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b573157
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He tapped his pistol. "I'm loaded with Glasers." Safety bullets. Powerful rounds that can kill, but they won't penetrate Sheetrock and injure bystanders. They're called suburb slugs."
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Jeffery Deaver |
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cb222c4
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We don't have enough time to move fast
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Jeffery Deaver |
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253fb76
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But it works that way if it works.
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reason
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Jeffery Deaver |
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4a47ced
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They look like wounds, not tattoos.
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Jeffery Deaver |
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cf5da00
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And if it took awhile, that means she was in pain for a long time.
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Jeffery Deaver |
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316c774
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The workbench was filled with glassware, books, syringes, tattooing machine parts, plastic bags, tools. Dozens of books on toxins and thousands of downloaded Internet documents,
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Jeffery Deaver |
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ce5c521
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You bet they did. Dellray was there. You should've seen him. He ordered every other case put on hold and said if metallurgy report wasn't in your hands ASAP there'd be one mean mother----you get the picture----reaming their----you get the rest of the picture.
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Jeffery Deaver |
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14b449e
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Rhyme's eyes closed. His head dipped. But only a few millimeters. As with most great men, Lincoln Rhyme's gestures of defeat were very subtle.
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Jeffery Deaver |
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17f8018
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Charlie Overby,
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Jeffery Deaver |
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d1e1473
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Whatever else you could say about Jason Westerfield, grass didn't grow under the man's feet. A
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Jeffery Deaver |
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5796bbb
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Finally, I pointed to the picture on the left. "That one." "Why?" I hadn't known I had to show my work. "I don't know; I just do." "Uh-uh, commit." "I really don't know. They're both nice." I glanced up the hall. "I've got to talk to your brother-in-law." "Come on, Corte. Humor me. You've screwed up my weekend pretty bad. You won't even be my masseur. You owe me." I banked my irritation again and looked at the pictures. Suddenly I had a tho..
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Jeffery Deaver |
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e8b2b0a
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My opponent . . . what is he going to do? In game theory analysis the followers of eighteenth-century statistician Thomas Bayes hold that the world is made up of constantly changing knowledge, and in determining the probability of an event--what Zagaev was planning, in this case--you have to continually readjust your predictions as you learn new bits of information. The odds that he'll play rock, as opposed to paper or scissors, change from..
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Jeffery Deaver |
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d2c1215
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The pictures slipped past again and I kept looking at them. Some of the scans were sepia pictures, going back a hundred years; some were black-and-white; some were oversaturated, from the sixties and seventies. Many were recent, direct digital. Finally,
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Jeffery Deaver |
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8a7fd2b
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In my twenties I was in Austin, Texas, finishing up yet another degree. I'd always loved hiking and, sick of the sedentary life of academia, I'd joined the orienteering club at the university. The sport, which originated in Sweden, is a competition in which you use a special map and a compass to navigate through wilderness you've never seen before, stopping at checkpoints to have a control card physically or electronically stamped. The firs..
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Jeffery Deaver |
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44ca91f
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Sign cutting taught me that terrain determines the route the prey follows 90 percent of the time: you generally have only to follow the path of least resistance to be pretty sure of remaining on the trail of your target. Henry Loving was different. His route took him in directions that didn't seem to make sense, less direct and more difficult. But
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Jeffery Deaver |
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136d44a
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I paused to listen too. Dogs track by smell first, then sound and then sight. Humans are different but hearing comes second with them as well. Always listen and listen carefully. Your prey makes noise escaping and those preying upon you make noise moving in for the kill (humans tend to be the loudest approaching that climactic moment; other animals, the opposite). You'd think that snaps and rustling would seem to come from everywhere. But i..
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Jeffery Deaver |
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bc5d0b8
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I said evenly, "Loving's low-tech. Usually he uses sandpaper and alcohol on sensitive parts of the body. Doesn't sound too bad but it works real well." I"
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Jeffery Deaver |
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eda675f
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I was satisfied that it would be virtually impossible for Loving to find any connection. "Call him." I handed Ryan a mobile, a flip phone, black, a little larger than your standard Nokia or Samsung. "What's this?" "A cold phone. Encrypted and routed through proxies. From now on, until I tell you otherwise, use only this phone." I collected theirs and took out the batteries. Ryan"
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Jeffery Deaver |
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e30e2fb
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Somebody you busted?" Amanda asked matter-of-factly."
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Jeffery Deaver |
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9956f5b
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What'd he do? Your stepfather?
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Jeffery Deaver |
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cc85958
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Chris Teasley came on. She said, "Um, Agent Corte." "Officer Corte," I corrected. My organization is an office, not a bureau or an agency. When Congress gave Abe the money that's what he created."
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Jeffery Deaver |
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9d535d6
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I sat down at my desk and ate a pickle spear and a large bite of sandwich, a Heimlich bite. I then sipped hot and strong and very good coffee. I
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Jeffery Deaver |
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e00de1f
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Our SUV and four other cars accelerated fast and skidded up over the grass on Professor Peter Yu's property, tearing up the lawn and destroying shrubs. I'm told that this dramatic entrance, which you'd think was made up by TV-movie directors, is in fact the most efficient way to approach a suspect. It's all about intimidation. We
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Jeffery Deaver |
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2d19b8d
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We tugged on door levers and jumped out, all our jackets fluttering in the wet breeze. I was limping--the toe still stung like crazy. DuBois and I moved in slowly, behind the eight armed tactical officers, who were sprinting into Yu's open garage, brandishing weapons. "On the ground, FBI! FBI!" Screaming is standard operating procedure too. Intimidation, again. In"
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Jeffery Deaver |
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388a042
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was a lean, unsmiling man, a dusting of short gray hair on his head.
