That year, as spring gave way to summer, the crime rate soared. For just about everyone involved in Philadelphia law enforcement, there were three parts to the day: your shift, your overtime, and four hours’ sleep. Family obligations and lawns went untended. Relationships waned.

Byrne and Eve Galvez saw each other infrequently over the next few months. Neither could, or was willing to, explain why. The job and its stresses were the prevailing theory, one they both offered and accepted. They ran into each other at the Criminal Justice Center a few times. Once at a Phillies game. Byrne was with his daughter that day. Eve was with a man she introduced as her brother, Enrique. Weekly phone calls became biweekly, then monthly.

They had never promised each other a thing. That’s who he was. That’s who she was. There was so much he wanted to tell her, so much he should have told her.

Byrne turned his face to the sun for a moment, then knelt down. A bright blue tarpaulin was still stretched over this makeshift grave.

A few moments later Byrne touched the grass just inside the crime-scene tape. The vision came back in a brutal rush. For the first time in his life he wanted it to.

In his mind, behind a bloodred curtain of violence, he saw—

—Eve talking to a man in shadows… her hand in his… an enormous house surrounded by rusting iron spires… the sound of the shovel piercing the soil… the jangle of the charms on Eve’s bracelet as her body was rolled into the earth… a man standing over the grave, a man with silver eyes…

Byrne eased himself to the ground. The grass was warm and dry. The pain in his temples pounded.

He closed his eyes, saw Eve’s face. This time it was from the heart of a beautiful memory, not a dark and violent vision. She tossed her head back when she laughed. She would cross her legs, letting one high heel dangle from her toes as she read a newspaper.

Kevin Byrne stood, put his hands in his pockets, looked at the shimmering city.

A man with silver eyes.

He made Eve Galvez his very first promise.

THIRTY

THE ROOF WAS DESERTED. The wind blew powdery white grit and blistering heat across it.

Swann had brought the chair up to the roof a week earlier, had secured it to the roof with a strong construction adhesive. He could not have the chair blowing over, not at a critical moment.

He placed Katja on the chair, secured her feet and arms. She peered out over North Philadelphia like the masthead of a grand sailing vessel, a sea witch, perhaps, or a golden mermaid. Swann took a moment, reveling in the accomplishment of planning and execution. The flourish—the very prestige of the Seven Wonders—was yet to come.

He unraveled the seven swords from the velvet. Repositioning them would be tricky, but he knew the sight of her would secure his place in history when they found her.

A few minutes later, he was finished. He gathered his belongings, walked across the roof to the stairwell, removed the plastic bags from his feet, surveyed the landscape.

Perfect. He glanced at his watch. Patricia Sato was waiting for him at Faerwood.

Five minutes later he pulled out of the garage, into the alley, unseen. He would return home, to his dressing room. He would emerge in a new guise, in the skin of a new man.

He had one more stop to make, and his preparations would be all but complete.

THIRTY-ONE

ANTOINETTE RUOLO hated tuna fish. Especially the kind that had those funky purplish brown streaks in it. Even though the can said “Solid White Albacore,” you always got some pieces affected with what Antoinette figured had to be some kind of fish disease.

Some kind of fatal fish disease.

And yet she ate tuna fish for lunch once a week. Every Friday. She was raised Catholic and, even though the Pope said you were allowed to eat meat on Friday these days, she never had, not once in her fifty-nine years.

As the elevator climbed upward, she felt the reflux of the sandwich. She wanted to belch, but she dared not. The elevator only held five people, and she figured the four other occupants, all strangers, might not appreciate it.

The car stopped on the forty-fourth floor. They emerged onto the observation deck, and its breathtaking views of Philadelphia. Antoinette took a deep, fishy breath, and continued the tour.

“Originally, it was supposed to be the tallest building in the world at just over 547 feet, but was surpassed by both the Washington Monument and the Eiffel Tower. Both were completed first,” she said. She’d been a tour guide at Philadelphia City Hall most of her working life, having started in 1971 as a “City Hall Bunny,” a silly promotional gimmick someone had come up with in the 1960s, à la Hugh Hefner, the idea being to hire pretty young things to give distinguished city visitors a personal tour.

It had been a long time since anyone had considered Antoinette Ruolo a pretty young thing.

“It was the tallest building in Philadelphia for many years, of course, and was to remain so forever, until the City and Arts Commission broke an eighty-five-year-old ‘gentleman’s agreement’ and allowed the construction of One Liberty Place, which measures 945 feet,” Antoinette said. “Since then, of course, the Comcast Center has eclipsed that honor at a height of about 975 feet, making it not only the tallest building in Philadelphia, but in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, as well.”

As her charges gazed out over the city, Antoinette considered them.

Mostly middle-aged, casually dressed.

“Now, the tower of William Penn is a marvel unto itself,” she continued by rote. “It stands thirty-seven feet tall and weighs twenty-seven tons. It is still the largest statue on any building in the world.”

At this point a man at the back of the group raised his hand, as if he were in junior high school. He carried a huge backpack, the kind hikers carry on long treks.

“I have a question,” he said. “If I may.”

Wow, Antoinette thought. A polite person. “Please.”

“Well, I’ve done a little reading in my Fodor’s,” he said, holding up the tour book. “The book goes into great detail about the building, but it doesn’t say too much about the clock. I’ve always been fascinated by timepieces.”

Antoinette brightened, gave a quick bob to her graying hair. Lord, she needed a perm. “Well, you’ve come to the right person…”

JOSEPH SWANN TUNED the woman out. It was an ability he had developed as a child, listening to his father’s well-oiled patter during his close-up routines, the facility to not listen to someone, but still be able to comprehend and recall everything they said.

He realized he was drawing attention to himself by asking questions, but he just couldn’t seem to resist. Besides, he had learned the art of makeup and costuming from a master. No one knew what he really looked like, and before they would be able to connect him to the events of the next twenty-four hours, it would be far too late.

The truth was, he knew everything there was to know about the massive timepiece at the base of the tower at Philadelphia City Hall. He knew that the clock had begun running on New Year’s Day 1899. He knew that the faces had a diameter of twenty-six feet, and were larger than even those of Big Ben. He knew that each hour hand was twelve and a half feet long.

He also knew that the door he needed to get in was just on the other side of the tower, opposite the elevator. He had taken this tour once before, posing as a much older gentleman, a man with a thick German accent, and knew that the lock on the door was a standard Yale deadbolt. With his skills, it would take him less than ten seconds to open the door. Probably much less.