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partner were inside, scanning the dark, windowless chamber.
    Empty.
    Nothing to see, not even cartons of junk.
    They flicked on the overhead light. White walls and cheap short-nap carpet.
    Lovejoy and the others waited tensely in the parking lot, outside the kill zone.
    There was still a possibility Dance was in there. Maybe he’d given up, shot himself. Maybe he was dead.
    Please, Jesus, let him be dead.
    Lovejoy realized he was praying. Catholicism had a way of coming back to you at times like this.
    Over his earphone, the SWAT commander’s voice; “We’re in.”
    “And?”
    “He’s flown.”
    Moore slumped her shoulders. Patterson pulled off his headset and swore.
    “Understood,” Lovejoy said.
    He turned to the assistant SAC and spoke rapidly, squeezing all emotion out of his voice.
    “There’s a chance he’s still in the vicinity. Better have LAPD broadcast an alert and deploy any unit they can spare to cruise the area. West L.A. Division can stake out his apartment building in case he’s stupid enough to return. His girlfriend works at Bullock’s in Westwood. It would be advisable to take her into protective custody and squeeze her for anything she knows.”
    Patterson nodded. “I’ll alert security at all the local airports, the bus station, the train station.”
    “Rental car companies,” Moore said. “And his bank—he may try to withdraw funds, close out his accounts.”
    “Got it.” Patterson moved off to speak with the LAPD Valley Bureau commander, who had just arrived on the scene.
    Lovejoy waited till the assistant SAC was gone before permitting any crackup of his surface calm. Then he lowered his head, wrestling with the urge to scream.
    “Fuck. We blew it. Blew it.”
    A wet sneeze shook him. Suddenly his allergies were back, as if in punishment for failure.
    “We’ll get him, Peter,” Moore said gently.
    “That’s what we thought this morning.”
    “Next time—”
    “Next time may be too late. I mean ... he’s done seven already. Who’ll be number eight?”
    Moore took his hand, squeezed it tight. She had no answer.
    * * *
    Jack sat in a window seat at the back of the bus, watching the smoggy wasteland of the San Fernando Valley shudder past. He felt calm and confident and wonderfully self-possessed.
    He had beaten them. Beaten them all. Cheated the law of its prize.
    Across the aisle, a little boy was practicing coin tricks while his Latino nanny looked on.
    The boy smiled at Jack. “I can do magic.”
    Jack nodded. “So can I.”
    “Really?”
    “Let me show you.”
    He took out a quarter and passed it deftly from hand to hand, then palmed it. A simple illusion he’d learned years ago while running a street-corner shell game.
    “Wow,” the boy said. “You made it disappear.”
    “I can do better magic than that. I can make myself disappear.” He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “In fact, I just did.”
    He couldn’t stay invisible for long, though—not in this city. He had to get out. And he knew where to go.
    Jack checked his watch. Ten o’clock. He could make it to LAX by eleven-thirty at the latest. There had to be a noon flight to Miami. He would land by nine p.m. Eastern time.
    From there it was less than a two-hour drive to Islamorada ... and Pelican Key.

 
     
     
    7
     
    Night sounds, drifting like echoes of dreams through the heavy tropical air.
    From the mangrove swamp, the choral croaks of rain frogs, excited by the afternoon’s brief downpour. Out on the tidal flats, the cries of night herons, feeding. Kee-o, kee-o, keer : the song of a redheaded woodpecker nesting amid the forest’s mossy conifers. Everywhere, the background buzz of cicadas, an endless static sizzle.
    The rippling shallows around the dock, dimly visible through gaps in the garden foliage, coruscated lazily in the starlight. The sparkle on the horizon marked Upper Matecumbe Key and the flow of traffic on Route 1.
    There were nights when faint noises could be heard from