There were shouts, and screams, and gasps of awe, all directed at Sullivan Field. People raced down the sidewalk, pedestrians jumped into cars. The scream of fire engines en route filled the distance. Police cruisers raced through side streets, their chirping, intermittent wails clearing a path. All were converging on disaster.
Prayers were said, mundane problems forgotten, all concern directed toward the victims and the families left behind.
Nick inched his car forward, caught within the panicked masses. His eye was drawn to the clock on the dashboard, the sight of which made the watch in his pocket feel like a piece of lead: 12:05.
Less than three hours before time ran out.
As the traffic finally abated, Nick turned onto Maple Avenue, heading for Washington House. He flipped on his blinker but quickly flipped it off and hit the accelerator.
He had forgotten about time.
Julia’s Lexus sat parked in the side lot of the building owned by Shamus Hennicot. Julia was alive somewhere inside, coming to grips with the fact that her client had been robbed, entirely unaware of the consequences the burglary would have on the future that awaited her.
He thought of running in, wrapping his arms about her, and holding on forever, but the robbery had already happened. Paranoia was already setting in on Dance and his team. Their search for witnesses, security video, and ultimately Julia had already begun.
He thought of re-enlisting Marcus in his quest, but he had already led him to death once. He thought of whisking Julia away but knew that somehow she would be found, her death inevitable, as he had seen twice already. McManus had yet to arrive on the scene and he had no idea where Paul Dreyfus was.
Nick pulled out and looked at the St. Christopher medal, pulled from the neck of Julia’s killer. He had initially thought it would be the talisman that would lead them to Julia’s murderer, but it had been just another piece of metal weighing down his pocket, a clue that proved useless. He had been so convinced it was Dance’s, but Dance wore nothing about his neck.
He had seen Shannon in his sweat-covered tank top, but again there was nothing there. Brinehart had been killed by Dance before Julia was shot, Randall was the overweight accomplice who had distracted him at his front door. That left Arilio, whom he had yet to see, and Rukaj. It could be either of them, or even someone who had yet to be revealed to Nick. He would remain diligent but had abandoned hope in the necklace’s power of identification.
Nick realized that the St. Christopher medal, the mahogany box, the gold swords and daggers, every hour, every death all pointed back to a single point of origin. All things converged on the robbery of Shamus Hennicot.
Everything, saving Julia, saving Marcus, it would all come down to preventing that singular incident, to seeing that Dance never pulled a job that he would have to cover up. But to do that, he could not impede it now, not after it happened. He would have to wait until 11:00, before they went into the building. Which would give him forty-five minutes to put the pieces together, forty-five minutes to formulate a plan for taking on a team of armed men, a team lead by Detective Ethan Dance, a man who took lives as easily as he took a breath.
THE BYRAM HILLS police officer sat in his unmarked car, his eyes fixed on the white building fifty yards ahead as he nervously drummed his fingers on the wheel. His dark-brimmed hat sat on the seat beside him. He hated that hat, how it flattened his red hair, how ridiculous it looked, wondering why the pillbox, patent-leather- brim style was still in use seventy-five years after its design when the rest of fashion lived in the present.
Nolan Brinehart had longed to be a detective since he was a child, dreaming of being one of those brilliant TV heroes who rights the wrongs, who figures out the impossible crimes from vague, inadequate clues. But he had trouble with figuring out quadratic equations and algebra, not to mention that he could barely do jigsaw puzzles as a kid.
He had gone to Byram Hills High School and had a fair amount of experience with the police as a youth. Of course it was from the other side of the law. Never charged with or convicted of anything, he was your typical delinquent, drunk and disorderly, causing fights, but nothing beyond the wildness of male youth.
Hoping for the fast track so he could begin to earn a decent wage and leave the ridiculous hat and blue uniform behind, he had cozied up to Detective Dance. He knew Dance had helped Detective Shannon along, had taken an interest in the fellow Brooklynite several years earlier, helping him to achieve his promotion in one-third the usual time.
And now, as with all masters and apprentices, Brinehart had found his opening. He was a willing pupil and Dance was a teacher in need of a new student.
Dance told him the romanticized world of detectives, the one that everyone knew so well from movies and television, did not exist. Crimes were usually easily solved or impossible to figure out, and the pay was underwhelming. But if Brinehart was willing to walk a slightly different path, he could not only achieve detective status in a year’s time but have a bank account that would allow him a lifestyle impossible to attain on a detective’s abysmal salary.
So Brinehart became a last-minute addition to Dance’s crew, acting as a lookout, as a gofer, as whatever Dance needed to pull off the job.
