Cheryl gave up. You win, you win. Take the goddamn boat, take your goddamn girlfriend. Just let me go, let me go in peace. She inhaled through her nose to let comforting death into her lungs.

• • •

"There!" Amelia Sachs cried.

She and Bell ran forward over the pedestrian walkway toward the thick cluster of bushes and trees on the edge of the Hudson River. A man stood on a rotting pier, which had apparently been a dock years ago before access to the river had been filled in. This area was overgrown, filled with trash and stank of stagnant water.

A man in chinos and a white shirt was holding a rope that arced over a small rusting crane. The other end disappeared below the surface.

"Hey," Bell called, "you!"

He had brown hair, yes, but the outfit was different. No beard, either. And his eyebrows didn't seem that thick. Sachs couldn't see if the fingers of his left hand were fused together.

Still, what did that mean?

The Conjurer could be a man, could be a woman.

The Conjurer could be invisible.

As they jogged closer he looked up in apparent relief. "Here!" he cried. "Help me! Over here! There's a woman in the water!"

Bell and Sachs left Kara beside the overpass and sprinted through the brush surrounding the brackish pond. "Don't trust him," she called breathlessly to Bell as they ran.

"I'm with you there, Amelia."

The man pulled harder and feet and then legs in tan slacks emerged, followed by a woman's body. She was wrapped in chains. Oh, the poor thing! Sachs thought. Please let her be alive.

They closed the distance fast, Bell calling on his handy-talkie for backup and medics. Several other people who were on the east side of the pedestrian bridge were gathering, alarmed at what was going on.

"Help me! I can't pull her up alone!" the rescuer called to Bell and Sachs. His voice was a gasp, out of breath from the effort. "This man, he tied her up and pushed her into the water. He tried to kill her!"

Sachs drew her weapon and trained it on the man.

"Hey, what're you doing?" he asked in shock. "I'm trying to save her!" He glanced down at a cell phone on his belt. "I'm the one called nine-one-one."

She still couldn't see his left hand; it was enclosed by his right.

"Keep your hands on that rope, sir," she said. "Keep ' em where I can see them."

"I didn't do anything!" He was wheezing – an odd sound. Maybe it wasn't exertion but asthma.

Staying clear of her line of fire, Bell grabbed the crane and swung it toward the muddy shore. When the woman was in arm's reach he tugged her toward him, as the man holding the rope let out slack until she was lying on the ground. She lay on the grass, limp and cyanotic. The detective pulled the tape off her mouth, unhooked the chains and began to give her CPR.

Sachs called to the dozen people gathered nearby, drawn by the commotion, "Is anybody a doctor?"

No one answered. She glanced back at the victim and saw her stirring… Then she began choking and spitting out water. Yes! They'd gotten to her in time. In a minute she'd be able to confirm the man's identity. Then she looked past the scene and noticed a wad of shiny navy-blue cloth. She caught sight of a zipper and sleeve. It could be the jogging jacket he'd quick-changed out of.

The man's eyes followed hers and he saw it too.

Was there a reaction, a faint wince? She thought so but couldn't tell for sure.

"Sir," she called firmly, "until we get things sorted out here, I'm going to put some cuffs on you. I want your hands -"

Suddenly a man's panicked voice shouted, "Yo, lady, look out! That guy in the jogging suit – to yo right! He got a gun!"

People screamed and dropped to the ground and Sachs crouched, spinning to her right, squinting for a target. "Roland, look out!"

Bell too dropped to the ground, beside the woman, and looked in the same direction as Sachs, his Sig in his hand. But Sachs saw nobody in a jogging suit.

Oh, no, she thought. No! Furious with herself, she understood what had happened – he'd mimicked the voice himself. Ventriloquism.

She turned back fast to see a brilliant fireball explode from the rescuer's hand. It hovered in the air, blinding her.

"Amelia!" Bell called. "I can't see anything! Where is he?"

"I don't -"

A fast series of gunshots sounded from where the Conjurer had been standing. The onlookers fled in panic as Sachs aimed at the sound of the shooting. Bell did too. They both squinted for targets but the killer was gone by the time her vision returned; she found herself aiming at a cloud of faint smoke – from more of the explosive squibs.

Then, to the east, she saw the Conjurer on the other side of the parkway. He started up the middle of the street but saw an RMP speeding his way, its lights and sirens frantic, and he leaped up the wide stairway that led to the college and vanished into the crafts fair, like a copperhead disappearing into tall grass.

They were everywhere…

Dozens of police.

All searching for him.

Gasping from the sprint, his lungs stinging, the muscles in his side on fire, Malerick leaned against the cool limestone of one of the college's classroom buildings.

In front of him a fair spread out over the large plaza, which was jammed with people. He looked behind him, west, the direction he'd come from. Already the police had cut off that entrance. On the north and south sides of the square were tall concrete buildings. The windows were sealed and there were no doors.

His only exit was east, on the other side of a football-field-size expanse of booths and dense crowds.

He made his way in that direction. But he didn't dare run.

Because illusionists know that fast attracts attention.

Slow makes you invisible.

He glanced at the goods for sale, nodded in pleasure at a guitarist's performance, laughed at a balloon-tying clown. He did what everyone else did.

Because unique attracts attention.

Similar makes you invisible.

Easing east. Wondering how the police had located him. Of course he'd expected they'd find the drowned body of the woman lawyer sometime today. But they'd moved too fast – it was as if they'd anticipated that he'd kidnap someone in that part of the city, maybe even at the riding academy itself. How?

Farther east.

Past the booths, past the concession stand, past a Dixieland band on a red, white and blue draped stage. Ahead of him was the exit – the east stairway leading from the square down to Broadway. Only another fifty feet to freedom, forty. Thirty…

But then he saw flashing lights. They seemed nearly as bright as the burst from the flash cotton he'd used to escape from the redheaded officer. The lights were atop four squad cars that squealed to a stop beside the stairway. A half-dozen uniformed officers jumped out. They scanned the stairs and remained with their cars. Meanwhile other officers, in plain clothes, were arriving. They now climbed the stairs and merged into the crowd, looking over the men at the fair.

Now surrounded, Malerick turned and headed back toward the center of the festival.

The plain-clothed officers were slowly moving westward. They were stopping men in their fifties who were clean shaven, wearing light shirts and tan slacks.

Exactly like him.

But they were also stopping fifty-year-olds who were bearded and were wearing other clothes. Which meant they knew about his quick-change techniques.

Then he saw what he'd been dreading: The policewoman with the steely eyes and fiery red hair, who'd tried to arrest him at the pond, appeared at the top of the stairs at the west end of the fair. She plunged into the crowd.