‘I thought you knew. He’s dead. He was killed by the stream of water after he drilled the hole. Because the pressure was never shut off.’

Absolute silence descended. It was shattered only a few seconds later when Harriet Stanton began to scream uncontrollably.

CHAPTER 68

‘It’s over,’ Pam Willoughby said, practically leaping into Seth McGuinn’s arms.

He was at the front door of her apartment building in Brooklyn Heights. He stumbled back, laughing. They kissed long. The sky finally was clear and the incisive sunlight, ruddy from the afternoon angle, poured onto the façade of the building. The temperature, though, was even colder than in the past few days, when sleet pelted from the gray sky.

They stepped inside the hallway and then walked into her apartment on the first floor, to the right. Even a glance at the basement stairs, at the bottom of which Seth had nearly been killed, didn’t dampen her joy.

She was buoyant. Her shoulders were no longer knots, her belly no longer tight as a spring. The ordeal was over. She could return home, at last, without worries that that terrible man who’d attacked Seth would come back. According to Lincoln Rhyme’s message, the unsub was dead and his colleagues had been arrested.

Pam had noted immediately that Amelia wasn’t the one delivering the news.

Fine with her. She was still angry and wasn’t sure she could ever wholly forgive Amelia for trying to break up her relationship with her soul mate.

In the living room Seth pulled off his jacket and they dropped onto the couch. He cradled her head and pulled her close.

‘You want anything?’ she asked. ‘Coffee? I’ve got some champagne or, I don’t know, bubbly wine. I’ve had it for a year. It’s probably still good.’

‘Sure, coffee, tea. Anything warm.’ But before she rose Seth took her by the arm and studied her carefully, looking her over with a face of both relief and concern. ‘You all right?’

‘I am. How about you? You’re the one who was going to get a tattoo from that crazy guy.’

Seth shrugged.

She could see he was troubled. She couldn’t imagine what it had been like to be pinned down like that, knowing you were about to be killed. And killed so painfully. The news reported that the poisons the killer had used were picked because of their agonizing symptoms. At least he didn’t seem to blame her for the attack any longer. She’d been cut deeply to see him pulling away afterward. Walking away from her, not looking back … that was almost more than she could stand.

But he’d forgiven her. That was all in the past.

Pam walked into the kitchen and put water on to boil, readied the drip coffee-maker.

He called, ‘And what exactly did happen? You talk to Lincoln?’