The Burning Edge

Praise for the novels of Rick Mofina

IN DESPERATION

“A blisteringly paced story that cuts to the bone.

It left me ripping through pages deep into the night.”

—James Rollins, New York Times bestselling author

“A superbly written thriller that

plumbs the depths of every parent’s nightmare.

Timely, tense, and terrifying, this book is sure to be a big hit!”

—Brad Thor, #1 New York Times bestselling author

THE PANIC ZONE

“Taut pacing, rough action and jagged dialogue feed a relentless pace. The Panic Zone is written with sizzling intent.”

—Hamilton Spectator

“The Panic Zone is a headlong rush toward Armageddon.

Its brisk pace and tight focus remind me

of early Michael Crichton.”

—Dean Koontz, New York Times bestselling author

VENGEANCE ROAD

“Vengeance Road is a thriller with no speed limit!

It’s a great read!”

—Michael Connelly, New York Times bestselling author

“A gripping no-holds-barred mystery…

lightning paced…with enough twists to

keep you turning pages well into the wee hours.”

—Allison Brennan, New York Times bestselling author

SIX SECONDS

“[A] well-crafted and timely thriller.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Six Seconds should be Rick Mofina’s breakout thriller.

It moves like a tornado.”

—James Patterson, New York Times bestselling author

Also by Rick Mofina and MIRA Books

IN DESPERATION

THE PANIC ZONE

VENGEANCE ROAD

SIX SECONDS

And watch for Rick Mofina’s next thriller,

available October 2012

Other books by Rick Mofina

A PERFECT GRAVE

EVERY FEAR

THE DYING HOUR

BE MINE

NO WAY BACK

BLOOD OF OTHERS

COLD FEAR

IF ANGELS FALL

This book is for

Mildred Marmur

Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak

Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.

—Macbeth, Act iv, Scene iii

William Shakespeare

1

Ramapo, Metropolitan New York City

Maybe the worst was really over, Lisa Palmer thought, driving home alone to Queens from Upstate New York.

Her fingers tightened on the wheel. She was trying to get a grip on her life, trying to regain control, but it was hard, so hard. It had been nearly two years since her husband, Bobby, had died, but now, for the first time, Lisa believed that she and her kids would endure.

They had to.

They needed to move on with their lives. Selling the cabin in the Adirondacks was the first big step Lisa had taken.

But was it the right thing to do?

She glanced at the passenger seat and the slim briefcase holding all the paperwork. A few hours ago she’d closed the sale at the Realtor’s office. The new owners, a retired chef and his wife, a florist, from Newark, would take possession in thirty days.

The cabin was still Lisa’s until then.

She had promised Ethan and Taylor one last visit to the lake. It was important for all of them to say goodbye to this part of their lives. They’d go up to the cabin together in a few weeks. Lisa brushed a tear from her eye. God, the kids loved it there. She did, too. It was on Lake George and so pretty. It had been in Bobby’s family since his great-grandfather bought it in 1957.

Bobby had treasured the place. Lisa’s hand shook when she’d signed the papers and all the way down I-87 she’d begged Bobby to forgive her.

I had to do it. The insurance is still a mess. The bills keep coming. I can’t make ends meet anymore, not on my pay. The cabin was our only asset. I’m so sorry. I have to think of the future; of going on without you.

She would always love Bobby. But while her aching for him would never stop, she found hope in the thick forests that swept down the hills and rock cuts of the region.

Suddenly, she felt he was near.

He was a mechanic who’d quit school to work in a garage in Corona. A kind, good-looking guy who was good with cars. He loved history, always had his nose in a book. It was at this point of the cabin drive that he would say that the lumber and iron from these hills helped build New York City. Then he would tell her how George Washington had climbed one of the rocks out there and watched for British ships down by Sandy Hook.

Lisa smiled at the memory as her Ford Focus glided down the New York Thruway. After drinking the last of her bottled water, she decided she’d take a break at the new truck stop coming up at the exit for Ramapo, which would put her about an hour or so from home.

This trip to sell the cabin had overwhelmed her. Along the drive, she thought of her best friend from the old neighborhood, Sophia Gretto. They’d grown up together and were like sisters. Even after Sophia had left Queens for college in California they’d kept in touch. Now Sophia was an executive with a public relations firm. Her husband, Ted, was an entertainment lawyer. No children, two Mercedes and a house on Mulholland Drive. Lisa was a supermarket cashier in Queens who never made it to college.

When Bobby died, Sophia and Ted flew to New York to be with Lisa and the kids. Ted had been a saint. They’d both been so good to her.

In the months after Bobby’s death, Sophia had visited a few times and called almost every day.

“Why don’t you think about moving to Los Angeles,” Sophia suggested a few months ago, during one of their calls.

“I couldn’t.”

“Ted and I could get you a job in one of our offices. You could take courses and get your real estate license like we talked about. We could help you, Ethan and Taylor. Think it over.”

“I don’t know, Sophia. It could be too much change for the kids.”

“Promise me you’ll just think about it, honey, okay?”

Lisa did.

In fact, it was all she could think about.

Being a cashier was a good job, but it was not what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. Before she’d met Bobby and got pregnant, Lisa had dreamed of going to college to study interior decorating and start her own business. It didn’t happen. After high school she had to work to help take care of her mother. Lisa loved Bobby and her life with the kids, but in a far corner of her heart her dream still flickered.

Should she go after it?

Could she leave everything here and move to Los Angeles?

“It would be like walking away from him, from the life we had here,” Lisa had told Sophia.

“Lisa, before all this, you were the fiercest, toughest person I’ve ever known. You could handle anything without anyone’s help. So whatever you decide to do, you’ll make it work. You just need to get your strength back.” Then Sophia said, “You did not die with him.”

“Part of me did.”

“Not all of you. You have a life to live. You have to go on.”

Everything Sophia had said made sense.

Lisa was about to arrive at a decision as she left the thruway and wheeled into the big, new Freedom Freeway Service Center at Ramapo. She parked some distance from the rigs easing in and out of the lot. Diesel engines growled, air brakes hissed. She was enveloped by humid air as she walked across the hot pavement.

After driving nearly two hundred miles, stretching her legs was a luxury.

The interstate traffic droned.

The building was landscaped with clipped shrubs. Its neo-deco facade had huge windows. New York State flags and the Stars and Stripes flapped on gold-tipped poles above the mammoth entrance.

Inside, the air-conditioning was soothing. After using the restroom, Lisa went to the snack shop for bottled water, a candy bar, a comic for Ethan and a magazine for Taylor. She knew she shouldn’t be spending the money, but she missed her kids and wanted to give them something.

A few people stood ahead of her to pay.

As the line advanced, all the lights went off. The ventilation fans stopped and the building lost power. People glanced at each other for an answer. A moment later, the lights came back on and the fans restarted.

Keys jingled and a man in a business jacket loosened his tie, hurried from a rear office toward the restaurant, grumbling to the woman accompanying him. “Call them and tell them it’s another false alarm.”

Lisa saw the man go to a control panel at the far end of the restaurant. The panel’s lights stopped flashing after he inserted a key and turned it.

Must be this hot weather straining the air-conditioning.

Come on, please.

This was taking longer than she’d expected and she still faced New York traffic. She wanted to get back on the road.

Lisa looked outside as an American Centurion armored truck stopped in front of the lobby, which had three ATMs. One guard started loading a cart while another stood by, scanning the lot and the building.

The guards started for the entrance as Lisa stepped to the counter. After paying, she slid her items and wallet into her shoulder bag. Then she made a quick search in her bag for her supermarket ID, not certain if she’d left it at home, or if she’d thrust it in her bag after finishing her shift before driving upstate.

She barely noticed the rumble of the four motorcycles that had pulled up alongside the armored truck. Adjusting her bag, she saw several people standing near the ATMs; some were studying the large map of Greater New York City above the machines.

As the armored truck guards entered, Lisa froze.

Two of the motorcycle riders, their faces hidden by their helmets and dark shields, were dressed in full-body riding suits that were bulky around their abdomens. They were wearing gloves and gripping handguns as they came up behind the guards.

Pop!

The first rider shot the first guard. A gout of blood and fragments of his skull blasted across the floor to a vending machine.

At the same time, the second rider came up on the guard wheeling the money cart and fired into the back of his neck. Crack! The impact forced the top of the guard’s head to flap open, cranial matter springing out. The money cart clanged to the floor between the dead men, their blood blossoming into widening pools.

Lisa caught her breath.

“Everyone down!” the first shooter yelled, seizing the guards’ guns. “Nobody fucking move! Put your phones on the floor beside you now! Put your hands behind your head! Look at the floor! Don’t look at us!”

Lisa slid to the floor. Her magazines, water and other items tumbled from her bag around her.

The second rider produced a sack and moved swiftly, collecting cell phones from staff and customers throughout the center.

Outside, the two other riders had sprayed something into the truck’s air intake, forcing the driver to exit, double over and vomit. Then they shot him. The two riders entered the truck and quickly unloaded money into backpacks and saddlebags.

In the service center, a woman began wailing.

One of the riders herded all staff and customers from the washroom, the restaurant, the kitchen, the snack shop and gas counter into the center’s lobby, forcing them to the floor at gunpoint. The other gunman produced folded nylon bags and commanded the nearest person, a sobbing teenage girl, to help him fill them. The plastic wrapped around some of the cash had torn. Bundles had rolled over the center’s floor lobby near Lisa.

The gunman collecting the cash grunted as he snatched the packs that had fallen around her, whizzing them into the nylon bags. His partner eyed the people on the floor for movement.

Please, God, let someone call the police, Lisa thought.

The man on the floor next to Lisa turned his face to her. He looked about thirty, was clean shaven with quick intelligent eyes. He was wearing jeans, a jacket and T-shirt.

“I’m a cop,” he whispered, keeping his hands outstretched over his head. “My gun’s on my right hip under my shirt.”

She nodded.

“You slide closer, lift it out,” he said. “Tuck it under me. They’re wearing vests, but I can get off head shots.”

Lisa could not breathe.

She was motionless until the man’s urgent gaze compelled her to move. She worked her way closer to him, carefully extending her left hand, pulling away his jacket, feeling the hardness of his gun. Lisa got it loose. Her sweating face was two feet from his.

He nodded encouragement.

As Lisa pulled, the weapon slipped from her fingers and rattled on the floor. A gunman flew to them, grabbing the gun before the cop could. He patted the man, taking his second gun from his ankle holster. He jerked at the man’s jacket, extracting a folding police wallet and examining it.

“Fucking FBI!”

Lisa looked into the young agent’s eyes.

The gunman pushed the muzzle against his head.

Lisa’s breathing quickened. The agent blinked and said, “Jennifer, I love you,” before his skull exploded, propelling brain matter onto Lisa’s face.

The killer moved and pressed his gun to her head.

2

Ramapo, Metropolitan New York City

The gun drilled into her head with crushing savagery.

As Lisa waited for death, blood pounded against her skull.

She looked into the lifeless eyes of the cop beside her, feeling bits of his brain tissue on her face, her skin prickling with fear, her heart hammering against the floor.

Time stood still. Like a dream.

The smell of lemon floor cleaner mixed with a burning aroma from the gun. She sensed sweet lake air and water lapping on the shore as she saw Taylor and Ethan, then Bobby, their smiles melting in the sun.

As Lisa’s pulse thundered, she found her misshapen reflection in the black shield of the killer’s helmet, trapped in a dark abyss.

Her mind streaked to her last seconds with Bobby, his stubble brushing her cheek, the hint of his cologne, his soft, “Love you, babe,” before he left for work that day and was gone forever.

Ethan. Taylor.

Her last moments with them when she’d dropped them off at Rita’s before driving upstate: Taylor in her pink T-shirt with the kittens and the tiny mustard stain; Ethan, serious and angling for a new computer game.

She’d hugged them so hard.

“You’re hurting me, Mom.”

“I love you two so much.”

“Love you, too, Mom.”

Watching them shrink in her rearview mirror, leaving them behind.

Is this the last time? No! You can’t do this to them! Oh, Jesus, I need to be with them!

Lisa raised her head, turning so it scraped against the gun. Turning until she looked into the black shield, searching the monstrous darkness, piercing its semitransparency, she found the killer’s eyes, two black points of fury, boring into her through the blood splatter.

With every ounce of her strength, Lisa summoned Bobby, Ethan and Taylor, feeling their brilliant faces shining down on her. She seized them, wrapped herself around them. Lisa could feel them now, smelling their skin, their hair, their essence. Her entire life blazed before her like a falling star as she begged heaven not to take her from her children, prayed with such intensity she voiced the words.

“Please, don’t. I’ve got kids. I’m just a cashier. Please, I’m begging you.”

All of it had happened in a heartbeat as Lisa waited for the gunman to end her life.

But no shot came.

Another second passed. A shadow crossed over them.

“Did you hear me?” a second gunman shouted at the first. “Let’s go!”

The second man gripped a bulging canvas bag and jerked the killer’s arm. “Why did you shoot him?”

“Fucking cop went for his gun.”

“Okay, forget her! We’re done! We’re over three minutes! People outside could be making calls—let’s go now!”

The pressure of the gun on Lisa’s head was gone, along with the four suspects. In their wake, Lisa’s ears rang with the shrieking of the victims. They consoled each other. Some huddled over the corpses. Lisa didn’t know how much time had passed before the chaos blended with approaching sirens.

The first police officers rushed into the center through every door with handguns and pump-action shotguns drawn and trained in every direction, ordering everyone to kneel and keep their hands up, palms out.

“They’re gone! Help us, please! We need ambulances!” a perspiring, overweight man pleaded.

More police arrived, along with paramedics who tried to aid the men who’d been shot, but it was futile.

“Miss, please. Are you in any pain?”

Someone was talking to Lisa.

“Miss, you have to let us help, you have got to let go.”

I’m never letting go. I’m alive…

“Miss, please.”

Lisa couldn’t answer. She blinked several times before realizing she was holding the hand of the dead cop beside her.

“Take care of him,” Lisa said. “You have to take care of him. They just shot him.”

It’s my fault. I dropped the gun. It’s my fault.

She was trembling as a paramedic examined her, checking her vital signs, talking to her.

“You’re going to be all right. Help is here.”

The sirens wouldn’t stop. More police cars and ambulances arrived, emergency lights splashing from the lot over the scene.

Everything was hazy in the aftermath.

All four men were dead.

Sheets were draped over their bodies and the area was cleared, protected; officers moved the survivors to the far end of the center. As they began interviewing each of them, some nodded toward Lisa.

Her heart was racing.

Officer Anita Rowan of the Ramapo Police Department had taken Lisa aside. Rowan had short hair; tiny earrings pierced her lobes. Lisa noticed her polished nails as she wrote in her notebook.

“Now, Lisa, I want you to take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”

Lisa recounted everything that she saw. Rowan had a nice tan and a white-toothed smile and touched Lisa’s shoulder when she repeated parts of Lisa’s account for accuracy. Her utility belt gave little leathery squeaks when she left Lisa to talk to a group of grim-faced men in plainclothes. From where Lisa was, she could see them in the killing zone. They produced their own clipboards and notebooks, writing down what other uniformed officers reported.

A couple of the plainclothesmen eyed Lisa.

Then the investigators tugged on rubber gloves and slipped on shoe covers and visited the dead as if each were an exhibit on a macabre tour. They raised each sheet, examined each body, took notes and pictures, made sketches and checked identification.

The investigators consulted other investigators and two of them approached Lisa. The first was a few inches over six feet, about forty-five, with thinning hair. A dark mustache accentuated his poker face.

“Lisa Palmer?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Detective Percy Quinn, Ramapo P.D.” Quinn’s face creased with concern as he took stock of the blood flecks on Lisa’s temple, nose, cheeks and chin.

“You want someone to wipe that off her?” Rowan asked.

“That’s evidence,” Quinn said. “I want a picture first.”

Quinn summoned a crime scene tech who took several frames, then got a paramedic to use a medical wipe and swab. The tech preserved the material as evidence. Quinn and the others signed the information.

“Are you okay, Miss Palmer?” Quinn said afterward.

“I don’t know.”

“You witnessed the shootings?” Quinn asked.

“Yes.”

“Lisa, we’re going to need your help, but given what’s happened, this crime goes beyond our jurisdiction.”

She didn’t understand.

“I just want to go home.”

“We appreciate that,” Quinn said. “But we won’t be done for some time yet. We’re preserving the scene. What we’d like to do is move you into a separate office area here while we wait for the primary investigators.”

“I just want to go home to my children.”

“We understand, but we really need you to cooperate with us. It’s important that you help us. Will you do that for us, Lisa?”

She thought of the man on the floor beside her, how he’d died trying to help.

She nodded and they led her down a hall in the administrative part of the complex to an office. The sign on the wall said, Mac Foyt, Manager. The room was large with blue deep-pile carpet. Photos of cars, trucks and pretty scenes of seasons along the Hudson covered most of the walls. The desk had framed pictures of a boy in a baseball uniform, a man and woman smiling at Niagara Falls.

Mac and Mrs. Foyt?

Rowan’s utility belt squeaked as she set a sweating bottle of water on the desk before Lisa. Sirens continued wailing outside.

“Is there anything else I can get you, Lisa?”

“Can I call home?”

Rowan was sympathetic. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “The situation is too serious. I can contact anyone on your behalf.”

Lisa’s stomach lurched and her head throbbed.

“Lisa?”

As Lisa cupped her hands to her face, she felt the coolness of the medical wipe that removed his blood and brain matter. That’s when she realized some of it was still on the backs of her hands.

“I just stopped to go to the bathroom and buy a snack.”

Lisa released a long anguished sob.

Rowan held her to keep her from coming apart.

3

New York City

Frank Morrow picked up his line at his desk at the FBI’s New York headquarters at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan.

He had refused to go to his doctor’s office in Greenwich Village today, insisting his specialist deliver the news by phone. After weeks of tests, scans and second opinions, Morrow had braced for this call.

“Frank, it’s Art.”

“Should I enhance my pension plan or review my will?”

“I wish I had better news. It’s worse than we’d feared.”

“Is it treatable?”

“Chemo is a long-shot option. You’d have to stop working, and the odds chemo will have any impact are two to three percent, at best.”

“Is there any other option?”

“No.”

“So I’m terminal?”

“Yes.”

“How long?”

“Frank, we can’t be sure.”

“How long, Art?”

“A year, maybe sixteen months.”

Morrow’s knuckles whitened as he squeezed his phone.

Silence fell between him and Art Stein, a Johns Hopkins grad who’d interned at Sloan-Kettering. Stein had an excellent bedside manner that he’d taken courtside over the last few months, after agreeing to give Morrow most of his updates during Knicks games at the Garden.

Now, to fill the growing quiet, Stein reached for medical jargon, explaining again about cells, hematology and the stages Morrow faced with this rare form of cancer.

Morrow was no longer listening.

Maybe it was Morrow’s private philosophy, forged by his line of work, but for him, death was always near. A view made manifest by the fact that the FBI’s New York office was a few blocks from Ground Zero.

