"Yessir." Struggling to keep the breathless grin off her face. "I-"

"If you want to make it all the way to first-grade and sergeant I'd think long and hard about who you arrest-or detain-at crime scenes. And, for that matter, how you talk to who. Just some advice."

"Noted, sir."

"Now if you'll excuse me, Officer . . . I mean, Detective. I've got about five minutes to learn everything there is to know about insurance."

Outside, on Center Street, Amelia Sachs walked around her Camaro, examining the damage to the side and front end from the collision with Loesser's Mazda in Harlem.

It'd take some major work to get the poor vehicle in shape again.

Cars were her forte, of course, and she knew the location, as well as the head shape, length and torque, of every screw and bolt in the vehicle. And she probably had all the ding-pullers, ball-peen hammers, grinders and other tools she needed in her Brooklyn garage to fix most of the damage herself.

Yet Sachs didn't enjoy bodywork. She found it boring-the same way that being a fashion model had been boring and that going out with handsome, cocky, bang-bang cops had been boring. Not to put too much of a shrinks spin on it but maybe there was something within her that distrusted the cosmetic, the superficial.

For Amelia Sachs the substance of cars was in their hearts and hot souls: the furious drumbeat of rods and pistons, the whine of belts, the perfect kiss of gears that turned a ton of metal and leather and plastic into pure speed.

She decided she'd take the car to a shop in Astoria, Queens, one she'd used before, where the mechanics were talented, more or less honest and had a reverence for power wheels like this.

Easing now into the front seat, she fired up the engine, whose gutsy rattle caught the attention of a half-dozen cops, lawyers and businesspeople nearby.

Pulling out of the police lot, she also made another decision. A few years ago, after some rust work, she'd decided to have the factory-black car repainted.

She'd opted for vibrant yellow. The choice had been impulsive, but why not? Shouldn't whims be reserved for decisions about the color of your toenails, your hair and your vehicles?

But now she thought that since the shop would have to replace a quarter of the Chevy's sheet metal and it would need repainting anyway, she'd pick a different hue. Fire-engine red was her immediate choice. This shade had a double meaning to her. Not only was it the color her father always said that muscle cars ought to be but it would also match Rhyme's own sporty vehicle, his Storm Arrow wheelchair. This was just the sort of sentiment that the criminalist would appear wholly indifferent to but that would privately please him no end.

Yep, she reflected, red it would be.

She thought about dropping the Chevy off now but, on reflection, decided to wait. She could drive a beat-up car for a few more days; she'd done that plenty in her teen years. At the moment she wanted to get back home, to Lincoln Rhyme, to share the news with him about the alchemy that had transformed her badge from silver to gold-and to get back to work unraveling the thorny mysteries that awaited them: two murdered diplomats, alien vegetation, curious imprints in muddy ground and a couple of missing shoes.

Both of them right.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

My thanks to Jane Davis, who practices her own brand of unparalleled magic in overseeing my website, to my sister and fellow author Julie Reece Deaver, to my dear friend and thriller writer extraordinaire John Gilstrap, and to Robby Burroughs, who accompanied me to the performance of the Big Apple Circus at which the idea for this story was born.

I also found the following sources extremely helpful in the writing of this novel: The Creative Magician's Handbook, Marvin Kaye; The Illustrated History of Magic, Milbourne and Maurine Christopher; The Magic and Methods of Ross Bertram, Ross Bertram; Magicians and Illusionists, Adam Woog; The Annotated Magic of Slydini, Slydini and Gene Matsuura; The Tarbell Course in Magic, Harlan Tarbell; Houdini on Magic, Walter B. Gibson and Morris N. Young, eds; and Magic in Theory, Peter Lamont and Richard Wiseman.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

Former journalist, folksinger and attorney Jeffery Deaver's novels have appeared on a number of bestseller lists around the world, including The Times, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. The author of eighteen novels, he has been nominated for five Edgar Awards from the Mystery Writers of America and an Anthony award, is a two-time recipient of the Ellery Queen Readers' Award for Best Short Story of the Year, and is a winner of the W. H. Smith Thumping Good Read Award. His book A Maiden's Grave was made into an HBO movie starring James Garner and Marlee Matlin and his novel The Bone Collector was a feature release from Universal Pictures starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie. His most recent novels are The Stone Monkey, The Blue Nowhere and Speaking in Tongues. He lives in Virginia and California. Readers can visit his website at www.jefferydeaver.com.