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Jeffery Deaver |
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9858705
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In a moment the two men were on their bellies, hands bound behind them with Monadnock restraints. Other agents entered the house, searched it and then returned, calling, "Clear." Claire"
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Jeffery Deaver |
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ff197a0
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Well, to the matter at hand," Westerfield said. "I was pretty surprised the whole morass rose as high as it did." He caught that mixed metaphor, at least, and hesitated. Then: "A U.S. senator. Hm." His voice and attitude continued to be as irritating as I remembered from the last time we met. Well, every time we'd met. I"
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Jeffery Deaver |
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dc2c647
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Speculation about the past is inefficient. And therefore irrelevant to achieving your goal. So
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Jeffery Deaver |
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3365bc9
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Accordingly, the occupant of the car was not Aslan Zagaev, nor was it one of the tactical agents. It was Omar, essentially a robotic head and torso, with a few servo motors inside that let him--well, it--mimic pretty well the movement and gestures of a human being. You could program the system so that Omar would act bored or drunk or--the most-used setting--nervous and fidgety. The features weren't as good as Disney animatronics but inside ..
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Jeffery Deaver |
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4cd3850
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The best part about Omar was that he wasn't simply a decoy. Surrounding the robot was a grid of ultraviolet and microwave beams. When Loving or his partner, presumably from some distance, took up position and fired the typical three-burst round into Omar's head, empty and inexpensively replaceable, a computer would instantly correlate trajectory, speed and GPS coordinates and indicate on our handhelds where the shooter was, down to three fe..
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Jeffery Deaver |
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41136bc
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Because of her frenetic nature and dancing mind, she chatted up a storm with the subjects she interviewed, who ended up overwhelmed or intimidated. Or captivated.
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Jeffery Deaver |
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df1b51d
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I always carried in my breast or hip pocket a video camera disguised as a pen. It was linked to software whose algorithms alerted me that the body language of a person approaching was consistent with that of an impending attack. I also used it to record crowds in public when I was transporting principals, to see if faces of passersby in one locale turn up in another. A
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Jeffery Deaver |
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a7b9822
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A young officer in my organization, Lyle Ahmad, was a solid, olive-skinned former marine with a trim crew cut. He was a clone, a close protection officer. I had met Ahmad when he was a marine guarding the U.S. embassy in Warsaw and I was an agent with the State Department's protection and investigation arm, Diplomatic Security, where I worked before joining my present outfit. He was quiet and sharp and boasted impressive multiple-language s..
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Jeffery Deaver |
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36ed16f
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Playing chess or Go or Tigris and Euphrates--a very good game, by the way--I can watch people as they choose their strategy and note how they respond to something I've done. Even
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Jeffery Deaver |
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d756c18
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I looked around the property. "It's a lot different here now, with the primary in custody and the lifter about to be nailed. You can almost enjoy it." I glanced at the imposter's black angular machine gun. It wasn't pointed near me but if he caught on that I knew who he was I'd be dead before I could move an inch. The man said, "That's true--except for some deer with a suicidal personality who jumped out of the bushes over there a little wh..
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Jeffery Deaver |
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98d06cb
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Calm, Corte. Whatever happens you have to stay calm. When you look into your opponent's face, when you talk to him, it should be like you're discussing cornflakes. Never more emotional than that. . . . Emotion's deadly. What
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Jeffery Deaver |
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43688f9
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POGUE AND I stood outside the closed door to the outbuilding. I observed him closely for the first time. The head beneath that sandy hair was long, a predator's skull. His features were pinched--they'd circled in on themselves--and a scar curved forward from his chin, short and narrow, from a knife, not shrapnel. He didn't smile or offer much expression and I doubted that he ever did. No wedding ring, no jewelry. I noted remnants of stitchi..
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Jeffery Deaver |
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1954551
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DuBois's observations were back. She'd largely recovered from the Graham ignominy.
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Jeffery Deaver |
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b173898
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GPS--whose voice I had decided sounded unnervingly like Chris Teasley's, Westerfield's assistant--took me to a storefront off Connecticut Avenue. It was a used-CD store, manned by a few slow-moving clerks. The customers were mostly in their twenties, along with a few smudged, bearded music lovers about my age. I walked up to one young man behind the register, flashed my ID along with a security picture of the Asian man who'd collected the g..
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Jeffery Deaver |
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1d85b20
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Now, I regarded my opponent carefully, as if we were sitting across from each other over a chessboard. Zagaev had a round head, a double chin that his beard obscured pretty well and bristly hair that couldn't decide to be gray or less gray. His age, duBois had reported, was only forty-three. His head was large, his pallor anemic. He nervously gripped and ungripped his hands every few seconds. I knew this only because I heard the tinkle of c..
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Jeffery Deaver |
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15fbb13
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Finally, with a last glance around the store, I pushed out the door, which had a quaint old-time bell on an armature. I looked around and headed into a coffee shop nearby. DuPont Circle survives on chic and Cafe Cafe had that aplenty. The accent mark was a clue, as was the $25/LB. sign in one bin of dark beans. I ordered a black filtered Colombian, the cheapest thing on a menu full of exotic concoctions, none of which were to my mind coffee..
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Jeffery Deaver |
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e2749aa
|
What's your name?" "Stu." He eyed me carefully. "You were asking some things? In the store?" His statements were inflected as questions. I"
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Jeffery Deaver |
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6b5c093
|
I'm not a bad person." Zagaev looked up at me with imploring eyes. Claims of ethical purity are a common strategy in games like this. But they're paper, forever losing to scissors."
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Jeffery Deaver |
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c8918a0
|
A long moment of debate. I looked at Zagaev's amulet, Alexander II with his impressive mustache. Though arguably the most liberal of the tsars, the emancipator of the serfs, he was assassinated by revolutionaries.
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Jeffery Deaver |