“Stop!”

The voice yelling this was vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it. And if that was all that my unknown would-be assassin had wanted-for me to stop-simply asking in the first place would have been far more polite than starting off by shooting, especially since I hadn’t been going anywhere, only pacing, when the shooting began.

“Who’s there?” This came from another voice, one which I recognized immediately. It was Jake’s, and he sounded surprisingly close, as if he was only a few yards away on the other side of the wall. He must have arrived on the scene between bullets.

I put my hands over my ears. The last thing I wanted to hear was the sound of Jake’s head getting blown off.

“Put your gun down!” the first voice shouted.

Jake had a gun? That was weird. Unless it meant-

“Or I’ll shoot,” the first voice added, sounding closer this time. Again, I tried to place it. I definitely knew it from somewhere. It couldn’t be the dark-haired stranger-I’d never heard him speak before.

“Who are you? And how do I know you’re armed?” Jake countered. That was a stupid question. We knew the guy was armed because he was shooting at me.

Unless, he wasn’t the one who had been shooting at me.

Which meant that Jake had been shooting at me.

After luring me to a nice, dark, secluded spot conveniently adjacent to a river that offered a superb outlet for body disposal.

I’d have plenty of time at a later date-at least, I hoped I would-to review the new heights of stupidity I’d reached and the countless ways in which I’d actively rationalized away all of the signs that had been pointing to Jake as a potential evil-doer. I did give myself a moment to wonder at his ability to blush on cue, and to seethe at the manner in which he’d manipulated me and my trust, but a more extensive session of self-flagellation would have to wait.

I steeled myself for another peek over the wall. This time nobody shot at me. The men on the other side were too busy with each other. My eyes found Jake easily enough. He was crouched in an archway on the interior side of the rotunda. He was wearing a ski mask of all things, but an inch of golden hair at the nape of his neck gleamed in the moonlight, as did the metal of the gun, complete with silencer, he was gripping with both hands.

The other guy was harder to spot. His voice was coming from closer to the entrance, but he kept himself well hidden as he and Jake debated which of them had guns and who was going to put his gun down first.

I spied another glint of light on metal just as the sound of a gunshot exploded in the night. The gun firing this time wasn’t equipped with a silencer, the way Jake’s was. I dived back behind the wall with a shriek.

But this shot hadn’t been meant for me. I heard Jake curse and metal clattering along flagstones. When I poked my head over the wall again, I saw that Jake’s gun now lay several feet away from him, and he was bent over, nursing one hand in the other. Apparently the other guy had pretty good aim.

My rescuer emerged from the shadows and sprinted across the rotunda. He grabbed Jake’s gun, hurling it out over the balustrade and into the river. Then he turned to me. I started to duck, but he didn’t raise his gun. “Rachel, get out of here!”

He, too, was wearing a ski mask. He also knew my name. And I still couldn’t place his voice. I personally didn’t own a ski mask and was feeling at a distinct disadvantage, both fashion-wise and in terms of having even the slightest idea of what was going on.

“Who are you? What is this all about?” I demanded, climbing back over the wall.

He turned to Jake. “Count to five hundred before you move. And I’m serious-I will shoot you if you follow us.” He’d been yelling before and now he was using a loud whisper. Maybe if he used a normal tone I could place it.

“Come on,” he urged, in that same loud whisper. “Let’s go.” He grabbed my arm and began running toward the entrance.

“I can run by myself,” I told him. He let go of my arm but didn’t slacken his pace.

We raced around the corner, side-by-side.

At which point I encountered another object, moving in the opposite direction but at a comparable velocity.

The impact threw me to the ground and knocked the wind out of me. It appeared to do the same to the other object who, upon closer inspection, was a man. He clearly hadn’t been keeping up with Men’s Vogue because he wasn’t wearing a ski mask, although he was wearing a suede jacket. Which allowed me to identify him as the mysterious dark-haired stranger.

My rescuer in the ski mask had stopped running and paused to help me up. “Are you okay?” he asked, still whispering.

“I’m fine,” I said,“but I don’t think he is.” The stranger was flat on his back, and in the dim light I could see a deep gash just below one eye. “We should get him some help.” I didn’t know if he was a good guy or a bad guy, but he was probably in need of stitches. Amazingly, I still had my emergency escape duffel bag with me, and I found a piece of cloth inside to press over the cut. It was a rag from Emma’s studio, not a sterile bandage, but it would be a shame to let blood drip all over the suede.

Between the two of us, we managed to get the wounded and only partially conscious man into a standing position. We half walked, half dragged him the short block to Riverside Drive and into the lobby of the closest apartment building. There was a doorman there, seated on a high stool and watching a small television. When he saw us, he sprang to his feet. The three of us probably didn’t look as polished as the building’s usual visitors.

“Please-this man’s been hurt. Could you call an ambulance?” I asked.

My ski-masked rescuer, meanwhile, deposited the bleeding stranger onto the stool the doorman had vacated. Without another word, he dashed back out the door.

“Wait!” I called. I dug through my pockets and pulled out some cash. Pushing the crumpled bills into the doorman’s hand, I rushed to follow him.

But he was already nearly a block ahead of me, his figure receding in the darkness as he ran north on Riverside Drive.

I t was only ten o’clock when I reached the designated corner at Ninth Avenue and Forty-second Street, but it had already been a trying night, given all of the scampering and scrambling I’d been doing.

The corner wasn’t very busy. At this time of the evening, the tourists were safely stashed away at the Broadway theaters nearby, and the Lincoln Tunnel traffic had long since thinned out. Nor was the corner as seedy as one would expect from Forty-second Street. Giuliani and then Bloomberg in collaboration with Disney and other corporate patrons had taken one of Manhattan’s seedier neighborhoods and thoroughly sanitized it. The sanitization had its advantages, but as a fugitive from justice I felt that I’d earned the right to refer to Forty-second Street as The Deuce. It seemed unfair that the area was too clean and shiny to merit underworld parlance now that I was a member of the underworld.

I was getting a bit antsy and starting to worry that this part of the contingency plan had gone awry when a gleaming black BMW 645ci pulled up to the curb. I knew it was a 645ci because its owner had bored me on more than one occasion extolling its many tedious virtues.

I sidled over to the car, swinging my hips to the best of my limited ability.

“Hey, baby. Wanna date?” I asked.

Luisa looked up at me in disgust from the driver’s seat. “Charming.”

I shrugged. Forty-second Street was still Forty-second Street, after all.

She shifted the car into park and slowly unfastened her seat belt. “This is a very nice car,” she said. She’d been reluctant for her car to be involved in our contingency planning and had only agreed after significant coaxing. When I’d reached her from a pay phone a half hour earlier, I could tell she’d been hoping that I would be able to arrange alternative transportation for myself and that this part of the plan would never go into effect. And telling her about being shot at had seemed to only heighten her reservations, masked rescuers notwithstanding.