She listened carefully on her way up but there was no sound other than distant traffic and the water on the pilings and the wind that meant the storm would hit pretty soon. Rune paused at the top landing. She pulled the white tear gas canister from her pocket and pushed the door open.

The roof was empty.

She stepped outside, then walked carefully along the rotting tar paper and gravel, testing each square in front of her. At the edge, she walked back toward the front of the building to the spot where she thought she'd seen the guy.

Rune stopped and looked down at her feet.

Okay, so it's not my imagination. She was looking at footprints in the tar. They were large — a man's shoe size. And were smooth, like conservative business shoes, not sneakers or running shoes. But aside from that, nothing. No cigarette ash, no discarded bottles. No cryptic messages.

As she stood there a sprinkling of rain began and she hurried back to the stairs. She started down slowly, reaching out with her foot to find the flooring in the dimness.

A noise.

She paused on the second-floor landing. Stepped through an open doorway into the dark, abandoned office. Her hand gripped the tear gas canister firmly. Her pupils, contracted from the brightness, couldn't take in enough light to see anything.

But she could hear. Rune froze.

He's here!

Someone was in the room.

Nothing specific told her — no popping boards, no whispers, no shuffles of feet. The message was transmitted maybe by a smell or maybe by some sixth-sense radar.

The wave came back with a message: Whoa, honey, he's big and he's pretty damn close.

Rune didn't move. The other figure didn't either though twice she heard the air of his breath across his teeth. Her eyes became accustomed to the dark and she looked for a target and slowly lifted the tear gas.

Her hands began to quiver.

No, not one but two of them.

And they were ghosts.

Two pale forms. Humanlike, vague, undefined. They both stared at her. One held a thick, white billy club.

She aimed the canister at them. “I've got a gun.”

“Shit,” a man's voice said.

The other voice, also male, said, “Take the wallet. Take both wallets.”

Her vision was improving. The apparitions turned into two naked, crew-cut men in their mid-thirties. She began to laugh when she saw what the club was; it was now considerably smaller.

“Sorry,” she said.

“This isn't a mugging?”

“Sorry.”

Heavy-duty indignation. “Well, I just want you to know you scared the living hell out of us. For your information, this room happens to be reserved.”

Rune asked, “How long have you been here?”

“Too long, apparently.”

“For the last hour or so?”

The anger became giddy relief. One of the men nodded toward his friend and said, “He's good but he's not that good.”

The other, more sober: “Forty-five minutes?”

“Closer.”