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She stopped speaking and turned to him.

Verlaine grinned. “I can buy you a drink and he can’t.”

Tense. Would she balk?

Mona looked him over. Slow. Not smiling now. She said into the phone, “Gotta go.”

Click.

His index finger crooked for the bartender.

“So, I’m James.”

Playing it coy, of course. She said something. He couldn’t hear. The music at Rasta’s was a one-hundred-decibel remix of groups from twenty years ago, the worst of CBGBs.

He leaned closer and smelled a luscious floral scent rising from her skin.

Man, he wanted her. Wanted her tied down. Wanted her sweating. Wanted her crying.

“What’s that?” he called.

Mona shouted, “I said, so what do you do, James?”

Of course. This was Manhattan. That was always question number one.

“I’m a sculptor.”

“Yeah?” A faint Brooklyn lilt. He could tolerate that. The skepticism in her eyes, no.

His iPhone appeared and, shoving it her way, he flipped through the pictures.

“Jesus, you really are.”

Then Mona looked past him. He followed her gaze and saw a tall redhead, smiling as she made her way through the crowd. A stunner. His eyes did the triplet glance: face, tits, ass. And he didn’t care that she saw him doing it.

As tasty as Mona.

And no LBD for her. Leather miniskirt, fishnets, low-cut dark-blue sequined top, strapless.

The arrivee tossed her beautiful hair off her shoulders, glistening with sweat. She cheek-kissed Mona. Then pitched a smile Verlaine’s way.

Mona said, “This is James. He’s a real sculptor. He’s famous.”

“Cool,” the redhead said, eyes wide and impressed — just the way he liked the pretties to be.

He shook their hands.

“And you are?” he asked the redhead.

“I’m Amelia.”

Mona turned out to be Lily.

Verlaine got Amelia a Pinot gris and a refill of his bourbon.

Conversation wandered. Protocol demanded that, and Verlaine had to play the game a little longer before he could bring up the subject. You had to be careful. You could ruin an evening if you moved too fast. A girl by herself? You got her drunk enough, you could usually get her to “try something different” back at your place without too much effort.

But two together? That took a lot more work.

In fact, he wasn’t sure he could pull this one off. They seemed, fuck it, smart, savvy. They weren’t going to fall for lines like, “I can open up a whole new world for you.”

No, may have to write this evening off. Hell.

But just then Lily leaned forward and whispered, “So what’re you into, James?”

“Hobbies, you mean?” he asked.

The women regarded each other and broke out in laughs. “Yeah, hobbies. You have any hobbies?”

“Sure. Who doesn’t?”

“If we tell you about our hobby, will you tell us about yours?”

When a sultry raven-haired pretty in a tight LBD asks you that question, there’s only one answer: “You bet.”

The redhead reached into her tiny purse and displayed a pair of handcuffs.

Okay, maybe the night was going to be easier than he thought.

* * *

James Robert Verlaine had a certain charm, Amelia Sachs gave him that.

The clothes were weird—Midnight Cowboy meets Versace — and he probably owned more hair products than she did. But, despite that, his witty attention was completely on her and Lily.

With Lincoln Rhyme as a romantic as well as professional partner, Amelia had been freed from the madness of the dating world. But before him there’d been innumerable evenings in restaurants and bars with men who were anything but present. Their thoughts kept zipping back to Nokias or BlackBerrys in jacket pockets, to business deals sitting on office desktops, to girlfriends or wives they’d forgotten to mention.

A woman knows right away when a man’s with her or not.

And Jim Bob — she loved Lucas Davenport’s nic for him — definitely was. His sniper eyes bored into theirs, he touched arms, he asked questions, made jokes. He inquired.

Of course, this wasn’t typical bar meeting talk — about family and exes, about the Mets, the Knicks, politics, and the latest retreads from Hollywood. No, the theme for tonight was such esoterica as describing the type of rope he enjoyed tying “girls” up with, where to get the best mouth gags, and what kind of whips and canes caused the most pain but left the fewest marks.

Back at Lincoln’s loft, the four investigators had decided the way to Verlaine’s psyche was through his fly. His sado-sexual history would give them entry. Lily had gone to the bar first — strategizing that a single bulb might draw the moth less suspiciously. Yep on that one. Then Amelia — in an outfit she’d had to purchase an hour earlier — had arrived to seal the deal. And it had taken a whole sixty seconds to find out that Verlaine usually came to Rasta’s before heading to his fave S&M dives.

Thank you, Facebook.

Verlaine’s phone appeared again and he punched in a passcode. A private photo album opened. And he leaned forward to show off his prize shots.

Amelia struggled not to show her disgust. She heard Lily inhale fast, but the senior detective turned the sound into a whisper of admiration. Verlaine missed her dismay.

The first image was of a naked woman, wearing only a necklace, blindfolded, with her hands taped or tied behind her. She was kneeling on a slab of concrete. Interesting, Amelia thought, and caught Lily’s eye. Concrete, just like the victims.

The woman in the picture had been crying — her makeup had run to her chin — and her breasts were streaked with ugly welts.

Verlaine, obviously aroused, eagerly scrolled through more images, which Amelia found increasingly hard to look at. It took all her willpower to appear aroused by the images of cruelty.

He gave a running narrative of the “partners.” Amelia only heard the word “victims.”

Ten minutes.

Fifteen.

At that point Verlaine said, “Excuse me, ladies. I need to run to the little boy’s room. Behave while I’m away. Or not!” He laughed. “Back in a sec.”

“Wait,” Lily said.

Verlaine turned.

“Always wondered something.”

He lifted an eyebrow.

“What’s the plural of sec?”

* * *

“That son of a bitch,” Lily said. She wasn’t smiling.

“God, that was awful,” Amelia added. “What do you think?” She was nodding back toward the toilets where Jim Bob might be emptying his bladder but was sure to be filling his nostrils.

“Sleazy, scummy, I want to take a shower in hand sanitizer.”

“Agreed. But is he a killer?”

“Those pictures,” Lily whispered. “I’ve worked sex crimes but that’s about the worst I’ve seen. From some of those wounds, I guarantee he put one or two of them in the hospital.” She considered the question. “Yeah, I could see him taking it a step further and killing somebody. You?”

“I think so.”

Lily continued, “I hope so. Man, I really do. I don’t want the crew from Narcotics Four to be behind this.”

Amelia didn’t much care for the detectives running the elite unit — Martin Glover, Danny Vincenzo, and Candy Preston all had egos like runaway stallions — but no cop wants to think that colleagues are torturing and killing wits just to up their conviction rate, however noble their cause.

Amelia looked over her friend. “So. You and Lucas, you had a thing, right?”

“A while ago, yeah. In Minnesota and when he came here. Really clicked between us. Still does. But not that way. We’ve moved on. And you and Lincoln seem like a good fit.”