Airtight

So Somers must have something significant, Carlton figured, or he wouldn’t be going down that path. And he came on so strong, almost accusing Carlton of involvement in the murder, that it left no doubt he was ready and willing to cause problems. And anything that interfered with the sale, for any reason, was an unacceptable problem.

Hanson Oil and Gas was a committed buyer, but deals are not closed until they are closed. The kind of publicity that Somers might bring to bear, talk of murdering Federal judges, could spook them. They had a Board of Directors to answer to, and were listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Companies like that have to be careful of ugly controversy, and Daniel Brennan’s murder was as ugly as it gets.

The only saving grace, it seemed to Carlton, was that Somers appeared to be on something of a solo crusade. The fact that he showed up at the hotel alone was somewhat revealing, but the key fact was that Somers was the one who killed Steven Gallagher. Maybe he was haunted by that, and feeling a need to find out whether Gallagher deserved his fate.

Carlton and his partners were close, way too close for things to get derailed now. So Carlton made the phone call, and explained the situation.

“It’s not a problem,” said the voice on the other end of the phone.

“Easy for you to say; he didn’t come to see you. He knows something, and he’s not the type to let it go.”

“I’ll take care of it. Don’t call me on this line again.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to take care of it.”

“Don’t overreact,” Carlton said, but by then he was talking to a dead phone.

He hung up, already regretting that he had made the call.

It was “unofficial update” time.

I had promised Captain Barone that I would keep him informed about what was going on, and I entered his office to do that.

“How’s your brother?” was his first question.

“Hanging in. He’s got four and a half days to live; if I was in his position I’d be doing a lot worse.”

“So you’re not making progress?” he asked.

“Actually, more than I thought I would. I think there’s a reasonable chance that Steven Gallagher did not kill Daniel Brennan.” I hadn’t planned to share that with Barone at this point, because I didn’t think he’d react well and I had more important things to do than manage his moods. But he was a partner in this, he had a stake in the outcome, and he had a right to know.

“Can you rephrase that?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe it’s just semantics, but it would be better if you could say it this way: ‘I’ve confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt that Steven Gallagher killed Daniel Brennan.’”

I smiled for the first time in a while. “So these unofficial updates are not supposed to be accurate?”

“It’s not a requirement, no. But since we’ve started down this path, tell me why you feel this way.”

I went over basically the same items I had discussed with Julie. Barone kept shaking his head; I couldn’t tell whether he was disagreeing or just upset by the possibility that we, that I, had tracked down and killed the wrong man.

When I finished, he said, “Maybe the Today show was a mistake.”

“You understand I’ve got more important things to worry about than how this is going to look.”

He nodded. “I do understand that. How can I help?”

“I think we need to put more pressure on Carlton, maybe plant some items in the press. We need to force him into making a mistake.”

“Luke, you’re guessing on this thing, and it’s not even a particularly educated guess.”

“I know that, Captain. But the jury here is Gallagher; I don’t have to go by the strict rules of evidence.”

“Carlton is not without resources; we start libeling him in the press, we could be bringing problems on the department, on me, without any benefit coming from it. I can handle the hassle, and I’m willing to, but I need to see more potential upside.”

I was annoyed by his attitude, even though I expected it, and even though I knew he was basically right. “OK, so we don’t mention him by name; we just let the word get out that we’re still checking some key leads in the Brennan murder. And we say the focus of the investigation has switched to Brayton.”

“Even though we already shot the guilty party.” It wasn’t a question; it wasn’t even said to me. Barone was sort of rolling it around in his mind, trying to see how it would play.

“I shot him,” I pointed out. “Captain, even if my brother was sitting on a beach on the Riviera sucking down pina coladas with umbrellas in them, I wouldn’t let this go.” I was basically telling him that he had no choice, that I was going to keep pulling on this string until I got to the end.

“You’re a pain in the ass,” Barone said.

“I’m aware of that.”

“Do it.”

“Thanks. I will.”

“You probably already have,” he said.

“Yes, I have.”

“Did I mention that you’re a pain in the ass?”

“I’ll check my notes, but I believe you did.”

“So now what?”

“A tour of New Jersey.”

The decision was announced on the court website and made available in the clerk’s office.

The three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals had issued their ruling in the matter of Brayton vs. Carlton Industries.

In boxing parlance, it was a split decision, the court coming down 2–1 on the side of Carlton. But this wasn’t boxing, and there was no provision for a rematch. Simply put, while a close call, the net result for Brayton was devastating.

Judge Susan Dembeck wrote the majority opinion. While acknowledging the legal right, in fact the duty, of a town to protect its citizens, she argued that Brayton had failed to establish that the fracking would cause real damage. She felt that the purchasing company, Hanson Oil and Gas, had in their brief established a regimen that would adequately monitor the environmental effects. The data would be shared with the town, and the court would be receptive to reconsideration, if circumstances warranted. But, she felt, the town had simply not met its burden.

Judge Richard O’Brien, in a blistering dissent, said that Carlton and Hanson had not come close to meeting their own burden of guaranteeing that the health of the innocent citizens of Brayton would not be irrevocably damaged. He even trotted out the “can’t unring a bell” cliche, meaning that once the damage was done, it could not be effectively removed.

But by far the most devastating aspect of the ruling was the requirement that Brayton, if they were going to appeal to the Supreme Court, would have to post a bond in the amount of five hundred million dollars. There was no way that they could afford to do so; they did not even have the resources to make the appeal, no less post the bond.

Left unsaid in the opinion, of course, were the actions that the decision would trigger. Within thirty-six hours, the sale of the land to Hanson Oil and Gas would close; the documents were already signed and sealed. The money would automatically transfer to Carlton and the company that shared ownership of the land, Tarrant Industries.

Richard Carlton had known that the decision was coming, down to the time of day it would be released. He also knew that it would be a favorable one, yet he still felt substantial relief that it had come to pass.

Edward Holland issued a terse press release, saying that he needed time to study the decision and analyze the options. He spoke of the need to protect the families of Brayton, and promised further announcements soon.

Alex Hutchinson was already rallying the very disappointed citizens, planning demonstrations and vowing to continue the fight. Her outrage was palpable, so the media naturally gravitated to her.

Richard Carlton expected all of those reactions, and none of it bothered him. What did bother him was a report in the Daily News. Citing unattributed sources, it said that the investigation in Judge Daniel Brennan’s murder was still ongoing, and that the focus of that investigation had moved to Brayton.

No details were given, and neither Richard Carlton, Luke Somers, nor anyone else was mentioned by name. But Carlton recognized it for what it was, the first salvo in a pressure campaign that Somers was planning to mount.

Dealing with that pressure was now effectively out of Carlton’s hands, which worried him. With victory at hand, any overreaction had the potential to be terribly counterproductive.

But all Richard Carlton could do was watch.

Who are “they”? Who is behind it? And more importantly, will Gallagher believe it? He gave me suicide pills, Lucas. They’re sitting on the table. I don’t want to suffocate. Remember that time at the lake? I know what it feels like to be without air to breathe.

You saved me then, Brother.

This is Act Two.

It’s only about a half hour from Paterson to Morristown.

That’s mainly because the drive is on Route 80, the only highway in America that never, ever seems to have any traffic on it. I don’t know why that is, but whoever planned and designed Route 80 should be anointed as the official National Emperor of Highways.

Within that half hour you can see the state take on a completely different character. People generally don’t think of New Jersey as particularly beautiful, but those people might change their minds if they drove to the northwest portions of the state.

Of course, Emmit and I weren’t on a sightseeing trip. It was in the northwest, Morris, Warren, and Sussex counties, that the satellite company reported weather interruptions of service that matched what Bryan had reported.

We had called ahead and set up a meeting with Captain Willis Granderson of the Morristown police. We picked Captain Granderson because he had served on the force the longest, thirty-seven years. It was important that we talk to someone who had a history in the area.

Granderson was an immediately likable guy, and one who seemed genuinely glad to have company. I got the feeling that he was sort of out of the law enforcement loop, and was just putting in the time until retirement. But based on the interactions he had with fellow officers on the way back to his office, it seemed he was treated with deference and respect.

After making sure we had cold sodas, Granderson asked us what he could do for us.

“We want to talk about bomb shelters,” I said.

“Just goes to show if you hang around long enough … in thirty-seven years, nobody’s ever asked me about bomb shelters.”

I smiled. “Well, you can check it off your list. Are you aware of any in this area?”

“Course I am. Why do you want to know?”

“We have reason to believe that someone is being held against their will in this part of the state. We further believe that they are underground, and cannot hear outside noise, nor themselves be heard outside the room. It’s not necessarily a bomb shelter, but it’s a good guess.”

He nodded. “Sounds right. The good news is that we do have bomb shelters in this area; the bad news is that there’s a whole shitload of them.”

“Why so many?” Emmit asked.

“Because in the sixties, there were a bunch of missiles here, sitting in silos, pointed at the dirty Commies. So people figured that if the other side shot first, they’d try and hit the missiles before they got in the air. So here is one of the places the Russians were aiming first.”

“So people built the shelters to protect themselves from a direct hit,” I said.

He laughed. “Yeah. Like if I shot a bazooka at you, and you protected yourself by wearing a heavy sweater.”

“They weren’t safe?” I asked.

“They were safe if there was a tornado, or a hurricane. But a nuclear missile landing nearby? No way. And you know what? If you were sitting under a nuclear attack, you’d never want to come up for air, because you’d be sucking poison. If you ask me, instant incineration is the way to go.”

“Have you ever been in one of the shelters?”

“Are you kidding? We had one under our house; my father built it himself. I took girls down there until I was twenty-two. I wish I lived there now.” He smiled at the recollection.

“Is it possible that there is one with satellite television hooked up?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Have the satellite on the house, or a nearby tree, and run the line down to the shelter. No problem. It could even be in a silo.”

“What do you mean?”

“Some people bought old silos, for beans, once the missiles were taken out. I’ve never seen one, but I’ve heard they turned them into like underground apartments.” He laughed. “I even heard some people built homes next to them, and use the silos as guesthouses.” He laughed again. “I got some family I’d like to put underground when they visit.”

“Is there a map of where the shelters are?”

“No, not that I know of. I’m sure some of them would be registered in town halls, or something. You know, if people had to get permits to build them. But I’m sure most of them just went ahead and did it.”

“What about the silos? Is there a map of where they would be?”

Another shrug. “Must be. The Defense Department keeps records of everything.”

I turned to Emmit. “Let’s make sure we get that.”

Emmit wrote it down, which meant I could forget it. Once Emmit wrote something down, it happened.

“I can tell you where a couple of them are, if you want to see them,” Granderson said.

“How far from here?” Emmit asked.

“Twenty minutes.”

Granderson told us where they were, and how to get there. We thanked him and left.

True to his word, we were there in twenty minutes, an old sign directing us off the road to a US Military Installation, apparently unnamed. We drove on a dirt road towards it, and in less than five minutes we were there. It was a group of small buildings, maybe barracks, and six small towers.

We parked near one of the buildings, and walked towards the towers. Everything was old and dusty, metal was rusted … it sure didn’t feel like a place that once contained enough power to wipe out a good part of the world.

Emmit and I walked towards one of the towers, and saw what used to be the hole in the ground. It was very, very large, maybe thirty feet across, and it was covered by what could best be called an enormous concrete manhole cover.

There were still warning signs, some alerting to the dangers of radiation. It didn’t seem like a current worry, since the area hadn’t been roped off, but I did feel a flash of concern.

“You think this stuff could still be radioactive?” Emmit asked.

“Let’s put it this way,” I said. “You’ve been impotent since you got out of the car.”

He laughed, but the laugh was cut short by the bullet smashing into him. He fell backwards, and I dove on top of him, rolling us over to some level of protection, behind the tower.

“Emmit, you OK?”

He didn’t answer me, but his eyes were open, and the bleeding was coming from just below his shoulder. I balled up his shirt and pressed down on the wound with one hand, as I tried to peer out to where the attack had come from. I had my gun out in the other hand, but I had no target to shoot at.

Another round of weapons fire shattered the quiet, and dirt and concrete kicked out from all around us. We were in a completely untenable position; any effort to find the person shooting at us would leave me totally vulnerable.

But I had to do something, because Emmit could well have been dying. And the way things were setting up, I was going to join him.

I started to work my way around the tower, but more shots cut me off. Then I heard a sound; it was a human sound, maybe a small shout of surprise. Or pain. Or both.

I waited sixty seconds, which in that situation was an eternity. Then I started to make my way around again, bracing myself for more gunfire.

But there was only silence.

So I kept going, gun at the ready, prepared to shoot at anything I saw. And what I saw was a man, standing off in the distance near a building, looking down.

I raised my gun, but I didn’t shoot, because the man was Chris Gallagher. And he was looking down at a body.

Gallagher looked up at me, clearly not afraid of the gun in my hand.

He bent over and seemed to be searching the pockets of the person lying at his feet. I wanted to ask him what the hell was going on, but I had Emmit to worry about.

I took off in a run towards my car, and as I passed by Gallagher I yelled, “My partner’s been hit!”

Gallagher nodded and started running back towards where we had been. I continued on to my car, and drove it to where Emmit was lying, now with Gallagher beside him and pressing down on the wound. As I approached, Gallagher picked Emmit up. It seemed effortless, amazing since Emmit weighed more than two hundred and fifty pounds.

I helped Gallagher put Emmit into the backseat, closed the door, and ran back around to the driver’s side. As I passed by Gallagher, he slipped something into my hand. I didn’t look at it; I was too busy programming the GPS to find the nearest hospital.

It was seven miles away, and while en route I called in to Barone’s office to report what had happened, and to tell them to have the hospital waiting for our arrival.

I called to Emmit a few times, but he didn’t answer. I was hoping that he was just unconscious.

When we got there, I pulled up and was immediately surrounded by emergency personnel. The hospital appeared unimpressive, a one-level place that looked more like a veterinary hospital, but the people there had their act together.

Emmit was out of the car, on a gurney, and in the hospital within a minute. By the time I got inside, he was gone, and I had to ask the person behind the desk where they had taken him.

She asked me to fill out some papers, but I refused, at least for the time being. I wanted to be with Emmit, and she understood and directed me to the area where he was being treated.

I was in the waiting room for over an hour when Captain Barone and three other cops from our station showed up. “How is Emmit?” Barone asked.

“He’s in surgery. They’re not telling me anything, but he lost a lot of blood. Did you reach his wife?”

He shook his head. “She’s on a plane to Seattle to visit her parents. There’s a message for her to call in when she lands. Who did this?”

It was then that I realized that I hadn’t looked at whatever Gallagher had given me. I took it out of my pocket. It was a Nevada Driver’s License, in the name of Frank Kagan.

I showed it to Barone. “He did.”

“How do you know that? Where is he?”

“He’s dead. Chris Gallagher killed him.”

“Excuse me?”

“This guy had us pinned down. Emmit was hit and I was next. Gallagher was there, I don’t know why, but he killed him.”

I told Barone where it happened as best as I could, and he made a phone call to dispatch officers to the scene. Then we waited on Emmit.

It was another hour and forty minutes before the doctor came out to talk to us. “He’s going to make it. He may not go dancing any time soon, but he’s going to make it.”

He went on to say that no major organs were hit, but that Emmit had lost a lot of blood, and if he had gotten to the hospital ten minutes later, it might have been too late.

The bottom line was that Gallagher had saved Emmit’s life.

And mine as well.

Gallagher instantly regretted what he had done.

Intervening had not been a mistake, even though he was operating mostly on instinct. Kagan was going to kill those two cops, and Gallagher was not about to let that happen.

What he regretted was killing Kagan. He could have knocked him unconscious as easily as he broke his neck, and if he had, Kagan would have remained alive to answer Gallagher’s questions. And Gallagher had no doubt that Kagan would have found it in his best interest to answer them; Gallagher could be very persuasive that way.

But now it was too late for that; Kagan’s question-answering days were behind him. So now Gallagher would have to do the answering for him. He’d find out why Kagan was there to kill Somers and his partner, and he had no doubt it was related to the Brennan murder investigation.

Gallagher had a strong feeling that Kagan was military, just based on the way he handled his weapon, and how he chose the optimum spot and position to take out the cops. If he was right, it would make it easier for Gallagher to find out what he needed to know.

But Somers certainly had more resources at his disposal, which was why Gallagher gave him the driver’s license. They’d be able to track down Kagan’s history, and find out a great deal of information about him.

But Gallagher kept a prize for himself. It was a hotel key, a card that would provide entry to Kagan’s room at Cod Cove Inn. At that moment Gallagher had no idea where that was, as there was no address on the key. But he’d find it, and he’d get into the room. And once he did, if he learned anything that made sense to share with Somers, he could do so.

Gallagher placed a phone call to Lieutenant Linda Worley, a military police officer assigned to the Intelligence Unit at Quantico. Worley and Gallagher had briefly been stationed together in Germany about eight years prior. They almost had an affair, and would have, had not Worley remembered that she had a husband back in the states. They’d run into each other a few times in the intervening years, but not for long enough for anything to have happened.

“This is Gallagher,” he said, when she got on the phone.

“And this is a happy coincidence,” she replied. “I’ve been divorced six months.”

He laughed. “Well, if you give me some information, I just might work my way down there to see you.”

They bantered some more, until he got around to telling her what he needed. “There’s a guy named Frank Kagan, last known address Las Vegas; I need to know all there is to know about him.”

“What else have you got?”

“I think he was military.”

“Well, that narrows it right down,” she said.

“He’s maybe forty-two, and probably has a criminal record.”

Gallagher had a pang of conscience in asking her to help. She had no way of knowing that he had gone renegade; if she checked, his records would simply say that he was on leave. But before long the police, military and civilian, would be after him. It would come out that she’d helped him, and at the very least wouldn’t look good in her file.

She said that she’d get back to him, so he turned to his computer to find out where the Cod Cove Inn was. There were three of them in the Northeast, the closest being near Brayton. Having followed Lucas to Brayton and met Alex Hutchinson, he knew there wasn’t any need to check out the other Cod Cove Inns. That was the one.

Knowing that time was of the essence, Gallagher set out to drive to Brayton. He certainly wanted to examine the room, and there was always the chance that the police would find out where Kagan had been staying and seal the place off.

