I screamed. The wind threatened to shove me completely into the swirling maelstrom. I curled my burning hand into a fist and rammed forward.

My knuckles cracked against glass. Cool, smooth, firm plate glass. The kind of glass you can see and feel on any building anywhere.

The shifting darkness raced away from where I hit to reveal the side of Arco North. Overhead, the knife and the blood unraveled into nothingness. The sky lightened to the intensity of approaching twilight-the west glowed red-orange. The wind died down to a gentle breeze. Everything lay in shadow, but at least these shadows stood still.

I had managed to come within a foot of the revolving door. We stepped through into the lobby and rushed toward the elevator. I didn't feel like climbing up and down stairs at the moment. I punched for the one operating car. It creaked to life like an old dog dutifully trudging down to its master.

"We've got to find a way down below." Ann looked at me. Her eyebrows arched with a gentle curve that straddled the thin line between an affectation of perpetual surprise and the impression of shrewd, shrewish cunning. They managed to frame her cool blue eyes with a deep warmth. When she wanted them to. Right now, the lines enclosed a look of tired persistence.

"I want to get this over with," she said. "I can't have this go on much longer."

"It'll be over soon enough, kid. Everything ends before we're ready for it."

The lift shuddered to a stop. The doors parted with the creak of metal that sees too little use.

I told her to hold the doors open while I trotted off to my office. She leaned against the electric eyes to cut off their light. She closed her own eyes, cutting off their light, too.

My office looked and smelled as it always did. Dead. Just like the promise of wealth and comfort I'd envisioned years ago.

Promises.

Life promised nothing except a pointless existence punctuated by an early death. Or so I'd heard.

My cheerful mood was not improved by the message on my answering machine. I rummaged through the desk for my other pistol.

"Dell"-the voice on the tape sounded worried-"this is Joey Moreno. You gotta come over right away. Some priests from my archdiocese just left here, asking some really strange questions about you and that TV nut Zacharias. Something funny's going on. I'll be waiting."

The line clicked and buzzed. I found my other Colt Lightweight Commander, checked the magazine in the grip. Full. I slipped a second loaded magazine into my pocket. Feeling a tad more secure, I racked the action, snapped on the safety, and slid the gun into my waistband holster.

I dug up my Magna-Lite and flicked it on. The batteries still worked. Good.

I reset the answering machine and locked up. Ann was still standing in front of the doors when I reached the elevator. Her face had relaxed into a calm mask. Her purse lay loosely clutched in her hand. Somehow, her nylons had survived the ordeals and the barefoot walk unscathed. Just like Hollywood, I thought as I touched her shoulder lightly.

"Here's where we split up, Blondie."

She opened her eyes. "What?"

"Head over to Auberge. I'll meet you at the Cafe of the Angels when I'm finished downstairs. Get a room at the Hotel Libya if I'm late."

"No," she said, "I'm going with you."

"Look, sister, I happen to have a contractual immunity to radiation-I think. You're not so blessed."

"I-"

"You've got spunk. Just let a little common sense sink in." I let the doors close. When I sighed, it sounded just like the aging motor that lowered us slowly down.

"Angel, there's a time to flex your self-confidence and a time to play it wise. Assassins are some of the most cautious people around. Always cross at the green after looking both ways and overhead." I smiled. It didn't do any good.

"I'll guard your back." Her gaze was as cold as the polar wind. Her hand whipped something out of her purse. It glinted even in the diffused elevator light. She held it up to me.

The blade was as long as my hand, double-edged and vehemently sharp. The rainbow-tempered steel narrowed to a nasty point at the tip. The smooth black hilt was contoured and intricately carved to provide a sure grip. She held it as if she knew when to use it, and how.

"What did you say your job is at the Bautista Corporation?"

"Assistant comptroller," she said.

"Are your bookkeepers that difficult to keep in line?"

"The lady's got to protect herself. Lasers are too finicky, guns are too troublesome to maintain properly. Besides"-she lowered the knife-"there aren't many white knights around to save distressed damsels anymore." She laughed. Her face glowed with life again, like the moon coming out from behind an eclipse.

"The lady with a dagger, eh? Where were you thirty years ago? You'd have made a great comrade-or enemy." That did it. I was getting wistful. A sure sign of my dotage. I clammed up.

She looked embarrassed for a moment, then smiled as gently as a sea breeze at dawn. She slid the toadsticker back into its sheath in her handbag. It must have weighed half a kilo.

The elevator doors opened on the lobby-the farthest the car could descend. Some of Old Downtown's elite sprawled about the tattered chairs and piles of rags. The less drunken ones tried to argue about the recent inclement weather. Their conclusions were more elegant and metaphysical than mine, so I stopped listening and headed for the exit facing Flower. Ann followed.

"All right, sweetheart." I stepped through a hole in one of the glass panels that served as the doorway. "You're a free woman above the age of consent. I can see there's only one way to keep you from risking your neck-and I've never decked a woman before. Come on."

That sounded good. I nodded toward the subway-style stairs down to the Plaza. I looked tough. The image satisfied me. No need to let her know that I was as scared as a little kid caught in a war zone. The part that bothered me was that I hadn't been drafted-I'd volunteered.

There were two entrances to the Plaza on Flower. The one nearer Sixth Street was still buried under the rubble from the South Tower. The one by North was only marginally more accessible-years of neglect had not made the way any safer. Winds had pushed dirt and trash down the stairs to fill the bottom to thigh height.

I switched on the Magna-Lite. A white oval of illumination spilled across the quadruple doors. The glass panel of one had been smashed long ago. A mound of rubbish flowed through it to form an alluvial fan inside the Plaza.

I wrapped my fingers around the exposed edge of the glass. The butt of my flashlight tapped firmly against it. A large piece broke away on the second try with no more than a loud snap. A few extra swings cleared an opening wide enough for me to step through.

"Careful," I said in offering my hand to Ann. "Scars aren't fashionable this year."

She made it through easily. The steps beyond the door were cluttered with debris. Bits of broken masonry and pulverized tile covered the stairway in a rough, unstable blanket.

"I was here once," Ann whispered like a kid in church, "before they blew it up."

I nodded in the darkness and took a tentative step downward. It was like tiptoeing on castanets. I took the next step even slower.

"Why'd they do it?"

"Huh?" I tried to keep the torch beam steady for both of us. The steps were part of a broken escalator-we walked down it as slowly as debutantes at a coming-out party. I grasped the handrail just as the little sign on my left commanded. Gritty dust covered everything. A dank, sickening smell soaked the air, like the odor of dead lilacs in a forgotten tenement where someone lonely had died. Water dripped in a corner.

"The terrorists." She guided her feet carefully between mounds of rubble. "Why'd they blow up the towers?"