Knoll shakes his head and points a finger at the monitor, paused the moment right after I vanished. “Agent Blackwood, I think we understand that part of the explanation, thank you.” He’s frustrated and impatient. “How the hell did you disappear? We watched you hold out your hands and vanish in a flash. One moment we’re watching you there. The next you’re standing behind us.”

“Agent Knoll, I did it the easy way,” I reply. In any other situation I would have enjoyed the fact that I fooled him.

“The easy way?”

“I walked.”

“Walked?” He raises an eyebrow. I get similar reactions from the others gathered around the monitor.

I point out the window. “There’s a blind spot about five feet in front of the corner. Right under the other camera trained on the other side of the building. The cameras are meant to keep people away from the ledge. Not watch them when they’re nowhere near it.”

I can see he’s agitated by the way I’m explaining the illusion. I need him, and everyone else, to understand each part so the whole thing makes sense. Everyone else is staring at me with folded arms. A room full of cops hates to be fooled. That’s why it’s extra critical I call their attention to everything before I destroy the mystery.

“To get to the blind spot it took less than a second, but I needed a way to distract the camera. So I did this.” I point to the monitor, now back on the live feed, then snap my fingers. The screen flashes white.

The tech at the station lifts his hands from the keyboard as people stare at him. “I didn’t do shit.” He angrily pulls up a window showing IP addresses for the camera feeds.

People turn to me with open mouths. Frustration is turning into anger. I’m not trying to piss them off. “Bear with me a moment, please.”

“Did you jack the system? Use some kind of signal disrupter?” asks the tech.

“No. Nothing like that. I can’t imagine how I’d even do that. I did it the low-tech way.” I point out the observation lobby window to a uniformed NYPD officer smiling back at us. “I asked Officer Malloy to aim a green laser pointer at the camera.” We keep several of them in our field kits.

Out on the observation deck, Malloy flashes the laser through the window and splashes it across our chests, then up at the camera dome, causing the screen to go all white.

“The light is so bright that when it hits the lens it overloads the sensor. Somewhere out there the Warlock was watching through a telescope with a laser aimed right at the camera lens. Or he managed to pre-mount it weeks ago.” I point out to the twinkling lights of the city. “It could be hidden on any of a thousand buildings that are in the line of sight of here. No spray. No hologram. Just a ten-dollar toy. All it took was a second for her to go from the corner to the blind spot. One bright flash.”