As Stein went on, Morrow looked out at Lower Manhattan’s skyline and was pulled back to that day, thinking how one moment you are living your life, then fate slams into you the way the planes slammed into the towers.

On that morning, Morrow actually saw the Boeing 767 that was American Airlines flight 11 streak by his twenty-eighth-floor window before it knifed into the North Tower. Within minutes, the New York Division led the investigation. Morrow was immersed in it as the FBI and a spectrum of agencies chased leads, examined the wreckage and collected evidence at Fresh Kills.

Everybody had lost someone in the attacks.

Moments of that morning haunted him.

“Frank?” Stein repeated. “Frank, are you with me? To answer your question—” I asked a question? “—there won’t be any physical pain. Breathing could cease in your sleep. Frank?”

Morrow searched for words worth using.

“I’m lucky, Art.”

“Lucky?” Stein paused. “Frank, do you want me to put you in touch with a shrink, to talk things over?”

Morrow found Elizabeth’s and Hailey’s faces in the framed photographs next to his computer monitor. He smiled to himself.

He was damn lucky. Unlike the people who died in the attacks. To Morrow they were heroes. Especially the jumpers he’d seen.

They had no choice. They had no time.

Morrow was lucky because he had time to get ready.

“Frank? Do you want me to set it up?”

“No, I don’t think I’ll need that now. I’ll just chew this over for a while, you know?”

“I understand. Call me anytime. Hey, I got Lakers tickets. Are you in?”

“I’m in.”

Morrow hung up.

Telling Elizabeth and their daughter, Hailey, would be the hardest thing he’d ever have to do. Elizabeth knew nothing about this. He’d kept it to himself for the last three months. That’s when he started getting a few stomach cramps in his sleep, his skin started itching, his piss and crap turned weird colors and he’d lost a bit of weight. He told her he’d cut out the fries at work and used the stairs more.

“That’s good.” Elizabeth smiled, but her eyes held a degree of suspicion.

Of course, he was a bastard for not telling her and she’d have every right to kill him. But she’d lost her mother last year and he was not going to put more worry on her if there was a chance it was nothing.

All that changed now.

In the back of his mind, Morrow had figured that his number had come up. Somehow he just knew. He was grateful for the good life he’d had, for the time he had left. What tore him up was that it was going to be hard on Elizabeth and Hailey.

At least we have time to prepare.

He’d talk to his boss, get some time off. Maybe drive along the coast with Elizabeth and Hailey, watch the ocean and talk.

Burial or cremation?

He didn’t have to decide today.

One thing was certain: he was not going to curl up. To hell with chemo. As long as he could do the job, he would do the job. He’d seize control of every minute he had left. He was not going to eat his gun, or fall in front of a subway train.

Frank Morrow would rage against his impending death.

“Frank—” Agent Rutto rushed by his doorway “—meeting in the boardroom, now!”

About thirty people had gathered quickly around the room’s huge cherry-wood table, the venetian blinds opened to a view of the Brooklyn Bridge. Assistant Special Agent in Charge Glenda Stark had called the briefing and, in typical Stark style, cut to the point.

“Listen up, people. We’ve just received confirmation of four homicides in the robbery of an armored courier, American Centurion, which was servicing ATMs at the Freedom Freeway Service Center at Ramapo.”

Stark surveyed the room over her bifocals. She had everyone’s attention.

“Three of the victims were Centurion guards. The fourth—” Stark cleared her throat. “The fourth is Special Agent Gregory Scott Dutton, with our Bridgeport office.”

Cursing rippled round the room.

“According to preliminary witness accounts, Ramapo P.D. indicates this was a highly organized hit. Dutton was among the hostages and was going for his weapon when he was killed.”

Reaction in the room rose. Stark shut it down.

“This one is ours. ERT is en route. Ramapo, Rockland Sheriff and New York State are on scene. We’re pulling from New Jersey, Hudson Valley and New Rochelle RAs. And Connecticut is sending agents. I want as many of our people to get up there now to interview witnesses. NHQ has been briefed and the director says this is a priority. Agent Morrow?”

“Yes.”

“You’re the case agent. That’s it. Let’s move, people.”

4

New York City

The man in the town house apartment was going to kill his neighbor.

The NYPD had sealed his street in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, near Stuyvesant Town. News crews had gathered at the east and west cordons. Jack Gannon watched from the east end of the block as a hostage negotiator tried talking the man down.

Gannon, a reporter with the World Press Alliance news service, was with Angelo Dixon, a WPA photographer. Dixon had been using the earpiece on his portable scanner to monitor NYPD radio dispatches.

So far, Gannon knew that the suspect, Sylvester Jerome Nada, was an unemployed carpenter facing eviction, divorce and a mountain of debt. He’d claimed his neighbor, Gustav Trodder, had stolen his antique pistol, which had once belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte. Nada had taken Trodder hostage with his semiautomatic Smith & Wesson, vowing to “blow his freakin’ head off.”

Nothing was happening.

This standoff is going to turn out to be a supreme waste of time.

Gannon had been here nearly two hours and his gut told him the real story was the tip he’d been working on back in the newsroom.

It came in last week, a call about an impending threat.

“It involves an operation, a mission, an attack on America,” the caller had said.

Gannon often got nut-job calls like that and had first considered this one useless. It was short on details, anything he could use for confirmation.

But something about the tipster had gnawed at him.

“This is big! I swear to God, what I’m telling you is true!” the caller had said.

The guy had a nervous air of authenticity. He was scared. He’d called Gannon several times from public phones, refusing to give his name, occupation, address, anything. But he’d grown comfortable with Gannon and finally agreed to meet at a diner near Times Square.

“I’ll bring the confirmation you need.”

But Mr. Anonymous never showed and his calls stopped.

That was three days ago.

Gannon had told no one about it, adhering to his rules on tips.

Never tell an editor what you’ve got until you have it nailed. Editors either forced you to push your source until you lost them, or dismissed your tip outright. And with the way things were going at the WPA these days, he was not going to tell anybody what he had until he had it locked. It was the only way he’d guarantee support from the desk.

Instinct told him to pursue the tip, to find out what had happened to his source. Gannon secretly worked on it between other assignments. That’s what he’d been doing before he was punted to cover this waste of time.

Normally, the WPA, a worldwide newswire, wouldn’t staff a story like this; it was too local. But things hadn’t been normal at the WPA since Melody Lyon, the newswire’s most respected news editor, took a one-year leave three months ago to teach English in Africa.

Lyon was replaced by Dolf Lisker, a man who’d headed the WPA’s business coverage. Lisker had little experience leading news teams. He was a heartless slab of misery who loathed the world and everyone in it. He was obsessed with WPA’s slipping revenues.

Numbers—good numbers—were Lisker’s friends.

The WPA was headquartered in Midtown Manhattan where it oversaw bureaus in every major U.S. city and ninety countries, providing a 24/7 flow of fast, accurate information to thousands of newspaper, radio, TV, corporate and online subscribers everywhere.

Gannon was devoted to the WPA. Its reputation for excellence had resulted in twenty-five Pulitzer Prizes. But Lisker was wary of increasing competition from the Associated Press, Bloomberg, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, China’s Xinhua News Agency and Russia’s fast-rising Interfax News Agency.

“Each time subscribers take a competitor’s content over WPA content, we bleed,” Lisker wrote in his assume-command memo to the staff. “Treat every news organization as the enemy. Regard exclusives as our oxygen. We need to break stories and offer better ones than our competition. This is how we will fortify our numbers.”

Rumors flew that Lisker had presented the WPA executive with a “personnel efficiency model”—translation: “editorial cutback plan”—linking story pick-up rates to performance assessments of every WPA reporter.

The pressure was straining morale.

Gannon had felt Lisker’s sting a few hours ago. Lisker had walked by the news desk and overheard the call about a hostage taking in the Lower East Side. It had come from a WPA intern posted at the shack in NYPD headquarters at One Police Plaza.

“It’s got something to do with a dispute about an antique flintlock pistol that belonged to Napoleon.” When Lisker heard that, he stopped cold.

“Napoleon?” Lisker said to the assignment editor on the line with the intern. “That gives this a global hook. We should jump on it.”

“I’ll send the intern,” the assignment editor said.

“No.” Lisker looked at Jack. “Send Gannon.”

Gannon lifted his head from his keyboard. He’d been working on ways to find his anonymous caller. His monitor displayed his notes on his tip.

“But the intern’s closer,” Gannon said, closing his file.

Lisker approached, jabbing his finger at him.

“Listen up, hotshot! You’ve shown us zero since Phoenix, so get your ass down there now and get us a story on Napoleon’s pistol!”

Gannon grabbed his jacket, phone, notebook and recorder.

“Jack—” the assignment editor had his hand clasped over a phone “—Angelo Dixon is heading down in his car. He’ll pick you up out front.”

So now here he was with Dixon, waiting for this thing with Sylvester, Gustav and Napoleon’s pistol to wind down.

Dixon had one eye clenched behind his digital camera. Gently rolling his long lens, he shot several frames of a disheveled man crouched near a police car and talking to cops.

“This is crazy.” Dixon concentrated on the police chatter flowing into his ear. “You won’t believe who that is.”

Gannon squinted down the street. “Who?”

Dixon absorbed more from the scanner, then said, “It’s Gustav.”

“What?”

Dixon held up a finger, listening to his scanner.

“All this time—” Dixon smiled “—he’s been at the deli around the block. He heard the commotion, then started asking cops when he can get back into his apartment. Wait. He says Sylvester has no guns, hates guns, is going through tough times, is emotionally unstable and makes stuff up.”

“He makes stuff up?”

Gannon saw a uniformed cop enter Nada’s building with a large brown bag. “Now what?”

Ten minutes passed and nothing.

Gannon’s phone buzzed and he received a photo of himself at the cordon taken from the cordon at the opposite end of the street.

The message with it said Hey.

Gannon studied the press pack at the west cordon. A woman gave him a small wave. Katrina Kisko, a reporter with the New York Signal, the new online newspaper.

Seeing her gave him pause.

They’d met at a double homicide in the Bronx and started dating. It was good—better than good. He’d fallen hard for her, thought they had something strong. For the first time in his life, he was no longer alone. Until Katrina broke it off, telling him that being in the same business made things “too complicated” for her.

Too complicated?

He was stunned. He didn’t understand. It was like a kick in the teeth.

That was a few months ago and Gannon hadn’t seen her until now.

He returned her wave.

Then NYPD radios crackled. The cordon tape was lifted; Dixon and other news photographers rushed toward the building, recording Nada being escorted shirtless and cuffed into a waiting car.

It was over.

Twenty minutes later, the NYPD press officer told reporters that there was never a hostage or guns involved. Nada was going to Bellevue for a psych evaluation.

Reporters fired a barrage of questions. Gannon had to repeat his three times before the officer got to it.

“What about the Napoleon gun?” Gannon asked.

“A fabrication.”

More questions and Katrina Kisko weighed in.

“How did you get Nada to surrender?” she asked.

“He asked for food and we gave it to him.”

“What kind of food?” Katrina asked.

“A cheeseburger, fries and a milk shake.”

“What flavor was the shake?” Katrina asked.

“Cripes.” The press officer repeated her question into his radio.

The answer crackled back. “Strawberry.”

Katrina smiled and resumed typing on her BlackBerry.

At that point Gannon’s phone rang.

“This is Lisker.”

“It’s over. There’s no gun, no hostage, no story.”

“Yeah, we’ve got something else. One of our stringers just picked this up on his police scanners—four murders in an armored car hit at an I-87 truck stop.”

“Where?”

“Ramapo. We’re breaking it. We’ll work the phones here but I want you and Dixon to get up there now. You’re the lead. We have to own this story, Gannon.”

“On my way.”

Gannon turned to face Katrina.

“On your way where?” she asked.

“Really, Katrina? You’ve got to be kidding.” Gannon saw Dixon signaling to hustle to his parked car.

“I thought we were friends, we could help each other,” she said.

“Friends? Give me a break.”

“Maybe I handled things wrong. I’m sorry if I hurt you, Jack.”

“I’ve got to go.”

“You’re seriously not going to tell me?”

Gannon left her standing there and rushed to Dixon’s Dodge Journey. Ten minutes later, he watched Lower Manhattan and the East River rush by as Dixon accelerated on FDR Drive, weaving through northbound traffic. As they passed the United Nations and the span of the Queensboro Bridge, Dixon estimated they’d get to Ramapo in an hour.

“By the way, what was that with your extremely hot girlfriend?”

“Ex.”

“All right, your extremely hot ex-girlfriend.”

“Nothing, Angelo.”

“Right.” Dixon laughed.

Gannon’s thoughts of Katrina were eclipsed by the knot tightening in his stomach.

Four homicides awaited him.

5

Ramapo, Metropolitan New York City

Whomp-whomp-whomp…

A few miles south of Ramapo police roadblocks halted traffic in the south- and northbound lanes of the thruway while a New York State Police helicopter cut across the sky above Gannon and Dixon.

After showing press ID at the roadblock, they were waved through.

Maneuvering through the traffic, Dixon got them down to the exit for the service center, then to the first entrance, but no farther. It was blocked by patrol units with Rockland County.

An officer stepped up to Dixon’s SUV.

“You’re going to have to turn around, sir. You can’t go any farther.”

“We’re press.”

“Who are you with?”

“WPA.” Dixon and Gannon held up plastic IDs from their neck chains.

“All right. Park with the others and stay outside the tape.” The officer pointed to the distant landscaped island with the service center’s sign.

Gannon took stock of the knot of news trucks and cars emblazoned with station call letters. But no media people were around. Dixon grabbed his gear and they walked quickly, keeping outside the yellow tape that stretched around the perimeter of the huge lot. Along the way, they came to clusters of onlookers at the tape and stopped to talk to them.

“All I know is my sister’s a waitress in the restaurant and nobody can tell me anything,” said Reeve Torbey, a man in his twenties wearing a faded Guns & Roses T-shirt. “I texted her, tried calling her cell, the restaurant. I can’t get through.”

Gannon quoted him, got his cell number and left his card, urging him to call and promising to share information.

Agnes Slade, a woman with silver hair pulled up in a bun, shielded her eyes as she stared at the center, a phone clutched in one hand.

“My son’s in town and just called me. He said police are searching everywhere,” she told Gannon. “Things like this just don’t happen here.”

As Gannon and Dixon moved on, the sound of approaching sirens underscored the drama. Gannon heard the deep rumble of a Cessna.

Could be TV news, or police searching for suspects, he figured.

“Here we go,” Dixon said.

Amid the gaps in the lake of rigs, cars and emergency vehicles parked in the lot, Dixon glimpsed the armored truck and crime scene techs working around it. He steadied himself and focused his long lens.

Gannon moved on, exploring farther. Over his years as a crime reporter with the Buffalo Sentinel, he knew what to glean from a scene to give his work depth and accuracy. He’d studied the same textbooks detectives studied to pass their exams. And he’d researched and reported on enough homicides and murder trials to know the anatomy of an investigation.

It had earned him the respect of the seasoned detectives he knew.

Forty yards from Dixon, Gannon stopped and signaled him to the spot.

“Have a look through there.”

They still saw the armored car, but from this different perspective they could now see the sheet on the pavement covering the victim near it. Dixon took more pictures.

“Look through the entrance doors,” Gannon said.

A cloud passed, dimming the sun’s reflection on the glass doors, allowing Dixon to see inside and make out two more sheets covering victims on the lobby floor. In one case, a boot extended from under the sheet. Keeping beyond the tape, Dixon took more pictures, framing them with the outside victim and armored truck in the foreground and the two victims inside in the background with investigators bent over them.

It was a powerful news photo.

A uniformed cop yelled at them to keep moving and pointed toward the flagpoles farther along. As they walked away, Gannon glanced around the scene, feeling the clock ticking down. He had to find a way into the heart of what had happened here and why.

His BlackBerry vibrated with a text. The WPA’s news desk advised him that their stringer was having car trouble and would be late. Gannon was not concerned the WPA had dispatched more staff from headquarters.

Gannon and Dixon could handle the early work.

About a dozen news types were gathered at the flagpoles in what was an impromptu press area. Four TV news cameras topped tripods and a couple of photographers chatted with people holding notebooks, recorders and microphones with station flags.

Gannon checked his BlackBerry again. The WPA had already moved another short news hit out of headquarters. The latest read:Four people are dead after the brazen robbery of an American Centurion armored truck at the Freedom Freeway Service Center in Ramapo, at New York City’s northern edge, according to local authorities. The suspects remain at large.

“Carrie Carter, WRCX Radio 5 News.” A woman in her mid-twenties smiled at Gannon. “Who are you with?”

“WPA.” Given the size of the group, Gannon figured not all the press from the city had arrived yet. “So what’s going on here?”

“You tell us. The WPA beat everybody with that first wire story.”

“What have they told you here so far? Looks like you’re set up for a briefing. They talk to you yet?” Gannon asked.

“Not yet. Ramapo P.D. promised us a press briefing in ten minutes,” Carrie said, “but that was twenty-five minutes ago.”

Gannon knew armored car robberies fell to FBI jurisdiction and figured the local cops were likely sorting out just who was going to say what. Glancing to the parking area, he saw satellite trucks from the networks and other news cars arriving.

“What’s on the other side of the complex?”

“Nothing, just administrative offices,” Carrie said. “There’s nothing going on. The entire property is taped off. Police are everywhere. I’ve never seen so many.”

Gannon had to make a choice: stay and be spoon-fed information, or go digging. Figuring he didn’t have much time, he jotted his cell number on his business card and passed it to Carrie Carter.

“Will you do me a favor, Carrie? Call me the moment it looks like they’ll start?”

“Sure.” She glanced at his card. “Jack Gannon? I’ve heard of you. You broke that big story about the scientist who stole the old CIA experiment.”

Gannon nodded, then advised Dixon, who was gossiping with a photographer, that he was going off alone to check a few things out. They’d alert each other if something came up.

He walked quickly along the tape, scrutinizing every window of the center, every movement, every RV, car, truck, ambulance, patrol car and emergency vehicle. He knew that inside the center, police were taking statements from witnesses, getting their accounts while everything was fresh. Crime scene techs would be photographing, tagging and bagging. The county medical examiner would be called in.

As sirens wailed and the activity continued, Gannon searched for something, anything that might help. Maybe a witness would be released and walk to their car or truck? But he saw nothing but police in the lot.

Hold on. Who’s that?

Gannon focused on a New York state trooper with a clipboard walking to a patrol car in an isolated area near the tape. It had been a while, but it sure looked like—

“Brad!” Gannon called, careful no one else was close by.

The trooper turned, recognition blossoming on his face.

“Well, I’ll be a son of a gun. How the heck are you, Jack?”

He invited Gannon to his car, but Gannon indicated the tape.

“It’s okay.”

Gannon ducked under and no one saw him hurry to the patrol car.

Brad West had been posted to Troop A at the time Gannon was with the Buffalo Sentinel. West did a lot of volunteer work, but after a tough year, his charity for kids with cancer was low on money and on the brink of closing. West approached the paper, Gannon produced a heart-wrenching feature and the donations poured in.

