She lifted her hands defensively to deflect the blow to her head, glanced for her Glock. It was too far away.

With a tendony hand tough as a bird claw, the small man pulled the knife from her pocket. He tossed it away.

Then he stood and gripped the club.

Pop, she spoke to her deceased father, How bad d’I blow this one? How many rules d’I break? Recalling that he’d told her all it took to get killed on the street was a one-second lapse.

“Now, you’re gonna tell me what you’re doing here,” he muttered, swinging the club absently, as if he couldn’t decide what to break first. “Who the hell’re you?”

“Her name’s Mizz Amelia Sachs,” said the homeless guy, suddenly sounding a lot less homeless. He stepped off the bottom stair and moved up to the white guy quickly, pulling the bat away. “And unless I’m most mistaken, she’s come here to bust your little ass, my friend. Just like me.” Sachs squinted to see the homeless guy straighten up and turn into Fred Dellray. He was pointing a very large Sig-Sauer automatic pistol at the astonished man.

“You’re a cop?” he sputtered.

“FBI.”

“Shit!” he spat out, closing his eyes in disgust. “This is just my fucking luck.”

“Nup,” Dellray said. “Luck didn’t have a bitsy thing to do with it. Now, I’m gonna cuff you and you’re gonna let me. You don’t, you gonna hurt for months and months. We all together on that?”

“How’d you do it, Fred?”

“’Seasy,” the lanky FBI agent said to Sachs as they stood in front of the deserted subway station. He still was dressed homeless and was filthy with the mud he’d smeared on his face and hands to simulate weeks of living on the street. “Rhyme was tellin’ me ’bout the Dancer’s friend being a junkie and living downtown in the subways, knew just where I hadta come. Bought a bag of empties and talked to who I knew I oughta talk to. Just ’bout got di-rections t’his livin’ room.” He nodded toward the subway. They glanced at a squad car, where Jodie sat, cuffed and miserable, in the backseat.

“Why didn’t you tell us what you were doing?”

Dellray’s answer was a laugh and Sachs knew the question was pointless; undercover cops rarely told anyone—fellow cops included, and especially supervisors—what they were doing. Nick, her ex, had been undercover, too, and there’d been a hell of a lot he hadn’t told her.

She massaged her side where she’d fallen. It hurt like a son of a bitch, and the medics said she ought to have X rays. Sachs reached up and squeezed Dellray’s biceps. She felt uneasy receiving gratitude—she was truly Lincoln Rhyme’s protégée there—but she now had no problem saying, “You saved my life. My ass’d be capped now if it wasn’t for you. What can I say?”

Dellray shrugged, deflecting the thanks, and bummed a cigarette from one of the uniformed cops standing in front of the station. He sniffed the Marlboro and slipped it behind his ear. He looked toward a blacked-out window in the station. “Please,” he said to no one, sighing. “’Bout time we had some luck here.”