ime is the fire in which we burn.

— DELMORE SCHWARTZ

Lincoln Rhyme had been awake for more than an hour.

A young officer from the Coast Guard had delivered a jacket found floating in New York Harbor, a man's size 44. It was, the captain of the boat deduced, probably the missing victim's; both sleeves were covered in blood, the cuffs slashed.

The jacket was a Macy's house brand and contained no other trace or evidence that could lead back to the owner.

He was now alone in the bedroom with Thom, who'd just finished Rhyme's morning routine — his physical therapy exercises and what the aide delicately called "hygienic duties." (Rhyme referred to them as the "piss 'n' shit detail," though usually only when easy-to-shock visitors were present.)

Amelia Sachs now walked up the stairs and joined him. She dropped her jacket in a chair, walked past him, opened the curtains. She looked out the window, into Central Park.

The slim young man sensed immediately that something was up. "I'll go make coffee. Or toast. Or something." He vanished, closing the door behind him.

So what was this? Rhyme wondered unhappily. He'd had more than enough personal issues recently than he wanted to deal with.

Her eyes were still looking over the painful brightness of the park. He asked, "So what was this errand that was so important?"

"I stopped by Argyle Security."

Rhyme blinked and looked at her face closely. "They're the ones that called after you got written up in the Times, when we closed that case about the illusionist."

"Right."

Argyle was an international company that specialized in safeguarding corporate executives and negotiating the release of kidnapped employees — a popular crime in some foreign countries. They'd offered Sachs a job making twice what she did as a cop. And promised her a carry permit — a license for a concealed weapon — in most jurisdictions, unusual for security companies. That and the promise to send her to exotic and dangerous locations caught her interest, though she'd turned them down immediately.

"What's this all about?"

"I'm quitting, Rhyme."

"Quitting the force? Are you serious?"

She nodded. "I've pretty much decided. I want to go in a different direction. I can do good things there too. Protecting families, guarding kids. They do a lot of antiterrorist work."

Now he too stared out the window at the stark, bald trees of Central Park. He thought about his conversation with Kathryn Dance the previous day, about his early days of therapy. One doctor, a sharp, young man with the NYPD, Terry Dobyns, had told him, "Nothing lasts forever." He'd meant this about the depression he'd been experiencing.

Now the sentence meant something very different and he couldn't get the words out of his mind.

Nothing lasts forever...

"Ah."

"I think I have to, Rhyme. I have to."

"Because of your father?"

She nodded, dug her finger into her hair, scratched. Winced at that pain, or at some other.

"This's crazy, Sachs."

"I don't think I can do it anymore. Be a cop."

"It's pretty fast, don't you think?"

"I've thought about it all night. I've never thought about anything so much in my life."

"Well, keep thinking. You can't make decisions like this after you get some bad news."

"Bad news? Everything I thought about Dad was a lie."

"Not everything," Rhyme countered. "One part of his life."

"But the most important part. That's who he was first, Rhyme. A cop."

"It was a long time ago. The Sixteenth Avenue Club was closed up when you were a baby."

"That makes him less corrupt?"

Rhyme said nothing.

"You want me to explain it, Rhyme? Like evidence? Add a few drops of reagent and look at the results? I can't. All I know is I have a really bad taste in my mouth. This's affected how I look at the whole job."

He said kindly, "It's gotta be tough. But whatever happened to him doesn't touch you. All that matters is you're a good cop, and a lot fewer cases'll be closed if you leave."

"I'll only close cases if my heart's in it. And it's not. Something's gone." She added, "Pulaski's coming along great. He's better now than I was when I started working with you."

"He's better because you've been training him."

"Don't do that."

"What?"

"Butter me up, drop those little comments. That's what my mother used to do with my father. You don't want me to leave, I understand, but don't play that kind of card."

But he had to play the card. And any other he could think of. After the accident Rhyme had wrestled with suicide on a number of occasions. And though he'd come close he always rejected the choice. What Amelia Sachs was now considering was psychic suicide. If she quit the force he knew that she'd be killing her soul.

"But Argyle? It's not for you." He shook his head. "Nobody takes corporate security seriously, even — especially — the clients."

"No, their assignments're good. And they send you back to school. You learn foreign languages... They even have a forensics department. And the money's good."

He laughed. "Since when has this ever been about money?... Give it some time, Sachs. What's the hurry?"

She shook her head. "I'm going to close the St. James case. And I'll do whatever you need to nail the Watchmaker. But after that..."

"You know, if you quit, a lot of buttons get pushed. It'll affect you for a long time, if you ever wanted to come back." He looked away, blood pounding in his temple.

"Rhyme." She pulled a chair up, sat and closed her hand around his — the right one, the fingers of which had some sensation and movement. She squeezed. "Whatever I do, it won't affect us, our life." She smiled.!!!You and me, Rhyme...!!!You and me, Sachs...