“You got a friend for life here, Jack,” West told him.

Now, sitting out of sight in West’s patrol car, the two men caught up quickly as the trooper’s police radio crackled with dispatches. West said that last year, he transferred to Troop F after he got married to a woman he met at a police function in Syracuse.

“I’ll tell you, it’s a very small world,” West said. “I got called out to help on this and so did my wife. Anita’s with Ramapo P.D. She’s inside with the victims.”

“Really? Can I ask your help on this?”

“Name it.”

“You know I protect sources, Brad.”

“We’re good there.”

“What happened?” Gannon nodded to the center.

“It’s pretty bad in there. We’ve got four suspects who carried out the hit. Two of them killed two guards making an ATM delivery inside. Two of them killed the driver waiting in the truck. They got all the cash, could be several million.”

“What about the fourth victim?”

“The suspects ordered all the people to get on the floor. Turns out one is an off-duty cop and tries to go for his weapon. They see him and shoot him dead.”

“Jesus. Who’s he with?”

“He’s an FBI agent.”

“FBI?”

The story just got larger.

“What about witnesses? Got any?”

“I don’t know much about that.”

“What about the suspects?”

“I don’t think we have much. Faces were covered, they fled on motorcycles. We’re searching. FBI’s got this one, and with one of their own among the dead… Well, I think this one’s personal for the feds.”

“Who’s the case agent?”

“Somebody named Morrow.”

“Is he on-site?”

“He’s inside.”

“Any idea where? I might try to grab him.”

West nodded to the administrative section of the complex.

Gannon thanked West and, before leaving, exchanged cards with him. He returned to walking outside the tape until he came to the far side of the center and the administrative arm, which was circular, with floor-to-ceiling windows.

Gannon’s pulse quickened.

There were people and movement inside. Gannon inventoried his immediate area. A few patrol cars among the dozen or so parked vehicles. No cops and no other press.

He estimated that he was one hundred feet or more away. It took time for his eyes to adjust to the light and shadows before he could distinguish a desk and a man standing near it. The man had on a soft blue shirt and tie, sleeves rolled. There was movement. Other people were in the office with him. Gannon saw a cop’s uniform. Okay, a female officer.

Could this be it? The FBI talking to a witness?

Gannon ached to slip under the tape and approach the office.

He didn’t. He pulled out his phone and called Dixon.

“Angelo, say nothing. Don’t react. But take a second to excuse yourself, then head counterclockwise along the tape until you find me on the other side.”

“What’s up?”

“I think we’ve got something here.”

“Okay, give me a minute.”

Hanging up, Gannon nearly dropped his phone.

In the movement he saw a figure, looked like a woman, seated at the desk. Gannon could not see enough detail to determine her identity, but her actions chilled him. She set her head flat on the desk, raised her right hand and extended her forefinger to it as if it were a gun.

Christ, she’s acting out one of the murders.

6

Ramapo, Metropolitan New York City

Lisa Anne Palmer was the name of Morrow’s eyewitness.

Age: Thirty-one, widowed, with a ten-year-old son, Ethan, and eight-year-old daughter, Taylor. Gripping his folding clipboard, Morrow studied Lisa’s personal information, her preliminary statement and her driver’s-license picture. Five foot four, one hundred fifteen pounds. Pretty. Dishwater blonde. Blue eyes.

What exactly did you see?

Morrow’s collection of information for the investigation was growing. Upon arriving at the center, he’d interviewed the first responding officers to ensure the scene had been protected and to get an assessment. Then he’d slipped on elasticized shoe covers, tugged on latex gloves and examined the body of each victim before members of the FBI’s Evidence Response Team put on their coveralls and began processing the scene.

Other agents, supported by local investigators, were conducting separate interviews of travelers, locals, employees—everyone who was here when the crime happened. Outside, they took note of every plate and vehicle in the lot and they were checking security cameras. An enormous amount of work lay ahead. But as things stood, Lisa Palmer was the most valuable part of Morrow’s investigation.

Now, as he stepped into the center’s office and looked at her for the first time, sitting there in the manager’s leather chair, he asked himself if he could help this widowed supermarket cashier from Queens to lead him to the killers responsible for this bloodbath.

“Lisa…” Morrow shot a glance to the other agents in the room, along with Rowan, the uniform from Ramapo P.D. “I’m Special Agent Frank Morrow, FBI. I’m the case agent. I’ve read your information and—”

“Did you find them?”

“Not yet.”

“You have to find them!”

“We’re doing all we can. Odds are they’ve left the area. We don’t think they’d have any interest in having any contact with the victims again.”

“You don’t know that! I saw what those monsters did!” Anguish webbed across her face. “Are my kids okay? They took our cell phones! What if they get my home address and go after my kids?”

“Take it easy, Lisa. We located the bag with the cell phones,” Morrow said. “The suspects tossed it in a ditch near the lot and set it on fire. We believe they took them to buy time. What remains of the phones is evidence.”

“But nobody will let me call my kids. Are my kids okay?”

“They’re okay. We’ve taken care of that.”

“How?”

Morrow consulted his notes.

“You told us you left them with your friend, Rita Camino.”

“Rita, yes.”

“We’ve requested the NYPD send an unmarked plainclothes unit to get Rita, Ethan and Taylor. We’re making arrangements for you to see them. For now, it’s vital that we keep things confidential. Okay?”

Lisa’s fingertips caressed two small photos on the desk. Her children, Morrow figured, pegging the pictures as the wallet-size format from the type portrait studios offer at malls.

“How long before I can see them?”

“We’re working on that.” Morrow nodded to two other agents in the office who’d finished setting up a small video camera, then said, “I’m sorry for what you’ve been through and I know you’ve already given us your account, but as the case agent, I need you to talk to me and we need to record it. Okay?”

She continued looking at her children and Morrow asked if the paramedics had given her a sedative.

She shook her head; so did the Ramapo officer.

Good, Morrow thought. A sedated witness could be a challenge.

“I know this is difficult,” Morrow said, “but I need you to give me every detail of everything that happened while it’s fresh. Can you do that?”

Lisa’s breathing quickened. Her gaze lifted to the big windows and the center’s parking lot as if the murders were replayed out there.

“It was horrible.”

For nearly half an hour, Lisa took Morrow through it all, telling him all she could remember from the lobby, then inside. One of the gunmen sounded American, another sounded foreign, European, maybe. Their movements suggested those of men in their late twenties, early thirties, though Lisa couldn’t say for sure.

They wore motorcycle helmets with dark shields that hid their faces. They had full-body suits that motorcycle racers wear. They were wearing gloves. As for weapons, all Lisa saw were handguns.

“Do you recall seeing any distinguishing marks?”

Recognition rose in her mind then vanished.

Distinguishing marks?

Awareness rose again before dissipating. Lisa couldn’t remember. She shook her head.

“Are you sure?” Morrow asked.

Lisa blinked hard.

But something was there. Why can’t I remember?

Because it’s my fault.

Morrow pressed for other details. How were Lisa and the agent positioned? Show us the angle, show us the distance. Show us where on this floor plan. Where were the suspects? What were they saying?

“I know this is awful,” Morrow said, “but it might help if you reenacted where the killer positioned the gun before he pulled the trigger.

Before he pulled the trigger.

If she hadn’t dropped the gun, the agent might still be alive. Her guilt mounting, Lisa recounted how the agent had identified himself, directed her to get his gun, how she’d dropped it, how the gunman rushed to them.

She then lowered her head flat on the desk, atop the photos of her children, and positioned her fingers like a gun. With her trembling forefinger as the barrel, she pressed it to the side of her head.

“He never pleaded for his life like I did. He tried to help us.”

Lisa sobbed.

The Ramapo officer comforted her.

Morrow gave it a moment and looked to the window; that’s when he thought he saw someone at the edge of the lot. The press? As a precaution, he nodded for an agent to close the blinds.

Morrow returned his attention to Lisa, who was calmer. He had finished interviewing her for now and closed his clipboard.

“Thank you, Lisa.” Morrow gave her his card. “Call me at any time if you remember anything more at all. I don’t want to put you through this too many more times, but we’ll talk again soon. Matt Bosh is here and he’s going to help you now.”

A second man, who had quietly entered the office, took Morrow’s cue.

“Lisa, Matt Bosh. I’m with the FBI’s Office for Victim Assistance. We’re here to help you. First thing we want to do is get you into town to be with Ethan and Taylor, to make sure you feel safe and comfortable.”

Bosh had white hair and a kind face.

Lisa nodded her appreciation.

She found a measure of composure and searched her bag for more tissue, suddenly remembering the magazine and comic book she’d bought for Ethan and Taylor; how items had spilled from her bag during the heist.

How they were lost.

Like so many things in my life.

Overwhelmed by a terrible wave of sadness, she called out to Morrow before he left the room. He stopped and turned, hopeful she’d recalled an important detail.

“Did you know him? The agent?”

“No.”

“Did you know anything about him?”

“He was married. His wife is pregnant with their first child.”

“Can you tell me his name?”

“Gregory. Gregory Scott Dutton.”

Lisa turned back to the desk, stared at the pictures of her own children and tenderly collected them. Consumed with guilt because she was alive, she broke into tears again.

Watching her, Morrow grappled with his rising fury.

He didn’t know if it was for the cold-blooded executions of these four people, or for his own death sentence. It didn’t matter, he reasoned, heading for the door.

He took up his communion with the dead as if it were a shield and whatever anger he had, he kept caged. Glancing at the ID photos of the three guards and the young agent, Morrow made his way back to the killing zone, accepting that he was at war.

7

Ramapo, Metropolitan New York City

Time to roll the dice.

Gannon was at the tape, too far away to identify the woman in the office who was demonstrating a shooting to investigators.

Morrow, the FBI case agent, had to be among the small group gathered around the desk. Gannon needed to talk to him, but didn’t know how much longer he’d be alone here. In the office, he saw someone looking in his direction. Then the blinds closed.

Damn.

He had to do something. A long moment passed.

Gannon whistled through his teeth at a detective who was standing in the parking lot near the office, reading notes. The man approached.

“What’s the problem?”

“I believe Special Agent Morrow is inside. It’s important I speak with him, briefly.” Gannon gave him his card.

“Nobody’s giving any interviews.”

“Our stories go to every newsroom in the country and around the world. We can get information out fast. If you want to catch the bad guys, it might help you to talk to us.”

Considering Gannon’s point, the detective reassessed Gannon’s card, looked back at the office, told him to wait then walked to the building. Gannon saw him at the door, talking to two men also wearing the standard FBI uniform of conservative jackets, white shirts and ties. One of them looked at Gannon, then his watch.

Then the two new guys started toward him.

This was his shot.

“What is it?” The first fed asked.

“You’re Agent Morrow?”

“Right, who are you?”

“Jack Gannon, WPA. I understand you’re the case agent?”

“Yeah, what’s so important?”

“Can you confirm for the WPA that one of the four homicide victims is an FBI agent? And that it’s believed he was going for his weapon when he was killed?”

Morrow’s icy expression revealed nothing.

Gannon expected his questions to sting because they betrayed a leak. But that was not his concern. Leaks, tips, informants and anonymous sources were oxygen for reporters, and for cops like Morrow. The agent was about six feet, maybe taller, with a medium build. His chiseled, impassive face gave off the vibe of a man not to be messed with as he eyed Gannon.

But Gannon was no rookie, having experienced ordeals like a horrific interrogation by secret police in Morocco and being taken hostage by drug gangs in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. He was raised in a blue-collar section of Buffalo, New York. His old man was a machine operator in a rope factory and had a handshake that could crush bones.

Gannon could stand his ground with anybody.

“Is any part of my information wrong, Agent Morrow?”

“No comment.”

“Do you have any key witnesses?”

“No comment.”

“But you’re not denying WPA’s information?”

“I don’t have time for games with you.”

The second agent stepped closer to Gannon. “There will be a press briefing at the flags. We advise you to go there now.”

A tense moment passed between them before Morrow and the agent walked off.

So did Gannon, his determination hardening with each step.

Twenty minutes later he was at the flagpoles.

Things had changed here since he’d ventured off alone to prospect for information. More than one hundred members of the Greater New York City news media had claimed a patch of space under the flags.

Any of these people could have the jump on me, Gannon thought, tapping his notebook against his leg while observing the rituals of a news conference.

The camera operator called for batteries, cables and switches from news and satellite trucks. Information concerning birds, dishes, coordinates and feeds was exchanged over harried calls that were patched to directors, booths and networks. TV reporters primped and preened hair and teeth, checked earpieces and handheld mikes.

Gannon saw Carrie Carter, with WRCX Radio 5 News, talking with a reporter from the New York Daily News. Then he saw Dixon finish a phone call and adjust his camera.

“Jack. Sorry, I didn’t catch up to you. The desk wanted me to stay here. You find anything?”

“Only possibilities. What about you?”

“They moved my stuff. Great pickup. The desk says we beat AP and Reuters with some of the big ones already. FOX, CNN, USA Today, the Washington Post, L.A. Times, Times of London, Le Monde in Paris, Bild in Germany and the Sydney Morning Herald have posted them already.”

A sheet of paper appeared in front of Gannon, held by a cop distributing a short summary of facts on the crime. Gannon took it, read it over. Nothing here he didn’t know. His phone rang.

“It’s Lisker. Update me.”

“They’re about to start a news conference.”

“What do you have?”

Glancing around, he lowered his voice to protect his information. “I got an account of what happened from a source close to the investigation, but it’s going to take more work to flesh it out.”

“What about suspects?”

“Nothing so far. Nothing they’re talking about.”

“They have any leads? What’re they saying?”

“Not much.”

“Well, what else you got?”

“That’s it for now.”

“That’s it? We’re going to need more to stay out front on this. We’ve sent people up to report on the manhunt.”

“I have to go.”

Several sober-faced men in suits and uniforms emerged at the microphones. The one who identified himself as FBI Special Agent Tim Weller then made introductions of the police people flanking him from Rockland County, Ramapo P.D. and the New York State Police.

In the seconds Weller took to prepare, it struck Gannon, as it often did covering major crimes, how this part of the process was a macabre juxtaposition. Here they were about to joust over information on a multiple homicide, while not far off, the bodies of the victims still lay under tarps in pools of blood.

And somewhere out there notifications would soon be made; somewhere out there wives, mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers would be told the worst thing a human being could ever hear. Gannon knew the devastation, knew how the ground under your feet vanishes, how your world changes forever.

A memory shot through him.

The state trooper standing at his apartment door in Buffalo, holding his hat in his hand. He has shining brown eyes. A mix of cologne and unease as he clears his throat and confirms. “Jack Gannon?” Rotating the hat in his hand, saying, “I’m so sorry to have to tell you that your mother and father have been in an accident. A very bad accident. I’m so sorry.”

Gannon shifted his concentration to the podium where Weller looked into the cameras and unfolded a sheet of paper.

“Let’s get started.” He read directly from the handout, offering little more than a bare-bones summary of the case: Police were searching for four armed-and-dangerous suspects wanted in connection with four homicides during the robbery of an American Centurion armored car while the crew was replenishing ATMs at Freedom Freeway Service Center at Ramapo. Three of the victims were armored car guards, the fourth a resident of Connecticut. At this time, their names are being withheld until tomorrow after their next of kin have been notified.

“We’ll take a few questions now,” Weller said, igniting a deluge.

“Is this in any way connected to terrorists?”

“Nothing’s been ruled out at this time.”

“How much cash was stolen?”

“That’s undetermined at this time.”

“Was anyone taken hostage when they fled?”

“We don’t believe so. Nothing indicates anyone taken against their will.”

“Can you estimate how many shots were fired?”

“We don’t have that information at this time.”

“Did the guards fire back?”

“It’s unclear at this point.”

“We heard the suspects fled on motorcycles, is that true?”

“That’s our understanding. We hope to have more information later.”

“There’s some indication the power failed prior to the heist. Is this an inside job? Is anyone else involved?”

“All part of the investigation.”

“Were security cameras working?”

“That’s under investigation.”

“We heard that maybe people outside took some pictures or video with cell phones?”

“We’re looking into that.”

“Have your searches on the thruway and in town yielded any leads?”

“Not yet.”

“Can you tell us about the fourth victim?”

“As we’ve said, we’ll have more information tomorrow.”

For nearly half an hour the reporters were unrelenting with their questions. Many were repeated, frustration mounting until Weller concluded matters. “The investigation is ongoing. More information will be released at a later date.”

Gannon sighed internally.

It looked as if his angle about the fourth victim being an FBI agent who’d died going for his gun remained his exclusive. Using his BlackBerry, Gannon typed an immediate update to the news desk at WPA headquarters with a note stating that he’d write a fuller feature once he got back. After he’d pressed the send button, he felt a tap on his shoulder.

“So this is it?” Katrina Kisko glowered at him. “This is what you couldn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t want to complicate things.”

“I just don’t get it, Jack. I am not your freakin’ enemy. Besides, when a story like this breaks, you seriously think the New York Signal isn’t going to know about it?” She shook her head. “You’re still pissed at me, that’s what this is all about.”

“Well, you kind of just flushed me away, but that’s fine.”

“I’m sorry. I suck at that sort of thing, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Can’t we be friends? Maybe work together on this? I’ll help you, you help me?”

Gannon smiled.

“I don’t think so. You’re forgetting, you’re my competition, Katrina.”

The warmth drained from her face.

“Fine with me, if that’s the way you want to play it. You want to go up against me, the New York Signal and our two million online followers? Well, bring it on.”

Katrina walked away.

That’s the way I want to play it, Gannon thought.

As he and Dixon headed back to his SUV, he stopped at the tape, his eyes adjusting to the distance, and watched the crime scene technicians working around the victims.

He gave it a moment, out of respect for the lives lost.

8

New York City

Killers At Large After Armored Car Heist…

The headlines on the I-87 truck stop murders blazed along the news zipper that flowed around the old New York Times Building.

Updates also streaked across the news ribbons on neighboring buildings, intensifying the jumbotronic neon glory that was Times Square. But the full story would be forged about a dozen blocks northwest in the headquarters of the World Press Alliance.

After a hard drive from Ramapo into Midtown, the brakes squeaked on Angelo Dixon’s SUV when he stopped in front of the WPA Building. Gannon got out, hustled through the lobby, swiped his ID badge at the security turnstile and stepped into the elevator.

The afternoon was fading and time was hammering against him.

While the elevator floor numbers flashed, he concentrated on what he had, what he had to confirm and how he would structure his story.

The doors opened on the sixteenth floor.

Gannon passed through news reception with a familiar rise of pride as he swept by the wall showcasing some of the most stunning images taken by WPA photographers over the last century. Many were Pulitzer and international prize winners.

The news operation took up much of the floor. Executive offices lined the north and south walls. The floor-to-ceiling glass walls on the east offered the Empire State Building, Madison Square Garden and Penn Station. Looking west, Gannon saw the Hudson and New Jersey.

It was a far cry from where he’d started at the Buffalo Sentinel.

