses when he was thrown into the drink. Yet it is suspected that this was so. For Schneider cruelly shortened the rope so that Señor Ortega's face was inches below the surface of Davy Jones's locker; — his hands undoubtedly thrashed madly about as he gazed upward at the air that would have been his salvation.

The bone collector saw a sickly young man standing by the curb. AIDS, he thought. But your bones are healthy — and so prominent. Your bones'll last forever... The man didn't want a cab and the taxi cruised past, the bone collector hungrily gazing at his thin frame in the rearview mirror.

He looked back to the street just in time to swerve around an elderly man who'd stepped off the curb, his thin arm raised to flag down the cab. The man leapt back, as best he could, and the cab skidded to a stop just past him.

The man opened the back door and leaned inside. "You should look where you're going." He said this instructionally. Not with anger.

"Sorry," the bone collector muttered contritely.

The elderly man hesitated for a moment, looked up the street but saw no other taxis. He climbed in.

The door slammed shut.

Thinking: Old and thin. The skin would ride on his bones like silk.

"So, where to?" he called.

"East Side."

"You got it," he said as he pulled on the ski mask and spun the wheel sharply right. The cab sped west.