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“What the hell?” he said aloud as he scanned the construction site. “Emergency? Nothing’s happening. Looks like there’s no one here.”

He braked hard, the SUV sliding to a stop behind one of the eighteen-wheeled tractor-trailers. It had a plastic-shrink-wrapped pod still strapped to its trailer. He grabbed the gearshift with his right hand and slammed it up into park.

A burning pain shot through his injured right arm.

“Damn it!” he said, cradling it with his left arm.

He used his left hand to open the driver’s door, then stepped out.

Scanning the area, he could not believe his eyes.

“It’s a goddamn ghost town,” he muttered.

He looked ahead of the big tractor-trailer rig and counted the nine others that had left Doylestown that morning. The very first one in line was parked beside the condominium’s main tower, where the bare iron-beamed skeleton of the building rose above the bottom three floors, which were mostly finished. The modular unit on the trailer had had its shrink-wrapping removed and had the lifting apparatus at the end of the tower crane’s cable attached to it.

Yet, the crane was silent. And when Austin looked up, he couldn’t see anyone in the operator’s cabin.

He sneezed three times, then, squeezing each nostril in turn, exhaled and shot mucus onto the bare-dirt ground.

Damn, I’m getting a cold, too? he thought.

He walked around the site for five or so minutes, becoming more and more furious, then headed for the main construction office, which had been housed inside a section of the ground floor that had been completed.

His telephone rang as he entered an exterior door.

“Jesus Christ, Willie,” he said, answering the call as he walked inside and proceeded to cross a large open area. “What does that son of a bitch want from me?”

“Johnny, he said he didn’t do it.”

“Oh, c’mon, I’m not stupid. Someone had to send those union bastards out there to protest—”

“He agreed, and said he would find out and get back to me.”

“And now there’s a work stoppage!” Austin went on. “I don’t believe him!”

Willie Lane sighed.

“Johnny, I guarantee you that Joey Fitz would tell me, and he said that he had nothing to do with it.”

“And I’m saying that’s bullshit! I’m at the construction site, and there is no one on the job.”

“No shit?”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“No one?”

“It’s a ghost town.”

“It’s Saturday afternoon. Maybe they knocked off at noon? They are union, you know.”

“Yeah, I fuckin’ know!”

Austin reached the project manager’s office. Above the window in the door the sign read CONSTRUCTION OFFICE / RESTRICTED AREA.

As Austin reached for the doorknob and found it unlocked, he thought he detected an odd smell. He looked through the window. It was dark inside.

“Look,” Lane said, “I don’t know what else to tell you. And I—”