The WPA’s newsroom was oversupplied with large flat-screen monitors tuned to 24/7 news networks around the world. They were mounted to the ceiling and overlooked the vast grid of low-walled cubicles where reporters and editors answered phones, engaged in interviews, huddled in quick brainstorming sessions or typed at their keyboards.

Gannon glimpsed a report on one of the TV monitors concerning the heist then glanced at Lisker’s office. He was nowhere in sight. Good, don’t need him breathing over my shoulder, he thought, settling in at his desk.

Logging on to his computer, Gannon suddenly detected the telltale smell of Armani cologne. Lisker had emerged at Gannon’s desk, sleeves of his blue Italian dress shirt rolled crisply over his tanned forearms. His handmade Gucci tie was loosened.

“What do you have that’s exclusive, Gannon?”

“The fourth victim was an FBI agent. He was killed going for his gun.”

“What?” Lisker’s eyes narrowed. “Why wasn’t this in your earlier copy?”

“I still have to make some calls to confirm it and other information.”

“Why didn’t you make them on your cell and file from the road?”

“Some are sensitive. It’s better to do the work here.”

“Damn it, Gannon!” A few heads turned. “This is a news-gathering agency and news has a short lifespan, or did you forget that?”

“I need another hour.”

“I’ll give you thirty minutes and a warning— We broke this story. If we lose it now to AP, Reuters, the Times—to anybody—there will be consequences. Got that?”

Gannon did not look from his computer monitor. Katrina’s threat to kill him on this story flashed through his mind.

“Did you get that, Gannon? Getting beat is not an option!”

“I got it.”

“Good. You’re my lead reporter on this until I pull you off. Hal Ford will send you raw copy from the others we put on the story. Weave their work into yours and move your ass.”

Lisker left with Gannon’s stare drilling into the back of his head.

Lisker had never been on the street. He’d never covered a fire, or a homicide; never had to ask an inconsolable mother for a picture of her dead child. Word was that all he’d done for years was rewrite corporate press releases. Beyond the fact that Lisker was married to the daughter of a WPA board member, it was a mystery how he’d ascended to his post, because whatever he excelled at wasn’t journalism.

Gannon was a die-hard old-school, street-fighting reporter. Sure, he could file from a BlackBerry; text you copy. And he was fast. But the way he saw it, accuracy trumped speed. He was a relentless digger, hell-bent on getting things right. Being first to get it wrong does not enhance your brand. Gannon knew that firsthand; saw how sloppiness had destroyed the credibility of the Buffalo Sentinel.

But all that was behind him now.

He had to get to work.

As minutes ticked by, he shut out the activity around him and concentrated on writing about three guards killed in the heist and an FBI agent’s self-sacrificing attempt to stop it. First, he searched online to check what competitors had filed. Nothing new, so far. Then he reviewed the raw copy. His colleagues were exceptional; their work was clean, well-written. But it didn’t advance the story.

Juliet Thompson got the same statement the armored car company, American Centurion, had given everyone: “Our thoughts go to the families of the victims. The safety of our employees is of paramount concern. We are cooperating with the investigation and ask that anyone with information on the case contact local law enforcement.” The company hinted that a reward was forthcoming.

Ron Schwartz had some strong stuff from retired guards on previous heists and the dangers of the job. “You live every second knowing all eyes are on you and somebody somewhere is planning to knock you off.”

Veronica Keaton had local color, plenty of shock, outrage and fear. “This sort of crime doesn’t happen here.”

But the WPA had nothing from the inside.

We have to go deeper, Gannon thought. Four people were killed and four people got away with murder and a lot of cash. We need to take readers inside. We need to find who did this and why.

Gannon picked up his phone and called the private number for Eugene Bennett, a former professor who’d taught at the John Jay School of Criminal Justice before becoming a security consultant for the armored courier industry. Gannon knew Bennett from earlier stories and was certain that he would know what had happened in Ramapo.

No answer.

Gannon left a message then called another number. It rang in the Buffalo suburb of Lackawanna, where Adell Clark, an ex-FBI agent, ran a one-woman private detective agency out of her home in Parkview. She was a single parent with an eight-year-old daughter.

Several years back, when Clark was with the bureau, she had been shot while the FBI was staking out robbery suspects in Lewiston Heights. Gannon wrote about her struggle to recover from the wound to her leg. Since that time, they’d become friends, helping each other when they could. Adell should’ve heard something on the dead agent via the FBI grapevine, he thought.

Again, no answer.

Gannon cupped his hands over his face, checked the time, then began writing. He was five paragraphs into his story when his line rang.

“Jack Gannon, WPA.”

“Gene Bennett.”

“Thanks for getting back to me. I could use your help on the Ramapo thing, but I’m short on time.”

“The usual deal, you keep my name out, okay?”

“Absolutely, what do you know?”

“The victims are three guards and an FBI agent from New Jersey.”

“I got that, do you have names for the guards or the agent?”

“No.”

“What was the agent doing there? Was he part of an operation?”

“No. From what I’m told, he was there on his own time, buying gas. He tried to get at his weapon when one of the suspects executed him.”

“Executed?”

“A woman was on the floor beside him when he tried to get his gun. But the suspects saw him. They checked his ID, discovered he was an FBI agent, then shot him point-blank in the head.”

“They made an example of him?”

“They knowingly and purposely killed a federal agent. That’s an AFO—assault on a federal officer—which makes this a federal case.”

“And there’s an eyewitness? A female eyewitness?”

“That’s right. She’s crucial.”

“Who is she? Is she an agent? Where is she?”

“I don’t know. The bureau’s keeping that tight.”

“And the suspects? What about them and the take?”

“As you know, there were four. They got away clean on motorcycles, high-performance sport bikes, with an estimated six million in cash.”

“They got away with six million on motorcycles? That’s a lot of cash.”

“Most of it was vacuum-packed-compact and easy to transport in saddlebags.”

“I read a piece you wrote a while back in the FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, where you said that historically, some armored car heists have been used to support bigger crimes by organized groups with an ideology, or with the desire to finance larger operations. Is there any indication this is a terrorist act, or guys on some sort of cause or mission?”

“Well, no doubt it was highly organized. It’s too early to rule anything in or out. But this was a ruthless, chillingly cold hit.”

“That’s my lead quote from an industry insider.”

“Just keep my name out of it.”

Gannon checked the time, thanked Bennett and ended the call.

After he finished writing the story, he sent it to the desk and browsed the web again, monitoring the competition. So far, nobody had what the WPA had—the inside angle about an FBI agent executed while going for his gun in a six-million-dollar heist that left four people dead.

“Nice work, Jack,” Hal Ford said after proofing Gannon’s story and putting it out to some five thousand news outlets across the country and around the world that subscribed to the WPA wire.

Gannon went to the washroom and splashed water on his face. He was the lead on the heist murders until Lisker pulled him off. That meant he’d have to set aside anything else he was working on. He stared at himself in the mirror, kneading the tension in his neck.

I’m missing something.

It was near dusk when he collected his things in his bag and headed home for the day. Sirens echoed through the city as he walked east, concern gnawing in the pit of his stomach.

I don’t know what it is, but I’m missing something on this story.

9

New York City

The Wyoming Diner was a classic eatery wrapped in battered chrome and blue trim. It was two blocks east of Madison Square Garden.

Gannon stopped off there to wait out the rush at Penn Station. A gum-snapping waitress—“What’ll it be, hon?”—took his order: a club sandwich and large white milk.

While waiting, he used his BlackBerry to check his competition, trolling for anything breaking on the heist. Not much, so far. Good. His food arrived. So did an email from Lisker, in his typical jabbing style:

Strong pick-up on our exclusive. We’re leading. Need new angle tomorrow.

Gannon chewed on his situation but failed to hit on a new angle. It’d been a long day and he was wiped out. After eating, he paid the bill, then went to a used-book store near Penn to think. It always stirred his imagination and his intent to write a crime novel one day, but the idea dissipated when his BlackBerry vibrated with an alert.

Reuters had just moved a story confirming 6.3 million dollars was taken in the heist and that American Centurion would offer a substantial reward for information leading to the arrest of the killers.

Okay, all they did was match us on the money angle. We’re still ahead.

But the pressure to stay ahead was mounting. He had to find a new angle. For now, he needed to get home, to shower, get some sleep and come at it fresh in the morning.

The crush at Penn Station had barely subsided when he threaded his way through the vast low-ceilinged warren under Madison Square Garden. He scored a seat on an uptown train. Most of the WPA’s married staff lived in New Jersey or Long Island, where real estate was affordable. He lived in the mid-100s and some days it could be a long ride.

For Gannon, New York was an adrenaline-driven power-drive through heaven and hell. Amid its majesty, there were the crowds, the traffic, the eternal sirens; and an array of smells like roasted nuts, grilled bratwurst, perfume, body odor, flowers and horse piss where the carriages lined up at Central Park between Sixth and Fifth Avenues.

He loved the way girls checked their hair in the reflection of subway windows; the way New Yorkers talked, like the time on Seventh Avenue he heard one woman tell another, “I’d rather gouge out my eyes with a curling iron than see that walking slime again.” Or, the time he stopped to check that a man facedown on the sidewalk on Thirty-second Street was alive.

He was. Still, Gannon alerted a cop.

Yeah, Manhattan was a world away from Buffalo.

As his train grated and swayed, subway platforms blew by him like the moments of his life. He’d grown up in a tough neighborhood of proud blue-collar families who lived in small, flag-on-the-porch homes built after the Second World War. People there were die-hards who believed the Bills would win the Super Bowl and the Sabres would win the Stanley Cup.

He had a sister, Cora, older by five years. Mom was a waitress. Dad worked in a factory that made rope and would come home with calloused hands. Gannon remembered how the winter winds would tumble off Lake Erie and rattle his windows as he fantasized about being a writer. Cora nurtured that dream, taking him to the library. “You have to read what I read in high school if you’re going to be a writer.” Cora got him Robert Louis Stevenson, Hemingway, Twain; urged their parents to buy him a secondhand computer and encouraged him to write.

Jack and Cora were close, but eventually she grew apart from them all. Then she started taking drugs. So many nights were filled with screaming, slamming doors, silence and tears. She was seventeen when she ran away with an older addict.

Heartbroken, Gannon’s mom and dad hired private detectives, flew to cities when they had tips. They never found her. It was futile and it broke his heart. He ached for her to come home. Then his anguish turned to anger for what she’d done.

Years went by. Cora was out of their lives.

His parents never saw her again. They never stopped searching for her.

After Cora left, he’d worked in Buffalo factories to put himself through college because his parents had spent nearly all they had looking for her.

All the while, he yearned to become a reporter and escape Buffalo for New York City and a job with a big news outlet. After college, he worked at small weeklies before landing a job with the Buffalo Sentinel.

The Sentinel would be his way out, he figured.

Then, while dispatched to a mall shooting in Ohio, he’d met a reporter with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Daphne Newsome. They started dating. She was a free spirit. Her first name was Lisa, but she used her middle name, Daphne. She wanted him to move to Cleveland and work at the Plain Dealer. She wanted to have kids and settle down.

He didn’t.

That ended it.

He threw all he had into his reporting and broke a major story. A charter jet en route to Moscow from Chicago plunged into Lake Erie off Buffalo’s shoreline, killing two hundred people. The world press speculated that the cause was terrorism. But Gannon tracked down the pilot’s brother and convinced him to share the pilot’s last letter, which revealed his plan to commit suicide by crashing his jet because his wife had left him for another woman.

The story was picked up around the world.

It led to Gannon’s Pulitzer nomination. He didn’t win, but what he got were job offers with big news outlets in New York City.

But as fast as his dream came true, it died.

A few days after the offers came, a construction worker, who’d spent the afternoon in a bar, slammed his pickup truck into Gannon’s parents’ car, killing them both. He’d never forget that New York state trooper, standing at his apartment door, hat in his hand, then watching two caskets descend into the ground. After his parents’ deaths, he was in no shape to do anything and declined the job offers. Months later, things had changed in New York.

The offers had dried up.

Gannon remained at the Sentinel until he was fired in a scandal over his refusal to give up a source on a story that linked a decorated detective to two women. One had been murdered—the other was missing.

No one believed in the story but Gannon. Everyone had rejected him, except Melody Lyon, the legendary editor at the World Press Alliance. She’d been watching him since his Pulitzer nomination and sensed something about his news instincts.

She hired him to work at the WPA in New York.

In the end, Gannon was vindicated.

Since he’d joined the WPA, he’d faced many ups and downs. But there were bright spots, like the recent one with his estranged sister. The circumstances were frightening, but he’d reunited with Cora, who had a daughter named Tilly. They lived in Arizona.

He smiled each time he reminded himself that he was an uncle now.

On the downside, Dolf Lisker was dragging the World Press Alliance through troubling upheaval. Like everyone, Gannon agreed that the newswires had to adapt to the struggling newspaper industry by strengthening content, particularly online content. Hell, the wire was the forerunner of the internet—so most people got the concept.

What they didn’t get was Dolf Lisker.

Unlike Melody Lyon, Lisker was a corporate sycophant rather than a journalistic champion. His so-called “personnel efficiency model” was rumored to be looming; and his daily edicts with mantras like “brand thrust” and “maximizing news value”—whatever the hell they meant—all worked to create a climate of fear for most WPA staffers.

But not for Gannon.

Being a reporter was in his DNA and he’d survived far worse than the ranting of a nonjournalist like Dolf Lisker. Pure journalism, the kind Gannon had devoted his life to, would endure long after the Liskers of the world had turned to dust.

And what about Katrina Kisko?

He’d never met anyone like her, a Brooklyn girl and a dynamite crime reporter who’d broken several major stories for the Signal. She had the killer instinct needed to survive the city’s fierce news wars.

Gannon loved the way her hair curtained over her eyes when she wrote, the way she clamped her pen in her teeth as she typed, faster than anyone he’d known. There was an energy about her; an intensity that pulled him to her like a moth to a flame.

He’d fallen in love with her.

Katrina was thirty and when she’d started hinting about her biological clock and the possibility of living together, Gannon was open to the idea. For the first time, he started to think about settling down, thinking about kids, thinking about the long run.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Katrina was the woman for him, until he reached the point where he was bursting to tell her.

He’d taken her to their favorite Italian restaurant in Lower Manhattan.

They’d both had chaotic days and he was sure his news would sweep her off her feet. After they’d ordered, he’d reached subtly into his jacket pocket and felt the tiny box.

“I’ve been giving a lot of thought about us, the future,” he said. His thumb traced over the box in his pocket as the candlelight lit her eyes.

“So have I, Jack. I’ve been thinking about our moving in together.”

“Yes.” He squeezed the box.

Katrina’s BlackBerry vibrated.

“Sorry, I have to get this.” Reading the message, she chuckled at a private joke she didn’t share. Then she texted a swift response, took a sip of her wine and a deep breath.

“Jack,” she started, “I don’t think it’s such a good idea.”

“What’s not a good idea?”

“Our living together.”

“What?”

“It’ll just complicate things with our work. It would be too complicated for me.”

“Complicate how? What is this?”

“I think we need a break.” Tears filled her eyes. “This is hard. I’m so sorry, Jack.”

The blow nearly winded him. He released the box in his pocket, tossed several twenties on the table and walked out. He kept walking that night until he found himself on the Brooklyn Bridge, staring at Manhattan. He contemplated the river for the longest time before he caught a cab back to his empty apartment.

The subway’s automated public address called: 157th Street.

Gannon’s stop.

His neighborhood was at the southern edge of Washington Heights, in the Sugar Hill district of Hamilton Heights. He liked it here. People were fiercely proud of the community and watched out for each other. On his way home, he stopped at the corner grocery for maple ice cream.

He did his best thinking with ice cream.

His building was a seven-story walk-up on 151st Street where he rented a fifth-floor one-bedroom for thirteen hundred dollars a month. It was clean, quiet, with oak floors, crown molding, milk-white walls and a whole lot of nothing else.

Sure, he had a few things: a used black leather sofa, a coffee table, a TV, a plain table and his personal laptop. Next to it, the New York Times, News, Post, Newsday, USA TODAY and the Wall Street Journal stood in neat towers, like a newsprint shrine to his faith in the truth.

He flopped onto his sofa and spooned ice cream from the carton. Catching night breezes, soft laughter and the echo of distant sirens that floated through the window he’d opened, he assessed his day and his life.

Seeing Katrina had made him think of the little box with the ring he’d bought for her at Tiffany’s. It was still in his nightstand. He didn’t have the stomach to go back for a refund. Maybe because he hoped against all reason that Katrina would change her mind. That was before he heard she’d started dating a DEA agent a week after dumping him.

He should’ve tossed the ring off the Brooklyn Bridge.

A sudden wave of loneliness rolled over him.

Why?

He’d been a loner all his life. Was he feeling this way because he’d seen Katrina? Maybe it was his sister, Cora. Despite all the pain she’d endured, she’d found joy with her daughter, Tilly. It had forced him to take stock of himself.

I’m thirty-five. Do I want to spend the rest of my life alone?

Maybe he hadn’t met the right woman yet.

Taking a hot shower, he considered the women he’d known. There was Sarah Kirby, the human-rights worker he’d met in Rio de Janeiro. There was Emma Lane, who lived out west. Then Isabel Luna, the journalist he’d met in Mexico, although she was married. Gannon could never forget her, or the others.

All of them had blazed through his life like comets.

As he brushed his teeth, his focus shifted to his story.

Four men died today.

He thought of the families of the guards, the agent. Man, his heart went out to them. He knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of that kind of news, when the ground beneath you vanishes and you plummet into a chasm of darkness.

Who did this?

Gannon fell into his bed, exhausted, set his alarm, then reached for his BlackBerry to check his competition again. Nothing new.

He had to find a fresh angle on the story.

Worlds had collided at the Freedom Freeway Service Center in Ramapo. For three guards just doing their job and an FBI agent.

I’m missing something.

Sleep was gaining on Gannon as he reread his work.

The witness.

She was beside the agent when he was murdered.

Who was she?

How did she come to be there? What had she been doing in her life up to that point? He had to find her. If he could put readers in her place, take them through that moment, well, that would be one hell of a story.

10

New York City

Two FBI agents escorted Lisa Palmer through a side entrance of the Westover Suites Hotel on West Twenty-ninth Street.

The men said little during the drive from Ramapo to Midtown and used a service elevator to take her to a twenty-fifth-floor suite of two large adjoining rooms.

To stem the adrenaline still rippling through her, Lisa held her bag tight and scanned the layout. Each room had two doubles and a single bed. There was a hint of Chanel as three women emerged to greet her.

“Hello, Lisa, I’m Agent Vicky Chan.” The first woman extended her hand. She was wearing jeans and a blazer over a T-shirt.

“This is Agent Eve Watson,” Chan said. The second woman, also in jeans, wore a New York Yankees sweatshirt. She had a firm handshake.

Chan indicated the third woman, wearing bifocals and a conservative skirt suit. “This is Dr. Helen Sullivan.”

Sullivan sandwiched Lisa’s hand in both of hers with warm concern. “Please call me Helen. I’m a psychiatrist with the FBI’s Office for Victim Assistance. I’m here to help.”