He looked off. Lincoln Rhyme was a scientist, a man of the brain, not the heart. Some years ago Rhyme and Sachs had met on a hard case — a series of kidnappings by a killer obsessed with human bones. No one could stop him, except these two misfits — Rhyme, the quadriplegic in retirement, and Sachs, the disillusioned rookie betrayed by her cop lover. Yet, somehow, together, they had forged a wholeness, filling the ragged gaps within each of them, and they'd stopped the killer.

Deny it as much as he wanted to, those words, you and me, had been his compass in the precarious world they'd created together. He wasn't at all convinced that she was right that they wouldn't be altered by her decision. Would removing their common purpose change them?

Was he witnessing the transition from Before to After?

"Have you already quit?"

"No." She pulled a white envelope from her jacket pocket. "I wrote the resignation letter. But I wanted to tell you first."

"Give it a couple of days before you decide. You don't owe it to me. But I'm asking. A couple of days."

She stared at the envelope for a long moment. Finally she said, "Okay."

Rhyme was thinking: Here we are working on a case involving a man obsessed with clocks and watches, and the most important thing to me at this moment is buying a little time from Sachs. "Thanks." Then: "Now, let's get to work."

"I want you to understand... "

"There's nothing to understand," he said with what he felt was miraculous detachment. "There's a killer to catch. That's all we should be thinking about."

He left her alone in the bedroom and took the tiny elevator downstairs to the lab, where Mel Cooper was at work.

"Blood on the jacket's AB positive. Matches what was on the pier."

Rhyme nodded. Then he had the tech call the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab about the ASTER information — the thermal scans to find possible locations of roof tarring.

It was early in California but the tech managed to track down somebody and put some pressure on him to find and upload the images. The pictures arrived soon after. They were striking but not particularly helpful. There were, as Sellitto had suggested, hundreds, possibly thousands of buildings that showed indications of elevated heat, and the system couldn't discriminate between locations that were being reroofed, under construction, being heated with Consolidated Edison steam or simply had particularly hot chimneys.

All Rhyme could think to do was tell Central that any assaults or break-ins in or near a building having roofing work done should be patched through to them immediately.

The dispatcher hesitated and said she'd put the notice on the main computer.

The tone of her voice suggested that he was grasping at straws.

What could he say? She was right.

Lucy Richter closed the door to her co-op and flipped the locks.

She hung up her coat and hooded sweatshirt, printed on the front with 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, and on the back the division's slogan: Steadfast and loyal.

Her muscles ached. At the gym, she'd done five miles, at a good pace and 9-percent incline, on the treadmill, then a half hour of push-ups and crunches. That was something else military service had done: taught her to appreciate muscle. You can put down physical fitness if you want, make fun of it as vanity and a waste of time but, fact is, it's empowering.

She filled the kettle for tea and pulled a sugared doughnut out of the fridge, thinking about today. There were plenty of things that needed to be done: phone calls to return, emails, baking cookies and making her signature cheesecake for the reception on Thursday. Or maybe she'd just go shopping with friends and buy dessert at a bakery. Or have lunch with her mother.

Or lie in bed and watch the soaps. Pamper herself.

It was the start of heaven — her two weeks away from the land of the bitter fog — and she was going to enjoy every minute of it.

Bitter fog...

This was an expression she'd heard from a local policeman outside Baghdad, referring to fumes and smoke following the detonation of an IED — improvised explosive device.

Explosions in movies were just big flares of flaming gasoline. And then were gone, nothing left, except the reaction shot on the characters' faces. In reality what remained after an IED was a thick bluish haze that stank and stung your eyes and burned your lungs. Part dust, part chemical smoke, part vaporized hair and skin, it remained at the scene for hours.

The bitter fog was a symbol of the horror of this new type of war. There were no trusted allies except your fellow soldiers. There were no battle lines. There were no fronts. And you had no clue who the enemy was. It might be your interpreter, a cook, a passerby, a local businessman, a teenager, an old man. Or somebody five klicks away. And the weapons? Not howitzers and tanks but the tiny parcels that produced the bitter fog, the packet of TNT or C4 or C3 or the shaped charge stolen from your own armory, hidden so inconspicuously that you never saw it until... well, the fact was you never saw it.

Lucy now rummaged in a cabinet for the tea.

Bitter fog...

Then she paused. What was that sound?

Lucy cocked her head and listened.

What was that?

A ticking. She felt her stomach twist at the sound. She and Bob had no wind-up clocks. But that's what it sounded like.

What the hell is it?

She stepped into the small bedroom, which they used mostly as a closet. The light was out. She flicked it on. No, the sound wasn't coming from there.

Her palms sweating, breath coming fast, heart pounding.

I'm imagining the sound... I'm going crazy. IED's don't tick. Even timed devices have electronic detonators.

Besides, was she actually thinking that somebody had left a bomb in her co-op in New York City?

Girl, you need some serious help.

Lucy walked to the master bedroom doorway. The closet door was open, blocking her view of the dresser. Maybe it was... She stepped forward. But then paused. The ticking was coming from someplace else, not in here. She went up the hall to the dining room and looked inside. Nothing.

She then continued on to the bathroom. She gave a laugh.

