Slipping the skirt back on, she reexamined herself in the mirror. Good. But she decided she needed some color and tied a red-and-white silk scarf around her neck. Perfect. Bright but not flamboyant. She collected her handbag and left the room, descending to the lobby in an elevator car outside which a chain jangled at every passing floor.

Once outside, Harriet oriented herself and flagged down a cab. She told the driver the name of the hospital and climbed into the back seat. The air inside was funky and she believed the driver, some foreigner, hadn’t bathed recently. A cliché but true.

Despite the sleet, she rolled down the window, prepared to argue if he objected. But he didn’t. He seemed oblivious to her – well, to everything. He punched the button on the meter and sped off.

As they clattered north in the old taxi, Harriet was thinking about the facilities at the hospital. The staff seemed nice and the doctors professional, even if their English was awkward. The one thing she didn’t like, though, was that Matthew’s room in Upper Manhattan Medical Center was in the basement at the end of a long, dim corridor.

Shabby and creepy. And when she’d visited last night it had been deserted.

Looking at the elegant town houses to the left and Central Park to the right, Harriet tried to cast off any concerns about visiting the unpleasant place. She was thinking that maybe the bad luck of the heart attack was an omen, hinting at worse to come.

But then she put those feelings down to superstition, pulled out her phone and sent a cheerful text that she was on her way.

CHAPTER 19

With his backpack over his shoulder – the pack containing the American Eagle machine and some particularly virulent poison – Billy Haven turned down a side street, past a large construction area, avoiding pedestrians.

That is, avoiding witnesses.

He stepped into the doctors’ office building annex, next to the Upper Manhattan Medical Center complex. In the lobby he kept his head down and walked purposefully toward a stairwell. He’d scoped the place out and knew exactly where he was going and how to get there invisibly.

No one paid any attention to the slim young man, like so many slim young men in New York, an artist, a musician, a wishful actor.

Just like them.

Though their backpacks didn’t contain what his did.

Billy pushed through the fire door and started down the stairs. He descended to the basement level and followed the signs to the hospital proper, through a long, dim corridor. It was deserted, as if not many workers knew about it. More likely, they were aware of the dingy route but preferred to walk from office building to hospital on the surface, where you could not only find a Starbucks or buy a slice of Ray’s original pizza but not get dragged into a closet and raped.