Page 104 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

No, a badge holder, with an ID on one side and an NYPD gold shield on the other. “I’m Aaron Douglass, Organized Crime squad.”

He stopped but Sachs gestured them forward. Rhyme joined them too.

They looked closely at the ID, which seemed legit. Then they simultaneously took in the smaller man.

Douglass continued, “And this is Arnie Cavall. He’s a CI, works for me some.”

“Hey,” Arnie said in a cheerful voice. “How ya doing?” He was speaking to Sachs, ignoring Rhyme.

Douglass said, with some awe in his voice, “Captain Rhyme, a real honor to meet you, sir. And Detective Sachs.”

She said, “You’ve been tailing me. From that scene on Ninety-Seventh Street.”

“That’s right, I have.”

Rhyme muttered, “What the hell’s this all about?”

“We need to shoot a movie.”

Sachs called Lon Sellitto, who apparently called somebody else. Maybe another call was involved.

A moment later she got a text with Douglass’s picture and the confirmation that the detective, assigned to NYPD Organized Crime, had been embedded for six months within Viktor Buryak’s organization. The mobster knew he was NYPD but believed he’d caught himself a crooked cop, having no idea he was undercover.

“Slowly I’ve been getting Buryak to trust me. I run part of his information-gathering operation. A small one. But everything I give him, I tone it down or change the details, so nobody innocent gets hurt. He has me do some enforcement work, like this. But that I fuck with too so there’re no injuries.”

“You said, ‘enforcement work, like this,’” Rhyme said. “Explain.”

It seemed that Buryak was convinced that Rhyme, with Sachs’s help, was out to get him because he’d been embarrassed in court. The mobster couldn’t be tried again for the death of Leon Murphy, but believed Rhyme was on a mission to nail him for some other case or even frame him. Apparently Buryak hadn’t heard, or didn’t buy, the conspiracy blogger Verus’s theory that both he and Rhyme were working for the Hidden to sow chaos in the streets.

Rhyme scoffed. “I don’t have any time for crap like that. And even if I did, I’d need a whole team to get something on him. He’s the slipperiest fish I’ve ever seen.”

Douglass exhaled a sigh. “I know that.Everybodyknows that. But Buryak suffers from a serious case of paranoia. He doesn’t think in specifics. All he knows is that one of the best forensic cops in the world has decided to bring him down and I’m supposed to discourage that. Make sure you’re too scared or upset to pursue him anymore.” He glanced at Sachs. “By running you over. Not killing you. He doesn’t want that to happen. Just hurt you bad and scare the hell out of you both.”

Rhyme believed he saw his wife smile slightly at this.

Amelia Sachs did not scare particularly easily.

She asked, “What do you mean by ‘movie’?”

Buryak, the undercover cop explained, wanted a video of the “accident.”

“He doesn’t trust you?”

Douglass snickered. “I think it’s more he wouldn’t mind seeing you get wiped out—for his own personal enjoyment. He’s pretty pissed off that you’ve got thisV for Vendettaaction going on.”

Rhyme said, “We’ve got work at home.” They had the evidence from Kitt Whittaker’s apartment and the trace that Lyle Spencer had just risked his life to collect.

She said, “All right, let’s get it over with. What d’you have in mind?”

Douglass’s plan was that he was going to make a phone video as if he were surreptitiously spying on her. He would then shift the camera to the van speeding down the street. She’d stand in a doorway nearby and the van would slam into the containers where Sachs had been standing. She would then lie down on the sidewalk, as if she were unconscious and hurt.

“Won’t he be expecting a story on the news?” Sachs asked.

“If somebody took a shot at you, maybe. But just a traffic accident, no fatalities? Not really newsworthy. Anyway, you have a better plan?”

Sachs looked up and down the street, then said, “Okay, cameraman. Where do you want me?”

“Friends: Thomas Jefferson wrote, ‘What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two.’

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