On the way, Gallagher thought about the possibility of extending the seven-day deadline, of bringing a replacement tank to supply air for Bryan Somers. Luke was making headway, and since the goal was to clear Steven, ending the process prematurely was counterproductive. Complicating the situation was Gallagher’s concern that when Somers was at the missile shaft he was also just six miles from the place his brother was imprisoned.

Gallagher wasn’t sure how they got so close, but he was confident they were still operating mostly in the dark. And close was not going to get it done for them.

Gallagher rejected, at least for the moment, any extension of the seven-day deadline. Either Luke would get it done in time or he wouldn’t. And if the latter was the case, then Gallagher would finish the job.

Bryan wouldn’t get an extension, because Steven did not get one.

The Cod Cove Inn could not have been set up better for Gallagher’s purposes. It was a relatively small, two-story place, with maybe fifty total rooms. The main office was in a small separate building, so there was really no way to monitor movement.

He decided to try the upper floor first. If Kagan was military, and had any concern about his safety, he would instinctively want the higher ground. The jump down was a small one, easily navigated, so escape would have been just as easy as from the ground floor.

He started in the back, near the exit, since that was where he would want to be. The parking lot had not seemed crowded, and the vacancy sign confirmed that the place was not filled. Kagan, within reason, should have been able to choose his location, and most people would have wanted to be towards the front, closer to the elevator.

He found the room on the second try; the little green light went on and the door opened. He entered and found it to be very neat, every piece of clothing carefully folded and placed in drawers. Definitely military.

But it was also a suite, or at least connected to an adjoining room, with the door between the two open. It didn’t take much examination of the belongings to know that two men were staying here, Kagan plus one other.

Gallagher started searching carefully but quickly. On the desk in one of the rooms was a briefcase, locked, which was no problem for Gallagher, since among his talents was one for picking locks. In this case he didn’t bother; he was able to rip the briefcase lid off with sheer strength.

Inside was a thick envelope containing copies of media reports of the court case in Brayton, biographical notes on the various players, what seemed to be land maps, and some kind of geological reports. This was outside of Gallagher’s area of expertise, but he would look at them later, when he had more time.

A short while later, in the adjoining room, he reached one of the closets and saw a large suitcase standing on its side. He felt that it was quite heavy, which surprised him, since both Kagan and his partner had obviously unpacked.

The suitcase was locked, and it took Gallagher only a couple of minutes to pick it. Inside was a large, metal box, which was also locked. After another three minutes, Gallagher had that opened as well, and he recognized what he was looking at immediately.

The box was divided into twelve compartments, all the same size. Two were filled with a substance that Gallagher recognized very well, C-245, one of the most powerful plastic explosives ever developed.

The other ten were empty.

Gallagher heard a noise out in the hall, and waited a moment to see if someone was going to enter the room. He hoped it was Kagan’s partner, because he would keep him alive until he answered every question Gallagher could think to ask. But it was a chambermaid, who recoiled in surprise when she saw Gallagher.

“Can I clean the room?” she asked.

“Yes, I was just leaving,” Gallagher said. He grabbed the envelope, the suitcase with the remaining explosives, and left.

I got your back, Bryan. Big news on this end. Someone shot at us today. My partner got hit, but he’ll be OK. Gallagher was there, and killed the shooter. I’ll get him to understand that we’ve scared some people and they want to shut us down.

The truth is in Brayton, New York. There’s a case that Brennan would have ruled on if he got to the court; they made sure he didn’t. Don’t know exactly who “they” are yet, but I will.

Before you know it you’ll be back at work, enriching yourself and stealing from the little people.

And all I remember about that day at the lake was giving you mouth-to-mouth … I still have nightmares about it.

Don’t touch those pills, Brother. We’ll flush them down the toilet together.

I waited to talk to Emmit.

The doctor said he should be awake and coherent in about an hour, and I figured I could use the time to plan out my next moves.

My assumption was that Frank Kagan had been following us. Gallagher might have been following Kagan, but more likely he was following us as well. It was an embarrassment to me that we were obliviously leading a goddamn caravan around, but I’d get over it.

I had to assume that Kagan shot Emmit and had us pinned down. Gallagher must have come up behind him and killed him. I didn’t see any blood on Kagan, so it must have been done with bare hands. Gallagher’s reputation appeared justified.

I didn’t delude myself into thinking this changed the dynamic or balance of power between us. He didn’t save us because we were best buddies; he did it so I could continue my efforts to exonerate Steven. That’s why he gave me Kagan’s driver’s license; he was helping us along in the investigation.

My hope was that he would realize that we were getting somewhere, that Kagan came after us because he or, more likely, people who sent him were getting worried. My other hope was that Gallagher would move the seven-day deadline back, but I knew I couldn’t count on that.

But it wasn’t just a question of whether Gallagher thought we were getting somewhere; the fact was that we were. There could be no other explanation for it. Kagan would have been worth more to us alive, but just his identity might be enough to unlock the puzzle.

I didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but there was only one person we could be scaring, and that was Richard Carlton. If I could establish a tangible connection between him and Kagan, I’d nail him to the wall with it. He could go fracking in his bathrobe on Rikers Island.

The nurse came out to tell me that Emmit was alert, and I went in. He looked pale, but better than I expected, and he greeted me with a small smile.

“That really went well, huh?” he asked.

“Smooth as silk.”

“What exactly happened?”

“You got shot; I had a couple of beers, and then drove you back here. Ruined my whole day.”

The banter out of the way, I filled in all the details about Kagan and Gallagher. He seemed to be straining to listen, as if just doing so required an enormous effort.

When I finished, he said, “So you kill his brother, he threatens to kill yours, and then he saves your life. Complicated guy.”

“Yeah.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

“I called in to find out what I can about Kagan, see if it leads us back to Carlton.”

Emmit nodded. “It might just do that,” he said. “I can’t think of anyone else we’ve pissed off, at least not in the last few days.”

“That’s how I figure it.”

“You think you can get me something to drink?” he asked. “I’m thirsty as hell.”

I went out to tell the nurse the request, but when I came back Emmit was sound asleep. There was no sense waking him, and no reason for me to hang around. I didn’t know what I was going to do next, but I knew I was going to do it quickly.

Complicating matters, of course, was the need to now be careful. There were people who wanted to kill me, and if Frank Kagan was any indication, they were people with experience at it. I’d never had a particularly well developed self-preservation instinct, but in this case I knew that my death would ensure Bryan’s.

I called in to the office to get updated on what they had so far uncovered about Frank Kagan. He was a hit man out of Vegas, which was not quite as interesting as something else they learned. He was known to partner with an old army buddy named Tommy Rhodes. It turned out that Rhodes was an expert in bomb making and, more important, bomb using. It was those kinds of devices that were responsible for Richard Carlton no longer having a guesthouse.

As soon as I hung up, the cell phone rang. “Lieutenant Somers. This is Ice Davenport.”

Because of the strange name, it took me a moment to make the connection. It was Nate “Ice Water” Davenport, longtime friend of Daniel Brennan and unofficial counselor and confidant to his wife.

“Yes. What can I do for you?”

“You said I should call you if I wanted to talk some more about my friend.”

“I remember.”

“Well, I’m ready to do that.”

“Ice Water” Davenport lived on 88th Street and Riverside Drive in Manhattan.

To my amazement, I found a parking spot. The sign said that parking was OK except on Monday and Thursday mornings, which is when street cleaning allegedly takes place. I have my doubts about that, since I’ve been there on Monday and Thursday afternoons and suffice it to say that the streets do not look spotless.

He greeted me with a fairly tense, “Thank you for coming,” and offered me something to drink. I took coffee; it had not been a great week for sleep.

We sat in the living room. The apartment was huge; I hadn’t seen other doors when I got off the elevator, so it was possible that it occupied the entire floor of the building. The furniture was extremely modern, mostly glass and stainless steel, and the place was spotless. The doorways were higher than usual, in deference to the inhabitant.

“I’d like to establish some ground rules,” he said, which is one of my least favorite ways to begin a conversation. “I will provide you with some information, which may or may not prove relevant to your investigation. You in turn will keep Denise Brennan out of this, and will do nothing to damage Daniel Brennan’s impeccable reputation.”

“I’ll do my best,” I lied. The stakes being what they were, the last things I’d be concerned about were reputations or public personas. If I had to publicly brand Daniel Brennan as a Taliban-loving pedophile to save Bryan, I would not hesitate.

It seemed to satisfy him. “I’m speaking to you on behalf of Denise Brennan,” he said, continuing one of the longest preambles to an interview in recent memory. He spoke carefully and precisely, as if each word had been vetted and cleared before takeoff.

“Why isn’t she speaking for herself?”

“Believe me, I tried. Her allowing me to speak represents a major concession. But almost all of what I will tell you represents her feelings and relates events as she experienced them.”

I didn’t understand why “Ice” needed someone to “allow” him to speak, but I figured I’d find out soon enough, so I waited.

“In the weeks prior to his death, Judge Brennan had seemed under stress. I noticed it, but I didn’t spend much time with him. Denise saw it much more clearly, and was quite worried about it.”

“What was the cause?”

“She initially believed it to be financial. Despite an amazing career, Judge Brennan was not a wealthy man. He was injured before he could attain a large salary in basketball, and judges certainly earn far less than what would be commensurate with their importance to society. And I include Appeals Court judges in that.”

“With his name and reputation, I assume he could have earned far more practicing law?”

He nodded. “Without question. But he wanted to contribute to the greater good. So he was happy in his work, but concerned that he would not leave Denise financially stable upon his passing. His father died a very young man.”

I needed to move this along. “What does this have to do with his murder?”

“Perhaps nothing. And perhaps his increased stress was simply a result of the Appeals Court nomination process, testifying before Congress, and the like. But now there is this.”

He got up and walked over to his desk, opening the drawer and taking out a small folder. He opened the folder and took out a piece of paper, handing it to me.

I looked at it, but he told me what it was as I did. “It is a bank account in Judge Brennan’s name, opened six weeks ago in the Central Bank of Belize. There is one deposit, made two weeks later, in the amount of two hundred thousand dollars.”

“And Denise has no idea where the money came from?”

“She does not. And she tells me that there were no secrets between them, that they discussed finances and everything else as equal partners.”

I held up the paper. “How does she reconcile that with this?”

He shook his head. “She cannot. Which is why we are having this conversation. If it is somehow related to his death, then the likelihood is that the real killer has not been apprehended.”

“Where do you think he got the money?”

“I simply cannot imagine. My hope is that you will come up with a benign explanation.”

“You’d be amazed how few benign explanations I run into in the course of a day.”

I left there thinking that Judge Daniel Brennan may not have been the total paragon of virtue that his wife and friend believed him to be. I was also thinking that there was a damn good chance that the two hundred grand, however he got it, played a role in his death.

Given his job and position, my initial instinct would have been to think of the money as a bribe. But his taking the money would likely have signified his agreement in the matter, so why would he have been killed? Had he reneged, and was going to rule the other way?

I certainly did not know the answer to that, but there was one thing I did know.

Steven Gallagher did not give Daniel Brennan two hundred thousand dollars.

I never thought I’d say this, but I was happy to see Chris Gallagher.

He was sitting in his car in front of my house, probably in deference to the fact that it was raining outside. Apparently the great man was not impervious to water.

In any event, I needed to talk to him, to find out what, if anything, he knew. And, just as important, to impress him with how much I had learned.

I got out of my car and we made eye contact, which was enough to get him to follow me into the house. He was carrying a suitcase; I hoped he wasn’t planning to move in. The first thing he did was walk into the kitchen and take a beer out of the refrigerator.

“Have I said or done something to make you think we’re buddies?” I asked.

“Not that I recall. I also don’t recall you thanking me for saving your life.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Following you, as was Kagan. You’re not that hard to keep track of; does your car have a rearview mirror?”

“That explains why you were there. Why are you here?”

“It’s time for an exchange of information. We seem to be getting somewhere, and the deadline is approaching.”

“It can be extended,” I say.

“No, it cannot. Everything we discover makes your killing Steven even more unforgivable. Now tell me what you’ve learned.”

I brought him up to date on everything I knew and suspected about Richard Carlton and the situation in Brayton, as well as my belief that it was my nosing around there that got Kagan after us.

He nodded. “The answer is definitely in Brayton.”

“You’re taking my word for it?” I asked, surprised at his certainty.

“No chance,” he said. “I paid a visit to Kagan’s hotel room, which was just outside Brayton. I found some explosives, but more important were the explosives I didn’t find. The box was mostly empty.”

“What kind of explosives?”

He opened the suitcase and showed them to me. “C-245,” he said. “You can keep it.”

I knew what that meant; I had quite a bit of experience with munitions in the army. “Shit.”

“And Kagan was not working alone. I believe the guy he is working with-”

I interrupted. “Tommy Rhodes.”

Gallagher smiled. “Very impressive. What have you found out about him?”

“They were army buddies. Rhodes would know how to use the C-245; he was a munitions expert in the service. Our information is that he was considered as good as it gets, that if you gave him some hairspray and a bottle of Drano he could demolish Argentina.”

He nodded. “That fits. You should also have someone take a look at this.” He handed me some drawings, which seemed to be some kind of geological maps. “I think it’s the land area that Carlton is selling, but I don’t know what it all means.”

“Beats me, but I’ll find someone who understands it. What I can’t figure out is what Rhodes could have been looking to blow up. If he’s working for Carlton, they’ve already won in court. Who could they be after?”

Gallagher frowned. “I should have stayed there and asked Rhodes when he came back to the hotel.”

“I’ll send some people to pick him up.”

“They may not find anyone,” said Gallagher.

“What does that mean?”

“There were empty timer cases in his room. He might have already planted devices on timers. If not, he could detonate them remotely. He may have been staying around to make sure that there were no hitches. But with Kagan gone, he might bail out of the area. Probably depends on when the next device is set to go off.”

“It’s probably soon,” I said. “Rhodes was booked on a plane back to Vegas Saturday night. I’ll have cops at the airport, but he’ll be aware that we know his name, so I imagine he won’t show up.”

Gallagher smiled. “Then Saturday is a really big day all around. Keep your priorities straight, Luke.”

He was telling me that I shouldn’t spend too much time worrying about what Rhodes might or might not have been targeting, because Saturday was already a big day.

It was the day Bryan was scheduled to die.

One thing you need to do, Lucas … you need to tell me the truth. It’s hard enough for me to prepare for this; I just can’t be taken by surprise. I’ve been thinking about my will … my life insurance … right now everything goes to Julie. Not sure if I should leave it like that. Of course, when you change a will, you need two witnesses to sign it. That might be a little tough in this case.

The moment the court decision was announced, Alex Hutchinson was on the move.

More accurately, she was on the phone, planning a strategy of action to prevent Hanson Oil and Gas from starting to drill on the land they had just purchased. Richard Carlton, as much as she loathed him, was no longer the enemy. He had sold the land to Hanson, which made them the threat.

The loss in court was far from unexpected. Alex was smart, and informed, and she was a realist. Similar cases were being decided with some regularity in favor of energy companies, in New York and around the country. And they had already lost in District Court; the appeal had been something of a long shot.

Her first call was to Mayor Edward Holland. He had been a stand-up guy throughout, even taking on the legal work himself, in deference to the town’s shaky finances. It had served him well; the publicity he received was national, and he was portrayed as a heroic figure fighting big business on behalf of the little people. While she recognized his ambition, in her mind he still deserved most of the accolades, even in a losing effort.

It became obvious early in the conversation that he had no more bullets left in his legal gun. “We don’t have the money to take this any further,” he said. “It’s not the legal fees; hell, I’m working for nothing. It’s the bond.”

As he had privately predicted to her, the court had imposed a bond requirement of five hundred million dollars that the town would have to put up, should they try to delay matters with a further appeal. It was the court’s way of saying that their case would not win on appeal, and that Hanson would suffer financial damages if the process caused a delay in drilling the land.

“We need to take action outside the system,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means that we have to prevent the fracking from beginning. Once it does, we’ve lost.”

“Alex, we’ve already lost. Now we need to work with the EPA and other regulatory authorities to minimize the damage.”

“Great, we’ll just partially pollute the air and water supply. That way only half the town will get cancer.”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Mayor, I personally appreciate all that you’ve done. But it’s moved to the next level.”

“Which level is that?”

“We are going to organize, we are going to take action, and we are going to stop this.”

“Those are just words,” Holland said. “And with all due respect, they’re not the brightest words I’ve heard.”

“There will be more than words. We have a rally planned for tonight. We’ll have made decisions by then.”

“No violence, Alex. It will be self-defeating.”

“Letting our children die is self-defeating,” she said. “The rally is at the high school at six o’clock in the evening. You are the Mayor, and our leader, so you should be there. People will want to hear you.”

“I’ll be there, but you may not like what I have to say, Alex. I’ll be preaching restraint, and lawful behavior. I share your anger, believe me, but there is no other way.”

“See you tonight,” she said, and hung up.

Holland took some time to think about the phone call, and to decide what to do. He then picked up the phone and dialed his police chief, Tony Brus. “Tony, I think we’ve got a problem.”

“What’s that?”

“People are upset, and I think more violence is a possibility. You’d better be ready.”

“Have you got any specific information?” Brus asked. He was not a big fan of politicians in general, and Holland in particular.

In addition, Chief Brus was harboring hopes of running for Mayor himself in the next election, and had no interest in doing anything that would make Holland look good. He saw no irony in the fact that he frequently expressed his disdain for politicians while angling to become one himself.

“No, but if they blew up Carlton’s guesthouse before we lost, there’s no telling what they’ll do now,” Holland said.

“OK, I’ll keep an eye on it.”

Holland got off the phone and started thinking about public relations. So far the entire situation had been a political plus for him, even with the court defeat. He had been the hero fighting the good fight; it was the other side, and the judges, that bore the blame.

But he was sure there was more violence to come, and he needed to come out against it before it happened.

So he called his high school sweetheart.

Adrienne Horton and Edward Holland had repeatedly expressed their undying love for each other throughout high school, but their commitment actually lasted only a few days past the Senior Prom.

She had only spoken to or seen him a few times in the past couple of decades, mostly at reunions. But they had spoken five times in the last couple of months. She had made the first call, in her role as a producer of prime-time CNN programming. The fight between Big Energy and the people of Brayton made for a compelling human interest story, and she wanted to get Holland on to talk about it.

