Reckless

CHAPTER ONE

They entered the house through the sliding glass doors in the basement, which Becca, their fifteen-year-old, sometimes left ajar to sneak in friends at night.

Upstairs, April Glassman stirred in her bed. She always had an ear for noises late at night. The curse of having a teenager. Marc could go on snoozing forever, through fire alarms, she would joke, but April had a built-in antenna for the sounds of Becca tiptoeing in past curfew or Amos, their goldendoodle, on guard at the living room window, scratching at the glass over a late-night deer or squirrel.

The house was a large, red-brick Georgian at the end of a private drive off Cat Rock Road in backcountry Greenwich. Every bend in the wood seemed to magnify at night. She opened her eyes and checked the time on the TV cable box. Two thirteen A.M. She lay there for a few seconds, listening. She definitely heard something-creaks on the floorboards, muffled voices-in the foyer or on the stairs.

Suddenly Amos started barking.

“Marc…” She nudged her husband.

“Honey, what?” Marc Glassman groaned, mashing his pillow into a ball and rolling over.

She leaned over and shook his arm. “I heard something.”

“Probably just Amos. Maybe he spotted a deer. You know those bastards never decide to come out before two A.M.”

“No,” she said, alarmed. “I heard voices.”

“Okay, okay…” Marc exhaled, giving in. He opened his eyes and took a peek at the clock. “Grrr…I’m sure it’s just Becca…”

Their daughter now had a boyfriend at the high school, a junior on the wrestling team, who drove, introducing a whole new set of complications to their lives. Lately she’d been sneaking out after the two of them had gone to sleep, or on weekends, sneaking in her friends at all hours of the night.

“No. It’s a Sunday, Marc,” April replied, recalling how she had kissed her daughter good night hours ago and left her curled up in bed with Facebook going strong and a chemistry textbook on her lap.

“Not anymore…” Groggily, he sat up, rubbing a hand across his face, flicking on the light. “I was just gonna get up and check out the overnights anyway.”

As the chief equities trader at Wertheimer Grant, one of Wall Street’s oldest firms, it had been months since he slept a whole night through. Singapore opened at midnight, Australia an hour later. Europe and Russia got going at four. Six months ago he might’ve made it undisturbed till morning. But that seemed like a lifetime ago. Now the bottom had fallen out of the market. The whole subprime mess, Fannie and Freddie reeling, AIG. The banks teetering. Not to mention the company’s stock: a year ago it was over eighty and he and April could have gone off and planted tomatoes somewhere for the rest of their lives. Last Friday it had closed at twelve! It would take him another decade to recoup. Immediately flashing to his positions, his stomach wound into its usual two A.M. knot.

Now April was hearing voices…

“I’ll go take a look.”

In the last months, April had watched as her husband dropped ten pounds from the stress. She knew that something was wrong. She knew the firm was hurting and how much they were relying on him. How much he was expected to produce. Marc never shared much about his positions anymore. The pressure on him was crazy.

She leaned over and put her hand on his shoulder. “Honey, will this ever go back to normal?”

He threw off the covers and grabbed his robe. “This is the new normal.”

That’s when they both heard another noise.

A creak on the stairs. Marc put a finger to his lips for her to keep quiet.

Then another. Closer. A knife slicing through them.

Someone was coming up the stairs.

“Marc…” April caught his eyes. Her look was laden with worry. “Amos stopped barking…”

He nodded, feeling the same thing inside. “I know.”

The next creak seemed to come right from the upstairs landing. April’s heart skipped a beat. Her husband’s gaze was unmistakable.

Someone was in the house.

“Just stay there,” he said, nodding to the bed, raising a hand for her to stay silent.

They all knew about the recent rash of home break-ins going on in the backcountry. They were all just talking about it last Saturday night with the Rudenbachs at Mediterraneo. Marc listened closely at the door. They never put on the alarm. What the hell did they even have the damned thing for, he’d asked himself a hundred times. Just wasting all that stupid money. Truth was, he couldn’t even remember the damn code-or even where the panic button was.

“Marc…”

He turned. He stared at April’s freckled face, her soft, round eyes, hair raised in a nighttime ponytail. Except now, he saw only fear in it. And helplessness. “Becca, Evan…,” she whispered.

Their rooms were just down the hall.

He nodded firmly. “I’ll go check it out.”

He took a step, and suddenly the bedroom door flew open. Two men, wearing ski masks and plain blue work uniforms, pushed their way into their room.

April let out a scream.

“What the hell is going on? What are you doing in here?” Marc stepped up to them.

The first one in the overalls suddenly knocked him with a fist to his face back onto the bed.

“Marc!” April reached out to him.

Her husband removed his hand and stared at his fingers. There was blood on them.

“What the hell do you want?” he demanded.

