Page 143 of The Watchmaker's Hand

After a moment Rhyme offered, “I’m skeptical.”

Hale turned from a photograph he’d been looking at. A picture of Rhyme and Sachs in Lake Como, where they’d not only gotten married but stopped a killer in the same several days. His brows rose. “Skeptical?”

“This plan—the cranes, the housing activists, the assassination—so you can line your pockets? It doesn’t seem like you. I can’t imagine you without a client.”

“It was time for me to get off the merry-go-round.” Then in a whisper: “Everything comes to an end, now, doesn’t it? Don’t you feel that way too?”

“What can you tell me about the woman you were working with? The one who kidnapped Ron?”

“Not a single thing, Lincoln, not a thing.”

Rhyme knew that the evidence might give them leads, but Hale would remain completely uncooperative regarding his colleague.

Hale frowned as he saw something on the mantel.

“May I?”

Rhyme nodded.

Hale walked to the fireplace and studied a gold pocket watch, made by Breguet, a famed craftsman who’d lived many years ago. The face was white, the numbers in roman numerals. Some small dials showed phases of the moon and a perpetual calendar. Rhyme knew it also had a parachute inside, an anti-shock mechanism revolutionary for the time.

It had been a gift from the Watchmaker years ago and had been accompanied by a note of warning.

“You’ve kept it wound.”

“What good is a watch that doesn’t run? An object of beauty, maybe.” Rhyme shrugged. “But beauty is overrated.”

“Indeed.” The Watchmaker put the Breguet back on the ledge.

Rhyme was looking out the window once more, gazing toward a spot about three hundred yards into Central Park. A faint glint in the distance, which then vanished.

Hale asked, “You’ve seen him too?”

“Twice. Surveillance tapes. Near the cranes.”

Nodding, Hale said, “I don’t know who he is. Do you have any idea?”

“Andy Gilligan’s brother.”

“Ah, Mick. That explains how he knew about the trailer on Hamilton Court—I saw him there last night. Andy would have told him.”

“He’s connected—organized crime.” Rhyme added, “I saw him with a guitar case.”

“So that’s what he was carrying.” A faint smile crossed Hale’s face. “And I suspect he’s not a student of Segovia or Jeff Beck.”

“Do you see him now?” Rhyme asked.

Hale squinted. “No. Andy told me they used to hunt.”

Rhyme said, “There’s a back entrance here, it leads onto acul-de-sac. They can bring the detention center transport van around.”

After a lengthy moment during which the only sounds were the occasional snapping of an old, settling structure and the shushing of traffic, Hale said, “Even without reading Einstein, we know how time expands and contracts. Fast when you’re making babies, slow when you’re having them. Do you know what time does when you’re in a twelve-by-twelve cell, Lincoln? It turns on you. Your best friend becomes a python. That’s not for me.”

“I’ve adapted.” Rhyme nodded to his wheelchair.

“We share quite a bit, Lincoln. But I have no interest in adaptation.”

Rhyme noticed Hale’s eyes had slipped to the evidence bag containing his burner phones.

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