As Thom picked his way along the pitted road, the view to the right suddenly opened up and they were looking at the bay of azure water beneath a stunning blue sky and white clouds dense as wads of cotton. About a mile away was the low beige line of land and buildings that was the South Cove Inn and surrounding grounds. Somewhere along this north edge of the spit from here to the end, about a hundred yards away, the sniper would have set up his nest.

“Anywhere here,” Rhyme said. Thom drove a short distance to a pull-off and parked. He shut the engine off and two sounds filled the van—some harsh rhythmic pounding from the metal factory and the faint crash of waves on the rocks that lined the shore.

“One thing first,” Poitier said. He reached into his backpack and extracted something then offered it to Rhyme. “Do you want this?”

It was a pistol. A Glock. Very much like Amelia Sachs’s. Poitier verified it was loaded and pulled the slide to chamber a round. With a Glock there is no safety catch, you simply have to pull the trigger to fire it.

Rhyme stared at the pistol, glanced at Thom and then took the weapon in his right hand. He had never cared for firearms. The opportunity to use them—in his specialty of forensics, at least—was next to never, and he was always worried that he’d have to draw and use his gun. The reluctance stemmed not from fear of killing an attacker but from what even a single shot could do to contaminate a crime scene. Smoke, blast pressure, gunshot residue, vapors…

That was no less true here but curiously he was now struck by the sense of power the weapon gave him.

In contrast with the utter helplessness that had enwrapped his life since the accident.

“Yes,” he said.

Though he couldn’t feel it in his fingers, the Glock seemed to burn its way into his skin, to become a part of his new arm. He aimed it carefully out the window at the water, recalling his firearms training. Assume every weapon is loaded and ready to fire, never point a weapon at anything you aren’t prepared to send a bullet into, never shoot unless you see exactly what is behind your target, never put your finger on the trigger until you’re prepared to shoot.

A scientist, Rhyme was actually a pretty good shot, using physics in calculating how to get the bullet to its desired destination.

“Yes,” he said again and slipped the gun into the inside pocket of his jacket.

They got out of the van and surveyed the area: pipes and gutters directing runoff into the ocean, dozens of piles of sludge rising like huge ant hills and cinder blocks and car parts and appliances and rusted industrial machinery littering the ground.

No Swimming…

No kidding.