“Shut up,” the first one said. The man was large, his voice husky. A tuft of red hair peeked out from behind his mask. He had a gun, accounting for the blood in Marc’s mouth. “Just shut the fuck up and you might just live.”

“Oh, God, Marc, please…,” April murmured, her heartbeat now accelerating wildly. Her thoughts flashed to her children sleeping down the hall. Just keep them away.

The second man shut the bedroom door behind him. The one with the gun came over and pulled April off the bed. “Get up. Put your hands behind your back.” His accomplice took out a roll of duct tape from his uniform and twisted April’s wrists behind her back, binding them tightly. She looked at her husband with fear in her eyes as he ran a second piece of tape across her mouth.

“What do you want with us?” Marc pleaded, helpless, watching his wife being bound. “Listen, I’ve got a safe downstairs. We’ve got some money…” He shot April a steadying look, as if he was trying to say, Hang in there, honey. It’ll be okay. That’s why they’re here. For the money.

This isn’t the first one. No one’s been hurt so far.

“Where?” the one with the gun demanded.

“Downstairs. In the study. I’ll show you. Look, we haven’t seen your faces. We don’t know who you are. Just take what you want and let us go, okay?”

“Show me.” The man with the gun grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up.

That was when, to both their horror, the bedroom door opened again and their daughter, Becca, half-asleep, wearing a baby-blue Greenwich High sweatshirt and rubbing her eyes, wandered in. “What’s going on, guys…?”

Before she could even let out a scream, the second intruder grabbed her and covered her mouth.

“Please don’t hurt her!” Marc begged, seeing his daughter’s face turn white with alarm. “She’s just a kid…”

Eyes wide, April struggled against her binds, trying to go to her. Oh, baby, no, no…

Becca tore the man’s hand away. “Mom!”

They watched, unable to do a thing, as the second intruder wrapped the tape around Becca’s mouth and roughly bound her hands. Her uncomprehending eyes were round with fear.

“Throw ’em in there,” the man with the gun directed his accomplice, pointing to the master closet. Becca, who had always had a fear of small spaces, twisted her head back and forth, trying to resist. Unheeding, the accomplice shoved the two of them in. April fell to the floor, twisting against her binds. Don’t do anything foolish, she tried to say to Marc, desperation in her eyes. Just give them what they want. Please…

They shut off the lights in the closet and closed the door.

Her daughter let out muffled screams, writhing against April in the dark. All April could do was huddle as close as she could, trying to convey with all her strength that everything would be okay. Just stay calm, baby. They’re only here for money. They’re going to leave and this will all be okay. Daddy will come get us. I promise, honey, please…

Tears glistened in her teenage daughter’s eyes. April put her head against hers, trying to transfer all her conviction and strength, and she began to think, Her hair is so soft and she smells so pure, my little girl…Now she’ll remember this the rest of her life. You bastards. You’ve stolen the innocence from her. Her trust. Her thoughts flashed to Marc downstairs-Marc, please, just give them anything! Don’t do anything heroic. Just let them go-and then to Evan, only seven, sleeping down the hall, her sweet little baby. Just sleep, honey, through it all. It’s going to be okay…Please, Evan, please. It’s-

That was when she heard the sound: two far-off pops, coming from downstairs.

April and Becca looked at each other. She’d heard it too. April’s heart began to leap with fear.

Marc.

Panicked, tears started to run down her cheeks. What did you do, Marc? What did you fucking do?

Suddenly, there were footsteps. Heavy ones, pounding back up the stairs. Becca squealed, her large eyes doubling in size. The whole house seemed to shake.

What did you do?

Desperately, April fought against her binds. She looked at her daughter. All she could do was simply press herself into her as tightly as she could, panic building in her daughter’s eyes.

My babies… April started to cry, her thoughts flashing to Evan as the approaching thuds entered the room. Oh my God, what’s going to happen to him, my poor little sleeping boy? Do whatever you have to do to me, but please, not him. Not to Becca.

The closet door flung open. Light burst into their eyes.

Not my babies, April tried to scream. She threw herself in front of Becca. Not them, not them… She stared back at the hooded faces with eyes that were both begging and defiant.

Please…

CHAPTER TWO

Remind me again,” Annie Fletcher asked, wiggling out of her navy U of Michigan T-shirt. “Why is it they always call it blue Monday?”

“No idea,” Hauck gasped, his breaths quickening, gulping in air.

She rocked above him, hands balanced against the rattling headboard, swaying in perfect rhythm to the thrust of his thighs. Annie’s body was small and light, but her breasts were full, and her short, dark hair fell over her face, still messy from sleep.

In the background, the newscaster on the early morning show announced brightly that it was going to be a clear and sunny day.