He had been receptive, but preferred to wait until the legal proceedings had run their course, so as not to appear to prejudice them. She was so sure that he would eventually come around, regardless of the outcome of the case, that she had done background work. Camera crews had been sent to the town, and interviews were conducted. The piece was done and ready to go, and probably would have aired with or without Holland.

But he was a politician, and Adrienne knew that no politician would be able to resist such a platform. So when the call came to tell her that he was ready, she set it up for that evening, and Holland was there at 6 PM.

The interviewer was Anderson Cooper, and he first ran the taped piece providing background for the viewers who had not been familiar with the story. It included the interviews with local people in Brayton, expressing heartfelt concern for their children and their way of life.

The piece tersely said that Richard Carlton and representatives of Hanson Oil and Gas had both declined to comment on camera but had released packaged statements vowing that they would protect the environment while supplying much-needed energy resources.

It was obvious that the compilers of the segment were on the side of the people of Brayton, which provided an easy segue into Holland’s interview.

But he was not there to mouth platitudes; he was there to make news, and he did so right away. “Anderson, I have asked privately, and now I am asking publicly, for state and federal authorities to come in and provide protection for the people of Brayton. There is a significant danger of violence.”

“Why do you say that?” asked Cooper.

“Well, as you noted in the piece you just ran, there has already been violence, a house was blown up. And now the anger, the totally justified anger, has been ramped up to a much higher level. I’ve put our police force on high alert, but we are a small town, and can do just so much. I want to do everything I can to protect the people of Brayton; they are not just my constituents, they are my friends.”

Cooper pointed out the obvious. “But it’s those same people that are angry. So the constituents and friends who you are trying to protect are the ones that might commit the acts you’re worried about?”

“Anderson, I don’t know who committed the previous act, and I certainly have no knowledge of who might do something illegal or dangerous in the future. But people are very, very angry and upset. When parents feel that their children’s lives are in danger, they will do anything they can to protect them. In a situation like this, the frustrations can boil over, and the actions of one or two can hurt many.”

“So you’ve not been able to provide specifics to the authorities?”

Holland shook his head. “I have not. What I have done is caution everyone to remain calm and not take any rash actions. At the same time, I repeat that I have asked for state and Federal intervention to help defend our community. These are dangerous times, and I don’t want to be in the position of wishing we had all done more.”

Holland was more than satisfied with the interview. He felt that he came across exactly as he hoped, as an intelligent, rational public servant who cared only about the people he represented.

He did not delude himself into actually believing that anything he said made anyone safer.

Holland went directly from the studio to the rally in Brayton. It was at the local high school, but was far too large to be contained by that building, and was being held on the football field.

A podium was set up with a loudspeaker, and various citizens were taking turns speaking and voicing their outrage at what the courts had decided. Among the listeners there was some anger, but the place had a sort of festive atmosphere, and the watching police had absolutely no need to intervene.

When Holland arrived, Alex Hutchinson was talking to the crowd. “So we will have people on the site twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Carl Hamilton will set up the schedule; so contact him and tell him your availability. We need everyone to contribute their time. Saturday evening will be our big rally; please call everyone you know, not just citizens of Brayton, and ask for their support. It will start at four o’clock, but come as early as you like.

“We want fifty thousand people on their land, telling them to go away. We can still win this thing, but we have to stick together.”

When she saw that Holland had arrived and was listening to her, she called him up to the podium. Neither she nor anyone else had been able to watch his CNN interview, so of course they did not know that he had expressed concern that they would commit violent acts.

He spoke briefly, cautioning everyone to be calm and to write their Congressman and Senators. He spoke of understanding their anger, but said that it had to be channeled in a law-abiding fashion. There were no TV cameras, so no need to speak with any particular passion.

He also was not inclined to tell them that he had decided to get a court order to remove them from the land, if they did not go peacefully. He did not want any of the people in his town getting hurt or worse.

Tommy Rhodes had only himself to blame.

He should have gone with Frankie Kagan after that cop, even though Frankie had said he could handle it alone. Frankie was the boss, so Tommy let it go, but he should have insisted. But he hadn’t, and the results were disastrous.

Just how disastrous remained to be seen, but he already knew enough to be very worried. Someone had gotten into his hotel room, and had gone through his and Kagan’s things. They had also taken the documents relating to Rhodes’s ongoing operation, though the likelihood was strong that they would not understand them, at least not in time to cause a problem.

Kagan hadn’t returned, and hadn’t checked in with Rhodes for six hours. That was such a violation of procedure that it could only mean one of two things; either Frankie Kagan was captured, or he was dead.

Rhodes was very much rooting for dead.

In any event, Rhodes needed to get away, so that he would have time to assess the damage, report in to his boss, and figure out his next moves. He had wanted to usurp Frankie’s position and deal directly with their employers, but now that it seemed to have happened, he wasn’t pleased.

It was very likely the police would search for him at the hotel; in retrospect he was surprised that they weren’t waiting there for him when he returned. It might mean that it wasn’t the cops at all who had broken in, though Rhodes could not imagine who else might have done it.

So Rhodes packed his things quickly and left. It wasn’t safe to go to another nearby hotel; there were so few that the cops could easily check each one. So Rhodes drove south, towards New York City, and checked into a Hilton in northern Westchester. He further assured his anonymity by using a fake ID, which he carried for emergencies. He would not cancel his plane flight on Saturday, but since the police would find out about it, he just wouldn’t show up.

A radio news report as he was leaving Brayton provided some level of reassurance. A cop had been shot, out near the abandoned missile silos, and the shooter had been killed. Rhodes thought with relief that at least Frankie hadn’t talked, which meant there was no way the cops could react quickly enough to stop the operation.

Of course, Tommy’s future was altered forever. His identity would certainly become known, and he was going to be a target of the police. He was confident that he’d have the money and resources to never be found, but it was not the way he wanted this to go down.

He was already a wanted man, and in forty-eight hours he’d likely be the most wanted man in America.

Julie Somers was not used to feeling helpless.

It wasn’t her style to just sit back and watch events unfold. It’s why she went into the public defender’s office after graduating from law school; she always wanted to be where the action was.

After a couple of years, she decided she wanted to be on the right side of the action, so she moved over to the prosecutor side. It’s not that she didn’t believe all defendants were entitled to excellent representation. She just got worn down from the belief that the majority of her clients were in fact guilty of the crimes with which they were charged.

She wanted to win; she was as competitive as anyone. But she wanted to feel good when she won, and that was not often the case as a defense attorney. So she switched sides, and hasn’t looked back. In her new role, she controlled the action. She called the shots, and was on offense rather than defense. Just the way she liked it.

Bryan’s kidnapping left her in the exact opposite position. Except for finding out some information for Luke when he requested it, she was sitting on the sidelines and waiting for him to update her.

She loved Bryan and always would; whether or not she could still live with him as his wife was an entirely separate issue. She also felt guilt over having somehow caused the current situation. She was the reason that Bryan was at Luke’s that night, when Gallagher showed up.

She still agreed with Luke’s decision to not call in Federal authorities to go after Gallagher. She and Luke had access to the same information that they would have, but they had different goals. The Feds would have shared their desire to get Bryan back unharmed, but would have gone after Gallagher as well. Julie and Luke simply did not feel that was the best approach towards keeping Bryan alive.

But she knew one thing; if anything happened to Bryan, Gallagher was going down. She wouldn’t rest until that happened, though she knew it wouldn’t be easy. From what she had read about him, Gallagher was as good as they come at the art of survival. He was trained in living off the land, and could probably melt into some undeveloped area and never be found.

So she called Lou Rodriguez, an investigator she had frequently employed while on the defense side of the system. Rodriquez was smart, tough and reliable, and better than anyone she had used since moving to the prosecutor’s office. Now, whenever she opposed him, she found herself cringing at what he might find.

She asked Rodriguez to meet her away from the office, and they had coffee at a diner near the courthouse. “I need to hire you,” she said.

He was surprised; prosecutors had no need to go outside to get investigative help. “What about that army you’ve got working for you, Jules?”

He always called her “Jules,” and was the only one to do so. She had no idea why, but sort of liked it. “I meant personally.”

“Personal issues? Jules, you know how I feel about you, but-”

She cut him off. “It’s not that.” Rodriguez took pride in never working on cases involving marital problems. Getting pictures of husbands with other women was simply not his thing. “It’s not on the same planet as that, but it does involve Bryan.”

“Sorry,” he said. “Tell me about it.”

So she did, after first soliciting his promise that whatever she said would remain confidential. After describing the situation in as much detail as she knew, including the progress Luke had been making, she said, “I want you to follow Gallagher. If things don’t go well…” She stopped to compose herself. “If things don’t go well, I want to know where he is, and how to pick him up.”

He didn’t hesitate. “I’m in.”

She exhaled in relief. “Great. Thanks, Lou. Just bill me at your normal rate.”

He shook his head. “This one’s on the house; you’ve done enough for me. Any idea how I find him?”

“It shouldn’t be hard. He spends some time following Luke, and even shows up at Luke’s house sometimes, mostly at night. He’s not worried, because he knows Bryan is his trump card.”

“I’ll start tonight.”

She gave him a folder with copies of all the information she had. “I’m having dinner with Luke at Morelli’s tonight at seven. Maybe he’ll follow him there.”

“I’m on it,” he said. “Just one question, Jules.”

“What’s that?”

“It doesn’t matter, but I’m curious … did Gallagher’s brother do Brennan?”

She thought for a moment. “I’ll know more tonight, but gut instinct? I don’t think so.”

No surprises, Bryan … I promise. I’m meeting Julie tonight, to tell her what’s going on. It’s driving her crazy to just sit and wait. I guess you know the feeling. Anything you want me to tell her?

I’m proud of the way you’re holding up, little brother.

Michael Oliver would have preferred being anywhere but Brayton.

He had last been there when he studied the land that his employer, Hanson Oil and Gas, was considering buying. He had recorded all the data, taken all the pictures and measurements, and gone back to Tulsa to analyze the information and write his report.

It was that report that convinced Hanson to make the purchase, and which in effect started the entire controversy. Hanson had great confidence in their chief engineer. Once Oliver said there were huge amounts of natural gas to be gotten efficiently from the shale under the ground, they relied on it without question.

Now that the purchase had just been finally approved by the courts, Oliver was brought into town for meetings with the engineers who would conduct the actual fracking process. Some of the equipment was still in place from when the tests were conducted, and the drilling that had been done put them ahead of the game.

But for all the violence that critics said the fracking did to the environment, it needed to be done with some care, almost delicacy. Mistakes could be costly, in both time and money. And despite what the citizens of Brayton claimed, the engineers also were concerned about the environmental impact. Everyone in that room, except Oliver, had children of their own, so they understood.

Oliver laid it all out for them, providing a road map for what they were going to find underground. They met for six hours, and he assured them he would be available by phone and computer back in Tulsa to answer any further questions they might have.

Oliver couldn’t wait to get back home, but felt compelled to accept the invitation of the executive in charge of the project to have dinner that evening. It would be an early one, and Oliver would get a late flight to Chicago afterwards. He’d stay overnight there, and get a short flight to Tulsa in the morning. It was not ideal, but anything was better than staying in Brayton.

When he arrived the previous evening, he had made the mistake of turning on CNN in the hotel and watching the interview with Edward Holland. The situation was dangerous, or at least Holland made it sound like it was. The only saving grace for Oliver was that he was anonymous; there was no way that anyone in Brayton knew who he was, or what his crucial role in the situation had been.

After the meetings he went back to the hotel and packed, putting his one bag into his rental car and heading for the restaurant. It was a Japanese steak house in Central Valley, one of those places where they cook for you right at the table. There were six of them there, the executive, four senior engineers, and Oliver.

His dinner companions were in a great mood, but all Oliver was focused on was getting out and on that plane. The only good thing about the dinner was that it was not in Brayton; Oliver was out of there and would never be back.

So at seven thirty, he said his good-byes, pretending that he wished he could stay longer. He knew it would be the last time he would ever see these people, but he certainly didn’t tell them so. They would likely be lifers at Hanson, while his time there was coming to an end.

Once out the door, he went to find his rental car in the parking lot. For a few moments he forgot which car was his, but rather than figuring it out, he just pressed the button on the key that unlocked the door. It also caused the rear lights to flash on and off, providing an easy way to identify the car.

Oliver trotted to the car; he hadn’t left that much time to get to the airport, and was not about to miss that flight.

He got in, turned the key, and ended his life. The explosion took out three cars on either side of him, and brought everyone in the restaurant running outside to see what had happened.

His colleagues were afraid that his was the car that blew up, but there was no way to know, because it would take an army of forensics people to find any sign of what used to be Michael Oliver.

I heard about the latest violence on the way to meet Julie.

The explosion was followed by a second explosion, this one in the media. It firmly put Brayton onto the national map, in a way that hadn’t happened before. Edward Holland had been on some TV shows making his case, but it hadn’t really registered on anything but a local level.

That was then.

The main difference was that this act, unlike the guesthouse destruction, took a life. In fact, the purpose of it was to take a life. Michael Oliver was not collateral damage; he was the target. It was an execution, pure and simple, an act of domestic terrorism.

Moreover, it was a sophisticated act. The perpetrator knew who Oliver was, even though he was an obscure part of the process. That is not to say he was an unimportant player; the reports were crediting him with making the determination that the land contained natural gas in amounts worth literally billions of dollars.

But he was barely known; he was not the head of Hanson Oil and Gas, nor a public spokesman for them. He was actually based in Tulsa, and was simply in town for meetings. For the killers to have known that, and to have isolated him as a target, represented a level of planning and calculation that was as impressive as it was ominous.

There were signs that this was going to trigger a national debate about fracking itself. It was an incredibly important factor in the energy landscape, and had already prompted countless lawsuits. Yet it had stayed somewhat below the radar, a place where it would never reside again.

The various players in the drama were already reacting in an expected manner. Carlton issued a vehement condemnation of the “terrorists,” and Hanson’s spokesman did the same. They said that they would not back down in the face of the unlawful acts and would take additional steps to beef up security, in order to ensure the safety of their employees. Nothing would stop Hanson from pursuing their goal of providing affordable energy to the American people.

Alex Hutchinson, the de facto leader of the protesting townspeople, also condemned the action, and claimed that neither she nor anyone in her group had anything to do with it.

Edward Holland, trying to remain above the fray, added his strong disapproval of any violence, and pleaded for calmer heads to prevail. He talked of his own anger at what was happening to his town, and the need to protect the children, but added that this was not the way to go about it.

Holland went on to remind everyone that he had asked for preemptive state and Federal intervention to cool things off, but that his requests went unfulfilled. He once again renewed those requests publicly, and media reports were very favorable to him.

“How does all this help Bryan?” were Julie’s first words when she saw me.

I had been thinking about it, and wasn’t pleased with my own point of view. “I don’t think it does,” I said. “At least not much.”

She seemed surprised. “Why?”

“Well, first of all, keep in mind that the entire jury here is composed of Chris Gallagher. And the fact that there has been some violence is not a surprise to him; he already knew that Emmit and I were targeted to be killed.”

“So, if he’s a jury, treat him like one, Luke. Make a persuasive argument; make him understand. Put the facts out there in a clear, concise manner; that’s what is done for juries. Let me do it; I’ll convince him.”

“I’ve been trying, Julie. And I’d be happy for you to try. But there’s a logical flaw in our argument.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Our focus, Gallagher’s focus, is on the Brennan murder. Brennan was considered pro-Brayton, or at least more pro-Brayton than Judge Dembeck. So the side that might have had any interest in killing him would have been the company side, not the town.”

She had to know where I was going with this, but I spelled it out. “This new violence is being committed against the company, most logically by people who would have wanted Brennan to take the seat. The people that killed Michael Oliver would have placed Brennan in a protective cocoon if they could have.”

“And Gallagher is smart enough to see that?” she asked.

“Without a doubt.”

She seemed lost in thought for a few minutes. I had no idea what she was thinking. I had known Julie for almost seven years, and this made the seventh consecutive year that I had no idea what she was thinking.

“I did something you’re not going to like.” She said it in a challenging way, as if she was comfortable with what she did, and not worried about my reaction.

“I already don’t like that sentence.”

“I hired Lou Rodriguez to find Gallagher.”

“Shit, Julie … what do you mean ‘find’?”

“He’s not going to do anything, just keep track of where he is.”

“Keep track of where he is? He’s been following me. He’s probably at the bar in the next room right now.”

“Then Lou’s on the stool next to him,” she said, obviously annoyed by my attitude.

“Great. So the bad guys are following me, Gallagher’s following them, and Rodriguez is following Gallagher. I’m leading a procession. I’m like the goddamn Grand Marshal of the Rose Bowl Parade.”

“Maybe he’ll lead Rodriguez to Bryan. Probably not. But he’s not going to walk away from this, Luke. No matter how it turns out. I wouldn’t be doing my job if he did. Nor would you. He’s a kidnapper, at a minimum.”

She didn’t say what the maximum was, but she didn’t have to. She was right, of course, but on some level it didn’t sit well with me, and she could see it.

“What’s your problem with this, Luke? That he’ll make Rodriguez, and take it out on Bryan?”

“No, he couldn’t care less who’s following him, or why.”

“Then what?” she asked.

I wasn’t sure how to answer that, but my mouth seemed to make the decision for my brain, and started talking without permission. “I killed his brother, Julie. I guess on some deep level I understand what he’s feeling. I don’t know what I’d do in his shoes, but it wouldn’t be pretty.”

She spoke in a much softer voice, trying to keep herself from crying. “You might find yourself in his shoes.”

I nodded. “And then I’d feel completely different. Then I’d find him and kill him. And on some level he’d understand that completely, and he’d be fine with it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I think he’s decided that his life is over, one way or the other.”

“If he hurts Bryan,” she said, “it will be.”

Got your e-mail too late … you’ve already had your dinner. Not much for me to say to Julie, anyway. Just tell her not to feel guilty about this; she had nothing to do with it.

Remember the time you were going to have a fight with Randy Singer after school? Nobody could believe I wasn’t going to watch, but I didn’t because I didn’t want to see you lose, and I thought you might.

I never remembered you losing at anything, and I wanted to keep it that way.

I still do.

This was not going the way Chris Gallagher expected.

It was actually going far better, which was causing him to reassess. Nothing wrong with that, not in his mind. A battle plan only lasts until you first meet the enemy. Then you make the necessary adjustments in the field.

