But of course simple locks like these meant nothing to him. He could open one in seconds and hide inside a dark storage room. He could get into a judge's chambers, hide until Monday. He could slip through one of the padlocked grates that led down to the utility tunnels, which in turn would give him access to half the buildings in downtown Manhattan, as well as the subway.

She turned a corner and plunged down another dark corridor. Testing knobs as she went, she found one door unlocked.

If he was inside the closet he would've heard her—the click of the knob, if not her footsteps—so there was nothing to do but go in fast. Shoving the door inward, flashlight up, ready to jump to her left if she saw a weapon turn her way (recalling that there's a tendency for a right-handed shooter to pull the gun to the left when panic firing, which sends the slug to the target's right).

Arthritic knees screaming at the partial crouch, she swung the halogen beam throughout the room. A few boxes and file cabinets. Nothing else. Though as she turned to leave she recalled that he'd hidden in shadows by using a simple black cloth. She looked around the room again more slowly, probing with the flashlight.

As she did she felt a touch on her neck.

A gasp and she spun around, bringing the gun up—aiming at the center of the dust-coated cobweb that had caressed her skin.

Back into the corridor.

More locked doors. More dead ends.

Footsteps approached. A man walked past her now, bald, in his sixties, dressed in a guard's uniform and wearing an appropriate ID badge. He nodded as he walked past. He was taller than Weir so she let him pass with no more than a glance.

But then she thought there might be a way for a quick-change artist to change his height.

Turning back, fast.

The man was gone; she saw only an empty corridor. Or an apparently empty corridor. She recalled again the silk the Conjurer had hidden beneath to kill Svetlana Basnikov, the mirror to kill Tony Calvert. Her body a knot of tension, she unholstered her weapon and started toward where the guard—the apparent guard—had disappeared.

———«»———«»———«»———

Where? Where was Weir?

Trotting along Center Street, Roland Bell surveyed the landscape in front of him. Cars, trucks, hot dog vendors in front of their steaming metal carts, young people who'd been working at their perpetual-motion law firms or investment banks, others woozy from pitchers of beer at the South Street Seaport, dog walkers, shoppers, dozens of the Manhattanites who roam the streets on days beautiful and days gray simply because the city's energy draws them outside.

Where?