The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(75)

She pulled the thickest towels from the racks and strewed them on a path to the door.

One step. Good.

She paused to find a spot for the next one and froze.

What was that? She smelled natural gas.

“Jesus, Jesus…”

Porter recalled the terrible news story about what had happened after the first earthquake. The damage from the shaking hadn’t been bad at all. A few broken windows. But some gas lines had broken. The resulting explosions and fires had killed several people: a couple, trapped in their burning house.

Well, she and her daughter weren’t going to be victims.

They were on the first floor. She’d get Erin and clutch her tight and hobble outside, shouting her head off for the other tenants to get out too.

Move, move, move!

Another step.

One more. And then the glass splinter leveraged through the towel like a scorpion’s stinger and pierced her heel.

Porter screamed and fell backward. She released the crutch and got her hand behind her head just in time to keep her skull from cracking on the side of the porcelain bathtub. Pain careened through her body. Her vision crinkled again—from the agony. It then returned, though blurred by more tears.

The smell of gas was stronger here: Her face was beside the access panel to the bathroom pipes, which led down to the basement, where the cracked gas line would be.

Go! Somehow, she had to get to the room and save her baby.

Crawl over the fucking glass if you have to!

An image came to her: The news footage of the buildings burning following the most recent quakes—that horrifying tornado of orange flames and oily black smoke.

Save your daughter.

“Erin!” she cried involuntarily.

The girl must have heard—or perhaps she’d been woken by the foul smell of the gas—and she started screaming.

“No, honey, no! Mommy’s coming!” She struggled to roll onto her belly, so she could start her frantic crawl to her daughter.

But she hadn’t realized that her broken ankle had become wedged beneath the bathroom’s heavy wooden vanity. As she rolled over, she felt, and heard, the gritty snap of the delicate bone work giving way. Breathtaking pain exploded within her entire body.

Screaming in unison with her infant daughter, Claire Porter looked at her foot. The metal rods that the surgeon had implanted just the other day had ripped through the skin and, bloody, were poking out of the top of her foot. She gagged and felt her head thud hard against the tile floor as blackness embraced her like oily smoke.





Chapter 37



Vimal Lahori was back in his beloved bus station, the Port Authority.

Better this time. Less pain. The horror of the killing had diminished. And he had money.

At home last night, before he’d gone down to the studio to “have words” with his father, he’d walked upstairs on the pretext of getting a sweater. He’d done that…but he’d also taken the three thousand dollars—his three thousand—that Nouri had paid him, as well as his wallet. He had lifted another two hundred of his father’s because he was owed that, and much, much more, for the cutting jobs his father had rented him out for. He got his phone too. A razor, toothpaste and brush, the antiseptic Adeela had given him. Some bandages. And of course his Book, his most precious possession.

Vimal had been planning all along to escape last night as soon as his parents were busy with their game or had gone to sleep. He’d agreed to some ambiguous peace treaty with his father, which Vimal hadn’t meant a word of. But then it turned out that his father hadn’t meant a word of it either. He should have guessed that Papa was lying—and going to entrap him in the basement prison; the bottled water stacked up, the food in the fridge, the sleeping bag. Lite fucking beer?

Goddamn it.

He shivered with rage.

Vimal was now walking away from the Greyhound window. The one-way ticket cost him $317.50. The journey from New York to the station at 1716 7th Street, in Los Angeles, would take sixty-five hours.

Thinking about what was coming next, Vimal Lahori was sorrowful, he was terrified.

But these emotions were outweighed by the exhilaration he felt, and he knew he was doing the right thing. He turned his phone on and texted his mother that he loved her. And texted his brother that he loved him too and he’d be in touch from someplace out of town.

He then bought a soda—a large Cherry Coke, a secret delight (his father never let him have any beverage with caffeine because he was, for some reason, convinced it would make his son’s hands shake, resulting in a flawed diamond facet). Vimal bought a slice of pizza too. He stood, eating and sipping, at a dirty high-top table. There were no chairs for customers. To encourage turnover in the “dining room,” he guessed.

He looked into what amounted to his luggage—a canvas bag he’d bought for a dollar at a grocery store. And he took out what gave him as much comfort as the Port Authority itself.

The Book. A holy book in a way. It was something he turned to a lot, something that comforted him, that never failed to astonish.

The Collected Sketches of Michelangelo had been printed years ago, in the early part of the prior century. Vimal considered the master to be the greatest sculptor who’d ever lived and, given his own passion, it was logical that he’d be drawn to the man and his art. The artist was Vimal’s god. Oh, he liked pop music, manga and would have liked binge-worthy TV, had his father allowed him to watch much of it. But he loved Michelangelo and, in those moments when his ancestral country’s religious legacy—reincarnation—seemed plausible to him (this was rare, usually after wine), he fantasized that the ancient sculptor’s soul—part of it, at least—resided within Vimal himself.