Detour

PROLOGUE

It’s an old saying. An adage. A reassuring word to the wise. Or actually, to the scared. It’s meant to mollify, to calm, to show one the utter silliness of their thinking.

You say it when someone’s frightened to do something.

To travel, for instance.

To ride the rails. Hop a plane. Charter a boat.

To scuba dive. Jet-ski. Rollerblade. Balloon.

They’re frightened a terrible something will befall them, that they’ll set out to experience an enjoyable afternoon, a day, a vacation, a life, but instead, they’ll end up dead.

And what do you say to them?

There’s more chance you’ll get hit by a bus while crossing the street.

Because how often does that happen, huh?

He kept a secret file in his bottom drawer, buried beneath his myriad charts, pulled out and dusted off for special occasions, as a kind of reminder.

J. Boksi, thirty-eight, about to be engaged. He was walking out of the jewelers, admiring the sparkling oval-cut two-carat ring set in filigreed white gold.

S. Lewes, twenty-two, newly earned MBA in business administration from Bucknell University. She was coming from her first job interview and staring up at the grandest buildings she’d ever seen.

T. Noonan, seventy, doting grandfather. He was taking a walk with his four-year-old grandson and explaining why Batman could not beat Superman in a fair fight, never ever, not on your life.

E. Riskin, sixty.

C. Meismer, seventy-eight.

R. Vaz, thirty-three.

L. Parkins, eleven.

J. Barbagallo, thirty-five.

R. and S. Parks, eighteen-year-old twins.

They’d all been hit by a bus while crossing the street.

Every single one of them.

They were all dead.

It reminded him that despite what you think, it can happen.

It can.

It can even happen to you.