Lisa glanced around again, concluding that the bags in the other room belonged to the women. This looked like a sleepover with strangers. All the curtains were drawn. Outside, a passing siren underscored how Lisa’s world had been turned upside down.

Chan touched her shoulder.

“We want you to feel safe and comfortable while you help us with the investigation,” Chan said. “No one knows you’re here. This location has not been disclosed. With the exception of Helen, we’re all armed. The guys—” Chan cued the men to leave “—will be in the rooms across the hall.”

“Where are Ethan and Taylor?”

“NYPD detectives are bringing them now with your friend Rita Camino.”

“My kids must be scared. I haven’t spoken to them yet. I—I—I feel like—damn it—” Lisa’s heart raced.

“They’ll be here soon,” Chan said.

“Lisa.” Sullivan stepped closer. “After an event like this, it’s normal to go through a range of emotions.”

Lisa shot her palm at Sullivan.

“With all due respect, Helen, don’t tell me about my feelings, please. I went through hell when I lost my husband.”

“Yes, I know. Matt Bosh briefed me on the phone. But Lisa, you’re enduring a lot of trauma.”

A tense moment passed as Lisa eyed Sullivan then Chan.

“Did the FBI find the monsters who did this?”

“We’re still searching.”

“Because I shouldn’t be here right now,” Lisa said. “I shouldn’t be here talking to you, waiting to see my kids. That bastard put a gun to my head! He wanted to kill me, too. And if that had happened, I would never see my kids again!”

Lisa dropped her bag and covered her face with her hands.

“Where are they? Oh, dear Jesus!”

The women moved to console her.

“It’s okay,” Sullivan soothed her. “It’s okay. Your fear, guilt and rage—anything you’re feeling—are natural reactions to this terrible event, which has hijacked whatever control you’ve had of your life.”

Lisa cried softly and Sullivan passed her tissues.

“You and your children have already been victimized by your husband’s death. This kind of trauma reopens the wound. Healing will take its own time. Everyone reacts differently. We know that Ethan and Taylor are your chief concern,” Sullivan continued. “Don’t underestimate their ability to cope. Children are perceptive. You should tell them, give them an idea you experienced something troubling. They may not need to know every detail, but they need to understand what happened to you. They need to have enough information so that they can help you heal.”

Lisa nodded, touching the tissue to her eyes until she found a measure of composure.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It all happened so fast. I just stopped at a truck stop. I was just trying to get home.” She ran her hands through her hair. “I have to fix myself up before the kids get here.”

Lisa went to the bathroom where she switched on the light and stood before the mirror, still trembling. Helen was right. What happened today had torn open her wound, pulling her back over time to that night when she was…

…keeping the meat loaf and mashed potatoes warm while worrying. Bobby’s so late. Why hasn’t he called? It’s not like him. He always calls. Why doesn’t he answer his phone? Staring at the clock over the fridge, the fridge door is feathered with Ethan’s and Taylor’s art and the picture she loved so much of all of them at the cabin by the lake.

Bobby’s smiling right at her, just smiling, and the kitchen phone is ringing…Bobby? No. A stranger’s voice asks: Is this Lisa Palmer? This better not be a telemarketer. Then the voice adds: the spouse of Robert Anthony Palmer?

The air freezes.

The “spouse” of Robert Anthony Palmer?

The official tone, the masked emotion stops Lisa’s world because she somehow knows, the voice explains…it’s the hospital…Bobby’s been rushed to the intensive care unit…come right away…

From that point on, everything moved in hazy slow motion as if she’d been cast into a black hole. The aftermath of Bobby’s death was surreal. People said things, but she didn’t hear because she was consumed with pain.

She and the kids underwent counseling.

Still, it was so hard.

The first Christmas, birthdays, their anniversary were agony. Then she would see people she hadn’t seen in years, who didn’t know Bobby was dead, and they’d say, “How’s Bobby?” She’d tell them and watch their faces and it got so she’d just avoid people. Then there were the people who did know and they’d avoid her at the mall or someplace, as if her grief were contagious.

The life Lisa had was over.

But she had to keep going for the kids. Each morning for the last two years, she confronted mountains of destruction, hopelessness and loneliness, taking them on one step at a time; as months then years passed she’d come to believe that she’d put the worst of it behind her.

Until today.

The pop-crack of the gunfire, those poor guards, the chaos, the money bags splitting near her, Lisa dropping to the floor, her purse spilling the things she’d bought for the kids, the robber grabbing the money, the agent looking at her, his gun, she dropped his gun, the killer was on them, she looked into the agent’s eyes, a good kind face—I love you, Jennifer—the muzzle flash, the deafening explosion of blood splattering his brain matter on her. The killer comes for her, his gun boring into her head…bringing it all back…

Bobby.

We’ve already been through too much. I don’t think I can bear this.

A vague prickling crept along the back of her neck as she looked at her shirt, discovering flecks of blood—the agent’s blood.

Lisa leaned back against the bathroom door and slid to the floor, burying her face in her hands. In the stillness she begged God for her life back, pleading until a soft knock sounded at the door.

It was Vicky Chan.

“Lisa, someone’s here for you.”

“One moment.”

Lisa collected herself, reached into her bag, changed her shirt, washed her face, brushed her hair, then opened the door to the sun. Ethan and Taylor were standing before her. She dropped to her knees and took them into her arms.

“Oh, thank God! My angels!”

After hugging and kissing them, she drew back to stare at her children. At Taylor, her turned-up nose and freckles. At Ethan, calm and too mature for ten, and looking more like Bobby every day.

“I’m so happy to see you!”

“I’m happy to see you, Mommy.” Taylor locked her arms around Lisa’s neck.

“Hi, Mom. You’re not hurt or anything?” Ethan asked, taking inventory.

“No, I’m not hurt.”

Again, Lisa hugged them to her while shooting a glance over their shoulders and mouthing a big Thank you to her friend Rita.

Rita Camino was a self-described “divorced-no-kids-fun-loving-Jets-fan.” She was a natural blonde in her thirties from Forest Lawn, Queens. For the last ten years, she’d been a senior cashier at the supermarket where Lisa worked. Rita was a rock-solid friend to Lisa, practically an aunt to the kids.

“We told them that you were fine but that there was a complicated, important family matter going on,” Rita said.

“Ethan and I thought you were in big trouble,” Taylor said.

“No, sweetheart, I’m not in trouble.”

“What happened?” Ethan asked.

Lisa first introduced the children to the other women, then, after a nod of encouragement from Dr. Sullivan, she explained.

“I stopped at a gas station and I saw some people do some bad things to other people.”

“What kind of bad things?” Ethan asked.

“I saw people get hurt. I saw bad guys hurt other people.”

“Like a fight?” Ethan asked.

“Yes, sort of like a very bad fight.”

“How bad were they hurt?”

Lisa glanced at Dr. Sullivan, who nodded.

“Honey, some people were killed.”

Lisa watched Taylor’s eyes widen and stroked her hair.

“It’s sad, I know, sweetie,” Lisa said.

“But—” Ethan looked around the room, processing the information “—you didn’t get hurt?”

The gun pressed to her head. They don’t need to know every detail, but they need to understand what happened.

“No, I didn’t get hurt, but because I was there I need to remember everything for the police. It’s important that I do it so they can find and arrest the bad guys. So our police friends fixed it so we can stay here with Vicky, Eve and Helen until we’re done. That’s why everybody has overnight bags. It’s like a sleepover.”

“How long will it be?” Taylor asked.

“A few days, then we’ll go home. Did you guys get a chance to eat?”

The children shook their heads.

“Some chips and soda on the drive in,” Rita said.

“Okay, how about we order pizza from room service?”

“And ice cream!” Taylor said.

“And ice cream,” Lisa agreed.

While they ate, Lisa caught up with them on their school, their friends, upcoming parties, wants—“it’s always something”—and the cabin.

“So it’s really sold now, Mom?” Ethan asked while fidgeting with his small folding pocketknife. Bobby had given it to him a month before his death and Ethan cherished it.

“I’m afraid so, sweetheart.”

“But we still get to go up one last time like you promised, right?” Ethan lowered his voice for privacy, knowing the FBI people were in the adjoining room. “We have to do the special thing for Dad.”

“Absolutely. We’ll go up once we get this stuff all sorted out. A promise is a promise.”

Ethan brightened, so did Taylor. Their smiles were balm to Lisa and they spent the rest of the evening watching an animated movie together. Snuggling with them was the best medicine. Lisa drew strength from them and resolved to get back on track, seize her life back. After the movie ended, she got them into bed, smothered them with kisses before closing the door behind her and joining the women in the other room where they were watching an all-news network.

“How are they doing?” Rita asked.

“Good. They’re strong.”

“And you?” Sullivan asked.

“Better.”

“You should know,” Rita said, “that a cute FBI agent drove your car to your house and locked it in your driveway. I have your keys.”

“Thanks.”

“I told Nick at the store that you had a family emergency and you’ll need some time. You should call him in the morning.”

“I will if I am allowed.” Lisa looked to Chan.

“Well, you’re not under arrest.” Chan smiled. “But Agent Morrow will be here in the morning. You can discuss it with him. As you know, he’s concerned about guarding the seal of the investigation.”

“Another thing,” Rita said. “I also told Mrs. MacKay, the kids’ principal, that an emergency came up, so you’d better call the school tomorrow, too, Lisa.”

The TV’s images flashed with a Breaking News update on Armored Car Heist Homicides.

“Here we go.” Watson had the remote control and increased the volume slightly as the newscaster read the information.

“And this just in on that I-87 armored car heist that left four people dead in Ramapo, north of New York. The World Press Alliance, citing unnamed sources, is reporting that one of the victims was an FBI agent who was shot ‘execution style’ while going for his weapon and that investigators have a key eyewitness. Again, the WPA is reporting…”

Chan and Watson exchanged looks of concern.

“Whoa! Morrow’s going to freak out,” Watson said.

“A leak was inevitable,” Chan said, “with so many jurisdictions involved and the New York and national media all over it.”

“So much for his ‘seal’ on the investigation,” Lisa said. “How would the WPA know about this?”

“Good reporters with good sources,” Watson said.

The report made Lisa uneasy and she withdrew into her thoughts. Watson changed the channel to one showing Casablanca, and the women watched Bogart and Bergman in silence until the anxiety in the room gradually subsided. When the movie ended, Lisa got ready for bed. Sullivan, mindful of Lisa’s anxiety, went to her bag.

“You’re under a tremendous amount of stress and may have trouble sleeping,” Dr. Sullivan said. “One of these pills will work fast and help you get the rest you need.”

“Thank you.”

They moved one of the single beds so Rita could sleep in the bigger room with Chan, Watson and Sullivan because Lisa wanted Rita to be near her and the kids the first night. Lisa also requested to have a room alone with her children. After taking the pill, she kept the bathroom door open so her room was awash in soft, soothing light.

After checking on Taylor and Ethan, she got into bed.

Did this really happen?

Her body was still quivering.

She struggled not to think.

Sleep came for her quickly just as…on the bed beside her, inches from her, the killer’s eyes burned with hate before she was face-to-face with the FBI agent.

Gregory.

Staring at her, he said, “I love you, Lisa,” before his face became Bobby’s face and his head exploded in a never-ending stream of blood. The pressure of a gun against her head increased.

She woke, gasping, sat upright and waited to catch her breath.

She got out of bed, kissed Ethan and Taylor, then went to the sofa chair next to the window. Pulling her knees under her chin, she looked out at Manhattan’s skyline.

Thank you, God, for letting me live.

Brushing the tears from her cheeks, she prayed.

The killers are out there. Please help the FBI catch them. Please. We need to put the pieces of our lives back together.

11

Thousand Islands—U.S. border with Canada

At that moment, some 350 miles north of where Lisa Palmer prayed, a fire raged in Ivan Felk.

Today’s operation succeeded, even against the surprise counterattack. The FBI agent had tried to be a hero, a mistake that he paid for with his life. He was a casualty of war, like the guards.

So be it. We’re all casualties of war.

Felk continued spooning cold baked beans from a tin can and watching the night from the cover of a tangle of brush on a small island in the St. Lawrence River. He considered the man beside him. Nate Unger, a country boy from La Grange, Texas, battle-weary and pathologically loyal to their mission, like all of Felk’s men.

Like the soldiers I lost four months ago.

It was a doomed covert mission in the disputed frontier between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It had failed because it was supposed to—his team had been sacrificed. Felk’s unit of professional soldiers had been hired by a global security firm contracted by coalition governments to carry out an illegal op.

No one acknowledged it.

Felk and his people were scapegoat soldiers; plausible deniability.

Before it was dismantled, the global security company was portrayed quietly through government-initiated rumors as “a group of dangerous rogues in a dangerous zone.” The government that had hired the firm through covert branches denied knowledge of any sanctioned action within the disputed frontier.

Such action would be illegal, a violation of U.N. convention.

It never made the news. Felk’s unit didn’t exist. Their mission never happened.

But Felk and the surviving members of his team knew the truth. Three of his men were killed. Six were captured and were being held hostage for a twelve-million-dollar ransom by insurgents in a labyrinthine region that was impenetrable. The deadline to pay was in one month, or the “spies” would be beheaded. Coalition governments refused to acknowledge the demand, or get involved in any way.

Felk refused to let his men die.

He gathered the surviving men of his team and set out on a desperate mission to secure the payment and bring his people home; an act of vengeance against the governments that had abandoned them.

This was their new war.

Everything was at stake.

They would lay waste to anything that got in their way.

“Here they come,” Unger said, handing Felk the nightscope.

It amplified the existing ambient light, capturing two brilliant green figures in a canoe, working their way across the river to their temporary camp on the island.

Rytter and Northcutt.

On time, just as they’d practiced. Felk went back to consulting the charts and testing his GPS unit, reconfirming their coordinates. Then he started on a second can of beans, finishing by the time the two others came ashore.

“Any problems?” Unger asked.

“None,” Northcutt said.

“You take care of everything with your vehicle?” Felk asked.

“It’s done,” Rytter said. “We’re hungry.”

“Eat. Suit up. Then we’ll move out.”

A fire would risk attention, so the men ate in darkness as water lapped against the island. There was no need to talk. Each man had experienced the horrors of war. Each man had killed other people, many other people. As a loon cried, each man withdrew into himself to process the death and destruction they’d left in their wake.

They were an elite group, possessing the highest IQs and most sophisticated training of any professional fighting group on earth.

Before becoming a private operator, Erik Rytter, a twenty-nine-year-old engineer’s son from Munich, was with the KSK—Kommando Spezialkräfte, a specialized German unit.

Ian Northcutt’s father was a physicist at Oxford. They’d become estranged when Ian left Oxford University at age twenty-seven, just shy of getting a Ph.D, to pursue a military career, ultimately becoming a member of the British Special Air Service, better known as the SAS.

Felk and Unger had been with the U.S. Army’s Special Forces before the CIA recruited them for its SOG, Special Ops Group. All of them had seen action in Iraq, Afghanistan and other hot spots around the globe before leaving government armies to become hired operators for private contractors, who in turn were hired by governments to help fight their wars.

They were highly skilled and highly paid to do the dirtiest jobs.

Now, all were committed to the rescue of their friends in an action they called Operation Retribution.

They’d researched and drilled until every move was committed to memory, like an intricate pass pattern. The irony of the targets, American Centurion and the Freedom Freeway Service Center, was not lost on them.

They’d rolled fast from Ramapo to where they were situated now: in Upstate New York’s Thousand Islands region, a group of islands and shoals scattered in the St. Lawrence River, dividing Canada and the United States.

After the heist, they’d split into pairs, traveling on back roads. They’d hidden the motorcycles in wooded areas, where they switched to vehicles stolen from long-term parking lots at Newark’s Liberty International Airport. They’d checked dates on dash-displayed parking tickets. The vehicles were hidden in isolated areas about a mile from their current location and would not likely be reported stolen for a week.

Felk reviewed their situation, recalling his research. He tapped his watch. The men prepared for the next stage by putting on wet suits.

New York state’s border with Canada stretches 428 miles. But between the twenty-six points of controlled entry, most of that border is “porous,” as an official for the New York Field Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration reported to Congress. The fact there are few natural, or man-made, barriers in the area to deter criminals was a key reason Felk chose this route for initial escape.

Felk and his men had a network of military friends everywhere, like-minded people who were always faithful. Their intelligence-gathering mission gave them the date and time that several million in unmarked U.S. cash was scheduled for delivery along 1-87 by American Centurion.

They had yet to count all the cash, but the amount looked substantial and put them in good shape for the next stage of the operation.

After zipping up their suits, they checked to ensure their small cargo packs were watertight before breaking camp, stepping into their canoes and heading into a chain of small islands in a northerly course.

The Thousand Islands, whose number is estimated at eighteen hundred large and small islands, are eroded Ice Age mountaintops. Part of a chain of metamorphic rock linking the Canadian Shield with the Adirondack Mountains. By Unger’s calculations, they still had a few miles to cover using a route that snaked along a necklace of small islands, many of them privately owned. In the distance, he saw the red beacons atop the spires of the bridges connecting the United States and Canada.

They traveled silently and unseen in the night, hugging islands wherever possible, ready at the first hint of trouble to vanish into a cove or inlet, or behind a jutting rock formation or trees that arched into the water. They heeded the approaching rumble of every motor, scrutinizing every vessel with their nightscopes, knowing they could easily encounter pleasure boaters, or an enemy.

The area was patrolled by the Ontario Provincial Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canadian and U.S. Coast Guards, the U.S. Border Patrol, New York State Police and New York State Park Police. Rounding an island dense with pine, Felk was satisfied that they’d come upon the invisible point in the river that was the border. But his relief was short-lived when he heard three soft knocks of Rytter’s paddle against the second canoe.

The alert for trouble.

On cue, the low distant rumble of a large inboard echoed around the island. Alarm rolled through Felk. The island nearest to them offered nothing but a rising wall of flat, wind-smoothed rock. The rumbling was getting closer. Nowhere to hide. Not a cove, inlet or tree. Nothing. The men paddled furiously to round the rock face, hoping some form of cover would present itself. Casting a backward glance, Felk saw the beam of a searchlight rake the surface.

Whatever was approaching was gaining.

Both canoes moved swiftly and silently, rounding the island until a good-size private dock reached out like a helping hand. With military precision the men guided their canoes to the dock. A large speedboat and two small boats were moored to it. Quickly, they tied their canoes to the dock, grabbed their packs and slipped into the water.

Keeping their eyes above the waterline, they hid behind the dock’s pilings. Felk manipulated the nightscope as a boat emerged. He cursed under his breath after glimpsing the word POLICE on the side. The boat’s powerful light swept across the dock and all the boats tied to it.

The engine stopped. The boat glided to the dock without a sound but for the gentle lapping of its wake.

“See.” A woman’s voice came from the boat. “He did it again.”

“Know what I think, Alice,” the man at the wheel of the police boat said. “I think you’re just looking for a reason to visit this guy again. I think you got a thing for him.”