He was looking forward to his share-a million dollars promised, money to be spent gradually, money that would allow him to be everything his wife wanted him to be. It was money Dance convinced him he deserved, taken from a man who would not even miss it, whose wealth he could never conceive.
He was counting on Dance’s talent and experience to make their crime impossible to solve. He had been told it would be an easy job, with inside information. All he had to do was keep an eye out for anything suspicious, any problems or people that might approach the house while they were inside.
He had watched as Sam Dreyfus led Dance, Randall, and Arilio into Washington House, remaining outside on lookout. He watched as Randall and Arilio carried the two duffel bags out and put them in the back of Dance’s Taurus before heading back inside.
Sam emerged two minutes later carrying a brown wooden box under his arm. The middle-aged man spoke to him briefly about the success of the operation and the easy money they just made before he hopped into Randall’s Chrysler and drove off.
Moments later, Dance exploded out the door like a wild animal, diving into his car and tearing off after Sam.
Brinehart had never realized that the problem to watch for would come from within the house, from within their group of five. He was the last-minute guy; he thought they were all connected, friends, partners. He had never thought that their inside man had issues, issues that could throw their entire scheme into disarray, sending it skidding into disaster.
Dance called from his car ripping into Brinehart for letting Sam get away, for being so stupid as to let him get into Randall’s car and drive off without even challenging him. Dance went on to tell him to remain and watch the house for anything suspicious and to report anything he saw. And to not continue on the path of stupidity.
Brinehart watched the woman in the black Lexus drive in at 11:50. Her car had been sitting in wait for twenty-five minutes now. He had run the plates. Julia Quinn, a name they had thought might arise, the attorney for Shamus Hennicot.
He had ignored the all-hands call to the plane crash, sitting in his unmarked patrol car under the hedges of Wampus Park, watching as his police brethren, along with every fire truck and volunteer fireman, raced to the scene. He heard the cries over his radio of a disaster like nothing that had ever been witnessed. His curiosity constantly baited him to leave his post, but he had been posted here by Dance, told to watch any activity and to keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.
The Audi had circled three times now, which would not normally be too suspicious for someone who was lost, but with black smoke and flame filling the air, the streets clearing, and emergency vehicles racing off, no one who is lost circles about three times.
He ran the plates, finding the car belonged to Nicholas Quinn, who resided at the same address as Julia Quinn. His heart beat a bit faster as his suspicion rose; it was almost as if Quinn didn’t want his wife to know he was there.
Brinehart watched Julia Quinn emerge from Washington House and look up into the sky. She pulled her cell phone from her purse and dialed as she got into her Lexus, quickly pulling from the driveway and heading off.
And as she disappeared down the road, the Audi returned, slowing as it approached Washington House, finally pulling into the driveway.
That was all the confirmation Brinehart needed. He started his car, drove across the street and blocked the driveway.
NICK HAD DRIVEN around the mile-square block, circling back to Washington House three times now. On each round, the mayhem grew. A panic was overtaking people, as they were unsure what was going on. Crawling through the traffic, he could hear the murmur of the crowd, feeling the anxiety of the people, the shouting about a plane crash, a pipeline, a terrorist attack.
And there was Larry Powers standing in front of his wife’s gift shop. People circled him, surrounded him as if he was the town crier who had all the answers.
Nick heard people talking in amazement.
“… I saw it. I was looking up, it was horrible. It was two planes-”
“-Two planes?” someone yelled. “What kind?”
“One slammed right into the other, like two birds crashing into one another, both falling dead out of the sky…”
Caught in the flow of traffic, horns blaring behind him, Nick drove on as Paul Dreyfus’s words floated up in his mind. It was his plane, his brother at the controls. The fateful robbery of Shamus Hennicot did not just result in Julia’s death, it also caused the crash of North East Air Flight 502, killing 212 passengers. So many innocents killed by greed.
Nick’s focus throughout this upside-down day had been so trained on Julia that he hadn’t thought of what was truly behind the crash, what had caused the AS 300 to drop from the sky on a cloudless summer morning.
Nick thought of calling what he knew in to the NTSB so efforts could be focused on things other than the cause of the crash, but they would learn the truth soon enough.
And then Nick realized that, if he was truly successful in stopping the robbery, if he was to halt Sam Dreyfus and Ethan Dance from carrying out their plan, not only would Julia be saved…
AS NICK MADE the turn onto Maple Avenue, he saw Julia’s Lexus in the distance, driving away toward Route 22. He slowed and scanned the area again. On each
