But Jake Myers caught her by surprise.

He smiled. He grinned like a man with a well-kept secret. Whatever apprehension they had temporarily instilled in him was gone, and the arrogance she’d initially witnessed at Pulse was back in its full glory. “Fine. Do what you have to do, beautiful.”

Ellie pictured herself delivering a knee strike to Myers’s groin, followed by a left jab into his skinny head. That’s what she had to do. At least a good smack. Something.

Instead, she said, “I take it you’re not answering any questions.”

“Not without a lawyer. You’re welcome to my DNA, however.”

It was Rogan who delivered the slap to the back of Myers’s head, and it wasn’t just in Ellie’s imagination. “Not another word.”

And that was the last they heard out of Jake Myers for three days.

THAT EVENING, at precisely 5:30 p.m., the man watched the entrance of Mesa Grill from a counter at an Au Bon Pain across the street.

He had come across the bartender accidentally the previous night. He had been walking downtown, looking for his next project; given the changes in the city over the last several years, it was his impression that downtown was the best place to look for the kind of girls he liked-girls who had fun, too much fun.

He started in Washington Square Park. A lot of NYU girls there. Hippie chicks. Down-and-outs. But compared to Chelsea, none of the girls he saw had that kind of spark.

From the park, he’d made his way over to the West Village. Spent some time in three different sex shops. He figured any woman who worked in a place like that would eventually be easy to grab. But to his disappointment, the employees had all been men. Most of the customers, too. It was the neighborhood, he figured.

He’d gotten his hopes up at a store called Fantasy when he’d spotted one of the employees from behind. She’d been reaching for a foot-long purple dildo from a top shelf. She must have been six feet tall. Thin. Long, white-blond hair. Then she had turned around, and it was clear that she was a he. Not his type.

From the Village, he had headed to the Flatiron. The district had once been known as Ladies’ Mile, famous for the department stores that drew the country’s most elegant women, shopping for the finest luxuries. First ladies frequented Arnold Constable at Nineteenth Street and Broadway. Tiffany & Co. had sat at Fourteenth Street and University before the jeweler decided that Union Square had coarsened. A century ago, this neighborhood had catered to the choosiest of women. Now, a hundred years later, he hoped that he might find precisely what he was searching for, somewhere on Broadway before he reached Madison Park.

The sidewalks were crammed with hundreds of interchangeable girls in blue jeans and winter coats, carrying shopping bags and designer purses. Most were in groups. Those who weren’t were attached to their cell phones-so uninteresting that they couldn’t stand the idea of being alone with their own thoughts for the handful of minutes it took to move on to the next purchase.

The man wondered if perhaps he was too spoiled in New York. He suspected that in any average city, the majority of these girls he’d written off would shine like flawless D-grade diamonds. Maybe his problem was that he had it too good. So many, many girls, not paying attention.

So he had tried again once he reached Twenty-third Street, making the turn where Broadway met Fifth Avenue. If anything, Fifth Avenue was even more crowded than Broadway. More girls. More shopping. More vacuous phone calls: “Nothing. What are you doing? Where are you? I’m going into Banana.”

He tried to remind himself that this was only his first attempt to find his next project, and less than twenty-four hours since Chelsea Hart. He had decided to call it an evening when he passed a busy restaurant. The brightly painted letters on the front window read “MESA.” High ceilings. Big crowd at the bar. Probably expensive. He was looking in the window, wondering whether it was expensive-stupid or expensive-good, when he noticed the bartender with the blond ponytail. She was pouring from two bottles into a martini shaker and talking to a middle-aged couple at the bar.

He spent a lot of time in bars. Despite the stereotype about bartenders, they really weren’t good listeners. If they were, he’d spend less time in bars. But this girl, she was really listening. She was nodding, laughing, looking the female half of the couple right in the eye, even as she frantically mixed away. Giving the mixer a vigorous shake, she scratched her cheek with her sleeve. Then she laughed about something. He could tell it was a real laugh, from the belly.

A margarita sounded good.

He’d waited until the seat next to the couple was empty before he ordered. House margarita, rocks and salt. Good, generic, forgettable order. As he sipped his drink, he’d learned more about the bartender, eavesdropping on her conversation with the couple. She was an aspiring writer. Two published short stories, a few magazine essays, and one unpublished novella. Now she was working on her first thriller, an attempt to go commercial at the suggestion of her agent. The setup featured a small-town female cop who realized her son was a serial killer.

He also overheard the bartender swap shifts with her bald male colleague for Tuesday and Thursday. She’d be covering his 11:00 to 5:30 shift; he’d take her usual 5:30 to midnight. “Thanks a lot for doing that,” the bald guy had said. “Not a problem,” she’d replied. “It’ll be nice to actually have a night to go out like a regular person.”

Only one pop-in, and he’d already nailed down a big piece of her schedule.

After he’d signaled for the check, he noticed that the top of the computerized slip of paper listed the name Rachel next to the date and time. He owed her twelve dollars. He opened his wallet and fingered a hundred-dollar bill inside, smiling as he remembered finding it in Chelsea’s purse. He removed a ten and a five instead and left both bills on the bar. Not too cheap, not too generous.

Now it was Tuesday evening, and the bartender should have just wrapped up the first of her two day-shifts this week. He watched from the bakery window, coffee in hand, as the girl he presumed was called Rachel buttoned up her beige peacoat and dashed across three lanes of traffic on Fifth Avenue.

Taking the corner onto Fifteenth Street, she passed directly in front of him. He lowered his gaze and then made his way to the exit, also turning at Fifteenth.

He was thirty feet behind her. He caught a whiff of musky perfume. He figured she probably spritzed herself on the way out of the restaurant to mask the smell of southwestern food.

He noticed she wore flat black loafers. Hopefully she would turn to something less practical when she wasn’t working. A healthy girl like her could run in loafers.

She reached her right hand to the nape of her neck, slipped off her ponytail elastic, and shook her blond waves loose. He stole a glimpse of her profile reflected in the window of a sushi restaurant as she passed. She looked good with her hair down.

Before she reached Union Square Park, she turned and disappeared into a storefront.

He crossed Fifteenth Street and kept his head down as he walked directly toward the park. He glanced in his periphery as he passed the spot where she had disappeared. “Park Bar.”

When he reached Union Square West, he found a seat at an unoccupied picnic table near the curb. He would sit here, and he would wait. And watch.

Patience. Diligence. Dedication. Timing.

He had found his project. Now he had to nail down the routine, learn the habits. Chelsea had caught him off guard. This time, nothing should be unexpected.

As he sat at the picnic table, watching subway riders dash to their trains at Union Square, he found himself smiling and remembering a line from Jack Finney’s classic novel Time and Again: “Suddenly I had to close my eyes because actual tears were smarting at the very nearly uncontainable thrill of being here. The Ladies’ Mile was great, the sidewalks and entrances of the block after block of big glittering ladies’ stores…”