“Never gonna think that way again,” she said, starting to really heat up. Because of the demands of her restaurant and Hauck’s new job-not to mention her son, Jared, moving east with her and boarding five days a week at a nearby school for kids with special needs-they only got to see each other a couple of days a week, and so things tended to be very physical between them.

“Me either,” Hauck huffed, cupping her thighs, the rush of climax coming on.

They had been together for six months now-on and off, mostly on-Annie’s responsibilities at the restaurant clashing a bit with Hauck’s commitment to the new job. She didn’t push for more. He didn’t offer. Annie was trusting and open. It wasn’t so much a relationship as it was a loose, easy friendship-with benefits-what time would allow.

Their rhythm grew faster and faster. Sweat coated their skin. “Thought you had to get to the market…,” he said to her, feeling her breaths beginning to deepen and knowing she was only a few accelerating tremors from letting out.

“Damn arctic char are just gonna have to wait…”

The voice from the TV said stock futures were trending down again for the fourth day in a row.

But Hauck and Annie weren’t listening. Their IRAs could have been in total free fall and right now neither of them would have given a damn.

Finally, with a last gasp, Annie arched, stiffening, then fell back onto him, joyfully spent of breath, draping her satisfied body over his, her chest feeling about a thousand degrees. “Damn.” She sighed from her head all the way down to her little toes. “Now that’s the way to start the workweek. That was a good one.”

“That was three.” Hauck flung back his arms in mock exhaustion. “I’m an old guy. You’re killing me.”

“Three?” She rested her chin on his chest. “Two, I think.”

“Two since they talked about the transit fares going up,” he told her. “One more since traffic and weather.”

“Oh, yeah, three,” she purred contentedly, releasing a long, slow sigh. “Math was never my strong suit.”

Hauck turned and focused in on the digital clock. “Damn. Look at the time! I’ve got to scoot.”

Annie restrained him as he tried to wrestle free, digging in her chin more sharply. “You know, I’m happy, Ty…” She smiled, a kind of coy, amused grin, being purposefully annoying. “Are you happy? You don’t always look so. I know you’re sort of a tough nut to crack.”

“Apparently not,” he said, chuckling at the lame joke. “And yeah, sure, I’m happy…” He tried to roll her off. “I’ll be happy if I can get you off of me and hop into the shower.”

“Oh, right,” Annie chortled, “like this wasn’t exactly what you had in mind when you snuggled over to me before the alarm went off…”

“Alright, maybe,” Hauck admitted a little guiltily. “One…”

“You’re just a glass-half-empty kind of dude, aren’t you? Never show too much of yourself. Never trust the moment.”

“I’m not half-empty at all.” Hauck finally spun her off and faced her sideways. “I’m actually completely half-full. It’s just that it’s buried. Very, very deep.”

“Right; if it were any deeper, you’d find oil in it,” Annie said, and deciding it was funny, twisted his nose.

“Laugh-out-loud,” Hauck said, screwing up his face. But then he laughed too.

That was because, truth be said, he was happy. The lines etched in his face might not have shown it, but Annie had brought things out in him he had never let surface before. The uncomplicated will to just enjoy life. To relax, stay in the moment. For the first time, it seemed things that had weighed heavily on him for so long-the deaths of his daughter, eight years before; his brother, only last year; and Freddy Munoz, his protégé on the force-all seemed to have been pushed back into some closed, time-locked vault he no longer felt compelled to open and to which he had momentarily lost the key.

Not to mention the fact that he had suddenly left the force and gone into the private sector. After fifteen years.

Now he traded up to a jacket and tie every day and had spiffy new digs in an office park on the water. Earning three times what he had before. He had colleagues in Europe and Asia on his speed dial. He even glanced through the Wall Street Journal every morning, pretending he was keeping abreast of business news, after he checked the sports scores on ESPN.com, of course. He had opened himself up to a new feeling, the arc of his new life seeming to work out. He was, like Annie pushed him to do, trusting the moment. Okay, maybe like he’d said, it was somewhere down deep, somewhere that didn’t come up to the surface very often. But it had been a long time since he felt this way. Boundaryless. Free of regret.

“Really, I gotta get up,” he said. He lifted her off. “I’ll do the coffee.”

Annie fell back against the pillows, groaning loudly, “Alright…”

The news anchor came back on. “And now, back to our lead from the top of the hour…”

The congestion on the Merritt Parkway had given way to something far more serious.

“In Connecticut, the town of Greenwich is waking this morning to a horrifying triple murder. An equities trader at a prestigious Wall Street firm was brutally shot to death during the night along with his wife and daughter in their expansive home in backcountry Greenwich. Cindy Marquez is on the scene…”

Hauck sat up, his years as head of detectives taking over, as the attractive reporter, bundled against the cold, stood in front of two large stone pillars leading to a typical Greenwich home.

