Her attention leaps to me. Her quick glance dissects and then dismisses me, and she looks back at her son, but the moment’s distraction has given him a chance to recover. He still looks devastated, but no longer quite so broken.

“Mom,” he greets her in that quiet, pained voice. I flash back to that moment on the boardwalk: the gun in my hand, the look on his face. Go ahead, shoot him now.

Out of the corner of my eye I spot a dimly glowing red light. Everyone’s attention is on Elliott, so I risk a glance. The transmitter. It’s still hidden in the shadows of the stair landing, waiting to broadcast our signal to the shelters above.

My heart and brain both settle into a beat that’s smoother and more certain. An idea assembles itself. We’re not going to get a chance to record Elliott’s carefully composed speech … so this moment, this confrontation, will have to do.

I slip my right hand back into my pocket. Maneuvering around the padlock’s bulk, I find the remote, search blindly for the button on the top right—my best guess at where an on/off button would be—and press it. Over the older cop’s shoulder, a blinking green light comes on. It worked. We’re transmitting live. Or at least, I have to hope we are.

Deep breath. This is it. Convince everyone, or lose Ty forever.

“You’re just in time,” I tell the mayor.

She doesn’t even bother to look at me. “I’m not talking to you,” she snaps. Her voice is edging toward sharp now. I take a moment to look her over. Her pants are wet from the knee down. She’s wearing a police windbreaker and a holstered gun. Her blond hair is perfectly tied back. Her face is expressionless, but her violet-blue eyes are snapping with the same electricity as her voice.

She’s pissed. That’s good. Maybe she’ll make a mistake. Maybe she’ll believe me.

“Just in time to see what I’ve done with the place,” I continue.

Now she looks at me. “What.” It’s a demand, not a question.

I sweep my left hand toward the gaping windows and the empty darkness beyond them, still carefully keeping my right hand and the padlock in it angled away. “That is my mirror warehouse,” I bluff, more glad than ever that the cops never figured out my true smuggling methods—which definitely don’t include a warehouse. “And it’s empty.”

Her eyes narrow. “What have you done?”

Elliott is looking at me now too. I feel the moment he understands. He straightens, his expression going blank. “We’ve placed all of Marty’s mirrors around the city,” he tells his mother. “Hundreds of them are hidden in every shelter.”