“My,” he said, eyeing the security devices.

Sellitto told him about the threat.

“Well, not surprising, I suppose. You’ve put some pretty bad people behind bars.”

The detective asked, “Hey, Mel, didn’t you have some competition or something?”

“Ah,” the slim, bespectacled man replied modestly, “we prevailed.”

Cooper and his stunning Scandinavian girlfriend contended as ballroom dancers throughout the tri-state area. They were, apparently, quite renowned.

Rhyme had probably heard about the contest but he never had time for, or interest in, small talk and tended not to listen when it was proffered.

“Thom’s out shopping,” Sellitto said. “But he made coffee.” Pointing to a pot.

“I’m good.”

Sellitto was looking through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that separated the public portion of the parlor from the sterile lab. There were a half-dozen items of evidence Amelia Sachs had collected at a crime scene yesterday. “You know, we oughta scan all of that.” He was nodding. “We don’t know how long this guy’s been after you. He could’ve hid a bomb in some evidence.”

To Rhyme that seemed far-fetched. He hadn’t blown up yet. But he supposed it couldn’t hurt.

Cooper dressed in booties, hat and gloves, then donned a clean white lab coat.

He turned to Rhyme. “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.”

Rhyme stared, wondering why Sellitto was laughing.

Cooper stepped into the sterile portion of the room and collected the evidence. With Sellitto guiding him through the instructions, he ran the items through the sensors in the hallway.

“All clear,” Sellitto announced.

Cooper headed back toward the lab, asking, “Where’s Amelia?”

“Spanish Harlem,” Sellitto said. “Some drug deal went down, and it might have Hector Velasquez’s prints all over it. I’m speaking figuratively about the prints—but I damn well hope it’s literal.”

Velasquez was one of the most ruthless organized criminals in the city. And one of the most elusive. It had been a priority of the NYPD’s OC Task Force to nail the mobster but they’d made no headway—until now. It seemed a drug deal had gone bad, and clues found at the scene, they hoped, might implicate the gangbanger in chief.

Sellitto’s phone hummed and he took a call. He listened and then held the unit away from his face. “It’s Andy Gilligan, gold shield I work with, Major Cases. He’s running a B and E, downtown. He’s asking if you’ll take it on.”

“Breaking and entering? Was there any battery, homicide?”

“No.”

Lincoln Rhyme had little patience for cases that did not challenge him. And simple larceny rarely rose to the occasion. “Then why me?”

“Because of where he hit. The DSE.”

“Which is?”

“The Department of Structures and Engineering. He got into the main repository. Downloaded the details of every existing and proposed construction project in the city. The mayor and the chief’re convinced it’s for some terror attack. You know, they have the layout for any building they want to hit.”

“Have they already run the scene?”

“Yeah. Evidence collection team out of Queens. And they got some interesting things. Looks like he missed an alarm. It went off and he had to book on out fast. Left behind a tool kit or something.”