She came forward, reading his face. “I know you’re in trouble.”

“This isn’t about me. I just want you to listen, okay, and not flip out. There is a virus moving through the city. It’s something…extraordinary…easily the worst thing I’ve ever seen.”

“The worst?” She blanched. “Is it SARS?”

Eph almost smiled at the grand absurdity of it all. The insanity.

“What I want you to do is to take Zack and get out of the city. Matt too. As soon as possible—tonight, right now—and as far away as you can possibly go. Away from populated areas, I mean. Your parents…I know how you feel about taking things from them, but they have that place up in Vermont still, right? On top of that hill?”

“What are you saying?”

“Go there. For a few days at least. Watch the news, wait for my call.”

“Wait,” she said. “I’m the head-for-the-hills paranoiac, not you. But…what about my classroom? Zack’s school?” She squinted. “Why won’t you tell me what it is?”

“Because then you would not go. Just trust me, and go,” he said. “Go, and hope we can turn it back somehow, and this all passes quickly.”

“‘Hope?’” she said. “Now you’re really scaring me. What if you can’t turn it back? And—and what if something happens to you?”

He couldn’t stand there with her and address his own doubts. “Kelly—I gotta go.”

He tried to walk out, but she grabbed his arm, checking his eyes to see if it was okay, then put her arms around him. What started as just a make-up hug turned into something more, and by the end of it she was gripping him tightly. “I’m sorry,” she whispered into his ear, then left a kiss on the bristly side of his unshaven neck.

Vestry Street, Tribeca

ELDRITCH PALMER sat waiting on an uncushioned chair on the rooftop patio, bathed in night. The only direct light was that of an outdoor gas lamp burning in the corner. The terrace was on the top of the lower of the two adjoining buildings. The floor was made of square clay tiles, aged and blanched by the elements. One low step preceded a high brick wall at the northern end, with two door-size archways hung with iron-work. Fluted terra-cotta tiling topped the wall and the overhangs on each side. To the left, through wider decorative archways, were oversize doorways to the residence. Behind Palmer, centered before the southern white cement wall, was a headless statue of a woman in swirling robes, her shoulders and arms darkly weathered. Ivy slithered up the stone base. Though a few taller buildings were visible both north and east, the patio was reasonably private, as concealed a rooftop as one might hope to find in lower Manhattan.