Sitting on the vanity, next to the tub, was a clock. It looked like an old one. It was black and on the face was a window with a full moon staring at her. Where had it come from? Had her aunt been cleaning out her basement again? Had Bob bought it when she was away and set it out this morning after she'd left for the health club?

But why the bathroom?

The freaky moon face looked at her with its curious gaze, almost malevolent. It reminded her of the faces of the children along the roadside, their mouths curved into an expression that wasn't quite a smile; you had no idea what was going on in their heads. When they looked at you, were they seeing their saviors? Their enemy? Or creatures from another planet?

Lucy decided she'd call Bob or her mother and ask about the clock. She went into the kitchen. She made the tea and carried the mug into the bathroom, the phone too, and ran water into the tub.

Wondering if her first bubble bath in months would do anything to wash away the bitter fog.

On the street in front of Lucy's apartment Vincent Reynolds watched two schoolgirls walk past.

He glanced at them but felt no deepening of the hunger already ravaging his body. They were high school kids and too young for him. (Sally Anne had been a teenager, true, but so had he, which made it okay.)

Through his cell phone, Vincent heard Duncan's whispered voice. "I'm in her bedroom. She's in the bathroom, running a bath... That's helpful."!!!Water boarding...

Because the building had a lot of tenants, and he could easily be spotted picking the lock, Duncan had climbed to the top of a building several doors down and made his way over the roofs to Lucy's, then down the fire escape and into her bedroom. He was real athletic (another difference between the friends).

"Okay, I'm going to do it now."

Thank you...

But then he heard, "Hold on."

"What?" Vincent asked. "Is something wrong?"

"She's on the phone. We'll have to wait."

Hungry Vincent was sitting forward. Waiting was not something he did well.

A minute passed, two, five.

"What's going on?" Vincent whispered.

"She's still on the phone."

Vincent was furious.

Goddamn her... He wished he could be there with Duncan to help kill her. What the hell was she doing making phone calls now? He wolfed down some food.

Finally the Watchmaker said, "I'm going to try to get her off the phone. I'll go back up to the roof and come down the stairs into the hallway. I'll get her to open the door." Vincent heard some rare emotion in the man's next comment. "I can't wait any longer."

You don't know the half of it, thought Clever Vincent, who surfaced momentarily before being sent away by his starving other half.

Stripping for her bath, Lucy Richter heard another sound. Not the ticking of the moon clock. From somewhere nearby. Inside? The hallway? The alley?

A click. Metallic.

What was it?

The life of the soldier is the sound of metal on metal. Slipping the long rounds of rifle ammo, fragrant with oil, into the clips, loading and locking the Colts, vehicle door latches, fueler's belt buckles and vests clinking. The ring of a slug from an AK-47, dancing off a Bradley or Humvee.

The noise again, click, click.

Then silence.

She felt chill air, as if a window was open. Where? The bedroom, she decided. Half naked, she walked to the bedroom doorway and glanced in. Yes, the window was open. But when she'd glanced in earlier, hearing the ticking, hadn't it been closed? She wasn't sure.

The Lucy commanded: Don't be so damn paranoid, soldier. Getting pretty tired of this. There're no IED's, no suicide bombers here, no bitter fog.

Get a grip.

One arm covering her breasts — there were apartments across the alley — she closed and locked the window. Looked down into the alley. Saw nothing.

It was then that somebody began pounding on the front door. Lucy spun around, gasping. She pulled on a bathrobe and hurried to the dark foyer. "Who's there?"

There was a pause, then a man's voice called, "I'm a police officer. Are you all right?"

She called, "What's wrong?"

"It's an emergency. Please open the door. Are you okay?"

Alarmed, she pulled the robe belt tight and undid the deadbolts, thinking of the bedroom window and wondering if somebody'd been trying to break it. She unhooked the chain.

Lucy twisted the lock, reflecting only after the door began to push open toward her that she probably should've asked to see an ID or a badge before she unhooked the chain. She'd been caught up in a very different world for so long that she'd forgotten there were still plenty of bad people stateside.

Amelia Sachs and Lon Sellitto arrived at the old apartment building in Greenwich Village, nestled on quaint Barrow Street.

"That's it?"

"Uh-huh," Sellitto said. His fingers were blue. His ears, red.

They looked into the alley beside the building. Sachs surveyed it carefully.

"What's her name?" she asked.

"Richter. Lucy I think's her first name."

"Which window's hers?"

"Third floor."

She glanced up at the fire escape.

They continued on to the front stairs of the apartment building. A crowd of people were watching. Sachs scanned their faces, still convinced that the Watchmaker had swept up at the first scene because he intended to return. Which meant he might have remained here too. But she saw no one that resembled him or his partner.

"We're sure it was the Watchmaker?" Sachs asked Frank Rettig and Nancy Simpson, cold and huddling next to the Crime Scene rapid response van, parked cockeyed in the middle of Barrow.

"Yep, he left one of those clocks," Rettig explained. "With the moon faces."

Sachs and Sellitto started up the stairs.

"One thing," Nancy Simpson said.

The detectives stopped and turned.

The officer nodded at the building, grimacing. "It won't be pretty."