Matt kept asking what had happened, but the guard was hyperventilating and looking all around. Matt heard a voice and realized it was the guard’s hip radio. Matt lifted the receiver off his belt. “Hello? This is Matt Sayles, manager of Sears. Hey, one of your guys here, on the first level—he’s hurt. He’s bleeding from the neck, and he’s all gray.”

The voice on the other end said, “This is his supervisor. What’s happening there?”

The guard was fighting to spit something out but only air wheezed from his ravaged throat.

Matt relayed, “He was attacked. He’s got bruises on the sides of his neck, and wounds…he’s pretty scared. But I don’t see anybody else…”

“I’m coming down the utility stairs now,” said the supervisor. Matt could hear his footfalls over the radio broadcast. “Where did you say you—”

He cut out there. Matt waited for him to come back on, then pressed the call button. “Where did we say we what?”

Finger off, he listened. Nothing again.

“Hello?”

A burst of transmission came through, less than one second long. A voice yelling, muffled: “GARGAHRAH—”

The guard pitched forward off the bench, crawling away on all fours, dragging himself toward Sears. Matt got to his feet, radio in hand, turning toward the restrooms sign next to which was the door to the utility stairs.

He heard thumping, like kicking coming down.

Then a familiar whirring. He turned back toward his store and saw the steel security gate lowering to the floor. He had left his keys hanging in the control.

The terrified guard was locking himself in.

“Hey—hey!” yelled Matt.

But before he could run there, Matt felt a presence behind him. He saw the guard back off, big-eyed, knocking over a rack of dresses and crawling away. Matt turned and saw two kids in baggy jeans and oversize cashmere hoodies coming out of the corridor to the restrooms. They looked drugged out, their brown skin yellowed, their hands empty.

Junkies. Matt’s fear spiked, thinking they might have hit the guard with a dirty syringe. He pulled out his wallet, tossing it to one of them. The kid didn’t move to catch it, the wallet smacking him in the gut and falling to the floor.

Matt backed up against the store grate as the two guys closed in.

Vestry Street, Tribeca

EPH PULLED UP across the street from Bolivar’s residence, a pair of conjoined town houses fronted by three stories of scaffolding. They crossed to the door and found it boarded up. Not haphazardly or tem porarily, but covered with thick planking bolted over the door frame. Sealed.

Eph looked up the front face of the building to the night sky beyond. “What’s this hiding?” he said. He put a foot up on the scaffolding, starting to climb. Setrakian’s hand stopped him.