Luke Somers was better than he thought, far better. He had dug deeply into the investigation, and was on his way to creating reasonable doubt as to Steven’s guilt. Which might have been enough, had Steven been allowed to go before a jury.

Somers had recognized the inherent difficulty in proving Steven innocent without finding the real guilty party. Because whoever killed Brennan had also set Steven up to take the fall; they had planted the bloody clothes, and called in the anonymous tip.

The violence interested him in that it was counterintuitive. It was targeted at those intent on mining the land, yet if Somers was right, Brennan was likely to be opposed to the miners’ position. Why would the same killers be going after players on both sides?

He discounted the possibility that there were two separate sets of killers; the world didn’t work that way. And the fact that Brennan was killed in a knife attack, rather than the type of explosions that did the subsequent damage, did not surprise him. On the Brennan hit, they wanted someone to blame, and Steven was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Had Brennan’s garage been blown up, Steven could not have been set up as easily.

The fate of Bryan Somers, in Chris’s mind, still very much hung in the balance. Someone was going to die for Steven. If it had to be Bryan, that was fine with Chris. Justice would be served, since no matter who killed Brennan, it didn’t change the fact that Luke Somers had gunned down Steven.

But if the real killer was found in time, then he would have been the one to set Steven up. And then Chris would see to it that he would die, and Bryan would be spared.

One way or another, Steven would get his justice.

So the goal was still to find out who killed Daniel Brennan, and to do so fast. Somers would do what he would do, but Chris could operate in a way that Somers could not. And he was about to do exactly that.

Chris believed that the one person most likely to have all the answers was Richard Carlton. The money was always the key, and Carlton was the one who had walked away with a fortune.

So Richard Carlton was the person who was about to receive a visit from Chris Gallagher.

Why was Michael Oliver chosen to die?

That was the question I was interested in, partly because I had run out of other things to be interested in. But on any level it was strange, which made it something I needed to understand.

I had Julie run a search on Oliver on something called LexisNexis. She had once assured me that if anyone was mentioned anywhere at any time for any reason, it would show up there. Ten minutes later she called to tell me that Oliver had never been mentioned in connection with the situation in Brayton anywhere in the media, at any time.

But he was very specifically targeted. He was at a dinner with five other employees of Hanson Oil and Gas, all of whom would be involved in the actual drilling operation. It would have seemed that from that group Oliver would have been the least likely candidate to be attacked.

He had merely performed his analytical function, and had done so in anonymity, at least as far as the people of Brayton were concerned. Between the Hanson and Carlton companies, there was a target-rich environment of people who were about to do damage to Brayton, yet Oliver was plucked from obscurity to die.

Frank Lassenger spent thirty years in the Army Corps of Engineers, retiring as a Lieutenant Colonel six years ago. He had done it all, building and repairing dams, creating structural solutions for buildings that were in earthquake-threatened areas, advising mining companies on safety and structure, and even providing expert guidance for underground rescues. After leaving the service, he had done some private consulting, but nothing that kept him away from his kids and grandchildren for any length of time.

I know all this because we both like bagels.

There’s a bagel store I stop off at almost every morning on the way to work, and Frank is usually there. We got to talking about each other’s jobs; he was more interested in mine, and I was more interested in his.

I instructed officers to contact Frank and tell him that I needed to speak to him about a matter of great urgency. I knew Frank would respond, and he was waiting for me at the precinct when I got there. Frank is the type that if you need him, he is there. I really like that type.

“You know anything about fracking?” I asked.

“Some. I’ve never done it myself, but I’m familiar with it.”

“Ever heard of a guy named Michael Oliver?”

“The guy that got killed? Sure.”

“Did you know him before that?” I asked.

“By reputation.”

I was glad to hear that Frank was familiar with him. “What kind of reputation did he have?”

“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “These companies are spending hundreds of millions, billions, of dollars to take energy from under the ground, sometimes under the ocean. They know it’s there, but until they go after it, they don’t really know how much or, more importantly, how easy it will be to get to.”

“So it’s a crap shoot?”

“Ever hear the term ‘dry well’? Anyway, people have to make the judgment about what’s there and what isn’t, and there are maybe fifteen people in the industry who are considered the best at doing that. Michael Oliver was one of those people.”

“Could he be wrong?’

“Sure, anything’s possible. But if Michael Oliver said ‘drill here,’ I’d invest my money in it, no questions asked.” He laughed, “Well, of course I’d have questions, but you know what I mean. And I don’t really have any money.”

I showed him copies of the information that Gallagher had gotten from Kagan and Rhodes’s room, except for the information about Carlton and the Hanson executives. He seemed most interested in the schematic layouts of the land, as I knew he would.

“Oliver prepared these?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Not sure. Why?”

“They’re well done, very thorough, so it was probably him.”

“Does it show where the natural gas is?”

“It shows where Oliver thought it was, and based on what I see, I would say he was right.”

“So there’s nothing unusual about it?” I asked. “I was struggling to come up with a reason that Oliver was a specific target, but that reason probably did not exist.”

“Well, there’s one thing that surprises me, but there’s probably a good explanation for it.”

“What’s that?”

He pointed to the map. “You see these arrows? That’s where Oliver was telling them to drill.”

“So?”

“So I don’t know why they’d drill in that many places, and it’s too spread out. You drill in the best spots, and then expand if you have to. He was telling them to start out wider. He must have had his reasons, but I don’t know what they were.”

“Would Oliver be important to the process from now on?” I asked. “Would they have needed him to do the drilling?”

Frank shook his head. “I doubt it. I’m sure he’d told them all he knew, and they had his notes and reports. Now it’s just a question of going down there and sucking the stuff out. Guys in his role become expendable once they’ve finished their analysis.”

I nodded. “Expendable people seem to have a short life expectancy.”

Bryan … I’m not going to lose this time, either.

There’s been a lot of violence surrounding this Brayton situation. You may be seeing it on television. Gallagher is going to understand that it’s all tied in to Brennan’s death. I will make him understand, and at the very least he’ll give you more time.

Do not give up hope. We’ve been through a lot, Brother, and we’ll make it through a lot more.

It took Bryan almost six hours to break into the box.

That was not a lot, when you consider that it took almost five days to even notice that it was there. It was a fairly large metal box, technically a strongbox, and it was in the kitchen pantry, partially hidden by shelves and dishes.

The reason it took so long to break open was not just that it was locked with a fairly good-sized padlock. It was also just at the end of the range that Bryan’s chain allowed him to reach, so prying it open became that much more awkward. But with the help of a heavy screwdriver that was in a kitchen drawer, he was finally able to get it done.

The result was something of a disappointment. He hadn’t known what to expect, and his expectations had been low. Certainly there was not going to be a key to unlock the chains, thereby allowing him to get the hell out of there.

Only a slightly greater hope would be a handgun, locked away for safety. He might have been able to shoot the chains off, though with his lack of familiarity with guns he knew he might kill himself in the process. Maybe he could have used it to shoot Gallagher if he returned; then they could at least die together.

The third hope, and the most realistic one, was that there was some clue to his location, something that he could use to help Luke find him.

But he was zero for three. All that was in the box were rations, labeled US Army MREs. Bryan had no idea what that meant, but he assumed they were long-lasting rations for soldiers out in the field. Never having been in the army himself, he had no idea if they were any good, but doubted it.

In any event, he had no need to experiment with them; food supply was not his problem, air supply was.

And Bryan had already planned his last meal.

He would dine on the two pills that Gallagher left him.

It was turning into a public relations fiasco for Hanson Oil and Gas.

Of course, Hanson’s bottom line did not rely on public relations, so it could fairly easily absorb the damage. But no one wants their company to look bad, especially in a part of the country so close to Wall Street.

Hanson’s CEO, Randall Murchison, was kept updated on the calls and e-mails coming from the public. They were overwhelmingly negative, as was to be expected. Also in line with expectations was the fact that very few shareholders were among the complainers. Those who stood to benefit financially from the Brayton natural gas find were inclined to be tolerant of it.

Ironically, the death of Michael Oliver, while a damaging blow to the company, provided a public relations bright spot for Hanson. Through Oliver, they had become the victims of vigilante justice. People didn’t countenance water and air pollution, but that was a somewhat less immediate and dramatic danger than bombs blowing up in parking lots.

There was a shareholders meeting coming up, and Murchison wanted it to go as smoothly as previous ones. He didn’t want angry townspeople to storm the meeting, yelling their claims that Hanson was going to be poisoning their children. Murchison was known to be a bit of a loose cannon, prone to straight talk that sometimes got him in trouble. But he didn’t want to be fighting with a bunch of panicked and angry parents on national television.

So he placed a call to Richard Carlton. The deal hadn’t officially closed yet, and the money therefore hadn’t been paid, so this was when Murchison would have the most leverage.

“You need to get that situation up there under control,” Murchison said. “My people are telling me we don’t need this aggravation.”

“I’m going to release a statement,” Carlton said.

“You’re going to release a statement? I got a dead chief engineer, people conducting a goddamn pep rally on the land I’m supposed to be drilling on, half the country sending me nasty e-mails, and you’re going to release a statement? Better be a damn good one; that had better be the goddamn statement of the year.”

“I will say that we’re going to use part of the resources from the sale to expand the auto parts business. It’ll mean a thousand more jobs for the locals.”

“You’re lying through your teeth,” Murchison pointed out. “You ain’t dumb enough to pour more money into that shit-ass company.”

The fact that Carlton was in fact lying through his teeth did not mean that Murchison’s accusations didn’t make him angry. The truth was that the auto parts company was going to close within a year and the angry people of Brayton would have something else to get angry about.

“My company has been a leader in its field for sixty years.”

“Yeah. Until you got hold of it. I’m instructing my people to not make the payment.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Watch me,” Murchison said.

“There are plenty other companies that would love to get their hands on that land.”

“Right. Every company in America wants to get their people blown up and be accused of poisoning toddlers. It’s every CEO’s dream.”

Carlton was in a panic, and he forced himself to sound conciliatory. “Randall, we don’t need to fight like this. What is it you really want?”

“You pay for security for the first year, and you announce it in your statement. Say you’re trying to protect innocent people from these vigilantes, and say that Hanson is a responsible corporate citizen who is committed to preserving clean air and water. We’ll release the same kind of statement.”

“OK. That’s fair,” Carlton said. “Done.”

It was an easy promise to make, because it would be an impossible one to keep.

In a very short time, providing security would be both unnecessary and impossible.

Lucas … did I ever tell you I had decided to follow you and Dad and become a cop? In my junior year, I decided to chuck it and I signed up to take the test. But I never took it, I went down there but left before it started. I decided I wouldn’t have the courage in dangerous situations. I guess I was right, because right now I’m scared to death, and not handling it well.

I haven’t thought about it in ten years. It’s amazing how old memories come back when you think you’ll never again make new ones.

That’s it for now … power on the computer is getting low.

Make Gallagher understand. Please.

Chris Gallagher spent almost two hours gauging the level of security.

It wasn’t so much that he was concerned that he couldn’t handle whatever was presented. He had entered Taliban strongholds undetected; getting into Richard Carlton’s house would be a comparative piece of cake, no matter how many guards he employed to protect himself.

What Gallagher learned in two hours he could have learned in ten minutes. There was no outside security in place, other than motion detector floodlights, which he could easily elude.

The wreckage of the guesthouse had been mostly cleared away, and Gallagher could see the foundation with his night vision goggles. It just added to the question that had already formed in Gallagher’s mind; why would someone like Carlton, already the victim of violence, not have more security?

It certainly couldn’t be financial; just based on the house, and the money Carlton was getting from Hanson, he could have hired an entire army division to protect him. And with his guesthouse destroyed, and a Hanson employee already dead, surely Carlton couldn’t be oblivious to the danger.

People like Carlton did not react to physical danger well. Things like that happened to other people, not them. So they overreacted, spending whatever it might take to shield themselves from that world.

Yet Carlton didn’t even have his curtains drawn; Gallagher could see him sitting serenely in what looked like his study, on the main floor, reading.

So the question answered itself beyond any doubt in Gallagher’s mind. Carlton was not afraid, because Carlton was behind the violence. It was why he knew that he had nothing to be afraid of.

But he was about to find out otherwise.

Gallagher could only see one other person in the house; he looked like he could be a security guard, but there was no way to be sure of that. The challenge was going to be putting him out of commission while not giving Carlton enough warning or time to call 911.

So he walked up to the front door and rang the bell.

Carlton didn’t move, showing no concern whatsoever. Through the glass window at the top of the door, Gallagher could see the other man in the house walk towards the front door. As he approached, while his momentum was still going forward, Gallagher kicked in the door. It was a sudden, violent move that he had perfected long ago.

The door smashed the man in the face, probably rendering Gallagher’s blow to his head unnecessary. He was not dead, Gallagher saw no reason to go that far, but he would not be waking up for a while.

For Gallagher, it represented the final crossing of a line. His life was essentially over; he recognized that and was comfortable with it. After tonight he would either soon be dead or live on as a fugitive. But he was positive that the answer to Steven’s death was in this house, and he wasn’t leaving until he had it.

Gallagher raced to the study, just as Carlton was getting to his feet in response to the crashing noise. When he saw Gallagher coming towards him, he looked towards the phone, but even in his panicked state he knew there was no chance of that.

Gallagher grabbed him at the front of his throat and pushed him against the wall. Choking, Carlton tried to strain upwards and away, but Gallagher just pushed him higher, cutting off his air supply. But Gallagher was not there to kill; he was there to get information.

Maybe fifteen seconds before Carlton would have passed out, Gallagher released his grip and pushed him into a chair. He waited until Carlton could speak his first words: “Who are you?”

“I am Steven Gallagher’s brother.”

“Who is that?”

“He is the person you framed after you had Judge Brennan killed.”

“No, no, no.”

“You don’t know me, but I am telling you this. Right now I control you, I control your pain, and I control your life. Do not lie to me.”

“I swear, I had nothing to do with that.”

Gallagher was surprised by the statement. Carlton was petrified; there was no question about that. Gallagher would have guessed he would have caved by then; perhaps the man was tougher than he thought.

So Gallagher tried another approach.

He broke Carlton’s arm.

He did it like one would snap a twig, only arms make a louder cracking noise than twigs. Carlton screamed in agony, an appropriate response considering the circumstance, and then started to mix in sobs with the screams.

“Why did you kill Brennan?” asked Gallagher in a calm voice, stepping back.

“NO, NO…”

“Why did you frame my brother?”

“NO, PLEASE … I DIDN’T … I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THAT.”

Gallagher started walking back towards him, and saw the total panic in his eyes. The fact that Carlton was not caving was a major surprise to him, and he was not often surprised.

It was a dilemma, in that inflicting more pain would get Carlton to confess to anything; Gallagher could have him admit to killing Kennedy. But Gallagher didn’t want a confession that way; he wanted the truth.

“You’re lying.”

By now Carlton was whimpering. “I swear, I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know anything about that.”

“Then tell me what you do know.”

And Carlton did exactly that.

I should have done it long ago, even though it had little chance of success.

I hadn’t wanted to spook Gallagher in the process, but I could no longer worry about that. I hadn’t spoken to him in almost thirty-six hours, and in any event I couldn’t be confident that I would be able to convince him to give Bryan more time.

I needed Barone’s help, and wasn’t positive I could get it, at least not on my terms. But I was waiting in his office to make my pitch when he got in.

“Uh-oh,” he said, when he saw me. Then, “Let’s hear it, fast. Like pulling off a Band-Aid.”

“I need your help.”

“I thought that’s what you’ve been getting.”

I nodded. “And I continue to appreciate it. But we’ve got to elevate it a notch.”

“I’m listening. Reluctantly, but I’m listening.”

“We’ve got to go wide with this.” In our parlance, that meant I was saying that so far the investigation had been limited to the officers in our precinct. Going wide would mean bringing in other precincts.

“How would that help?” he asked.

“I believe he’s in a bomb shelter in one of three counties. I need every cop that can walk going door-to-door, asking people if they know of bomb shelters in their area, so we can check them out. I also got a list of abandoned missile silos from the Defense Department, which we can do as a follow-up if this doesn’t pay off.”

“You know what the odds are of this working?”

“Very slim,” I said.

“What about Gallagher?”

“I want to leave him out of this, for now. I can’t afford to burn that bridge, not while there’s a chance of him seeing the light and letting Bryan go. Or at least extending the deadline.”

“So I’m going to call in the troops, sending them on a wild-goose chase, and conceal information crucial to the investigation? When the commissioner finds out he’ll turn me into a school crossing guard, with a defective whistle.”

“It’s on me,” I said. “If it goes south, you only knew what your people told you, and I withheld the crucial facts. I’ll take the bullet.”

What I was saying was true to a point, but much was left unsaid. Barone would look bad in the process, and he had to know that.

“This is a big ask,” he said.

“Captain, my brother is going to die if we don’t do this, and maybe even if we do. I am asking you to do whatever you can to prevent that from happening, whatever the blowback might be.”

“You know which precincts we’re talking about?”

“I do.” I took a piece of paper out of my jacket pocket, and handed it to him.

He looked at it, and said, “This has to go through the chief.”

I nodded. “He’ll go with your recommendation, as long as you tell him it’s life-and-death.”

“Which is what you’re telling me,” he said, pointedly.

I nodded again. “Which is what I’m telling you.”

He thought for a moment, then went to his desk and picked up the phone, asking his assistant to get the chief on the phone for him. “If he’s not there, find him,” Barone said. “This is Grade One.”

Within twenty minutes we had the authorization we needed and I was on the way out there to organize the operation, which had almost no chance for success.

I was almost there when my cell phone rang. It showed up as “caller unknown,” which gave me hope that it was Gallagher.

It was.

“Stay near this phone,” Gallagher said, instead of “hello.”

“Of course. Why?”

“I may have information you’ll want to hear.”

“Good, but when?” I asked. “Time is running out.”

“I know the timing better than you,” he said. “I just need to confirm something, and maybe save some lives in the process. You’ll be a goddamn hero.”

“I just want my brother alive,” I said. “That’s all.”

“Then hang tight.”

“I will.”

He was quiet for a while, and I thought he might have hung up. “Hello?” I said.

“I needed to know that Steven hadn’t done anything,” he said. Again there was a long period of silence. Then, “I knew, but I needed to know.”

