“Are the stairs down there?” Catherine asked, pointing down the hall.

The woman looked at her blankly. Catherine realized how she must look, her hair askew, face red, eyes wild with panic.

“Exercise,” Catherine said. “I use the stairs for exercise.”

“Lo siento. No inglés,” the maid said with a shrug, and shoved the laundry bin on down the hall past her.

Catherine breathed a sigh and headed for the doorway to the back emergency stairs. Please, no alarm, she thought as she shoved the handle downward and stepped onto the landing.

There was no sound.

She forced herself to take the stairs as quietly as she could manage. She hugged the wall as she went past her former floor and then stooped as she passed the little wire-and-glass window in the door. She stopped on each landing, listening for footsteps following her, coming to meet her.

There was nothing.

Fifteen minutes later, she slipped out a back door of the hotel, hopped down off the loading dock littered with cardboard boxes, bottles, and cans, and headed down Dey Street. Trying not to look too obvious as she looked over her shoulder, she stepped from Dey out onto the much busier Church Street and blended with the other pedestrians.

She should be safe out here. She prayed that Miller would not have had a chance to get a photo of her to the men he had sent. They would be operating on his description. After two days in front of the laptop, she was hardly the neat, well-groomed SEC inspector Miller knew. Her hair was down from its usual tight bun, she had no makeup on, and she wore a sweatshirt and sweatpants beneath her coat. That jerk Miller had never seen her in anything but a business suit.

She turned left on Ann Street, then south on Trinity Place. She walked past the old dark Gothic church that dominated the way. Thankfully the crowds were thick in the early evening, people rushing to the subway or waving to hail a cab. No one paid even the slightest attention to anyone else, just the way New Yorkers typically did.

She allowed herself to breathe. She felt safer here, being jostled by the moving mass of people.

Right on Carlisle and then down to Washington. Wait. Was that one of the men ahead, on the corner? He wore a dark suit, was heavyset, and seemed to be tarrying as he tried to light a cigarette in the blustery wind that whistled down the canyon of buildings. She slowed, looked for a doorway to enter, but the man threw up his hand, caught the attention of a cabbie, climbed into the taxi, and was gone.

There was Andy’s, right on the corner of Carlisle and Washington. She had made it.