I was satisfied that it would be virtually impossible for Loving to find any connection. Call him. I handed Ryan a mobile, a flip phone, black, a little larger than your standard Nokia or Samsung. Wha...
I was disappointed. Voice analysis can tell a lot about the caller: gender, most of the time, national and regional roots, illnesses, even reasonable morphological deductions can be made about the sha...
I returned to our surveillance. The houses around us reminded me of Ryan Kessler’s place. About every fifth one was, if not identical, then designed from the same mold. We were staring through bushes...
I WAS SITTING in one of our director’s scuffed chairs next to a man who clearly knew me, since he’d nodded with some familiarity when I entered. I couldn’t, however, place him beyond his being a feder...
Finally, I pointed to the picture on the left. That one. Why? I hadn’t known I had to show my work. I don’t know; I just do. Uh-uh, commit. I really don’t know. They’re both nice. I glanced up the hal...
Boys groped, boys dissed, boys put you down. But it was the girls who made you bleed
A young officer in my organization, Lyle Ahmad, was a solid, olive-skinned former marine with a trim crew cut. He was a clone, a close protection officer. I had met Ahmad when he was a marine guarding...
A few were journalists and one a novelist, who wanted to get it right. (Rhyme welcomed his presence; he himself was the subject of a series of novels based on cases he’d run and had written the author...
The man had stabbed his wife, Rostov’s mother (though only in the face and only with a screwdriver, so hardly a problem).
What’s your name? Stu. He eyed me carefully. You were asking some things? In the store? His statements were inflected as questions. I
We tugged on door levers and jumped out, all our jackets fluttering in the wet breeze. I was limping—the toe still stung like crazy. DuBois and I moved in slowly, behind the eight armed tactical offic...
The workbench was filled with glassware, books, syringes, tattooing machine parts, plastic bags, tools. Dozens of books on toxins and thousands of downloaded Internet documents,
The human creature is so astonishing, but count on it before anything else to be just that-a creature. A laughing animal, a dangerous one, a clever one, a scared one, but always acting for a reason-a...
Stanton clawed his way to the bedside table and managed to grab his knife. He jabbed it into Rhyme. Once, twice. But the only places he could reach were the criminalist's legs and arms. It's pain that...
I’m not a bad person. Zagaev looked up at me with imploring eyes. Claims of ethical purity are a common strategy in games like this. But they’re paper, forever losing to scissors.
I paused to listen too. Dogs track by smell first, then sound and then sight. Humans are different but hearing comes second with them as well. Always listen and listen carefully. Your prey makes noise...
I could see the palm of Freddy’s hand tap the butt of his Glock. We do this to reorient our muscles and nerves so we know exactly where our weapons are. Like I noted the pressure of the Baby Glock, in...
Everything in the past is memory and everything in the future is imagination. Those're both illusions – memories are unreliable and we just speculate about the future. The only thing that's completely...
As I’d listened in on the conversation, I’d noted what seemed to be disappointment in Loving’s voice. I wondered if that was due to his reluctance to cease playing this game with me personally. But th...
All right. He glanced at my gun. You tapped? Meaning: Was my Glock threaded for a silencer? I rarely had reason even to draw my weapon, let alone make sure it fired in a whisper. No. He handed me his....