“Bring me closer. He keeps forgetting to moor his boat properly. It drifts out into the shipping lanes. It’s not safe, Don. I’ll tie it down.”

The dock moaned as Alice hopped onto it.

From the water, Felk and the others watched through the planks as she moved strobelike above them in the light’s beam. Felk reached down to his calf until his hand found the handle for a ten-inch hunting knife. He would seize her ankle and bring her down into the water with him. He indicated for Unger to be ready and Unger gave a slight nod. Felk signaled for Rytter and Northcutt to pass under the police boat to take care of her partner.

They vanished in the black water.

Felk caught the patch for New York State Police as Alice crouched to secure the mooring line of the speedboat. He saw the butt of her pistol sticking from her holster.

“Okay, Don, done.”

“Sure you don’t want to go in, bat your eyes and tell him you done good, Alice?”

“Knock it off, wise guy. Hold on. What’s with these canoes? I don’t remember him having canoes.”

“Maybe he’s got company, Alice.”

“What the heck?” She walked along the dock, then halted directly above Felk. “Is there something down there? Don, bring the light over here.”

12

Thousand Islands / Somewhere in Ontario, Canada

Felk swallowed air and submerged.

Underwater, gliding along the bottom, he swam from the dock. Behind him he saw fingers of light spearing the dark water where he’d been. Using one of the moored boats for cover he surfaced without making a sound.

His hand tightened on his knife.

He could see the female trooper, crouched on the dock, working her flashlight, trying to determine what she’d seen.

“Alice, come on,” her partner called from the boat.

“I saw something down there.”

“Likely a fish.”

Felk heard a muted radio dispatch.

“We have to go, Alice.”

Suddenly the radio burst with a repeated police call for immediate assistance, near Alexandria Bay.

“Alice, we’ve got to move, now!”

The patrol boat’s motor grumbled to life and she leaped aboard.

After waiting several minutes for its wake to subside, Felk and the others climbed back into their canoes. They drove hard toward their destination, eventually coming to a large marsh and a welcoming symphony of croaking and chirping. The smell of fish and mud enveloped them as they set to work plunging knives into the canoes, weighting them down with rocks, sinking them and covering the area with cattails.

Once they’d moved to dry land, they changed into jeans, flannel shirts, woolen socks and hiking boots. They buried their wet suits and the things they no longer needed. Rytter clipped a digital police scanner to his belt, tuned it to frequencies for the Ontario Provincial Police and slipped on a headset. Northcutt monitored news reports on radio stations. Unger confirmed their location and their next destination point with his GPS unit.

“That way.” He pointed to a forest that bordered empty, rolling farmland. It looked like easygoing. “We’ve got a hike.”

As the group climbed a slope, Felk turned and looked back across the expanse of the river and the islands that straddled two nations. They’d fled the United States and entered Canada safely with millions in stolen cash strapped to their backs. This phase of the operation was behind them. Time to advance to the next.

Moving fast, the men soon entered a dense forest. It was the gateway to a rest stop along the Thousand Islands Parkway, a scenic two-lane highway meandering along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. Parked vehicles dotted the lot, an RV with Alberta plates, a Porsche from Quebec, a couple of sedans from Ontario.

There it is.

Felk spotted a white Grand Cherokee bearing an Ontario plate with the numeric sequence 787. Leading them to it, he went to the driver’s door. The window lowered to a man in his late twenties, alone behind the wheel.

“Waiting long, Dillon?” Felk said.

“Not long at all.”

“Good, let’s roll.”

“Outstanding work, sir.” The driver gave Felk a half smile, pressed a button and the Jeep’s rear liftgate opened. After setting their gear in the rear storage area, they got in. The Cherokee wheeled quietly from the rest stop and west along the parkway.

Felk was in the front passenger seat next to Dillon, who was in charge of support for the unit in Canada. This operation had been planned, drilled and reviewed with a range of contingencies. Felk took nothing for granted, but savored a moment of relief, exhaling as he looked at Dillon in the glow of the dash lights.

Lee Mitchell Dillon. Age: twenty-six. Born in Scarborough, a Toronto suburb. His father was a doctor and his Montreal-born mother was a nurse. Dillon was fluent in French, Spanish and English. He held a master’s degree in science from McGill University. He had seen combat in Afghanistan as a member of the Canadian Forces Joint Task Force 2, the JTF2, before he quit to work as a private operator with Felk.

The team was solid, not a weakness among them. Felk regretted that Sparks had refused to sign on. He was the only holdout. Could Sparks be trusted to keep the faith? Should we guarantee that he does? The troubling questions returned to gnaw at Felk until he shoved them aside to focus on the mission.

“News reports of the hit are being carried up here. It’s a big story,” Dillon said.

“We know,” Unger said. “How much farther?”

“About forty-five minutes, give or take.”

Traffic was nonexistent when they turned north on Highway 32, which cut across forests, farm fields and jagged rock exposures. When Highway 32 ended, they turned south on Highway 15, traveled another fifteen minutes beyond Seeley’s Bay toward the Dog Lake area. Dillon slowed to a near stop at an outcropping of house-size rock. The formation nearly concealed the mouth of a dirt road that twisted into a thick forest, disappearing in the darkness.

Private Property Keep Out, a hand-painted scrawl warned from a sign nailed to one of the trees. They bordered the entrance like sentries. Overhanging branches engulfed the road, as if to underscore the notice.

Lit only by the Cherokee’s high beams, Dillon proceeded along the narrow dirt ribbon, hugging small cliff edges.

“Some of the men behind Lincoln’s assassination fled to this region,” Dillon said as branches slapped at the doors and roof and gravel popcorned against the undercarriage.

The Cherokee arrived at a soft sandy path, curtained with tall shrubs. Then, through the bush, the headlights found a clearing and a cottage.

“It belongs to my buddy’s uncle.” Dillon killed the motor. “I told him I had some friends who wanted to fish. I’ve got full use for three weeks.”

It offered seclusion on three acres.

Felk was pleased.

After they hauled in their gear, Dillon showed them around. The cottage was built with cedar logs. The lake shimmered beyond large windows that framed a stone fireplace.

The main floor had an open living-dining area with a large flat-screen TV hooked to a satellite dish. The kitchen had a freezer, stove and a fridge Dillon had fully stocked. The sink had a pump to draw clean well water. There was a small hot-water reservoir. Upstairs, there was a private master bedroom and two large spacious bedroom areas with two extra-wide bunks in the loft area. There was no indoor plumbing. No toilet. No tub or shower. There was an outhouse at the rear. The lake was where people bathed, Dillon said before offering the men cold Canadian beer.

“Luxurious compared to some assignments,” Unger said.

“The Sheraton in Addis Ababa was comfy,” Northcutt added.

“Beats the hell out of Afghanistan,” Rytter said.

“Neighbors are rare in these parts,” Dillon said.

“We’ll cool off here for as long as we need before rolling on to the next stage.” Felk indicated the sports bags. “We need a tally on the take.”

The men opened all the bags containing the cash and other items from the heist. Dillon produced a money counter. As the men loaded cash in the machine, Felk took his gear upstairs to the master bedroom and stepped outside onto the upper balcony. He looked at the lake, tranquil under the starlight.

His attention shot back to the tribal regions of the disputed zone and he ran his hand over his stubbled face, knowing what was coming. The images were seared into his brain…

…the desecrated corpses of his men…corpses hanging from a bridge…dragged naked through a public square…pissed on, then dismembered…given to the dogs to finish off…the diseased three-legged mutt with a hand and forearm clenched in its jaws…

Three of Felk’s men were killed.

Five escaped with him.

The insurgents set their price for the lives of the six they’d captured: two million per man. Total: twelve million in U.S. cash. Whether the insurgents would actually make the cash-for-lives exchange was not a factor for Felk. He would secure the ransom and bring his men home.

He would not fail.

Felk returned to the bedroom and switched on his laptop, a state-of-the-art model fully encrypted with a satellite link. He checked for new emails from the intermediary.

There was one.

It had a video. A new video.

Was this it?

Felk braced to look at it, preparing himself for the worst he could imagine. The insurgents had threatened to make execution videos of the beheadings.

If this was it, he was ready.

The image blurred then focused on a newspaper showing the date, indicating the recording was less than twenty-four hours old. From his limited grasp of Urdu, Felk recognized the newspaper. It was the Daily Dunya Quetta. Sometimes the militants used other newspapers from the region to verify the date of the video. This one was twenty-four hours old.

The newspaper vanished.

Now the camera was showing six unshaven men—his men—sitting on the floor in manacles and flanked by four men wearing hoods and holding large swords.

One of the hooded men stepped in front of the camera.

“Heed this message from the New Guardians of the National Revolutionary Movement,” he said in heavily accented English. “Our court has tried these infidel spies and has found them guilty of crimes against humanity. The penalty is to pay the fine, or execution.”

The footage cut to a hooded man stepping to one of the seated prisoners and forcing him to bow his head as a sword rose over it. The captors shouted at the bound man. Fear filled the eyes of the other hostages. They were haggard, exhibiting signs of beatings, sleep deprivation.

Felk’s stomach churned.

The man chosen for execution began moving, his back heaving up and down. He was sobbing. They’ve broken him, Felk realized, just as a horrible guttural keening distorted the video’s sound.

“Ivan! Don’t let me die!”

The man’s cry pierced Felk.

The prisoner was his younger brother, Clayton.

“Ivan, please! Don’t let me die!”

The first hooded man blocked the image, his head filling the frame again.

“You have twenty-six days to pay fine.”

The video ended.

Felk’s nostrils flared as he struggled to steady his breathing. It took a long moment before he could slow his heartbeat.

Unger knocked at the door.

“Ivan, we’ve got something coming up on a newscast from New York.”

Felk joined the others in the living room. The cash was stacked neatly on the coffee table.

“How much?” Felk asked.

“Six point three,” Northcutt said.

Felk acknowledged the amount just as VNYC cut to a news anchor at a desk. A Breaking News flag stretched across the screen’s bottom.

“And this just in on that I-87 armored car heist that left four people dead in Ramapo, north of New York City. The World Press Alliance, citing unnamed sources, is reporting that one of the victims was an FBI agent who was shot ‘execution style’ while going for his weapon and that investigators have a key eyewitness to his murder. Again, the WPA is reporting…”

“An eyewitness? Jesus Christ, what could they have seen?” Dillon asked.

“Nothing,” Unger said. “No one saw anything. We took every precaution. It’s bull. What do you think, Ivan?”

Staring intensely at the TV news report, the image of his brother still burning into his heart, Felk grappled with self-reproach.

Why didn’t I kill that bitch next to the cop?

Why did he hesitate? Was it because he was distracted? Was it because she wasn’t a cop? Was it because she pleaded?

All he could do now was torment himself for his mistake.

I should’ve put a bullet in her head.

13

Pelham, Westchester County, New York 4:17 a.m.

Morrow watched time tick down in the glowing green numbers of the clock on his nightstand in his home.

Three hours of sleep.

He deactivated his alarm before it was set to go off and in the darkness, he felt his wife’s warmth against him, heard her soft breathing. Part of him yearned to stay here and hold her. Instead, he stared at the ceiling while self-reproach coiled around him for not telling Elizabeth what he was facing.

I can’t. Not yet. Not after losing her mother and not with this case.

But you vowed to love, honor, respect her in sickness and in health.

I also have a sworn duty to see that justice is done for these four men.

I need to clear the case before I can tell her.

What if I don’t clear it?

The notion of failure evaporated as scenes of the four notifications he’d made late yesterday swept over him again.

In Brooklyn, the first guard’s wife had refused to let Morrow and the others into her home in Flatbush. A curtain had fluttered, someone had seen them coming to her door. Morrow shot glances at her priest, the FBI grief counselor and the armored car company exec, who kept adjusting his glasses. Through the door the wife said she’d heard news of a heist on the radio. “I know Phil was working up in Ramapo.” She knew it but had refused to accept it: “It’s a goddamn lie! It’s not true!” She screamed through the door until Morrow noticed it was not locked, opened it and caught her in his arms just as she let go.

The second guard also lived in Brooklyn, in Bensonhurst, where he had recently separated from his wife. She was a bank teller in Gravesend. They took her into her manager’s office to break the news. She went numb. Froze, except Morrow observed how she kept twisting her wedding rings.

The third guard was to be married in a few weeks. His fiancée shook her head, repeating “No! No! No!” then collapsed against the doorway of her apartment in the Bronx. They called an ambulance and two neighbors.

The last notification was some sixty miles north on 1-95 in Connecticut. The agent in charge of the FBI’s New Haven Division met Morrow and two other agents at the Bridgeport resident office on Lafayette Boulevard. From there they went in separate cars to a tree-lined street where Special Agent Gregory Scott Dutton had lived in a split-level with his wife, Jennifer.

Others had joined them. Jennifer’s father, who was a retired Hartford detective. They also called her priest. Jennifer’s face contorted as if it had broken, when they’d confirmed her worst fear. “I kept calling Greg’s phone, and calling and calling.” One hand covered her face. The other covered her stomach as if to shield her baby from the nightmare that had befallen them.

In the shower, Morrow welcomed the hot needles of spray.

He would clear these four deaths.

Then he would clear his own with Elizabeth and Hailey.

By 4:45 a.m. he was dressed and ready to leave, when he peeked inside his daughter’s bedroom. Hailey was a fourteen-year-old vegetarian, intent on becoming an environmental lawyer. Her walls had posters of rock bands he’d never heard of. She had a new poster he liked that said, Give Earth A Hug Today. She was pretty as hell, with her mother’s eyes.

He could lose himself in their eyes.

Morrow was not afraid of dying. What he dreaded was the idea of never seeing them again. Yet, since Art Stein called, Morrow realized that a small part of him hoped that maybe, just maybe, the diagnosis was wrong.

It is an indestructible pillar of human nature to hope until the end.

He saw it in the victims straining from broken windows in the towers, waving shirts, jackets, flags of desperation, signaling hope to be rescued from the inevitable.

Then some of them jumped.

Morrow felt hands on his waist from behind.

Elizabeth, wrapped in her robe, turned him to her and kissed his cheek. She was warm and smelled so good to him.

“This is a terrible case, Frank,” she said. “You were tossing and turning.”

“I know.”

“Let me fix you something before you go in.”

“I’ll take a bagel and some fruit to eat on the way. How’s she doing?”

“She’s got a new boyfriend. Jerrod.”

“Do we like him?”

“Too soon to tell.”

“Have they…?”

“She tells me she believes in abstinence.”

“Do you believe her?”

“We have to trust her.”

“Want me to polygraph her?”

“Seriously, is there something we need to talk about?”

“What do you mean?”

She pulled him away from Hailey’s door.

“You’ve been acting like you’ve got something on your mind, and the weight thing.”

“Just work, Beth. I’ve got a lot on my plate.”

For an intense moment she read his face for any evidence of deception before shifting to another subject.

“I am so sorry about those guards, the agent. Did you know him?”

“No, he worked in Bridgeport. His wife is pregnant with their first.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I think that’s about the worst news a wife could ever hear.”

Morrow hated himself for not being able to tell her about his condition.

Not now. Just not now.

14

New York City

Morrow got behind the wheel of his bureau car, an old Taurus, but before he started the engine, his phone hummed.

He’d received a flurry of reports, including an updated version of the WPA story he’d seen last night. It quoted “unnamed sources,” stating that an FBI agent was among the victims, that he was shot while going for his weapon and investigators had an eyewitness to his “execution.”

Morrow cursed under his breath.

Unnamed sources.

This kind of crap was dangerous. Leaks kept the suspects informed. Morrow’s phone vibrated again with a new message that seized his full attention.

It was from the director of the FBI.

“Agent Morrow. I want you to keep me personally updated on the progress of the Ramapo investigation.”

Morrow took in a deep breath then let it out slowly.

It was 4:58 a.m. when he started the car and rolled from his modest colonial home in Pelham, working his way westbound on the Cross County Parkway. He made good time to the merge with the Saw Mill River Parkway until it continued south as the Henry Hudson Parkway in upper Manhattan. Then it was on to the West Side Highway and downtown.

Traffic was good at this hour.

He found a calming, classical music station and as New Jersey and New York streamed by him in the incipient light, he thought of what he was facing.

Lead agent for one of the FBI’s biggest cases.

Death at age forty-two.

Morrow was not bitter, angry or fearful. He was grateful for what he’d had, for Elizabeth, for Hailey, for his parents. It had been a good life, growing up in Laurel, Maryland. His father was a Maryland state trooper. His mother was a dental hygienist. They were God-fearing, devoted parents.

After getting a degree in criminology at the University of Maryland, Morrow became a police officer with Metro D.C. While on the beat, he obtained a master’s degree in law from Georgetown University where he’d met Elizabeth in the library. She was a research assistant for the U.S. Attorney General. Two years after he’d joined the FBI, they were married.

Morrow had had a good run with the bureau. He was recognized twice for exceptional service on organized crime and kidnapping cases he’d led in Chicago before transferring to New York, where Hailey was born. In New York he’d been assigned to the Joint Bank Robbery Task Force, working with FBI agents and NYPD detectives investigating major crimes like kidnappings, extortion, threats, bank and armored-car robberies.

In the wake of September 11, Morrow joined a special group of FBI agents that traveled to Afghanistan to question captured Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects.

He had devoted himself to keeping America safe. But even though Bin Laden was dead, there would always be a new threat, he thought, wheeling through Lower Manhattan, a few blocks from Ground Zero, before coming to the sentry posts and the barricades that sealed the streets surrounding Federal Plaza.

This quasi militarization was all in keeping with the so-called new normal, for the protection of the institutes and symbols of freedom that are sacrosanct. They define the nation. The security is insurance, he thought as the guard waved him through the check stop. That’s when Morrow made a mental note to check his policy and federal death benefits for Elizabeth, to ensure that she and Hailey would be financially secure, that she would not have to worry about the house, about Hailey’s college fund.

He’d take care of it.

As Morrow’s car entered the parking garage he glanced up at his building, gleaming in the twilight like a bastion of justice. After parking, he swiped his security ID then stepped into the elevator.

As it climbed he checked his watch: 5:47 a.m.

The case briefing was at 7:00 a.m.

We’ll see where we’re at then, Morrow thought, stopping off at the cafeteria for a large strong, black coffee before continuing up to the twenty-eighth floor. He went down the main reception hall, passed the framed photos of executive agents, as he did every day. This time his thoughts lingered as he glanced at the display nearby, the one honoring agents killed in the line of duty as the result of a direct adversarial force. The Service Martyrs.

Now we have one more.

Entering his office, Morrow saw that most members of his squad were at their desks, working the phones and studying data on their computer monitors. He set to work, reviewing everything they had so far, and made notes to prepare for the briefing. Twenty minutes later, agents and detectives from a spectrum of agencies crowded into the same boardroom where Glenda Stark, the assistant special agent in charge, had first alerted them to the case less than twenty-four hours earlier.

The air was a mingling of coffee, cologne, mint and righteous determination. Copies of a stapled six-page summary of the incident, encompassing statements, diagrams and preliminary results and analysis of a scene search, were circulated.

