On a signal to each other, Mike and Mercer pulled open the two doors that stood catty-corner in the cul-de-sac of the hallway. Mike took the one that led toward the stage and I was behind Mercer as he moved into the auditorium toward Chet Dobbis.

"What the-" The startled Met director stepped back and dropped into a front-row seat, beneath the glistening white-and-gold detail of the ceiling that shone against the dimly lighted house. "I'm so thankful you're here."

At the same moment, I heard someone running behind the black-curtained area in the wings. I looked from Dobbis, whose sincerity I doubted at this point, back to the source of the footsteps.

Mike streaked across the middle of the stage in pursuit of the shadowed figure, and Mercer doubled back out the door we had entered together and up the steps to join in the chase.

I started toward Chet Dobbis to ask the reason for his gratitude when the theater went completely dark. The thick gray steel fire curtain dropped from the fly down to the floorboards with the alacrity of the blade of a guillotine.

Dobbis stood up and I could see the silhouette of his body moving in my direction as I turned back to the exit to push it open. "Miss Cooper, wait!"

I yelled Mike's name and let the door slam on Dobbis as I entered the dead-ended corridor. It was too dark there to see anything except the shiny silver barrel of a revolver that was pointed at my face.

The man holding the gun was Ross Kehoe.

At the instant he started to speak to me, Dobbis barged through the door, which smacked against my back and knocked me into the wall.

Kehoe grabbed my neck with his left hand and pressed the gun barrel to the side of my head, just below my right ear. "Walk, both of you. That way. Lead her, Chet, if you don't want me to blow her brains out all over your back."

The icy feel of the cold metal bore against my skin sent a chill through my body. I twitched involuntarily and Kehoe tightened his grasp on the nape of my neck.

This was the gloved hand that had clamped on me from behind in the darkened stairwell of my building last night, only now I could feel the rough surface of his thick fingers pinching my smooth skin.

"Don't fight me. You won't win this one," Kehoe said as he pushed me ahead of him. His voice was harsher now, more guttural than it had been in Mona Berk's presence. This was Ross Kehoe, street thug and stagehand, before she had tried to gentrify him. Why hadn't I thought of him when I was jumped from behind in the dark, his lean, sinewy body a perfect match for the masked man in black?

Dobbis moved quickly along the darkened corridor and out the door into the lobby. Ross Kehoe told him to head up the steps, so he began to climb the broad staircase first. I looked over at the grating that barred the exit doors but could see nothing toward which I could make a successful run. "Move, Alex. Follow him up."

Kehoe growled his commands at me. He freed my neck so that I could go up behind Dobbis, but the gun barrel nudged at my back with each riser I mounted.

I started to turn right at the top of the stairs, toward the door that led to the adjacent office tower, the one through which Mike, Mercer, and I had entered the back of the theater. But that wasn't the way Kehoe planned to take us.

Kehoe reached out with the gun and tapped me on the arm. "Left. Go left."

Dobbis was standing still. I looked back and forth between the two men but couldn't figure the dynamic. Dobbis seemed as much a prisoner as I did, but he obeyed Kehoe's command immediately and walked the way he was directed.

I expected Mike and Mercer to emerge out of the doors beside the stage within seconds. The sound of our voices would certainly alert them that we were still in the auditorium.

"The detectives will be flooding the place any minute, Chet."

"Shut up, bitch," Kehoe said, slapping the back of my head with his hand. I coughed and bent over, turning to look at him. Dobbis walked on. Kehoe kept licking his lips with his tongue, then twisting it into the side of his mouth, making a sucking sound as irritating as a phonograph needle sliding across an old vinyl record. I'd heard that disgusting noise when he assaulted me last night.

"I told you to move," he said.

I didn't wait to be hit again. I didn't know whether it was good for me-or very bad-that Ross Kehoe's anxiety seemed to be building, almost as much as mine.

There was a second staircase, not quite as wide as the one that led up from the lobby, and Kehoe told Dobbis to take it. "I have lots more time than that, don't I, Chet?" Kehoe asked. "I mean, don't you think the lady's an optimist?"

Were they in this together or not? I couldn't tell.

I kept talking, thinking my words would echo below in the great space of the open theater and that someone would be able hear me sooner or later. "What does he mean, Chet?" I asked.

The steps became more narrow and steep as we climbed behind the second balcony, several hundred seats held aloft by the largest steel beam in the world.

"Tell her. You can tell her," Kehoe said with a laugh, again followed by that awful sucking sound, some kind of nervous reflex that got exercised more frequently when he was stressed.

The gun was still to my back, Kehoe playing with it from time to time, running the metal tip up and down my spine whenever I had to stop to wait for Dobbis. I walked behind him through a doorway and into the balcony area, high above the stage. Another left turn and we were going up more stairs, narrower still, to the very back of the last row of seats in the theater.

Dobbis stopped on the highest step to catch his breath. "When this place, Mecca Temple, was built in the 1920s, it was lit entirely with gas jets. And because they needed the gaslight and torches backstage to help the actors get around when the shows were on, and to light the stage itself, the designers had to be creative about ways to prevent fire from spreading."

I looked down toward the stage, but even in the darkness, the height from these narrow steps and the incredibly steep rake of the upper balcony made the view dizzying. I grabbed the brass railing and held on to it.

Dobbis pointed to the steel trap of a curtain that had cut me off from Mercer and Mike. "The idea here was to be able to transform the stage-in the case of fire-into a chimney, to separate it completely from the seats in order to protect the audience. The flames would be confined to the stage and shoot straight up, while the people in the audience would be safe. They'd have time to escape."

I steadied myself and continued to look for any sign of life below. Dobbis went on. "The curtain was made of asbestos originally. Replaced by steel." He stopped talking and closed his eyes. "This firewall is impenetrable."

Kehoe prodded me to walk again. I clutched the railing so that I wouldn't lose my footing and fall, as we made our way against the red velvet drapes behind the last row of seats. Not far above my head was the ornate ceiling, with elaborate Arabic designs outlined in brilliant gold leaf that seemed to glow in the dark, like the perforated stars that sat recessed into the ceiling beside the unlit chandeliers.

I had to turn sideways to shimmy between the heavy drapery and the last row of seats. "What does that have to do with-"

Dobbis was clutching the seatback of a chair, slowly putting one foot ahead of the other, since he barely fit in the narrow space. "It means that when we redesigned the theater, in order to fireproof the building against an accident or an electrical fire backstage, we did it so that with a single button, the manager could isolate the stage completely. The steel curtain drops in three seconds flat-"