Page 98 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

Ron Pulaski was safely down, being given oxygen and water.

But there was no sign of Lyle Spencer, still on the twelfth floor. The fire was rising and the smoke was growing black and thicker.

“What’s he doing?” Rhyme muttered.

Sachs said, “Jesus. The flames’ll be at his floor any time now.”

Two minutes passed.

Three.

Five.

“Call him.”

As she lifted her phone, it hummed with an incoming call. “It’s him.” She put it on speaker. “Lyle. Are you all right?”

“I broke through the door Ron was trying to get into.” He paused, presumably for oxygen. “The lock shop—it’s burning. Only had time to scoop up some dust and dirt from in front of a workstation. Got it in a bag. I’ll pitch it down.”

“Get out, Lyle,” Rhyme said. “The flames’re one floor below you.”

Spencer disconnected without responding that he’d heard.

Rhyme saw him appear in the window and toss a weighted paper bag out. It sailed to the street and landed near one of the firemen who picked it up and, seeing Sachs wave, brought it to them.

She put it in an evidence bag. She noted the fireman’s name, Rhyme saw, but tucked the bag away; they’d do chain-of-custody later.

Sachs said, “Why isn’t he coming down? Is he still looking for something?”

Is he stillalive?

They stared at the window.

Come on, Lyle.

Inside the building, the ninth or tenth floor collapsed with a mammoth roar, firing smoke and embers from windows. The building groaned.

It was then that Spencer appeared in the window. He seemed to be breathing into the mask deeply, filling his lungs. Then, curiously, he lifted his head and was gazing out over the city, like a tourist on the Empire State Building’s observation platform. His body language was serene.

Spencer looked down at the assembly of fire trucks.

Rhyme said, “Send him a text. We need him down now. And repeat ‘Need.’”

Sachs looked at her husband and then sent the message.

They could see him fish his phone from his pocket and look at it for a long moment. Then he slid it back.

Again studying the cityscape.

And down at the roof of the one-story building a hundred feet below.

Another floor collapsed. The building seemed to rock.

At last Spencer bent down and hooked the escape rig to something inside the hallway. He doffed the mask and tank—to lose the weight for the journey downward, Rhyme supposed—and then turned and scooted himself over the sill then ledge.

While Ron Pulaski had descended in a jerking fashion, Lyle Spencer returned to earth with balletic elegance, as casually as another man might cross the street, assured by a radiant green light that his passage was safe.

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