“Please tell me where Bryan is,” I said, but Gallagher ignored my plea.

Instead he said, “Have you ever crossed the line?”

I knew exactly what he meant. “No, I’ve gone to the edge a few times, but never crossed it.”

“Think long and hard before you do,” he said. “Because there is no way back.”

Bryan … we’re making great progress. I just had a conversation with Gallagher that was very promising. He said he was soon going to be telling me information that I’d “want to hear.”

You would have made a great cop, and it’s not too late. All you have to do is give up any hope of ever having a decent house or car, but the upside is that you’ll start getting shot at.

You’re handling this amazingly well, Bryan, and I’m proud of you. You’ve always been miscast as the younger brother, because I’ve always looked up to you.

See you soon …

“What the hell happened here?”

It was the question Tommy Rhodes asked as soon as he walked in, but he had a pretty good idea already. He had seen the car leaving, and gotten a look at the driver.

The door to Carlton’s house had been ajar when Rhodes came in, and the scene was fairly chaotic. William, who had been assisting Carlton throughout this operation, was bleeding slightly from the mouth, and had obviously come in second place in a two-person encounter.

Carlton was doing quite a bit worse. He was screaming in pain, yelling at William to get the car, and holding his arm at an awkward angle. It was obviously broken, and Rhodes saw it as a good bet that the driver who had just left was the source of the break.

“I’ve got a broken arm, that’s what happened.” Then, to William, “Let’s go.”

“Where are you going?” Rhodes asked.

“The hospital, where do you think?”

“What are you going to tell them?”

“That I fell, that I slipped, what the hell is the difference? If you got here on time, maybe this wouldn’t have happened at all.”

He started moving towards the door, but Rhodes closed it.

“What are you doing?” Carlton asked.

“I’m trying to find out what that guy wanted, and what you told him.”

For a brief instant, Carlton’s face reflected some worry along with the pain, but he recovered quickly. “He thought I had Brennan killed.”

“What did you say?”

“That I didn’t, what do you think I said? Damn idiot, he didn’t even know the cops shot the killer.”

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know,” Carlton lied. He wanted Rhodes in the dark as much as possible; he didn’t trust him.

“What else did you tell him?”

“Nothing. This hurts like hell, you understand? If they don’t operate on it right away, it won’t heal right.”

“Carlton, you’re not in this alone, OK? Tell me what else you told this guy.”

“For the last time, Rhodes, I didn’t tell the guy anything. Now get the hell out of the way.”

But Rhodes was no longer looking at Carlton; he had nothing more to say to him. Instead he turned to William, making eye contact without saying anything.

William understood the unspoken question, and slowly shook his head from side to side. Carlton didn’t notice the connection between the two of them; he was already heading for the door.

He got his hand to the doorknob when the three bullets hit him in the back, pushing him into the door, before he slumped to the floor.

“Leave him right here; I want him found,” Rhodes said to William.

“He will be.”

“Just the latest victim of the outraged citizens of Brayton.”

William smiled. “They’re out of control.”

Barone had done an impressive job.

Whatever he had said to his counterparts in the three northwest New Jersey counties had certainly motivated them. By the time I got to state police headquarters, officers from all three counties had gathered there. There were probably sixty in total, more than I would have expected could have been spared from other work.

“We’re looking for someone who has been kidnapped and is being held in what we believe is an underground room. Our assumption is that it is a bomb shelter, though we cannot be absolutely positive about that.”

One of the officers asked what made me think it was a bomb shelter, and I said, “The room seems to be soundproof, and fits the design typical of shelters in the sixties. C rations were also found in a metal cabinet, though they have apparently expired.

“We have reason to believe that the shelter has been occupied recently, as there is a satellite television hookup that is operable and in use.”

I showed them pictures of Bryan; I didn’t mention that he was my brother, but it’s likely that some of them made the connection because of the name, and the rather slight resemblance between us.

“There is a complicating factor,” I said. “A major complicating factor. There is a limited air supply, scheduled to run out soon. So there is no time to lose.”

“What’s the plan?” an officer asked.

“The plan is to go door-to-door, asking everyone if they have or, more importantly, know of bomb shelters in their area. We can then cross-check that against our list of homes with satellites.

“Every single possibility must be followed up on immediately, and if we need more manpower, I’ll make sure that we get it. I am aware that this is a difficult assignment, but we are one knock on a door away from solving it, and saving Bryan Somers.

“There is no time to lose, ladies and gentlemen. This situation defines ‘life-and-death.’”

Lucas … I am very, very anxious to hear more about your progress with Gallagher. I don’t have to tell you that time is running short.

I keep imagining that I’m having trouble breathing, that the air is running out prematurely. But I’m still alive, so clearly I’ve been mistaken. So far …

Hoping that someone gets me out of here before I run out of air is definitely the textbook definition of “waiting with bated breath.”

Hurry …

Alex Hutchison was gratified, but not surprised, at the response.

People were scared, and they were frustrated, and they were looking for someone to help them find a solution. Alex was providing, if not a solution, then at least a plan of attack. No one had a better idea, so they followed her.

People had started showing up the day before, bringing their tents and sleeping bags with them. Underneath them was the natural gas that Hanson was planning to bring up, in Alex’s mind destroying the environment in the process.

But no one would be able to drill while the land was inhabited by so many people, and it was Alex’s intention to keep a good number of protesters there 24/7.

Alex had confidence that the Brayton police would not attempt to evict them; those officers were the friends of the protesters. Their children went to the same schools, breathed the same air, and drank the same water. They would not turn on the protesters and do Hanson’s bidding.

Alex spent as much time as she could at the site, keeping morale up, and making sure as best she could that everyone was well behaved. Logical speculation was rampant that the recent violence was committed by protesters, so Alex wanted to keep these demonstrations as peaceful and law-abiding as possible.

But Alex instinctively understood that demonstrations could only be effective if there was someone to demonstrate to. Hanson Oil and Gas had paid a fortune for that land, and they were not about to pack up their drills and go home because there were people camping out on it.

Even if the Brayton police were reluctant to do their bidding, Hanson would undoubtedly get a court order, and then some police organization, local, state, or Federal, would be forced to act on it. Alex needed to make it as painful as possible for Hanson to try and do that.

The only chance to accomplish the goal was to win the public relations battle. That was why she had called a huge rally for Saturday evening. Her hope was to get at least ninety percent of the citizens of Brayton, plus many supporters from nearby towns, to descend on the contested land.

By publicizing the rally as much as possible, she hoped to get the media out in force. Interviews with worried parents, their children by their sides, would send a powerful message.

So Alex made the rounds, talking to the people camped out and offering them words of encouragement. It was not easy for them; these were not wealthy people who could afford to take time out of their lives. Husbands and wives were alternating staying on the property, each arriving as the other went back to their job, earning the money that they needed to pay the bills.

As she walked around, she noticed someone she recognized. She had spoken to the man at her diner; he had asked her a bunch of questions. There was a physicality about him that was intimidating.

But he was minding his own business, talking to no one, and in fact paying attention to no one. He seemed to be pacing the land, as if measuring it out. Then, as she watched, he walked over to one of the areas where test drilling had been done.

He leaned down, and although it was getting dark and hard to see, he seemed to be feeling the dirt. Then he walked over to another, similar place, and did the same thing.

Buttressed by the fact that there were a lot of people around to dissuade the stranger from doing anything to her, Alex walked over to him.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Bothering no one,” Gallagher said.

“Do you work for Hanson?”

“Go back to your friends.”

He didn’t wait for a response, just kept conducting his mysterious examination of the area. She kept following him, not backing down.

“You’re not going to drill on this land,” she said.

“You got that right,” he said. “No one is.”

She persisted. “Who are you?”

“Lady, I’m the person that’s going to save your life. Don’t make me regret it.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Are you always this big a pain in the ass?” he asked. “When the police tell you to leave this property, don’t give them a hard time like you’re giving me. Listen to them.”

“Our police would never try to throw us out.”

“The state police will. Start packing up.”

“We’re not leaving.”

He didn’t bother answering her; instead he headed for his car. The decision had been made; he’d call Luke from the car, and tell him what was going on, and where Bryan was.

There was no longer any need for Bryan to die; justice was going to be served in another way. And Luke would help in that process; Gallagher would use him to get the New York State Police to do what they needed to do, one way or the other.

He turned the key, started the ignition, and shared the fate of Michael Oliver.

It wasn’t until later, after the fires had been put out and the police and firemen were searching the scene for clues, that they also discovered the body of Tommy Rhodes. He was killed in his car, which was almost a quarter mile down the road from where the explosion took place. It was done execution-style, by a bullet in the back of his head.

This was where I would be for the next thirty-six hours.

I took a room at a Holiday Inn in Morristown, but I’d be spending very little time in it. I was there to find Bryan, and I wasn’t going home until he was with me.

And I was going to be out in the field with everyone else. I wouldn’t be making door-to-door cold calls, though. We had gathered data from local real estate agents, showing all homes that had been on the market in the last decade that listed a bomb or fallout shelter among their attributes. It was considered a plus in selling a home, albeit a minor one.

So I’d be going to those places that we already knew had such a shelter, after cross-checking it against our list of satellite homes. Unfortunately, this didn’t provide proof that there was a satellite hookup in the shelter itself, only in the home.

The officers on the hunt were going out in pairs, because finding the home with Bryan could prove dangerous. Gallagher could have accomplices there that might resist a rescue attempt, and the officers had to be prepared for that.

I also had a partner, the identity of whom was a big surprise. Emmit showed up, looking weak and a little worse for wear, but anxious to be of help. Emmit at half strength was a hell of a lot tougher than I was, and I was happy to have him back. I was also very grateful.

We spent a few hours going over our information, and making sure all the other officers knew their assignments. It was complicated, especially since we were doing it on the fly. We didn’t want any duplication of efforts; there just wasn’t time to waste.

I was no longer focused on the situation in Brayton. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe it was connected to the Brennan murder; the fact was that I did. And once Bryan was safe and sound, I would revisit it, and bring in the Feds and anyone else necessary to crack the case.

Brennan wasn’t the only victim in that situation. Michael Oliver had also died, and Emmit had been shot. It still seemed illogical to me. Carlton and Hanson Oil and Gas had the most to gain by preventing Brennan’s ascension to the court, and therefore had the motive to kill him. But the rest of the violence was meant to hurt those companies. Could there be killers on both sides? It seemed very, very unlikely.

But in the court of Gallagher, I had already milked it for all it was worth. Based on my last conversation with him, I think it had accomplished a lot. But he seemed intent on convincing himself without any more help from me, and I could only hope that he’d do so quickly.

But that was just a hope, and I couldn’t begin to rely on it. So Brayton would go on the back burner while we found Bryan.

It was while I was walking through the station that I saw the report on the television. There was another explosion near the site of the property in Brayton. It happened in the parking lot, adjacent to where the residents had set up their protest camp.

One person was believed killed, but either the identity of the victim was unknown or they weren’t yet ready to report it. Another person, identified as Tommy Rhodes, was shot in the head and died at the scene. The Mayor, Edward Holland, was again pleading for outside intervention, and railing against those who were not providing it.

The way things were going, I figured that by the time I got back to focusing on Brayton, they would have all killed each other.

We have strong reason to believe you are in a bomb shelter in northwest New Jersey. We have a massive manhunt going on to check every single shelter in three counties. Barone has mobilized a huge number of state police officers, and every one is looking for you.

This is in addition to the Gallagher news I told you about. I’m openly telling you all this because I’m hoping he’s reading the e-mails. Gallagher, if you are, please contact me as soon as possible.

We’re coming, Brother.

“I have no easy way to tell you this, Jules.”

Julie Somers braced herself for what was going to come next. It was going to be bad; Lou Rodriguez was not prone to the dramatic.

“Tell me,” she said into the phone, but not really wanting him to.

“Gallagher is dead.”

The news hit her in the chest, and pushed her back against the wall. “How?”

“Someone blew up his car in a parking lot in Brayton … where the protesters are camping out.”

“You’re sure it was him?” she asked, knowing the question was a stupid one.

“I’m sure. I’m sorry, Jules.”

“Any idea who did it?”

“No, I was watching him while someone must have rigged the car. If it helps, he had gone to Carlton’s house, and was in there about twenty minutes. Based on the yelling I heard, it wasn’t a fun visit for Carlton. I looked in the window when Gallagher left, and Carlton was holding his arm at a weird angle and still moaning to some other guy who had been there.

“I left to follow Gallagher, and he went to the place he died from there.”

“What was he doing there, do you know?” She was trying to get as much information as she could for Lucas; he might have a view of the big picture in a way that whatever Lou saw could be helpful. She doubted it, but had nothing else to hold on to.

“Just walking around, looking at some of the drilling equipment, checking out the dirt, or something. I couldn’t tell, really. He spent some time talking to a woman there, the one who was on TV. Then he went to his car and that was it. The explosion took out a bunch of cars around him.”

Julie pumped Lou for additional information, but he didn’t have anything more of value to offer, and in fact wasn’t yet aware that Rhodes was also murdered nearby. And the truth was, she doubted that what he did say could help Bryan in any way.

Gallagher’s only value to her was his knowledge of where Bryan was. At the moment, she couldn’t care less if he had solved the Brennan murder, or the violence in Brayton, or the Lindbergh kidnapping. He was the only one who had known where Bryan was, and that knowledge had died with him.

And now she had to tell Luke.

We had two chances to find Bryan, and then suddenly we had one.

What Julie had to tell me was even more devastating than that simple math makes it appear, because Gallagher represented by far the greater of the two opportunities. What we were doing in searching for shelters was a long shot at best.

Weird as it may sound, hearing about Gallagher’s death made me realize for the first time that Bryan might die as well. Of course I had known that intellectually for quite a while, but I was so wrapped up in the “hunt” that I kept the truth about Bryan’s situation tucked in the back of my mind.

Now it was front and center, and it made me so scared that I felt nauseous.

“How bad is it?” Julie asked.

I wasn’t going to lie to her. “It’s very bad,” I said. “And it’s my fault.”

“How is that?”

“I should have started this search days ago. Instead I focused too much on Brayton, and on convincing Gallagher to let Bryan go. I thought that was our only real shot, so that’s where I spent my time.”

“It was the logical thing to do,” she said.

“No, the logical thing when you have a kidnapping is to look for the victim. I was too intent on convincing Gallagher, and not spooking him.”

“Are you going to tell Bryan?”

“I don’t know,” I said, because I didn’t. “I’ve been getting his hopes up, because mine were up, and because I don’t want him taking those pills. I’m afraid if I tell him what happened he might panic and take them. What do you think?”

“I think we need to keep him alive until we can’t keep him alive any longer,” she said. “Hold off on telling him.”

“OK. For now.”

“You want to hear the rest of what Lou said, about Gallagher going to see Carlton, and then going to the site of the drilling?”

“Will it help us for me to hear it?” I asked.

“Probably not, but you never know.”

She told me the rest of it, and I filed it away to use after Bryan’s rescue.

“I’m coming out there,” she said. “I want to help search.”

“OK. I don’t blame you.”

I told her where I was staying, and that I’d book a room for her. Unfortunately, I only would need to book it for one night, because that’s all we had left.

The media was not yet reporting that Chris Gallagher was the person killed in the blast. Based on what Julie had said, it was unlikely that the body had been ID’d yet or, for that matter, even recovered remotely intact.

If there was enough left of the car they could probably trace it to Gallagher in that way, especially if it was owned or rented by him. If it was borrowed, it would take that much longer. Trying to recover and test DNA would take longer still.

I couldn’t stop myself from wondering what the hell Gallagher was doing at Carlton’s house, or the disputed land after that. But that was for another day.

Soon Julie would be here, and together we would find Bryan.

Or we wouldn’t, and then nothing would ever be the same.

Lucas … it’s great that you seem so optimistic. I trust that you’re telling me the truth.

This afternoon there was no news on, so I watched a movie. It was called The King’s Speech; I doubt that you saw it because it had no explosions or nudity. It was a true story about a relationship between two men, a Royal Prince and the therapist who helped him cure his lifelong stammer.

The Prince had a brother, who became King and then left the throne for a woman, making the stammering Prince the new King. Though they were brothers, they had no relationship at all, or at least not one worth having.

Maybe facing death is making me sentimental, but it told me that family is not enough, friendship is more important. So if I get out of this, I want to be friends, not just brothers.

And if I don’t make it, I want you to know that I forgive you for what you have done, and I forgive Julie as well.

But get me the hell out of here.

Julie arrived ninety minutes later.

She met us in the hotel restaurant, where Emmit and I took her through the progress we had made, and where things stood. As updates go, it wasn’t a pleasant one, because we were not getting anywhere.

Of course, in the kind of operation we were conducting you’re always getting nowhere, unless and until you have one hundred percent success. We’d certainly eliminated possibilities; officers had filed reports indicating that they had already checked out seventy-one confirmed bomb shelters.

In four of those instances, they were refused admittance until they threatened to bring the owners to the station and make their lives miserable. Failing that, the officers would have gotten search warrants, but it was unnecessary, because in each case there was ultimate compliance.

It was getting late, and we all decided to get four hours’ sleep and meet very early in the morning. There was nothing we could do anymore that night, and we needed to be refreshed for the next day. Left unspoken was what we all knew: it was Bryan’s last day.

Emmit went upstairs first, leaving Julie and me. We ordered a drink, just one because of that need to be completely alert the next day. It also might help us sleep, although at that point I didn’t think a sledgehammer to the head could put me out.

“Have you told Bryan about what happened to Gallagher?” she asked.

“No. Not yet.”

She nodded. “Good. Please give it a little time. We’re going to get it done tomorrow.”

I had strong doubts we would, but saw no need to mention it at that point.

Sitting with her right then was weird but not awkward, if that makes any sense. It was weird because of the awful situation we were facing, and because we were two people who had been in love with each other for six years.

After that one night, we never talked about it or our feelings for each other, and we definitely weren’t about to now. But it hung out there over the table like a fairly large-sized watermelon.

Since we couldn’t talk about that and we certainly didn’t want to discuss Bryan’s plight anymore, Julie asked me, “So, at the end of the day, did Steven Gallagher kill Danny Brennan?”

“No way. We can add that to the list of things I’ll have to live with.”

