Day One

expression changed, and he took a step back.

Thomas’s bedroom door opened; it must not have been latched shut. Hawke glanced over and saw the boy standing in the doorway, red faced, stuffed lion clutched in his arms. His first steps. Thomas hadn’t walked yet. He and Robin had been talking about it that day, considering whether to see the pediatrician. Thomas had been late for almost all his milestones, but his doctor said the boy was fine, simply a cautious child, nothing to worry about. Robin wasn’t so sure.

When Hawke looked back, Lowry was pushing past him, muttering to himself, his head down. “Don’t you come in here again,” Hawke said, but the man was already gone, the sound of his apartment door as it slammed shut echoing off the walls of the hallway and bouncing back to him, amplified into a sound of accusation and regret as he moved toward Robin and watched her turn away, hugging her arms to her chest.

* * *

Hawke tried to call Robin back, his fingers trembling and clumsy, and when there was no answer he felt light-headed, disconnected from reality. As the room spun he sat on a nearby desk chair and put his head down for a moment, trying to breathe slow and deep.

There was no time to panic, not now. He’d probably misinterpreted everything and Robin and Thomas were fine. They’re fine.

Except they weren’t, and Hawke knew it. You didn’t make a call like that if everything was okay. Memories popped through his mind like flashbulbs: He saw Robin sitting on their bed, sunlight dappling her bare shoulders, not yet pregnant with Thomas, young and eager and devastatingly beautiful…. Trying to learn how to wrap Thomas in the hospital blanket, make a triangle, wrap and tuck and wrap and then tuck again as the tiny creature squirmed and balled his little fists… Robin sitting on the edge of the bathtub staring up at Hawke, pregnancy test in her hand, and he couldn’t tell if the look of shock on her face was from happiness or terror…. And then when he closed his eyes again, he saw Randall Lowry shouldering open the door of their apartment, greasy hair swinging in his face, his eyes shining with madness and lust, and Hawke heard his wife screaming.

Hawke looked up, coming back into himself with a jolt. People were shouting over one another in the conference room, arguing over what to do. He stuck a finger in his ear to shut out the noise and tried Robin’s phone again, listened to the empty ring. He tried to dial again, and again. The third time, nothing happened at all.

He stared at the phone until spots danced before his eyes, then jabbed at the screen with his finger, cursing the network, and breathed deeply again. You’re not helping them by losing your mind. Think. Half of New York City was probably trying to make a call right now. He would have to find a different way to reach them.

Hawke’s smartphone was jail broken and customized by him, and he was able to bypass the operating system. One of his programs, a video calling and monitoring app, would allow him to use his home wireless network to activate the webcam attached to Robin’s laptop. They’d used it as a nanny cam before, on the rare occasions when they left Thomas with a sitter. In the mornings, Robin usually sat at the counter, had coffee and surfed the Net while Thomas played or watched TV. Maybe she’d left the computer open.

The screen was frozen. Hawke crashed the phone and quickly rebooted, and it seemed to come up clean. He directed the app to the right IP address, and a few moments later a grainy image appeared: his living room as seen through Robin’s laptop camera.

Hawke peered at the tiny screen, his guts churning. He could see the back of the couch; the TV was on and what looked like news reports were playing. No sign of Robin or Thomas, but the lamp that sat on the end table had been knocked over.

Take it easy. It might be nothing. But that single bit of chaos in an otherwise normal room unnerved Hawke. Had Thomas done it? If so, why hadn’t Robin picked it back up again? She was a neat freak, and something like that would have driven her crazy. Hell, even at three years old it would have driven Thomas crazy, too, with his need for order and symmetry, everything in its place and aligned properly. Just last week, he had thrown a tantrum because he hadn’t been able to line up the bins of toys on the shelf in his room to his own satisfaction, and Hawke had teased Robin about it later: Like mother, like son.

Where are they?

Hawke turned up his phone’s volume but couldn’t hear any sound through the laptop’s mike; even the TV seemed to be on mute. He flashed back to his conversation with Robin earlier that morning: Lowry yelled at Thomas again yesterday in the hallway, when we went to the store…. He was complaining about something, I don’t know, the TV up too loud, whatever….

Lowry was responsible for Robin’s panicked phone call. Hawke knew it. He thought about the laundry room, Lowry in Hawke’s apartment with his wife pinned against the sink. He put his ear to the phone, thought he heard a thud and muffled voice, but couldn’t be sure. “Robin!” he shouted into the mike, and shouted again, in case she could hear him, but there was no response.

As he was about to try her cell phone again, his own phone appeared to freeze; he tried to regain control, pushing the home button, tapping at it and cursing, and the phone began cycling through some kind of program, raw code running across the screen. Hawke tried to crash it again, holding the power and home buttons down, but at first the phone didn’t respond. Then the screen went white, blinked and went dead again, and this time it was bricked.

He cursed again and stood up, meaning to go plug it in and get better access through a keyboard to the internals, but a wave of dizziness hit him like a punch to the head. You’re in shock. He heard more voices and looked up as Bradbury came into the room, followed closely by Kessler: “…software is doing its job, I’m telling you it’s tracking activity like you wouldn’t believe—”

And then the voices stopped for a moment. Somehow, Kessler had crossed the space between them and spoke close to Hawke’s ear. “You okay?” she asked as he leaned drunkenly and stumbled. She reached out to him just before a tremendous explosion rocked the building.

CHAPTER EIGHT

10:51 A.M.

THE FLOOR SHUDDERED VIOLENTLY, and Hawke heard a distant whooshing sound, muffled and deep, just before Kessler let him go and ran toward the windows. He wanted to shout at her to get back, but it was too late; the glass exploded inward as the shock wave hit, sending shards hurtling through the air like flashing knives.

A piece caught Kessler in the throat. Hawke saw her whirl and spray blood as he went down, covering his own head, tasting carpet and smoke.

He looked up again through a strange haze as the overhead lights surged and watched Bradbury reach out to catch a desk lamp that was falling. An instinctive reaction, something Hawke probably would have done himself, but Bradbury ended up dancing a jig, his eyes rolling back to the whites, teeth clenched hard together as his huge body went rigid and his skin began to darken before he finally tilted sideways and fell to the floor.

“Oh my God oh my God!” someone was screaming from the other room. Black smoke billowed up from the street, whirling in through the broken windows, and it smelled acrid and oily, stinging Hawke’s eyes. He blinked, saw Bradbury on the floor still clutching the lamp in rigid, blackened fingers with his eyes bulging like boiled eggs and his tongue poking like a purple rag from his lips, and he thought of his apartment and his wife’s frantic voice over the phone. It hit him like a stinging slap: What if this isn’t just New York City? What if it’s happening everywhere?

Hawke stood up, legs trembling, covering his nose and mouth with his sleeve. Nothing else mattered anymore except getting out of the building. The black smoke was thicker around his face, and he couldn’t tell if it was coming from outside or somewhere close. Kessler was jerking violently and clutching her throat, a lot of blood wetting the carpet around her head. He whirled at a noise and watched Weller and a dazed Anne Young emerge