Rhyme nodded, staring at the chart. “Lonely. Just the sort to get suckered in by somebody with a glib tongue. Let’s check veterinarians. We know she’s got three cats, three different colors.”

“But where?” Sellitto asked. “Westchester? Manhattan?”

“Let’s first ask,” Rhyme mulled, “why would he hook up with this woman in the first place?”

Sachs snapped her fingers. “Because he had to! Because we nearly trapped him.” Her face had lit up. Some of the old Amelia was back.

“Yes!” Rhyme said. “This morning, near Percey’s town house. When ESU moved in.”

Sachs continued. “He ditched the van and hid out in her apartment until it was safe to move.”

Rhyme said to Sellitto, “Get some people calling vets. For ten blocks around the town house. No, make it the whole Upper East Side. Call, Lon, call!”

As the detective punched numbers into his phone, Sachs asked gravely, “You think she’s all right? The woman?”

Rhyme answered from his heart though not with what he believed to be the truth. “We can hope, Sachs. We can hope.”

. . . Chapter Fourteen

Hour 7 of 45

To Percey Clay the safe house didn’t appear particularly safe.

It was a three-story brownstone structure like many others along this block near the Morgan Library.

“This’s it,” an agent said to her and Brit Hale, nodding out the window of the van. They parked in the alley and she and Hale were hustled through a basement entrance. The steel door slammed shut. They found themselves staring at an affable man in his late thirties, lean and with thinning brown hair. He grinned.

“Howdy,” he said, showing his NYPD identification and gold shield. “Roland Bell. From now on you meet anybody, even somebody charming as me, ask ’em for an ID and make sure it’s got an i-dentical picture on it.”

Percey listened to his relentless drawl and asked, “Don’t tell me . . . you’re a Tarheel?”

“That I am.” He laughed. “Lived in Hoggston—not a joke, no—until I escaped to Chapel Hill for four years. Understand you’re a Richmond gal.”

“Was. Long time ago.”

“And you, Mr. Hale?” Bell asked. “You flying the Stars and Bars too?”

“Michigan,” Hale said, shaking the detective’s vigorous hand. “Via Ohio.”

“Don’t you worry, I’ll forgive you for that little mistake of yours in the eighteen sixties.”

“I myself would’ve surrendered,” Hale joked. “Nobody asked me.”

“Hah. Now, I’m a Homicide detective but I keep drawing this witness protection detail ’cause I have this knack of keeping people alive. So my dear friend Lon Sellitto asked me to help him out. I’ll be baby-sitting y’all for a spell.”

Percey asked, “How’s that other detective?”

“Jerry? What I hear, he’s still in the operating room. No news yet.”

His speech may have been slow but his eyes were very fast, scooting over their bodies. Looking for what? Percey wondered. To see if they were armed? Had microphones hidden on them? Then he’d scan the corridor. Then the windows.