“He raised the gun, Luke. He was going to shoot either himself, or you. The fact that he didn’t kill Brennan didn’t make him less dangerous.”

“Yeah,” I said, with as little enthusiasm as I was feeling. “Did you see The King’s Speech?”

“Yes. Great movie.”

“Bryan saw it the other night; he assumed I hadn’t seen it, because it seemed too upscale for my taste.”

She laughed and said, “I would assume the same thing.”

At least I think that’s what she said. I was focusing on the fact that when she said it she put her hand on my arm. It was like a jolt of electricity; she could have been reciting the Gettysburg Address and I wouldn’t have noticed.

Finally I said, “I saw it the night it came out.”

“Then you had a date that chose the movie.”

She had removed her hand, so I was hearing clearly again. “Guilty as charged, counselor. Anyway, Bryan wrote about the relationships that the brothers had, and compared it to the relationship between the Prince and the speech therapist. It showed him that family isn’t enough; you need to work at being friends.”

She nodded as if she understood; I guess when you live with someone for six years you get a good idea how they view things.

“Funny thing is, that’s not what struck me about it at all,” I said. “It got me thinking about how we’re all programmed from an early age to be what we’re going to be. Not because of any royal line of succession like those guys, but by our parents, or our intelligence, or whatever. For a lot of reasons, Bryan was going to be in business and I was going to be a cop.”

“I think you both wound up in the right place.”

We both realized at the same time the place Bryan was in at the moment, which put an end to the discussion.

“Let’s go,” I said. I paid the check, and we went upstairs. We walked down the hall to Julie’s room; mine was just a few doors past it. When we got to her door, I wanted to go in with her. I’m less in need of comforting than anyone I’ve ever met, but at that moment we both needed it, and we were uniquely in a position to provide it for each other.

“Good night,” I said.

She kissed me lightly on the cheek. “Good night, Luke. Tomorrow is going to be a great day.”

“Yes, it is,” I said.

She closed the door, and I walked the rest of the way to my room. It seemed like about four miles.

Hang in there, Brother. Big day tomorrow. Julie came up because she wants to be there when you get out; I hope that’s OK.

More tomorrow.

I was right about having trouble sleeping.

I lay there for a while, trying to ready myself for what we were facing, and trying to quell the fear.

I think I fell asleep, in fits and starts, and the only reason I say that is because I was having a dream. I don’t remember that much of it now, but Bryan was the King of England, or at least King of something, and I was sort of a dope in the castle who nobody paid any attention to. It was the Paterson, New Jersey, version of The King’s Speech.

I had the dream a little after five in the morning, and the reason I know that is because that’s what time it was when I jumped up like someone shoved a hot poker up my ass.

I grabbed the phone and called Julie and Emmit. “Meet me downstairs in fifteen minutes,” I said to each of them. They both asked what was going on, and I just repeated, “Meet me downstairs in fifteen minutes.”

I was down there in twelve, and Julie was already waiting for me. Emmit was there a few seconds later. There was coffee in the lobby, and we each grabbed a cup and sat down.

“Bryan e-mailed me that he watched The King’s Speech,” I said. “He’s had television service throughout.”

They didn’t say anything, probably hoping that I was going to offer more than this old news.

I was.

“I read an article a while back, I think it had to do with targeting advertisements to people, but the point of it was that the satellite and cable companies know what you are watching. They keep records of it; they even know what people record.”

“I think I read that,” Emmit said.

I could see excitement building in Julie’s eyes, but it was tempered. “But you know how many people watched The King’s Speech that night?”

“That’s the first thing I thought about,” I said. “There’s no way we’d be able to narrow it down in time. But it doesn’t matter what Bryan watched; what matters is what he’s going to watch.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“You have a friend at the satellite company, right? The guy you got the weather outage info from.”

“He was helpful; I wouldn’t call him a friend.”

“Either he’s going to be your friend today or I’m going to strangle him with my bare hands.

“Let’s find out where he is and get him up and in his office,” I said to Emmit. “And get a court order just in case.”

“I’m lost,” Emmit said. “What are we asking this guy to do?”

“I’m going to e-mail Bryan and tell him what to watch. We’ll do it in a way that stands out. Then we’ll get this satellite guy to sit at his computer and find out where the house with that watching pattern is.”

Julie opened her purse and took out a notebook. She turned a few pages, and said, “His name is Daniel Robbins. I think his office is in Morristown.”

Emmit stood up, said, “I’ll make the calls from the room phone,” and walked away, his large frame moving faster than I thought it could walk and showing no ill effects of the shooting. If I were Daniel Robbins, I would do whatever Emmit asked.

“This had better work,” I said.

“I think it can,” Julie said. “They should have the technology to pull it off.”

I didn’t take too much comfort in what she said, since she had as little knowledge of technology as I did, which is to say she had none. For the moment there was nothing to do but e-mail Bryan and wait for Emmit.

Ten minutes later my phone rang. I took a quick look and saw that it was a number I didn’t recognize, so I figured it was Emmit calling from upstairs. “Emmit?”

“Lieutenant Somers, this is Alex Hutchinson,” the caller said, in a female voice that sounded nothing like Emmit’s.

It took me a moment to place the name, and when I did I said, “Alex, yes … I-”

She interrupted me. “You said I should call you if I knew something important, and I know it’s early, but-”

I returned the interruption. “I’m sorry, Alex, I’m in the middle of something. Can I call you back at this number?”

She seemed uncertain. “Yes, I guess so. But I think you’ll want to hear it. It’s about that man that was killed.”

“I definitely want to hear it. I promise I’ll call you back soon,” I said, though I didn’t really plan to. I’d have Emmit call her back when the opportunity presented itself. I knew she was a serious person who would not be wasting my time, but I was going to focus on Bryan, and only Bryan.

Three minutes later, Emmit came into the room. “We’re going to meet him at the tech center. Let’s go; it’s just ten minutes from here.”

“Can he do it?” I asked.

“He’s not sure.”

Bryan, we’re going to want you to do something with the television, probably starting in an hour or so. I’ll send the instructions soon, so watch for my e-mail.

Do you have power on the computer?

Do you have a remote control for the television?

Please confirm that you got this e-mail.

Got it.

Down to 9 % on the computer, so I can’t check that often. I’ll try every fifteen minutes, for now.

I have a remote control.

I’ll wait for your instructions.

We were at the tech center in fifteen minutes.

Daniel Robbins was waiting for us outside. He was younger than I expected, probably not even thirty, but that was okay. In my experience the younger the person, the better they were with technology. I don’t think I’ve ever met a sixty-year-old computer geek.

He had a serious, intense look on his face; Emmit had obviously impressed him with the urgency of the situation. “Follow me,” he said, and we all started walking. “I’m not supposed to do anything like this without authorization.”

“Whoever gives you a hard time I will shoot in the face,” I said.

He nodded. “That should do the trick.”

He led us into an enormous room, the kind you associate with NASA mission control. There were probably a hundred seats at desks, each one with a large monitor. On the wall there were main monitors, with lights and numbers flashing, and maps with display lights. I’m sure it all had meaning to somebody, but not to me.

There were thirty or so people manning the desks, who I assumed were still the night crew. Robbins pointed towards a glass-enclosed office in the back of the room, on the balcony floor. “We’re up there.”

We followed him up to the room, which looked something like the communication center on the starship Enterprise. There were two people already there, a man and woman, both younger than Robbins. “This is Howard Mueller and Sarah Gayda,” Robbins said, and everybody nodded. No time for handshakes.

“Howie, you have the floor.”

He nodded, and began. “We’ve never done this; we don’t have any interest in what people are watching in the moment; it’s always after the fact. That’s more than ample for advertising decisions.

“But I think we can set it up for ongoing monitoring; it just might take a little while, because some of the cross-checking will be manual. The computers aren’t set up this way, and it might take more time to try and program them than to get things going.”

“OK, good,” I said. “I need to tell Bryan what he should be doing.”

“Sarah?” Howie said, and Sarah took the floor.

“Our computers are designed for fifteen-minute increments. So he should watch something for fifteen minutes, and then go to the very next channel for fifteen, then the one after that for fifteen, and so on.”

“Got it. Does it matter which channels?”

“Mmmm,” she said, “good question. Tell him to start with 318, then work his way up. Sometimes the number jumps; for instance the one after 319 is 324. But that doesn’t matter; he should turn to whichever one is next.”

“When should he start?”

Howie again: “It’ll take us at least forty minutes to set it up.”

I looked at my watch. “OK, he’ll start at eight forty-five.”

Robbins said, “We’ll be back at eight twenty-five,” to Howie and Sarah. Then to us, “I’ll show you where the coffee is.”

I walked over with Robbins, Julie, and Emmit, but knew that if I sat there and had more coffee my head would explode. I decided to call Alex Hutchinson back. She answered on the first ring.

“Lieutenant?”

“Yes.”

“Thanks for calling me back. I’m sure you read about the man that was killed the other day in the explosion; they haven’t given his name out.”

“I’m aware.”

“He was walking around the area where we’re protesting just before he died. I thought what he was doing was strange, so I approached him.”

“What was he doing?”

“Sort of examining the land, checking out the drilling rigs that were already there, that kind of thing. But that’s not why I called you.”

“Why did you call?”

“Because I talked to him and he said some strange things that I thought you should know. I figured he was with Hanson, so I told him we wouldn’t let him drill on the land, and he said that nobody was going to. Then he told me to leave him alone, that he was saving my life. I may not have the exact words right, but that’s basically what he said.”

“Anything else?”

“Yes, he said that the state police were going to throw us off this land, and said we should listen to them. Then he said I was a pain in the ass,” she said, and then laughed. “Which showed he knew what he was talking about.”

There would come a time when all this would be interesting to me, when I would try to bring down everyone involved in the Brayton mess. But that wasn’t the time, especially with Emmit across the room signaling to me about something.

“Thanks, Alex. Let me think about this for a while.”

“OK,” she said. “If you need me, I’ll be out here on the land. We’re not leaving, and we’re not the ones committing the violence, no matter what they say.”

I got off the phone and walked over to Emmit, who was reading something on his own cell phone. “What’s going on?”

Emmit looked up. “Richard Carlton is dead. Murdered in his own home.”

“I guess Gallagher got his justice,” I said.

Julie shook her head. “No, he didn’t. Carlton was alive when Gallagher left his house. Lou mentioned that he looked in the window and Carlton was holding his arm at a weird angle and yelling at some guy who was there with him.”

“William,” I said. “He was like Carlton’s assistant or something, but he looked more like a something than an assistant.”

“Could he have killed him?” Emmit asked.

“I don’t know, and right now I don’t give a shit. I’d be fine if they dropped a nuclear bomb on Brayton.”

I looked over at Howie and Sarah, still hovering over their computers; it was hard to believe that we were depending on them to save Bryan, but that’s where we were. Maybe it was to get my mind off that, but I started thinking about Gallagher again. “Carlton must have told Gallagher something. And whatever it was sent him to the drilling site.”

“And Carlton knew where he’d be going, and sent someone to kill him, so Gallagher couldn’t reveal what Carlton had said,” Julie said.

I shook my head. “More likely that somebody, maybe William, killed Carlton for talking and then went after Gallagher. My bet would be that the same person killed Carlton, Gallagher, and Rhodes.”

“It would have to be the protesters,” Julie said. “Carlton and Hanson have gotten what they wanted. So they killed Carlton for revenge, and they killed Gallagher because they thought he was on Carlton’s side.”

What she was saying didn’t ring true for me, but I shut my credibility bell off entirely, because Robbins was signaling for us to come over. Howie and Sarah were apparently done, and we were about to find out if our last chance was still feasible.

“OK, we’ve got good news and bad news,” Robbins said.

“Let’s hear all of it.”

“Howie?”

Howie took over. “The short answer is that we can do it. We can tell you who’s watching a particular show at a particular time, in the moment. We can’t do it in exactly the target area you’re talking about, our range is going to be a little wider, but we can do it.”

“And the bad news?”

“Two things. One is that a home will be recorded on the list as long as it’s on at any moment within the fifteen-minute time frame. So if they scroll through it, it’ll be there. That will increase the number of homes and the size of the list.”

“What’s the other thing?” I asked.

“We have no way of cross-checking the lists by computer; it will have to be manual.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Julie asked.

“Well, put it this way. We can print out a list of everyone watching ESPN from eleven to eleven fifteen. Then we can print out a list of everyone watching CNN from eleven fifteen to eleven thirty. But we can’t tell you, or at least our computers can’t tell you, who is on both lists.”

“Can you separate the lists by area?”

He nodded. “Yes, by zip code.”

I nodded. “Good. So we’ll each take different lists, and go over it by hand. We’ll get it done,” I said, though I had no idea if we could, since I had no idea how many lists there would be, what form they would take, or how many names would be on them.

I asked Robbins, “You have people that can help?”

He nodded. “Yes.”

“Only those you can trust completely, that you don’t think will be careless and miss anything.”

“I understand.”

“Good,” I said. “I’ll tell Bryan we’re a go.”

Bryan,

At eleven o’clock, turn on channel 318, at eleven fifteen, turn on channel 319. At eleven thirty, move to the next channel in order. If it skips numbers, that’s fine, just make sure it’s the next channel.

Any problem, let me know immediately.

Lucas,

Got your e-mail, and I’ll do exactly what you say.

I’ll let you know if there’s a problem, but please, you do the same. I only have hours left, and I’m not sure how many.

4 % on the computer.

Hurry.

Edward Holland was frustrated and angry.

The District Court had declined to provide a court order removing the protesters, choosing to give them more time to respond to Holland’s motion. That effectively removed the possibility, for the time being, of state or Federal intervention.

The murder of Richard Carlton was announced after the court issued its ruling, and there was no way they would reconsider before Monday.

Monday wasn’t good enough.

It was an uncomfortable position for Holland to be in. He had been the champion of the people he represented, and now he was at least temporarily on the other side. But he was positive that more violence was on the way, and he had to do whatever he could to prevent additional loss of life.

To that end, he again called Brayton’s police chief, Tony Brus. “What have you got on the Carlton murder?” he asked.

“He took three bullets in the back from ten feet. No witnesses. Also had a broken arm that happened premortem. Coroner won’t know for sure until the autopsy, but his guess is the arm happened within minutes of the shooting. Different gun killed Rhodes.”

“Anything that might lead you to the killer?” he asked.

“Hard to say. We took prints, but no results yet. But this was not an amateur job.”

“We’ve got to act,” Holland said.

“I’m acting,” Brus said, annoyed at the implication. “I’ve got every officer working fourteen-hour days. You want more action, get me more people.”

“I want the protesters removed from the mining site.”

Brus was tired of dealing with this asshole, especially since he was more and more inclined to run against him in the next election. “Mayor, I was just there. Everybody is calm; they’re barbequing and throwing Frisbees, for Christ sake.”

“People are getting blown up and shot in the parking lot.”

“I’ve told you, the violence is being committed by outsiders. I don’t know who, but there’s no way the people camping out on that land are killing people.”

“I don’t want anyone killed. By anyone. I want them gone before dark tonight,” Holland said.

“You’re making a mistake.”

“Your point of view is noted. Now I’m the Mayor, and I want them out. Bring tear gas, hoses, whatever the hell you need, but get them out.”

Brus was furious, but maintained control. “It will take me a while to put the operation together.”

“Do it,” Holland said, and hung up.

Brus hung up the phone with one thought on his mind. He would do his job, but there was no way he was teargassing his friends. And whatever he did, he would make Mayor Holland look bad in the process.

The day was already a month long, with no sign of ending any time soon.

At least that’s what it felt like, waiting for Howie and Sarah to set up the machines that would start monitoring TV viewership throughout northwest New Jersey.

Of course, at the same time, the clock seemed to be moving at a mile a minute, as it literally wound down the time left in Bryan’s life.

All we could do was watch and wait. Every time Howie frowned, I was afraid that he had just discovered something to make the entire project technologically unfeasible. And he never seemed to smile, so there was nothing to provide an upbeat counterbalance to that worry.

Robbins brought three people in, two women and a man. None of them were over twenty-five; retirement age in this company had to be thirty. But they seemed sharp when Robbins downloaded them on what was going to happen, and I further impressed the life-and-death seriousness on them.

I’ve been present when Julie gave closing arguments to a jury in capital cases, but I’ve never seen anything approaching the tenseness in her face and body as I did at that moment. Bryan was her family, and Bryan was her friend, and imagining him suffocating to death was completely and totally unacceptable.

I was able to spend the time beating myself up over not having thought of this earlier. I had known Bryan had television from almost the beginning; all this could have been accomplished with time to study the data, with more than four percent power on his computer, and a lot more than a few hours of air for him to breathe.

“OK,” Howie finally said, looking up at us. “We’re as ready as we’re going to be. It’s ten forty eight; we’re set to go at eleven. We’ll have the printout about six minutes after the time period is up, so we’ll get the first one at eleven twenty-one. That won’t do us any good, because we’ll have nothing to cross-check it against. We’ll have the second report at eleven thirty-six. There’s no way to tell how many reports we’ll need to eliminate all but one.”

He seemed to be a smart and confident guy, which made me feel better that he knew what he was doing. I liked him, and if he screwed it up, I was going to kill him.

But the bottom line was that we would not have anything to cross-check for forty-eight minutes. Since each minute seemed to take about four hours, we were looking at a long wait.

I didn’t want to e-mail Bryan, because I didn’t want him to use up computer power in responding. There was also no need; he knew what he was supposed to do, and would do it as long as he could.

I called Barone and told him what was going on, and asked him to send backup officers and position them in various areas in the three counties we were looking at. I wanted us to be able to get to Bryan as fast as possible once we knew where he was.

And then my mind wandered back to Brayton, again probably because I didn’t want to think about Bryan, counting on us, waiting in that room.

Ordinarily, in a situation like that, I would write down everything I knew. It helps me to think clearly, to make sense out of things that sometimes seem nonsensical. I didn’t have time for that now, so I couldn’t get my mind around certain questions.

Why would Carlton have been killed? He was no longer a factor in the mining operation; Hanson had already bought the land from him. Was it revenge by the townspeople? That hardly seemed likely. Was it to keep him quiet? Quiet about what?

What could Carlton have told Gallagher, and why did it send him to the drilling site? And what was he doing feeling around in the dirt, and looking at the drilling equipment?

They were questions I would answer, but they would have to wait. It was eleven twenty-one, and the first set of lists was being printed out.

