And he’d worn the latex mask and hood, too, to make sure he didn’t shed any of his abundant hair or slough off epidermal cells. To distort his features as well. There was the remote chance that, despite his careful selection of the secluded kill zones, he’d get spotted.

Billy Haven now examined his victim again.

Chloe.

He’d noted the name on the tag on her chest and the pretentious Je m’appelle preceding it. Whatever that meant. Maybe Hello. Maybe Good morning. French. He lowered his gloved hand – double-gloved – and stroked her skin, pinching, stretching, noting the elasticity, the texture, the fine resilience.

Billy noted too the faint rise between her legs, beneath the forest-green skirt. The lower line of the bra. But there was no question of misbehaving. He never touched a client anywhere he shouldn’t touch.

That was flesh. This was skin. Two different things entirely, and it was skin that Billy Haven loved.

He wiped more sweat with a new tissue, carefully tucked it away again. He was hot, his own skin prickling. Though the month was November the tunnel was stifling. Long – about a hundred yards – yet sealed at both ends, which meant no ventilation. It was like many of the passages here in SoHo, south of Greenwich Village. Built in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, these tunnels honeycombed the neighborhood and had been used for transporting goods underground to and from factories and warehouses and transfer stations.

Abandoned now, they were perfect for Billy’s purposes.

The watch on his right wrist hummed again. A similar sound from a backup watch in his pocket came a few seconds later. Reminding him of the time; Billy often got lost in his work.

Just let me get God’s knuckle perfect, just a minute more …

A clattering came from a bud microphone in his left ear. He listened for a moment then ignored the noise and took up the American Eagle machine once more. It was an old-style model, with a rotary head, which moved the needle like a sewing machine’s, rather than modern devices that used a vibrating coil.

He clicked it on.

Bzzzz …

Face shield down.

A millimeter at a time, he inked with a lining needle, following the bloodline he’d done quickly. Billy was a natural-born artist, brilliant at pencil and ink drawing, brilliant at pastels. Brilliant at needles. He drew freehand on paper, he drew freehand on skin. Most mod artists, however talented, used stencils, prepared ahead of time or – for the untalented – purchased and then placed on the skin for the inker to trace. Billy rarely did this. He didn’t need to. From God’s mind to your hand, his uncle had said.

Now time to fill. He swapped needles. Very, very carefully.