The second was to destroy Lincoln Rhyme. This part of the mission was purely personal.

He thought of the account of the Department of Structures and Engineering break-in spun to the criminalist by Andy Gilligan—the NYPD detective who’d been on his payroll for several years (it was he who had been going by the code name McAdams).

Everything’s on schedule. I’ll be at the target location later . . .

And Gilligan had done as promised: brought Rhyme into the DSE case and delivered the tool kit, which had intentionally been left by the detective after he himself broke into the department’s server facility and stole terabytes of engineering diagrams and blueprints.

He was, of course, eager to move forward but he understood that it would be a while before he could return to New York. As a man who was obsessed with the inscrutable topic of time, Charles Vespasian Hale, the Watchmaker, knew that designs as important as his could not be hurried.

If it took nine months to create a life, why shouldn’t ending one be approached with equal patience?

He lifted the wine glass toward the west, in Lincoln Rhyme’s direction. “To our next encounter,” he whispered.

Keep reading for an exciting excerpt from Jeffery Deaver’s next Lincoln Rhyme novel, The Midnight Lock.

1.

Something wasn’t right.

Annabelle Talese, though, couldn’t quite figure out what that might be.

One aspect of this concern, or disorientation, or mystery, could be explained by the presence of a hangover, though a minor one. She called them “hangunders”—maybe one and a half glasses of sauvignon blanc too many. She’d been out with Trish and Gab at Tito’s, which had to be one of the strangest of all restaurants on the Upper West Side of Manhattan: a fusion of Serbian and Tex-Mex. Fried cheese with beans and salsa was a specialty.

Big wine pours too.

As she lay on her side, she brushed the tickling, thick blond hair away from her eyes and wondered: What’s wrong with this picture?

Well, for one thing, the window was open a few inches; a May breeze, thick with the gassy-asphalt scent of Manhattan, eased in. She rarely opened it. Why had she done so last night?

The twenty-seven-year-old, who had dabbled at modeling and was now content behind the scenes of the fashion world, rolled upright and tugged her Hamilton T-shirt down, twisted it straight. Adjusted her silk boxers. Finger-combed her curls.

She swung her feet over the edge of the bed, feeling for her slippers.

They weren’t where she’d kicked them off last night before climbing under the blankets.

All right. What’s going on?

Talese had no phobias or OCD issues, except one: New York City streets. She couldn’t help but picture the carpet of germs and other unmentionable critters that populated the city’s asphalt—and which got tracked into her apartment, even when, as she did every day, she stowed her shoes in a carton by the door (and insisted her friends do the same).