Sarah handed them to us. They were different sizes, and probably averaged about six hundred addresses on each one. We spread them out in front of us on large desks, looking over them, and discussed the best way to go about the cross-checking.

But for the time being we were unable to do anything with the lists.

That would wait for the next list, which would provide something to cross-check them against.

Then it would be showtime.

The situation was way out there beyond the Planet Surreal.

Bryan could see that, even through the haze of fear that was enveloping him.

He was sitting underground, running out of air to breathe, counting on TV programs to save him. On the same table as the remote control was a glass of water and two pills, which he would use to kill himself at the first sign of impending suffocation. And the last person he would probably ever hear speak was on television, trying to sell him a miracle kitchen gadget.

He had a million questions that he wanted to ask Lucas, most of them about Gallagher and the situation in Brayton. For a short while Lucas had been so upbeat about it, and then he stopped mentioning it.

Bryan wondered what had happened, why it had gotten to the point where this thing with the television became what seemed to be his last chance. Had Gallagher refused to intervene, and had Lucas now given up on that?

But Bryan did not want to send an e-mail asking those questions. The computer had long ago told him that it was on reserve power, and he wanted to conserve what little he had left.

He wished he could go online and learn how he would feel when the air started to run out. Would there be a period of time where he felt only short of breath, and slightly dizzy? Would it allow him time to take the pills, and alleviate the suffering? And how long would the pills take to work? All of these questions would go unanswered.

Bryan considered writing a final message to the world, on pencil and paper, a medium that didn’t slowly reduce its “percentage of power” remaining. He had thought about it frequently during the previous six days, but didn’t know that there was anything special he wanted to say. Or that anyone would ever find the note, or his body.

So all he planned to do was switch the dial at each fifteen-minute interval and wait to be rescued, or to die.

The second set of lists came right on time, six minutes after the time period ended.

Nobody said a word; we all just launched ourselves into the job of cross-checking it with the first lists. It was a tedious, time-consuming job, made even more daunting by the tremendous pressure we were feeling.

My approach was to take the first address on list one and try to find it on list two. If I did, I’d put a checkmark next to it on both lists. If I didn’t, I’d put an “x” by it on list one, but I didn’t cross it out, in case it was on list two and I had just missed it.

It was so slow that I had the sinking feeling that we were going to fail, even if the process worked. I wanted to speed up the work, but I was haunted by the fear that in doing so I’d miss something. If Bryan’s address was on there and we passed over it, just once, then all hope would be lost.

It took me an hour and five minutes to get through my list, and I found thirty-seven addresses common to both lists. I was the first one finished, Julie was second, and the others were all done within fifteen minutes of me. The strain everyone was under was evident in their faces.

While we were working, other lists were being generated, as other fifteen-minute segments concluded. Since we only had to cross-check them against those names that were common to the first two sets of lists, this would go much faster but still take some time.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon before we narrowed it down to a manageable number. At that point we had seventeen addresses in the target area, though I was suddenly flooded with the fear that maybe we weren’t looking in the right place at all.

We had only narrowed it down to northwest Jersey because of the weather outages. What if the information we had been given was wrong? What if there had been outages someplace else? Bryan could be in Connecticut, or New York. Or what if Bryan’s particular outage wasn’t weather related at all? What if it was a local glitch?

But we were where we were, and seventeen was a limited-enough list to get started. I called Barone, and told him to start sending officers to the locations.

I was torn, not sure whether to go out in the field myself or wait for another list that would narrow it down further. I decided to wait, at least for one more list. And then I’d be on the move.

But first I had to make sure that Bryan believed we would save him, so he wouldn’t take his own life. If I was wrong, and I knew that could very well be the case, it would be a last, terrible betrayal.

We’re coming for you, Bryan … it won’t be long now.

You can count on it.

The rally was set for 6 PM, and it would be huge.

That became obvious when people started arriving before noon. They joined those already camping out there, and by two o’clock, with four hours still to go, the crowd had swelled to almost six thousand.

Edward Holland and Tony Brus agreed on a plan to clear the land of people. Holland would speak at the beginning of the rally, asking everyone to leave. Neither man had any real hope that his words would be effective, and Brus would have his officers on the scene, ready to move in if it became necessary.

Brus had instructed his officers on procedure. The goal was to get the people out of there and then quickly construct barricades to prevent them from coming back. There was no desire to arrest people; these were not criminals and should not be treated as such.

Brus had originally had the idea to fence off the area before people could arrive, but it was impractical, since so many protesters were already there and others arrived so early. This was going to be a first of its kind for Brayton, and Brus told his second command that it would “permanently change the way we’re viewed by the people who live here.”

But even a town as small as Brayton has procedures in place for situations like this, and they spent the late morning going over them, and talking about how they would react to various scenarios that could come up.

When they were finished and ready, Brus called Holland. “Mayor, we are as prepared as we will ever be.”

“Good. I’ll speak to them, and alert them as to what is going to happen. If they don’t listen to me, you move your men in.”

“You’re the boss,” Brus said, signaling his reluctant agreement to go along with the plan. He thought this was a serious overreaction, even after the Carlton murder. On the positive side, if it all went the way he expected, Holland wouldn’t ever get another vote in Brayton.

“Tony, I know you think I’m overreacting on this,” said Holland. “But the downside to doing it is that people will be pissed at us. The downside to not doing it as that people can die.”

“OK,” Brus said, “I can see that.” He knew that Holland did not want any citizens of Brayton to be killed. He also knew that Holland especially did not want them to die on his watch.

The reports coming in from the field were not good.

Barone called to say that officers had already checked out nine of the seventeen matches and come up with nothing. I took down the list of the ones that had been checked out, so that I could check them off our lists.

“What are they doing if the houses seem to be empty?” I asked.

“Hey, Lucas, you think I’d let them leave it at that? Our people are instructed to enter and search the homes, whether people are not home, or not cooperative. We’ll deal with the fallout later.”

“Thanks, Captain.”

“I’ll keep you posted as reports come in.”

I got off the phone and saw that the next group of lists was coming out. We got started on them, and I didn’t eliminate the homes that Barone had reported were already checked out, just in case the officers missed something.

Thirty-five minutes later we had the pared-down list. There were six homes on it, four of which had already been checked by Barone.

Which left two possibilities, one of which was only fifteen minutes from where we were. I called Barone and gave him this new information, and he said that officers were only ten minutes from the other location. He was close to there as well, and would meet up with them.

He would also send some as backup for us, but we were closer than his officers were, so we’d likely get there first.

When I got off the phone, I said, “Let’s go. We’re covering one of the two; Barone’s got the other.” I turned to Robbins. “You know how to get to this address?”

“Yes.”

“Then come on,” I said, and the four of us were off.

The address was in Mount Freedom, a small town northwest of Morristown. Robbins was only partially familiar with it, but told us he thought the address was on the outskirts of town, in mostly undeveloped farmland.

I drove, only because I got in the driver’s seat first. Emmit got in the back with Julie, and Robbins sat in the passenger seat. I drove in a way that emulated Emmit’s technique, which is to go so fast that the front wheels start to leave the ground. It was all open road, so I turned on the siren and let it rip.

I didn’t turn on the GPS, trusting Robbins’s assurance that he knew the way. This appeared to be a major mistake when at one point he said, “Turn right here-no, wait.” But he soon seemed to get his bearings, and told us he was positive he knew where he was going.

And he did.

We turned off on a small dirt road and pulled up to a farmhouse, small but in good condition. There was a car parked outside, and a pickup truck that looked like it had been a while since it was serviceable.

We got out of the car and ran to the front porch. I rang the bell and no one answered. I rang it again … no response.

So I nodded to Emmit, and he kicked down the front door.

The four of us went inside and started looking around. “We’re looking for doors in the floor,” I said. “Move every piece of furniture; the door might be hidden.”

So we searched, with Julie screaming Bryan’s name periodically, even though there was no way he could hear us even if he were there. The house was a small one, and we covered every piece of floor at least three times, then went out and looked around the yard.

I could see the satellite dish above the garage, so we went in there and searched just as carefully.

Nothing.

Bryan was not there.

My phone was ringing; it was Barone.

By five o’clock the number of protesters had exceeded ten thousand.

Even though there was no official program, a number of people had gotten up and made impromptu speeches from the stand that had been constructed for the occasion. Everyone knew that Mayor Holland was going to speak at six o’clock and Alex Hutchinson after that.

Holland had not arrived, but Chief Brus had, and was walking among the protesters. The courtesy with which he was greeted, and the almost festive atmosphere, confirmed his conviction that Holland was overreacting to the perceived danger. For God’s sake, Brus thought, half the children in town were there with their parents. Would people about to commit violent acts want their children there?

Holland was an idiot.

Brus’s strategy was a simple one. He would execute Holland’s order and send his men in to clear the place out. If they went peacefully, then that would be the end of it. Holland would take some political grief for having done it, but he could cover himself by claiming to only be concerned with the safety and welfare of the citizens.

If they resisted, Brus would not instruct his men to forcefully remove them. Holland would go nuts, and would demand the use of tear gas or other irresistible force. There would be a public disagreement between the two men, and Brus would not back down.

The net result would be that it would cost Brus his job; Holland had the right to fire him, and would exercise that right. But it would firmly and permanently elevate him well above Holland in the minds of the townspeople, and would be the perfect kickoff for his candidacy for Mayor.

It may not have been a win-win for Brus, but at the very least it was a no lose-win.

So all Brus had to do was sit back and watch Holland dig his own political grave and Brus would move in once he stopped shoveling.

At first, Bryan didn’t recognize what was happening.

He sensed that he was breathing slightly faster than normal, but he couldn’t tell if that was because he was feeling intense anxiety. He was pretty sure that extreme nervousness caused quickened breathing, but it was hard to remember.

And it was really important that he remember.

But after a few minutes, there could be no denying it. The air he was breathing was less satisfying; he needed more of it. That’s why he was inhaling faster and faster, but it wasn’t getting the job done.

In full-fledged panic, he turned on the computer, to see if there was a message from Lucas, providing a reason to hold on. There was none, so he quickly typed one of his own. The pills were three feet away, sitting on the desk, next to a glass of water. Waiting.

Then the computer went black and stayed that way. It was obviously out of power; he wasn’t even sure if the e-mail he sent went out. The battery had run out, as had Bryan’s life.

He picked up the computer and threw it against the wall, smashing the now useless machine that had been his lifeline. The exertion made him breathe even harder.

It was the moment of truth; if he was to take the pills, now was the time. He had resolved to do so, and felt that he could do it when faced with the certain prospect of death by suffocation.

But in the moment he hesitated. It was death he was afraid of, death in any form, and until he took those pills there was the remote possibility it could be avoided.

So he debated it in his mind, in seconds that felt like hours.

And then he felt strangely peaceful; it’s counterintuitive, but a brain deprived of sustenance will create such a feeling.

And with the pills on the desk, he slumped to the floor.

“Negative,” Barone said. “It’s a goddamn garden apartment.”

He was telling me that the other of the two matches that the satellite lists had yielded was a dead end, that there was no underground shelter there.

He was telling me that Bryan was going to die.

There was literally nothing we could do. Either we had been wrong about the general location that he was in or we had missed something in our rush to go through the lists. The latter possibility seemed more likely, but it didn’t matter.

There was nothing left to be done.

Julie started to sob softly, and I felt like joining her. I had spent a goddamn week trying to find a killer, and in the process I had killed my own brother.

Emmit, not the crying type, smashed his hand into the car so hard that it made a serious dent. He had given it his all, had even taken a bullet that day by the missile shaft, but it hadn’t been enough. At that moment I wished I had taken the bullet and fallen down the shaft and never …

And then thinking about that time at the abandoned missile shaft reminded me of what Willis Granderson of the Morristown police had told us the day he sent us to check out that shaft. He had laughed and said that he knew people who built houses near an abandoned one, set it up as a shelter, and used it as a guesthouse. He laughed and said that he had guests he’d like to put underground like that.

The backup officers Barone had sent were just pulling up, six officers in three cars. I started screaming at them, and at Julie, Emmit, and Robbins, “LOOK FOR AN ABANDONED MISSILE SHAFT! SPREAD OUT AND LOOK FOR A MISSILE SHAFT!”

I saw Emmit’s face light up in recognition; he was there when Granderson made his comment, and he remembered it as well. “Come on!” he yelled, and quickly indicated where each of us should look, so as to spread us out to make the search as efficient as possible.

We all took off on the run, trying to cover as much territory as possible without missing anything. Having seen the other abandoned shaft, I knew this one was large enough that someone would realize it if they came upon it.

And Julie did.

“LUCAS! OVER HERE! I THINK I FOUND IT!”

I was the closest to her, so I got there first. She was leaning over, trying futilely to pull on the enormous metal covering. A hundred of her, a hundred Emmits, would not have been able to do it.

But one Emmit proved to be enough. On the other side of the cover from where Julie was standing, he found a small door cut out of it. It was made of metal as well, and as I ran towards him I saw him take out his gun and shoot at the padlock that was on the handle.

He shot four times, and by the time I got there with the other officers he was pulling the door open. He lifted the door and I looked in; there was a long, fairly steep staircase down at least twenty feet.

I headed down; it was so steep that I did it backwards, treating it more like a ladder than a staircase. I was looking down as I did so, but I could hear the others above me, coming down.

The first thing I noticed, even before I got down there, was the sound of the television. When I got to the bottom I could see that it was a small apartment. I was about to call out Bryan’s name, and was already panicked that he hadn’t called out mine, when I saw him lying next to the table.

Emmit and two officers had made it down, and approached as I leaned over Bryan. One of the officers, who seemed to know what he was doing, felt for a pulse, but didn’t say whether or not he detected one. All he said was, “We need to get him to fresh air.”

When I stood up, I noticed the two pills sitting next to a glass of water on a table. He hadn’t taken them.

I was already feeling light-headed from the lack of air in the room, though some was certainly coming in from the stairwell. Whatever was affecting me didn’t seem to bother Emmit, though. This man who had nearly died from a bullet wound, and gotten out of a hospital bed to help, picked Bryan up, and put him over his shoulder.

One of the officers yelled into the shaft, “We’re coming up!” and then stepped out of the way for Emmit, who carried Bryan up the stairs with apparent ease. I was feeling so weak that I almost hoped Emmit would come back and carry me, but I followed along.

When I got to the top I saw Bryan lying facedown on his back, with one of the officers over him, doing CPR.

Before I had a chance to ask what his status was, Julie came over to me.

“He’s alive,” she said, and started to cry.

We sat in the hospital waiting room for three hours.

Dr. Arthur Lansing came out once to talk to us, somewhere around the one-hour mark. Lansing looked to be no more than thirty-five and was tall, at least six foot six. He would have been taller if he had a single hair on his head, but it was shaven clean. I had absolutely no idea what to make of that.

He spoke with authority and confidence, conveying a feeling that he was in control of the situation. “Mr. Somers is in a coma, but his condition has stabilized.”

“So that means he’ll … he’ll survive?” Julie asked.

Lansing nodded. “Absent any unforeseen circumstances.”

Julie closed her eyes in a silent thanks, and Emmit exhaled about four tanks’ worth of carbon dioxide.

I was focused on getting more information. “Why is he in a coma?” I asked.

“His brain was deprived of oxygen for an unspecified period of time. It shut down, partially as a defense mechanism. When it kicks back into full operation, he’ll hopefully come out of the coma, and we’ll know more about potential damage.”

“What’s your guess?” I asked.

He smiled patiently. “I’m afraid I don’t do guesses very often. If I knew how long he was without sufficient oxygen, I could give you an informed opinion. But I don’t, so I won’t. Sorry.”

“Can we see him?” Julie asked.

“Yes, but give it a little time. He’s going to be moved to a private room in Intensive Care; the nurse will come out to get you in a bit.”

So we waited. Captain Barone came in to see how things were going. He hugged all three of us, even Emmit. Barone was far more emotionally involved in this than I had realized.

After we had told him what little we knew about Bryan’s condition, he said, “So when the hell are you coming back to work?”

“I’m thinking vacation,” I said.

“Think again. We’ve got a murder case to solve.”

“Which one?”

“Judge Brennan,” he said. “When word gets out that Steven Gallagher didn’t do it, the Feds will be all over it. I want to beat them to it.”

“Sounds familiar,” I said, but the comment stung me. I hadn’t thought in a while about Steven Gallagher in that apartment, and the three bullets I pumped into him.

When Barone left, Emmit asked, “If Gallagher didn’t do it, who did?”

I was irritated that with all I had learned, I couldn’t come close to answering that question with any certainty. “If you’re asking who held the knife, my best guess would be Kagan. He possessed the necessary skills. I would have thought Carlton hired him.”

“Why?”

“Because he got half the money from Hanson, and Brennan could have been seen as a threat to that.”

“But somebody did Carlton, and Rhodes,” Emmit said, accurately. “And Rodriguez said Carlton was alive when Gallagher left the house that night.”

“Maybe it was William,” I said. “The butler did it.”

It was a bad joke, and Emmit correctly disregarded it. “Why would he kill his boss? Carlton already had the money; why would William have wanted him dead? Unless it’s Carlton’s wife; she was dumping him anyway.”

I didn’t believe that was likely, and said so. She was going to get a fortune in the divorce; it seemed unlikely that she would have engineered something like this, especially the Brennan killing. But anything was possible, and I would certainly investigate it.

We dropped the conversation and resumed staring at the door through which the nurse would allegedly come, inviting us in to see Bryan. I knew she hadn’t forgotten us, since I had gone to the desk at least a dozen times to remind them.

There were other things about the Brennan case, especially the situation in Brayton, that still bothered me. There were the items that Gallagher found in Rhodes’s hotel room, that he left with me. But even more troubling were the items he didn’t find. There were far more explosives missing than had been used, and the timers were not there as well. They could have been set by Rhodes before he died.

There was the Michael Oliver killing. I still couldn’t understand why he had been singled out to die; he was no longer a player once he submitted his report, and even before that had labored in anonymity.

But above all, it still made no sense that the violence was coming from different directions. Carlton and his partners had the motive for Brennan to be eliminated, yet all the rest of the violence was directed against Carlton’s side.

But sometimes things that don’t make sense suddenly do, all at once.

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “That has to be it.”

“Excuse me?”

