If Rhyme totaled the number of perps he’d been up against over the years, he supposed he’d rank anti-social personality disorder doers first (that is, psychos) and domestic terrorists second, far more numerous than foreign plotters or organized crime perps.

Like the couple he was about to speak to: Matthew and Harriet Stanton.

Rhyme was now on the tenth floor of the Stantons’ hotel, along with officers of the NYPD Emergency Service operation. ESU had cleared the building and found no other co-conspirators. Rhyme and Sachs hadn’t expected any. The hotel records indicated that only the Stantons and their son were staying here. Clearly there was one other perp – the deceased Unsub 11-5 – but there was no evidence of anyone else in New York. After Rhyme and Sachs had determined that the Stantons had been involved in the terror attack they and Bo Haumann had put together a tactical op to nail them.

The hotel manager had arranged for the elevators to bypass the tenth floor and had moved his staff elsewhere while the police evacuated the floor’s legitimate guests. Then woman ESU officers donned cleaning jackets, tossed their MP-7s into laundry carts and hung around the elevator until the family showed up.

Surprise …

Not a shot fired.

The Bomb Squad had cleared the room – no booby traps; in fact not much of anything left. The terrorists had traveled light. Sachs was presently running the scene there.

Lincoln Rhyme was now scrolling through his iPad, reading reports sent to him over the past half hour from the FBI based in St Louis, the closest field office to the Southern Illinois home of the Stantons and the AFFC. The group had been on the Bureau’s and the Illinois State Police’s radar – members were suspected in attacks on gays and minorities and of other hate crimes but nothing could ever be proven. Mostly, it was felt, they were bluster.

Surprise.

The authorities in the Midwest had already arrested three others within the AFFC for possession of explosives and machine guns without federal licenses. And the search there continued.

No longer in her crime scene coveralls, Amelia Sachs joined him.

‘Anything left behind?’ He looked at the milk crate she carried. It was filled with a half-dozen paper and plastic bags.

‘Not much. Lot of bottled water.’

Rhyme grunted a laugh. ‘Let’s see if our friends’ll be willing to have a tête-à-tête.’ A nod toward a linen room, where the Stantons were being held until the FBI showed up; the feds were taking point on this one.

They walked and wheeled into the room, where the prisoners sat handcuffed and shackled. The parents and son – their only child, Rhyme had learned – gazed back with a hesitant resolution. They were flanked by three NYPD officers.