After a quick roll call of those in the room and the people whose voices echoed through the speakers of the teleconference line, Stark got to the point.

“Four people are dead. It is our solemn duty to see that those responsible for their deaths are brought to justice. We will bring to bear the full weight of every law enforcement arm involved in this case to ensure that we prevail, and we will prevail.”

As Stark let a moment pass, Morrow glanced around the table at the scattering of notepads, cell phones, coffee cups and morning papers. Every newspaper—the New York Times, Newsday, the New York Daily News and the New York Post—carried stories of the heist murders on the front page. He caught the glitter of traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge and the FDR Expressway. Radio stations would be reporting the story to commuters.

“Now,” Stark said, “before I turn it over to Special Agent Frank Morrow, I want to emphasize that any unauthorized release of information on this case will not be tolerated. Leaks will be deemed an obstruction of justice. Is that clear?” Her eyes scanned the faces in the room. “A reminder, we’ve called a news conference for 11:00 a.m. Okay, Frank, over to you.”

Morrow ran through key aspects of the investigation so far, then gave a brief background on the victims and the timeline of events as he flipped through the pages of the summary.

“You’ll see here that during the heist, the restaurant’s cook, who was out back, ran into the lot to a rig operated by a driver from Tennessee and urged him to call 911. The trucker got off a cell-phone photo of our suspects fleeing, but the quality is extremely poor. A retired parole officer at the gas pumps took a photo from another angle when he heard gunfire, but it’s out of focus. And two Yale students got clear footage, but from a great distance. We’re looking at it all, trying to enhance the images, but they’re not very helpful.”

Morrow hit on other key elements, most of which posed a challenge. The FBI’s Evidence Response Team was still processing the scene.

ERT’s work there so far confirmed that the service center’s security cameras had been disabled and that no cartridge casings had been recovered; it appeared the suspects had collected them.

“All the kill shots were head shots. Preliminary information gleaned from the scene by ERT and the Rockland County medical examiner indicates the rounds used were 9 mm. One of the witnesses, a gun-store owner, suggested the suspects used Beretta M9s. So far we have no latents, no DNA. We expect to get an update from Ramapo this morning.”

“These guys are smart, very smart,” someone said.

Morrow nodded and continued. The Critical Incident Response Group, CIRG, had dispatched a team from the Behavioral Analysis Unit out of Quantico to conduct an on-site examination.

“Van, want to jump in here?” Morrow said.

The voice of Van Brogan, a BAU supervisory agent, crackled loud through the speaker.

“As you all know, our aim is to characterize the fugitive suspects to aid our pursuit and ultimately to provide interview strategies once we make an arrest.”

“Glenda Stark here, Van. What can you tell us at this stage?”

“Obviously this attack was very organized, almost commando, militaristic in its execution. This kind of discipline is indicative of a number of possibilities—a group on a mission, possibly domestic terrorists, entwining an ideological motive with a financial one. The detached manner of the homicides, particularly once it was established by the suspect that the fourth victim was a federal agent, suggests ideological motivation typical of a crusade, or mission.”

The briefing evolved into a short brainstorming session.

“Says here the loss was 6.3 million dollars— Was it an inside job? Did the suspects have help?” a New York detective asked.

“We’re going through the background of every employee and ex-employee at American Centurion and the service center.”

“Including the guards?”

“Everybody.”

“I’d check with military records and polygraph, everybody,” an FBI agent advised. “Get warrants for all phone records.”

“What about confidential informants?” a Manhattan agent asked.

“Yes, we’re asking everyone to press their C.I.’s. We understand American Centurion will put up a reward, and the bureau is also looking into a reward for information,” Morrow said.

“Was Agent Dutton shot going for his weapon?” a New York detective asked.

“That’s consistent with our information,” Morrow said.

“What was he doing there?” the detective asked.

“According to his wife, he was restoring a 1930 Ford and went to Newburgh for a part. We found a headlight set in his trunk and receipt in his wallet.”

As the briefing wound down, teams were assigned aspects of the investigation: canvassing, background checks on employees and reinterviewing witnesses. As they ended things, one agent asked Morrow a final question.

“What about the news report that says we have a key witness to Agent Dutton’s homicide?”

“Everyone who was there is a key witness to the crime,” Morrow said.

Not long after the briefing, after everyone had departed for their assignments, Morrow had a moment alone at his desk. He used it to stare at Lisa Palmer’s driver’s license photo. She was closer to Dutton’s killer than anyone else at that scene.

You had to have seen something.

After the upcoming news conference he would go back to her. She was his thread to the killers. There was one more thing he would try to help her remember.

Morrow’s cell phone rang.

“Frank, this is Gortman with ERT at Ramapo.”

The supervisor agent sounded jacked on caffeine, breathless amid the excessive background noise at his end.

“What’s up, Jim?”

“We’ve got something here—hold on. Can you hold on a bit?” Gortman turned to talk to someone before coming back to Morrow. “Okay, we’re getting it ready to go for you to use at the news conference.”

“Wait, Jim, what is it?”

“I thought Lanning told you, anyway, we’ve got something you’ll want everyone to see. We got it from this place across the roadway…”

15

New York City

Four motorcycles rocket from the Freedom Freeway Service Center, disappearing down the roadway leading to on-ramps for the New York Thruway and a web of secondary highways and back roads.

The grainy images, lasting some ten seconds, were captured by an old security camera at a fabric warehouse called the Colossal Cloth Collection. The building stood about one hundred and fifty yards from the service center. Its rusted exterior mountings for the camera had loosened, leaving it susceptible to wind gusts. The distance and aging equipment resulted in jittery footage.

But for the FBI, this was a key piece of evidence.

“We believe these are our subjects,” Special Agent Barry Miller told the reporters gathered for the press conference at Federal Plaza. The FBI showed the images on large monitors at the front of the room. Networks were broadcasting live. “We’ll have copies for you and enhanced still frames of each vehicle. We’ll run it three more times before we continue.”

Jack Gannon was among the reporters, photographers and TV crews crammed into the room. Every news outlet in Greater New York had someone there. Angelo Dixon was at the back, lining up shots. Amid the unyielding glare of camera lights, Gannon studied the security video. Taking notes, he never lost sight of the human toll.

It was right in front of him.

The ghostly images of the killers in flight, juxtaposed with those of the four people they had murdered. The faces of the dead men stared from the enlarged photographs set up next to the monitors. The FBI was about to confirm their identities. Now, for the first time, the world would meet the victims.

There was the crew chief, Phil Mendoza: aged fifty-two, of Flatbush, Brooklyn, married thirty-two years, with three children and six grandchildren. Mendoza, a former U.S. marine, had nine years with American Centurion and was considered the old man of the team.

Next was Gary Horvath, aged forty-one, from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. Horvath was recently separated after his nineteen-year-old son was killed when a rig hauling scrap metal rolled over his Honda on the Jersey Turnpike. Horvath was a former self-employed limo driver who’d put in seven years with the armored car company.

Then there was Ross Trask, twenty-four years old; the crew’s rookie, who started with American Centurion two years ago. Trask was from the Bronx and was about to join the New York Fire Department. He was engaged to his high school sweetheart. She operated a hairstyling salon. Their wedding date was a month away.

The FBI agent was Gregory Scott Dutton, who’d joined the bureau in 2007. Right from the academy at Quantico, Dutton was assigned to the Bridgeport residency office in Connecticut. He’d worked on the joint-terrorism task force’s investigation on the Bridgeport link to the attempted Times Square bombing. Dutton’s widow was seven months pregnant with their first child.

The instant their names were released, reporters alerted their desks to dispatch people to track down their families, ignoring Agent Miller’s pleas to respect their privacy.

The story was too big.

There were too many factors: four homicides, one of them an FBI agent going for his weapon, the 6.3 million dollars and the nature of the attack. The killing of the FBI agent was compelling. Since the bureau’s creation in 1908, fewer than fifty agents had been killed as a result of direct adversarial force.

Gannon’s call to the WPA went to Lisker.

“We’ve been watching the conference live,” Lisker said. “We’ve sent people to The Bronx and Brooklyn to profile the guards. What do you have to maintain our lead on the story?”

Gannon cupped his hand over his phone.

“Nothing, so far. I’m working with my sources.”

“After the press conference, I want you to help on the profiles of the guards. You and Dixon head to Flatbush. Profile Mendoza. I’ll get Hal Ford to get you the family’s address.”

“What about the FBI agent?”

“Our Bridgeport stringer got his home number. No one’s answering. The stringer’s on her way to the house now, but we think the agent’s widow is avoiding the press.”

Gannon was uneasy with Lisker’s micromanaging of the story. It would lead to problems. Gannon turned back to the news conference and surveyed the agents watching from the sidelines. The undercurrent of emotion seething beneath their grim faces was palpable.

For the FBI, this wound went deep.

Gannon found Special Agent Frank Morrow observing from a corner and for one burning moment their eyes met, before Morrow suppressed a sneer and looked away.

Then Gannon saw Katrina Kisko, sitting midway at the side. She’d glared at him long enough for him to feel her wrath before she resumed focusing on the conference.

“With the support of American Centurion,” Agent Miller said, “the FBI is offering a two-hundred-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the suspects. We’re appealing to the public, to anyone with any information about this crime, to contact us.”

The amount sent ripples of murmuring across the room.

“We’ll take a few questions now,” Agent Miller said.

The reporters asked about leads, evidence, Agent Dutton’s action, FBI policy on drawing a weapon, safety and training of armored guards, statistics about heists, the high-performance sport bikes used for the getaway, the commando-style attack, the suspects, motive, number of agents on the case, the emotion, FBI vendetta, the risk of being an armored-car guard, the amount of money stolen, witnesses, links to other heists, the possibility of the crime being an inside job, the potential link to domestic or international terrorist groups.

For nearly forty-five minutes, reporters went up and down a range of aspects relating to the heist before Miller concluded.

“We’ll call another briefing when more information is available. Thank you.”

As the conference broke up, Gannon told Dixon he would meet him where he’d parked his SUV, then pursued Agent Morrow, who’d left the room alone. At the moment, Morrow was his only shot at a stronger angle. The agent was thirty paces ahead, about to round a corner, when Gannon called out.

“Excuse me, Agent Morrow?”

He turned, recognized Gannon and stopped. Gannon double-checked to ensure they were alone.

“Jack Gannon, WPA. We met at the scene.”

“I know who you are.”

“May I ask you a few confidential questions?” Gannon said.

The sternness of Morrow’s face dared Gannon to continue.

“Look, I can understand that you and the agents on the case might be having a hard time and—”

“How’s that? Now you know what we’re going through? Did your ‘sources’ tell you how we’re feeling?”

“No, I was just being respect—”

“You don’t know dick, Gannon.”

“Were the facts in my story wrong, Agent Morrow?”

Morrow didn’t answer the question. Instead, he asked one.

“Who are your sources?”

“You’re kidding, right? I’m not telling you who my sources are.”

“I didn’t think so. But let me enlighten you, all-star, if I fuck up, people get away with murder, maybe even die. If you fuck up, what happens?”

“Possibly the same thing.”

“Is that right?” Morrow almost laughed.

“I’ll tell you one thing—you can bet your pension your shooters are reading every word I write, wherever they are.”

“Now you get why we don’t want to talk to you.”

“I see.” Gannon tilted his head to the briefing room. “But you sure do need us to spread the word on your bike photos and reward. You have no problem using us like a fifty-dollar hooker. But when we dig, when we do a little journalistic investigating, well, that changes everything. Which brings me full circle— Was my information wrong?”

Morrow’s jaw muscle pulsed.

“Just as I thought,” Gannon said. “Well, think about this. WPA stories go everywhere, and I mean, everywhere. The killers likely read my stuff. I am a conduit to what they digest, Agent Morrow. Think that over.”

Gannon’s phone rang, Morrow walked away and he answered it. It was Dixon, anxious to get rolling to Brooklyn.

“On my way.”

Gannon left.

As he exited Federal Plaza, he hurried to where Dixon had parked; a spot off Broadway on Chambers. Gannon was near the northwest edge of City Hall Park when across the street he spotted Katrina Kisko on a bench. She was talking to a guy in a suit and taking notes. Gannon recognized the man as a New York City police detective he’d met a couple of times.

He looked as if he was telling Katrina something significant.

16

New York City

The Blessed Virgin Mary ascended to heaven on a cloud of roses supported by angels in the framed print on the living room wall of Ana Mendoza’s Brooklyn home in Flatbush.

“Mi Felipe!”

Ana hugged her wedding photo tightly, while clutching a rosary. Its beads ticked against the frame’s glass as she rocked on her sofa, her face a portrait of agony. A grieving daughter on either side stroked her arms. Their tears fell on the younger Ana and Phil, who smiled at Gannon from a happier time.

“Why did they take my Felipe? Why?”

Ana’s raw, choking sobs tore at Gannon. This was the part of his job that he hated, meeting bereavement face-to-face.

The Mendozas had agreed to allow him and Angelo Dixon into their home for the WPA’s profile, to offer a tribute. A proud family, they struggled with their words in honoring their beloved husband, father and grandfather.

Throughout his years, Gannon had faced many situations whenever he made “death calls.” People had cursed him, threatened him or slammed doors on him. He never took it personally. Rejecting him was their right. What amazed him was how most people had invited him into their homes, while they praised the dead, showed him pictures, stared blankly or cried on his shoulder.

No matter how any times Gannon had done it, he always believed he was trespassing on a private moment of mourning; that he’d only gained entry largely because the bereaved were stunned by their loss and vulnerable. He was always respectful of their suffering. Experience had taught him when to offer words of compassion and when to sit in silent understanding. At times like this, Gannon steeled himself to be at his very best because he believed this was one of his greatest duties.

The families of the dead deserved nothing less.

And so he was more than patient with Ana Mendoza as she fought her anguish to talk about her murdered husband.

“I had a bad feeling yesterday morning,” Ana said. “I didn’t want him to go in, but I never told him. I don’t know why. Somehow, he must’ve known, because before he left he kissed me and said he loved me.”

The house filled with sobbing from Ana’s daughters and daughter-in-law. Her grandchildren, those old enough to grieve, cried too, while the little ones played.

“Why did they do this?” Esther Paulson, one of Ana’s daughters, asked Gannon. “I’ll never see my dad again. Our children are without their grandfather. Do these killers have a conscience?”

Esther’s sister, Valerie Roha, hardened her tear-stained face. “We want the hammer of justice to come down hard on them,” Valerie said. “It won’t bring my father back, but he didn’t deserve to die this way. None of them did. My father was a good man.”

Gannon’s gaze went to the mantel and framed photos of Phil Mendoza as a U.S. marine, local baseball coach, amid those of his children and grandchildren. Dixon’s camera clicked as he shot Ana with her daughters in the seconds before she fell into a session of inconsolable weeping. The women helped her to her bedroom while her son, Juan, finished a phone call in the kitchen.

“…yes, I told the FBI this morning that Dad thought they were being watched… Right. I’ll be there in about half an hour… Okay. Thanks.”

After ending his call, Juan Mendoza, a New York City Corrections Officer at Rikers Island, took his mother’s place on the sofa. His face was drawn. He hadn’t slept.

“Got everything you need?” Juan asked. “Because I have to go.”

Gannon seized this chance to build on the fragment of Juan’s telephone conversation that he’d overheard.

“Juan, I’m sorry, but I need to ask you about this. As you know, there’ve been rumors that investigators think this could be an inside job—”

“Are you saying that my father or his crew—”

“No! No. Forgive me. No, nothing like that. Let me clarify. There’s speculation that someone inside the company tipped the suspects about the route and the amount of cash your father’s crew was carrying. Have you heard anything on that? Did your dad raise any concerns on that, given all his years on the job with the company?”

Juan clasped and unclasped his hands while looking long and hard at Gannon, thinking carefully about the question. Then Juan’s red-rimmed eyes shifted to the wedding photo his mother had left on the coffee table and his focus seemed to drift before he spoke.

“A week or so before the attack, my dad and I went to a Yankees game. He rarely talked about his job, when out of the blue he tells me that he thought someone was casing his crew for a hit, that he’d sworn he’d seen the same guy appearing at various drops and that he was thinking of doing something about it.”

“Did you tell the FBI this? Did your dad tell someone, give you details?”

“Whoa! What are you doing? You’re writing this down?”

Gannon looked up from his notebook.

“I want to use it in the story.”

“No. No way.”

“Why not?” Gannon shot Dixon a glance, then looked at Juan. “You know we’re journalists and this information is critical. I could keep your name out of the story. Have you told any other reporter about this?”

“No. I haven’t. No, don’t write that. I shouldn’t have said anything—look, I’m not thinking straight.”

“But Juan—”

“No. Don’t use that. I take that back. Sorry, but I’m kind of messed up right now, okay? You saw my mom. Forget what I said. I misspoke myself.” Juan cleared his throat. “Please do not write that. I have to meet my brothers-in-law to pick out my dad’s casket, okay? Do you understand?”

Gannon swallowed his disappointment and, out of respect, agreed not to use the information from Juan Mendoza.

“So what’re you going to do, Jack?” Dixon asked later when they were in his SUV, heading for the Brooklyn Bridge. “That sounded like a dynamite lead. One of the dead crew providing a tip on the killers?”

It was dynamite, but the circumstances put Gannon on a moral and ethical tightrope. As they crossed the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River, he searched Lower Manhattan’s skyline for a solution.

17

New York City

Lisa Palmer flinched, pierced by the image of muzzle fire.

The memory vanished as she let out a breath.

Shivering, she hugged herself and continued looking out the window at the city. At times she felt like a prisoner here.

I want my life back.

Her hotel was not far from the Empire State Building. Maybe they could take the kids there, or go to Central Park? It’d been a long time since they’d seen the sights.

Bobby used to take them on Sundays.

Turning from the window, she picked up her tea, sipped from the cup, gazed at Ethan. His thumbs blurring, he was engrossed in the beeping and pinging of a computer game on his portable player. Taylor was rewatching the animated movie they’d seen on TV last night. She liked to do that. She was smiling, listening on a headset.

Rita was on the sofa chair reading a James Patterson thriller.

The irony was not lost on Lisa.

The room was tranquil except for the storm of confusion raging in Lisa’s mind. After checking the time, she rapped softly on the connecting door to the agents’ room. She entered and Vicky Chan let her use her laptop again to catch up on the latest news coverage on the heist. Lisa couldn’t shake her unease with the WPA’s stories highlighting an eyewitness to the FBI agent’s “execution-style” murder.

How could this reporter, Jack Gannon, know so much?

Lisa, Chan and Eve Watson watched the live news coverage of the FBI’s press conference. It was excruciating seeing the faces of the murdered men. Lisa gasped when she stared into Agent Gregory Scott Dutton’s eyes again.

She thought of his wife.

Widowed while pregnant.

Lisa whispered a prayer. Her heart went out to her and to the families of the guards. The report then broadcast the security camera pictures.

The killers. Look at them, speeding away. Escaping. They’re out there.