I looked up, and there was the nurse. Julie and Emmit were already standing, but I had been so lost in thought that I was oblivious.

“Nothing,” I said. “Sorry.”

“You can see Mr. Somers now,” she said.

“You guys go ahead,” said Emmit. “I’ll wait here.”

Julie and I followed the nurse through the double doors, and down a corridor to the intensive-care area. She led us to a room, and opened the door for us. “Just for a few minutes,” she said, and we went in.

Bryan was lying in bed, tubes leading into his arm, looking better than I would have guessed. He had his eyes open, but didn’t seem to acknowledge us in any way. I reached him first, and gently bent down to give him a slight hug.

“Hey, Brother, it is damn good to see you,” I said.

I pulled back slightly, and thought I detected a slight smile, though I couldn’t be sure. I looked at him, and then Julie, and felt a tightening in my throat. Humans I have spoken to who are in touch with their emotions have told me that’s a precursor to crying, but I can’t speak from personal experience. I certainly wasn’t going to hang around there and find out.

Fortunately, I had something else to do. “I gotta go to work,” I said, and turned and left.

“We have fought the good fight,” Edward Holland said as media cameras rolled,

“and we are still fighting. We are not going to let the water our children drink, the very air that they breathe, become instruments of harm. Not on my watch.”

They cheered him, all eight thousand of them. It was by far the largest crowd ever assembled in Brayton, and Holland had them eating out of his hand. But he knew that was about to change and the cameras would capture that as well.

“But we are going to do it the right way, the Brayton way. Yes, we have lost the battle in the courts, but there are many more to be waged, and we will win more than our share. That I promise you.”

The cheers became louder, raining down on him. Alex Hutchinson stood behind him on the podium, smiling and nodding in agreement, though she had no idea what was going to happen next. Holland had debated whether to tell her in advance, but decided she might choose to sabotage it.

“There has been far too much violence, and our side is being blamed for much of it. I know they are false accusations, and you know it as well. But perception is reality, and we must not do anything that feeds that perception.

“I am also concerned for your safety. No, change that. I am responsible for your safety. It’s a responsibility I will not shirk and I will not delegate. I will do what is necessary, what is consistent with the oath I swore when I took this office, to protect you, the citizens of Brayton.”

Holland looked towards the outskirts of the crowd, and saw Chief Brus and his men standing there, waiting. They seemed ludicrously undermanned to get this crowd to do anything, and Holland silently cursed the decision of the Governor not to send in the state police, and the courts to delay issuing the evacuation order.

“We must be law-abiding. We must not trespass on someone else’s land, just as we must prevent them from polluting our air and water. We will get our justice, but we will do so lawfully, and safely.”

There was a murmuring at that, as the crowd was not sure where he was going but concerned by what they heard.

“To that end, I am directing Chief Tony Brus to help you conduct an organized and peaceful evacuation of this property.”

In an instant, the cheers had turned to grumbling and booing. Alex, surprised by what she had heard, was shaking her head no.

“I ask your cooperation in doing this.” He motioned to the media cameras. “Let’s show the world what Brayton is all about.”

Brus and his men slowly advanced into the crowd. They were not wearing riot gear, nor carrying weapons. There would be time to regroup and get all that later, if the situation called for it.

It didn’t take long for them to feel the pulse of the crowd, and know that much stronger measures were going to be required.

Holland had lost them, and all hell was going to break loose.

The drive to Brayton should take an hour and a half,

so I told Emmit he needed to make it in an hour. Along the way I tried to reach Alex Hutchinson, Edward Holland, and the Brayton Chief of Police, to no avail. They were all at the rally on the disputed land.

If I was right, it was Ground Zero.

When I finally gave up on the phone, Emmit asked, “You want to tell me what the hell is going on?”

“The truth? I don’t know, not for sure. But I know what I’m afraid of.”

“What’s that?”

“The explosives and timers that Gallagher did not find in Rhodes’s room. According to Gallagher, it was way more than Rhodes could have needed for blowing up guesthouses or cars.

“And I think there’s a good chance that the detonations are going to be tonight. Rhodes was supposed to be on a plane out of here at nine o’clock. I’m thinking that he was waiting to make sure that everything went the way it was supposed to and then he’d leave.”

“Then what’s the target?”

“The land where the drilling was going to take place.”

“Why there?”

“I don’t know that, but I do know that there are a hell of a lot of people on that land right now.”

Emmit thought for a few moments and shook his head. “It doesn’t ring true for me,” he said. “What would the companies gain by killing a lot of people? They just want the natural gas.”

I nodded. “You’re right about that, but just because we don’t see the reason doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Very little of this has made sense from the start.”

“Then why do you think that’s the target?”

“Well, I couldn’t understand why Rhodes would have diagrams of the land; there seemed no reason for him to need them. But do you remember when we showed the diagrams to Frank Lassenger?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“He knew exactly what he was looking at, but one thing didn’t seem right. There were markings on the map to show where the drilling should take place, and Lassenger thought they were in the wrong place. That he would never drill where those markings were.”

“Damn…,” Emmit said, realizing.

“Exactly. If I’m right, those markings weren’t showing anyone where to drill. They were showing Rhodes where to place the explosives.”

Emmit stepped harder on the gas, and we went faster than I would have thought possible.

As evacuations go, this one was a loser.

With Alex Hutchinson exhorting the people from the podium to disregard Holland’s plea, and to resist the police efforts, Brus was having no success in getting the bulk of the people to leave.

After twenty minutes of cajoling by the police, perhaps eighty percent of the crowd remained, and showed no inclination to depart. Most of those who did leave were parents with children, uncomfortable about the turn things had taken.

Holland directed Brus to take stronger measures, but Brus was trying to talk him out of it. “These people are not being violent,” he said. “You want me to teargas them?”

“I want you to do whatever is necessary. Once they see we’re serious, they’ll leave.”

“These are not the LA riots, Mayor. We don’t have a court order, and there is no reason to risk injury, to the people or to my officers.”

“That is your opinion, but mine is the one that matters. I am giving you a direct order,” Holland said.

“And I am refusing it. You want to move them out, do it yourself.”

With that he turned and walked away. The conversation between them was caught on camera, and not by accident. Brus had orchestrated it; he wanted the voters of Brayton to see exactly what the Mayor wanted to do, and especially his heroic resistance to it.

Brus walked the grounds, ordering his men to the perimeter, an act that was greeted by cheers of triumph from the protesters. It had gone exactly as planned, so well that he didn’t even think the Mayor would have the political capital to fire him.

Holland, realizing the police would no longer do his bidding, sought out Alex Hutchinson. “Alex, we need to get these people out of here.”

“No, we don’t,” she said.

“Yes, we do,” said Lucas Somers.

It was seven thirty, and Tommy Rhodes had planned to be on a nine o’clock flight.

If I was wrong, we had all the time in the world. If I was right, we could be minutes from disaster.

“Alex, listen to me. I have reason to believe that explosives were planted all over this property, placed on timers. The strong likelihood is that it is programmed to blow at any minute.”

“You too?” she asked.

“No, not me too. I have no dog in this fight. It’s not my problem, and I basically don’t give a shit what happens to this land.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“But I care what happens to these people, and what happens to you. And right now, standing here, I care what happens to me.”

I was waiting to hear her reaction, and trying to figure out what I would do if she wasn’t convinced. There was no way Emmit and I could move these people out ourselves.

We could try and bring in the New York State Police, but the Governor had already refused to act. In any event, it wouldn’t be possible to accomplish it on a timely enough basis.

She was honest about it. “I don’t know whether to believe you.”

I nodded. “I understand that. And if I’m wrong, then the downside is you’ll all leave this area for a few hours and then march back in. But if I’m right, then the downside is incalculable.”

She didn’t answer, just thought about it some more, so I said, “The time to do this is right now. Not in five minutes. Right now.”

She turned and walked away, towards the podium. She got up there, took the microphone, and said, “Listen to me, everyone. This is important.”

She said it a few more times, and waited while the crowd quieted and turned its attention to her. “The state police have told me that they have reason to believe it is dangerous for us to be here. They’ve asked that we walk down the road a bit while they check the place out.”

There were some shouts of surprise and resistance, as the people tried to decide whether Alex had gone over to the other side. “I believe them,” she said. “Once everything has been cleared, we can come back; Lieutenant Lucas Somers has promised that. Come on, my friends, safety is the reason we are here in the first place, so safety comes first.”

Some people started to gather their possessions, and Alex said, “You can leave your things here; we’ll be back in a little while. This is just a precaution, but it is an important one.”

While she was talking, Emmit had gone over to the Brayton Police. He apparently persuaded them to re-engage; Emmit can be a powerful persuader. They walked back among the crowd, helping them to move quickly and orderly from the area, where Alex had gone to lead them down the road.

As they walked off, Emmit and I stayed in the back to round up any slow movers, and in twenty minutes everyone was off the property. It seemed like a lot longer.

I wasn’t sure what a safe distance would be, but this wasn’t a forced march to Bataan. There were elderly people and children in the group, and there was a limit on how long a walk they would tolerate.

We stopped at about a half mile, and I called Barone, explaining the situation and asking him to pull whatever strings necessary to get the bomb squad out here.

I saw Edward Holland trying to mend fences with the people, but it seemed like he was going to have his work cut out for him. He kept explaining that he was only concerned for their safety.

It was a claim that had far more credibility a few minutes later, when the world exploded.

I’d never seen anything like it.

Well, maybe in the movies. We were half a mile away, and the ground shook so hard I was sure it was going to open and swallow us. The flashes of light, maybe three or four of them, were so bright that for those brief moments it seemed like daylight.

The crowd started to panic and run away from the explosion, though their flight was brief. Within seconds that seemed like months the blasts stopped, and peaceful darkness settled in. Sounds of children crying could be heard; I suspect each of them had some serious therapy sessions ahead of them.

Edward Holland was standing next to me. “My God…,” he said, which pretty much summed it up.

Alex Hutchinson came up and asked, “Is it over?”

I nodded. “I think so, but there’s no way to know for certain. Make sure nobody goes back there.”

“That won’t be a problem,” she said, and started walking towards the crowd. She stopped, turned, and said, “Thank you.” Then she went and started comforting people, trying to calm them. The police were doing that as well, and Holland joined in.

People started leaving, though I assume their cars were destroyed in the blast. In thirty seconds Brayton had become a community of pedestrians.

Emmit and I waited for the bomb squad to arrive, and we told them what we knew, basically the type of explosives that had been used and the fact that they were detonated by timers. Remote detonation seemed unlikely, since Rhodes was no longer around to have done so.

When we got in the car, Emmit said, “I guess you were right.”

I shrugged. “It happens.”

I called Julie at the hospital, and asked her how Bryan was doing.

“He’s drifting in and out of consciousness; at least that’s what they’re calling it,” she said. “I prefer to think of it as sleep. They said it will last awhile.”

“Does he know you’re there?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What about the prognosis?” I asked.

“Too soon to know. But the first forty-eight hours are key; at least that’s what they’re telling me.”

“You going back to the hotel?”

“I think so,” she said. “The nurse promised she’d call me if he wakes up, and it’s only ten minutes away. What about you?”

“I’m staying there until Bryan is Bryan,” I said.

“Me too,” she said. “How did it go in Brayton?”

“I assume you haven’t been near a television?”

“No, I’ve been in Bryan’s room.”

“It was fairly eventful,” I said. “Turn on the TV when you get back to the room.”

I saw Emmit smiling at my characterization of the evening.

“What channel?” she asked.

“Trust me, it won’t matter.”

We made plans to meet for an early breakfast the next morning at the hotel. We’d go to the hospital together from there.

I got off the phone and Emmit said, “I’m going to head home tonight. I want to see Cindy.”

“Emmit, there’s nothing I can ever say to you that-”

He interrupted me. “Man, I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.”

I laughed. “Glad I was able to cheer you up.”

As we were getting back to the hotel, Emmit asked, “Who do you think was behind it?”

He was referring to the massive explosions; we both knew that Rhodes was paid help.

“I think I’ll let the Feds worry about that,” I said. “It’s been a pretty long day.”

I got back to my room and got undressed. When I emptied my pockets, I saw that there had been an e-mail on my BlackBerry that I never opened. It was from Bryan, and it said:

Good-bye, Lucas … take care of Julie.

I love you both.

And then I did something that I hadn’t done in many years, probably not since Bryan and I were in grammar school.

I cried.

My cell phone rang seventeen times during the night.

After the third call, I kept it in bed with me, so I could check the call waiting. I didn’t answer any; they all seemed to be Manhattan numbers, and I assumed they were trying to get me to do interviews on the events in Brayton. I was only going to answer if it were Julie or Bryan calling, but that didn’t happen.

I woke up, showered, and was five minutes away from going to meet Julie when she called. “He’s coming out of it,” she said.

“I’ll be right down.”

We drove to the hospital, and that made for probably the only time I’ve felt things were awkward between Julie and me. I didn’t know what she was going to do regarding her marriage, and I wasn’t about to ask her. I’m not even sure that she knew.

The truth was that I didn’t even know what I wanted her to do. I loved her, and I wanted to be with her. I had been denying that to myself for way too long. But I also wanted Bryan to have whatever it was that Bryan wanted.

I decided not to show Bryan’s last e-mail to Julie. He asked me to take care of Julie when he thought he wasn’t going to be around. Now that he was alive and hopefully well, he’d probably feel differently.

I figured it was too much to hope that Bryan met a great woman in the bomb shelter and they were engaged.

We got to the hallway outside his room, and a nurse greeted us with, “Doctor should be here soon, but he’s doing very, very well.”

At the door, Julie and I looked at each other before going in. I said, “One at a time?” She shook her head and said, “No. Together.”

I was shocked at how good Bryan looked. More important, he was alert and smiled when we walked in. It’s amazing what access to oxygen can do for somebody.

Julie went to him and hugged him, delicately because he still had tubes attached. She laid her head on his chest and kept it there for a while; she might have been crying, but I couldn’t tell for sure.

“Hey, babe,” he said, softly.

She lifted her head, and dried her eyes. She laughed a short laugh, and said, “Hey.”

I walked over and put my hand on his shoulder. “You made it,” he said. His speech seemed a little off but not too bad.

I nodded. “Thanks for hanging in there.”

“I knew you’d make it. But I knew you’d be a pain in the ass and wait until the last minute.”

“Hey, I’ve got a lot on my plate. I had to fit you in.”

He smiled. “I’m going to want you to tell me everything that happened, OK?”

“I will,” I said. “Now I’m going to leave you guys alone; I’ll be outside.”

It was about forty-five minutes later that Julie came out. I stood up, and she came over and put her head against my shoulder, and hugged me. As always, I didn’t have the slightest idea what she was thinking, or what she was going to say.

“Bryan and I are going to try and make it work,” she said.

I didn’t know how to answer that, so I said nothing.

I’d been saying nothing for a really long time, so I was used to it.

If I had to be doing interviews, I’d have preferred the Today show.

Instead, I had two Federal agents at my office when I got in. They had more hair than Matt Lauer but not nearly as much personality.

They were investigating the violence in Brayton. Edward Holland had been calling for Federal or state intervention for days, but it apparently took blowing up half the state to make it happen.

I was a key to their investigation, because I had been the one who realized what might happen that night. It was fairly easy for them to know that, since TV cameras had been at the site and captured everything.

The speeches of both Holland and Alex Hutchinson before the explosion had been playing in what seemed like an endless loop on television, and I had my share of airtime as well. I’m sure that both Holland and Alex were being subjected to the same type of interrogation as I was.

I had no reason to hide anything from them, until I came to a realization midway through. While they were investigating the explosion and murders in Brayton, they had not tied it in to Judge Brennan’s murder. They still thought that was solved, and that Steven was guilty.

I’m not sure why I didn’t enlighten them; I probably would have if they asked directly. It could be that I was paying back Barone for all he had done for me; I knew that Barone would want a head start in a reopened Brennan investigation, and I was giving him that. I also knew that Barone would want to manage how the information got out to the public that I shot the wrong guy.

I also realized in the moment that I had been through so much that I wanted a shot to get to the bottom of it myself. Bryan went through his terrible ordeal, Emmit was shot, and Chris Gallagher was killed. I wanted to find out who was responsible for all that, and I wanted to do one other thing.

I wanted to get justice for Steven Gallagher.

So I told the agents that I had learned about the Brayton situation while investigating the Brennan murder, but making it sound as if it were peripheral to that. And for a long time I had believed it was, while I was intent on lying to Chris Gallagher, rather than finding the truth.

When the agents left, I went in to see Barone, and told him that, for the time being at least, we had a head start on the renewed investigation into Brennan.

“Now these are the kinds of conversations I like,” he said.

“I thought you would.”

“So where do we start?”

“In Brayton,” I said. “That’s where it begins and ends.”

“So what is your ass doing here?”

I finally had time to approach the investigation my way.

Without the horrible clock ticking on Bryan’s life, I was able to analyze the Brayton system more logically and dispassionately. I did what I always did on a case. I wrote down what I knew, what I didn’t know, and why.

And then I went for a drive.

The only people who could be said to have come out of the carnage as winners were Edward Holland and Alex Hutchinson. Holland had constantly tried to protect his citizens, and it was manifested in his constant pleas for outside assistance, and most profoundly in his ordering his police chief to do whatever was necessary to remove them from a dangerous situation.

He risked unpopularity by doing so, but when he was proven right he became a political hero. He was already being talked about as the leading candidate for the open US Senate seat, and he was milking the publicity every chance he got.

Alex Hutchinson was in a similar situation, and her story was even more appealing. She was a mother protecting her children, protecting the children of an entire town, and she stood up to incredibly powerful forces arrayed against her.

Not only that, but she succeeded where Holland and the police had failed; she got the people to move off the land before the explosion. I certainly couldn’t have managed it, and neither could the local police.

With Holland moving on to a Senate bid, there was talk of drafting Alex for Mayor. Since there hadn’t been a contested mayoral election in Brayton in twenty years, it was hers for the taking. She had also been doing some interviews, but not as much as Holland.

So Alex was my first stop when I got to Brayton. She was at her normal spot behind the cash register at her diner, but that was the only thing that was the same as my last visit. It was so crowded that I had to park down the block, and there was a line stretching out the door of people waiting for a table. Even if Alex did not become the Mayor, she was already parlaying fame into financial success.