To get away cleanly after such a monstrous act was an outrage. She hated them for the worlds they’d destroyed; hated them for shattering the fractured life she was painfully rebuilding before she stopped for gas at the Freedom Freeway Service Center.

God, she wanted it back, wanted it all back…Bobby…everything…

Sitting there at Chan’s laptop, Lisa saw flashes of herself that first time Bobby came through her cash at the supermarket, devastatingly handsome, his cart loaded with TV dinners, canned beans, chili, cold cuts, chips and beer.

“You got a lot of single-guy food there,” she teased him.

He smiled back.

He was shy, but after that he came through her cash almost every week. Each time he’d make some conversation, starting by reading her name tag.

“You got a boyfriend or anything, Lisa?”

“Depends. You got a girlfriend or anything, whatever-your-name-is?”

“No, and my name is Bobby.”

That was it.

Not long after that, he asked her out. They had pizza, went to an Al Pacino movie. Then they walked, talked. They started dating.

Bobby’s family name, Palmadessalini, was shortened to Palmer at Ellis Island. He’d had an older sister who drowned at Coney Island when he was three; he barely remembered her.

His mother died of cancer ten years ago and his old man died of heart failure last year. Bobby was a mechanic. He had a mortal fear of snakes. He liked the Yankees, the Jets, Springsteen, fixing things, helping people.

Lisa was an only child, her father left home when she was eight, leaving her mother, a part-time waitress, to raise her alone. Life was a struggle. She fought with her mother because she drank too much and dated too many men. Lisa got her cashier’s job when she was still in high school. She’d dreamed of going to college, of being an interior decorator and maybe moving to Florida or California.

It never happened.

Her mother got sick and Lisa had to work full-time at the supermarket to help pay the medical bills.

Then her mother died.

“And, well, that’s pretty much my life so far,” she’d told him.

They’d dated over a year when Bobby asked her to marry him.

It was a small wedding, just a few friends. They went to Atlantic City for their honeymoon, worked hard, saved and bought the house when Lisa got pregnant with Ethan. The cabin Bobby had inherited through his family was their treasure and their asset. After they had Taylor, Bobby was talking about opening his own shop, Lisa was thinking about college courses, they took trips to the cabin, took the kids to Disneyland.

It was all beautiful until the night Bobby never came home.

Sitting here, staring at Chan’s laptop screen, Lisa realized she could never have that life again; that she needed to move on. She needed to put everything—Bobby’s death, the shooting—behind her. She sat in contemplation until Chan repeated her question.

“Lisa, did the news reports help you remember any details?”

“I’m sorry, no. Can you tell me how long before we go home? We have things we need to take care of.”

“Agent Morrow can discuss that with you,” Chan said, checking her messages on her BlackBerry. “He’ll be here soon with Dr. Sullivan to see you.”

Lisa informed the agents that she needed to make calls concerning her kids’ absence from school and her job. After Chan cautioned her about discussing the case, she directed Lisa to the desk to use Agent Watson’s cell phone. Its number could not be identified by recipients.

First, Lisa called the principal’s office at Ethan and Taylor’s school. She was on hold for two full minutes before Chandra MacKay came on the line.

“Mrs. MacKay, this is Lisa Palmer. I wanted to let you know that there’s been a family emergency and my son, Ethan, and my daughter, Taylor, are going to miss school for a few days.”

“I’m so sorry. Is it a death or illness in the family?”

“A bit of a family crisis… I wish I could tell you more.”

“Well, I hope things work out. If they’re going to be absent for a few days, our policy requires a note, a doctor’s note if they’re away for medical reasons. I’ll inform their homeroom teachers.”

Lisa thought Dr. Sullivan might be able to help provide a medical note or something. Next, she called the Good Buy Supermart that bordered Rego Park and Forest Hills in Queens. Above the chaos of ringing registers, she heard someone answer.

“Hello, Good Buy.”

Lisa always thought of the Beatles song whenever she called the store.

“Nick Telso, please.”

“Hold, please.”

Lisa pictured Nick—excessive hair gel, the tight shirt and gum chewing. He had managed the store for five years, promoted from running the produce section. Lisa was one of his best cashiers.

“Good Buy Supermart, Nick Telso.”

“Nick, it’s Lisa. I won’t be in today. I need to use a couple of banked days.” Lisa heard Nick flipping pages of the schedule near the phone in his office.

“You’re scheduled for two. This is short notice, Lisa. I could dock you.”

“I’m sorry. It’s a family crisis. I’ll need a few days.”

“How many are we talking, Lisa? One? Two? I got to change the shift schedule and there’ll be a lot of squawking.”

“Counting today, possibly four?”

“Four? What the hell happened, did someone d—”

She knew he was going to ask if someone died, but caught himself when he remembered who he was talking to.

“It’s something with my kids, Nick. I’ll tell you more later.”

“All right, all right, I’ll put you down for a two o’clock on the tenth. Call me if anything changes.”

“Thanks, Nick.”

Hanging up, Lisa stared at her reflection in the mirror before the desk and followed the worry lines drawn in her face before she returned to her room.

Ethan was on one of the beds. Legs crossed, his eyes darted from his game player to his mother then back again.

In that instant, Lisa read it all. He was carrying a world of worry on his shoulders, far too much for a ten-year-old boy. His father’s sudden death had accelerated his maturity and sharpened his intuition. He’d grown protective of her and Taylor. Studying his face, Lisa thought he was in a silent battle with resentment, anger and fear.

She would talk to him later.

Taylor seemed to be fine, smiling, watching the movie, sipping juice.

“So, how are things looking?” Rita asked.

Ethan, his nose in his game, listened intently for his mother’s answer.

“I called the school, the store and let everyone know that we’re going to be away for a while. So we’ve got some breathing room,” Lisa said. “Thank you again for dropping everything to help us.”

“No problem, kiddo,” Rita said. “I have to get back home tonight, got a shift in the morning, but then I’ll come back here to help with the kids. Want me to pick up anything?”

“I’ll let you know.” Lisa tugged Taylor’s headset off. “Some more people are coming to talk to me. They’ll be here any minute. I was thinking that you guys could go with Rita, Vicky and Eve to Times Square. I’ll give you some money. You could ride the Ferris wheel at Toys “R” Us then go to Central Park, or the Empire State Building.”

Taylor loved the idea. While she and Rita went into the bathroom to get ready, Lisa talked with Ethan, who pretended to be more interested in his game.

“What’s on your mind, hon?”

“How much longer before we can go home?”

“I don’t know, a couple of days, maybe.”

“A couple of days? I thought it was just going to be one night.”

“I don’t like this either, but I have to help the FBI. I’ll ask them about it when the senior agent gets here. He seems to be the boss. So, how are you doing?”

“Are we moving to California?”

“What?”

“I heard you talking on the phone last week.”

“I’m not sure about everything yet.”

“I don’t want to move. All my friends are here.”

“I know. We need to talk about it.”

“But Mom…?”

“We’ll talk about it, Ethan, okay?”

He looked at his game, letting a few moments pass.

“But we’re going back up to the cabin to do what we have to do for Dad, right? You promised.”

“Yes, we still have it for a few more weeks. I promise we’ll go back for one last visit.”

“Did you really see people get killed?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re okay, really?”

Lisa searched his face and by the way he was scrutinizing hers, she could only imagine how she must look to him. He’d already lost his father and to see his mother facing a new psychological tsunami had to be terrifying for him.

It broke her heart.

“Mom? Are you really okay?”

Lisa recalled Dr. Sullivan’s advice.

Tell them. Give them an idea you experienced something troubling.

“It was horrible, Ethan, but I’m doing the best I can to get through it.”

He took her hand. “It’ll get better when we can go home, Mom.”

She nodded through her tears. Lisa sat that way with her son until Taylor and Rita were ready. That’s when they heard Morrow and Sullivan arrive through the FBI agents’ room.

Agent Frank Morrow arrived with Dr. Helen Sullivan, who had left that morning for meetings at the FBI’s New York Division. Morrow approved Agents Chan and Watson going with Rita and the children. He sent one of the male agents with them and had the other remain across the hall.

“Are you comfortable here?” Morrow asked when he and Sullivan were alone with Lisa.

“Yes, but we want to know when we can go home. The kids have school, I have my job and bills to pay.”

“We understand that. But we’d like you to stay. We need you to keep helping us at this stage.”

“I thought you brought me here to be safe in case the assholes were trying to find me.”

Morrow nodded.

“That’s part of it. We wanted to isolate you from the scene, the chaos. Give you a chance to recover. We’ve done that with some of the other witnesses as well.”

“And what about the killers finding me? They took our cell phones.”

“We talked about this. They burned the phones. We’ve retrieved them and are keeping them as evidence. We’re trying to check calls to determine if anyone was working with them. From what we determined, the suspects had no time to gain any personal information to use for intimidation.”

“So they don’t know who I am or anything about me?”

“That’s our feeling and our Behavioral Analysis Unit, the guys who profile criminals, tell us it’s unlikely our subjects would pursue witnesses. Remember, they took pains to ensure no one could identify them.”

A mild wave of relief rolled over her.

“So I can go now?”

“We’d like you to consider one thing that may be crucial.”

“What’s that?”

“From all our interviews, we’ve determined that you are our key witness. You were closer to the homicide of a federal officer than anyone else there. You had to have seen a detail, a scar, a tattoo, jewelry, something unique about the gun, shoes or clothing.”

“But I told you everything. Everything.”

Morrow threw a glance to Helen Sullivan. It was her cue.

“Lisa, when someone witnesses a horrific crime, they often have trouble recalling the details of what they’ve seen. The trauma obliterates it. But studies show that the unconscious mind has recorded all the information, including the most disturbing parts.”

“You may not recall seeing the details we need,” Morrow added, “but they’re there.”

“So what are you asking me to do?”

“We’d like you to submit to a special interview,” Sullivan said. “In the file it’s known as a cognitive interview.”

“Is it hypnosis?”

“No, not exactly. It’s an interview technique to help you remember details. If you cooperate, I’ll conduct a few sessions.”

Lisa stared off, considering the request. A distant siren resurrected the sensation of a gun drilling into her skull.

“Will you do it, Lisa?” Morrow asked. “It might be our only hope to arrest the people who did this.”

She swallowed and nodded.

“All right.”

“Good,” Morrow said. “We can get started right away.”

18

New York City

It was midafternoon when Gannon returned to WPA headquarters from the Mendoza home in Flatbush.

He’d missed lunch and stopped for a sandwich at the deli on the building’s main floor. No egg salad left. Ham-and-cheese would do. He grabbed chips and a ginger ale, then swiped his ID badge through the security turnstile.

As the elevator carried him to the newsroom, his dilemma ate at him.

Juan Mendoza had revealed a major aspect of the case: before the heist, his father, the lead guard, had feared his crew was being secretly targeted for a hit.

The story practically wrote itself.

But if Gannon reported it, even using Juan’s information anonymously, it meant not keeping his word with a grieving source—an ethical and moral violation. If Gannon didn’t report it, he risked getting beat on the story, a costly professional defeat.

There was only one way around it: independent confirmation.

He had to nail this angle from his sources.

And he’d better do it fast, because it was a safe bet that the family had spoken to other news outlets. Who was Juan on the phone with at the house? There was no telling what he may have let slip to other reporters.

The elevator doors opened and Gannon hurried through the newsroom to his desk. Immediately he put in calls to Eugene Bennett at John Jay, his cell and home phones. Next, he tried reaching Adell Clark. Then he left messages for Brad West, with the New York State Police.

Somebody’s got to come through for me.

He opened his notebook, tore into his food and reread his notes. Between bites, he made asterisks alongside key points he would use. After eating, he crumpled the wrappers and paused to scan his desk.

Unease pinged at him.

I’m forgetting something. What the hell is it?

“I didn’t see you come in.” Hal Ford stood before him. “How soon before you file?”

“What do you mean? I just got here. And I already filed from my BlackBerry right after the news conference while Dixon drove us to Brooklyn.”

“We moved that story long ago,” Ford said. “Lisker wants to move a feature on the victims’ families ASAP. Didn’t you get my email?”

“I got the one that said we had the afternoon to write the profiles, because they were going later this evening.”

“I sent you another one.” Ford glanced across the newsroom toward Dolf Lisker’s glass-walled office. Lisker was at his terminal reading his monitor. “He changed his mind,” Ford said. “Everybody’s filed. He wants you to pull it all together ASAP into one large, updated piece that has everything—the profiles of the three guards and the agent and hard news on top.” Ford turned and said over his shoulder. “I’ll send you everyone’s raw copy. Get on it and get it to me, pronto.”

Gannon looked at his screen and shook his head.

He needed to hear from his sources. He made a quick round of calls, to no avail. He sent them emails and tried texting.

Come on. Somebody’s got to be around. Come on.

All of his efforts to reach his sources were futile.

He started working as fast as he could, assembling the large feature, pulling in the profiles and comments from the families and friends of the FBI agent, the guards, inserting paragraphs on the security video images of the suspects, the reward, updating the investigation.

The story wasn’t quite there. He had to break news and the piece he needed was from Juan Mendoza. None of his sources had returned his calls. He was wrestling with whether to use Juan’s information when his line rang.

“You done yet?” Ford asked. “Lisker wants to move the feature.”

“Five more minutes.”

“Hurry up.”

Gannon gave it a moment to consider Juan. He’d probably talked to other reporters. All right. He made a decision.

More like a rationalization. Whatever. Screw it.

He would use Juan’s information.

He started writing a new lead, topping the story with what Juan had told him, but attributing it to “a source.” This would be another solid exclusive for the WPA.

It would also be wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Deep in his gut Gannon knew it. He’d given his word to Juan. He could not burn a guy on the day he was buying a casket for his murdered father.

“Jack,” Ford called again. “I need that story now!”

“Hang on!”

Gannon lined up his cursor, pressed the delete button and watched the exclusive element of the feature vanish. He gave the story a fast read, correcting typos and garble, then sent it to Ford.

“You’ve got it, Hal.”

Gannon got up, went to the far end of the newsroom, looked out at the Hudson, New Jersey and took stock. He just didn’t burn people. That was not how he maintained his credibility with his sources.

But he had to advance the story. He had to keep the WPA ahead.

What am I missing? Am I forgetting something?

He considered possibilities. He could press Adell Clark and Brad West on any intel on how the investigation was going. He could even try pushing Frank Morrow, the case agent, one more time. Or, he could head back to Ramapo. Work the staff of the service center. But the WPA’s stringer was already doing that.

What about Gene Bennett?

Bennett was his inside source on New York City’s armored-car industry. If it was an inside job, he could go to Gene for help pursuing staff at the armored-car company American Centurion.

Gannon headed back to his desk, stopping off at the kitchen for fresh coffee, remembering what Bennett had told him: there was an eyewitness, a woman who was on the floor beside the agent when he was “executed.”

If I could find her, put readers in her shoes, give them a sense of who she is, what was going on in her life the instant she walked into a tragedy, it would be a hell of a story. It would take readers inside the heist.

As he settled back into his desk, his newsroom phone rang.

“Gannon, WPA.”

“Did you see what the New York Signal just posted?”

Gannon’s attention jerked to Dolf Lisker’s glass-walled office to find him glaring from his desk across the newsroom.

“No, I’ll call it up now.”

“We’ve just lost our lead. What you just filed is substandard. The Signal hammered us. I told you that getting beat is unacceptable. I’ll be sending a memo to all editorial staff. Meantime, get your ass on the street and get us back in front!”

The Signal’s story landed on Gannon’s monitor like a blow to his midsection. Seeing Katrina Kisko’s byline was the uppercut.

Deadly Armored Car Heist an Inside Job:Sources Tell Signalby Katrina KiskoThe New York SignalThe killers behind the commando-style robbery of an armored car that left three guards and an FBI agent dead at an I-87 truck stop likely had inside information. Sources among FBI agents and NYPD detectives investigating the heist say…

Damn it. There it was: the credit to “NYPD detectives” told Gannon that Katrina got her info from that NYPD guy he’d seen her with at City Hall Park after the press conference. It was such an obvious angle, too.

He’d missed it. Katrina didn’t. She’d taken him to school.

Gannon swallowed the humiliation, then shoved files and notes into his bag and left. As the elevator descended, temptation rose. Gannon could annihilate her story by using Juan Mendoza’s explosive revelation.

It would be sweet to hit back.

On the street, Gannon hailed a cab.

“Anywhere near Central Park.”

It would be so easy to use Mendoza’s information. Lisker would love it. But the glory would be short-lived. Gannon had to adhere to his own code. His word was his word. He did not give up sources and he did not burn them.

That’s how he lived with himself.

Compared to what the Mendoza family and the other families of the dead men were suffering, Gannon’s wound of being journalistically whopped was nothing.

But it stung.

He’d been beaten by the woman who’d dropped him.

It was over with Katrina, so forget about her, he told himself after paying the driver and walking toward the park to decompress as sirens wailed behind him.

Before entering, he bought an ice-cream cone from a vendor, vanilla. He often came to Central Park to reassess matters, and was relieved to find an empty bench in the shade by the time he finished his cone.

He sat down, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He cupped his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes before they traveled over the park, then to his bag on the bench beside him.

That’s when it hit him.

The thing he’d forgotten. It all came to him with clarity. He had a collection of about two dozen printouts, notes and fragments of information, ideas and tips that he collected in a folder labeled To Be Checked Before Ruling Out.

He’d thrown the file into his bag.

Gannon followed a fundamental rule to check every piece of information against any live story he was working on for any possible connection, something he learned long ago from an old battle-weary crime reporter in Buffalo.

“You never know what you’re sittin’ on, kid.”

With all the distraction and pressure arising from the Ramapo heist, Gannon had forgotten to check it against his file.

His mind started racing, for there was one item that screamed to be checked: the anonymous call about an impending threat to national security that came in about a week before the Ramapo robbery.

Yes, at first Gannon had dismissed it as useless babble from a nut-job. A lot of people from the crazy train called the WPA. “I know who killed Kennedy. The pope’s an alien, I have proof. I own the Brooklyn Bridge.” But Gannon’s gut convinced him that his caller could have something. He sounded so apprehensive, so frightened on the phone and kept his promise to call Gannon back at suggested times.

Gannon reviewed all the notes he’d taken from the calls, checking the quotes and things he’d flagged.

“This is big! I swear to God what I’m telling you is true!”

“I’ll bring the confirmation you’ll need.”

“It involves an operation, a mission, an attack on America.”

He checked everything against what he knew of the heist.

It was a commando-style attack akin to a military mission or operation. It encompassed the execution of an FBI agent, a representative of the federal government. Is that in line with “an attack on America?”

Eventually, the caller had agreed to meet Gannon and bring him documented confirmation but was a no-show.

That was that. Gannon had never heard from him again.

That was three days before the heist—then nothing.

Radio silence from the tipster.

Could the calls be linked to the heist?

Was it a long shot? Or was it a lead?

“You never know what you’re sittin’ on, kid.”

Gannon read over his notes.

What if there’s something here?

Could he afford to spend time looking for this guy?

Could he afford not to?

As Gannon continued scrutinizing the note, his heart beat faster.

He had to find this guy.

19