“Kate, the local police believe that the motive behind this family’s tragic end was simply a robbery gone bad. A string of break-ins up here has rocked this affluent community for months. But until now, none had ever turned so violent.

“Marc Glassman”-a photo flashed on the screen-“who was forty-one and worked as a lead equities trader for troubled Wall Street giant Wertheimer Grant, was found shot downstairs in their posh five-bedroom home off of Cat Rock Road…”

Hauck sat up. A tremor knifed through him.

“Hold it a second,” he said, disentangling from Annie’s legs. He stared, his heart rate accelerating, as he edged closer to the screen.

“The bodies of his wife, April, who was well known in local charities and schools, and their teenage daughter, Rebecca, were found in an upstairs closet. A younger son…”

Hauck fixed again on the photo. A shot of the family in happy times. His mind raced as the reporter described the grisly scene; he fixed on the husband-slightly receding hair, in a fleece pullover and sunglasses, one arm around his daughter, who was wearing an oversize college sweatshirt and had long brown hair, and the other arm around another child, a son, younger, a mop of yellow hair and smiles.

Then he focused in on the wife.

Pretty. Happy looking. In a green baseball cap, her light-brown hair, in a ponytail, peeking through the vent. A beautiful smile that was both proud and tragic at the same time.

“Oh, God…” Hauck groaned, sucking in a fortifying breath.

“I know, it’s horrible,” Annie said. She came up behind him and rested her chin on his shoulder, staring past him at the screen. “Are you okay?”

He nodded silently, not an answer as much as it was all he could do. A heavy weight fell inside him.

“I knew her,” he said.

CHAPTER THREE

The gleaming white Dassault Falcon touched down gracefully at Westchester County Airport, only a stone’s throw from the Greenwich town line.

The sleek six-passenger jet taxied off the runway to the NetJets private hangar. When the engines cut off, the door opened, and the attached stairway lowered down. An attractive couple stepped off-a stylish woman in her forties, blond hair flowing from underneath her cowboy hat, a fur draped around her shoulders; and her companion, dark complexioned, sunglasses, a little younger, in a navy cashmere blazer and jeans. The woman stopped at the top of the steps and said a word of thanks to the pilot, complimenting him on the landing.

“Always perfect, Mike.”

“Always a pleasure, Mrs. Simons. We’ll wait to hear from you on the Anguilla trip.”

“I’ll have Pam be in touch as soon as I know. You have a nice week.”

As they stepped down to the tarmac, both wore the tan of a week of spring skiing in Aspen.

Merrill Simons was forty-four and a household name around the charity circuit in Greenwich. Over the years she had chaired dozens of balls, served on a thousand committees, pretty much knew everyone. That went hand in hand with being married for twenty-three years to Peter Simons, chairman of Wall Street’s Reynolds Reid.

But that was all ancient history now. Their divorce had been finalized a year ago, six months after he had moved in with Erskina Menshikova, the Victoria’s Secret lingerie model, granting Merrill the house on Dublin Hill, the place in Palm Beach, and the penthouse overlooking the park on Fifth Avenue, not to mention continued use of the private jet.

The very same six months before the divorce was final, Merrill acknowledged, with a certain degree of relish, Reynolds Reid’s stock had begun to collapse, due to the firm’s heavy exposure in the mortgage crisis and the resulting wave of global sell-offs. She’d always suspected Peter didn’t know shit about dealing with a balance sheet, any more than he knew about being a father or keeping a marriage together.

She’d gotten that one right!

Now she enjoyed the thought that he was probably sweating bullets with a net worth about a quarter of what it was at the time of their settlement and was probably no longer able to get it up with his silky-thighed, golden-haired trophy catch. Which was only a matter of time anyway, she knew firsthand-regardless of Reynolds’s stock plunge.

Merrill had found her own “new chapter to write” as well, as Pete had aptly phrased it the day he told her he wanted to leave. Dani Thibault was handsome and successful in his own right. He had business interests throughout Europe-hotels and commercial office deals-partially financed by his ties to the Belgian royal family. He was a breeder on the polo circuit. Windsurfed. Skied like he’d been born on them. He didn’t seem to need her money, and he seemed to love how he had awakened her forty-four-year-old body from its long slumber. He did things to her that her husband hadn’t done since he was a trainee back in the bond department. Actually, had never done, if she was truthful! Dani seemed to know the world-he could line up fabulous evenings at private clubs in London, could get a table at El Bulli near Barcelona or Robuchon in Paris. Even her kids-Louisa was in L.A. working at a production company, and Jason was still a junior at GW-were taken with him too and loved the fact that their mom had pulled herself up and transitioned to a new and happier life. That she was getting laid. Merrill’s girlfriends in town, mired in their own tired, unfulfilling marriages, were ogling her in jealousy.

It was just that a few details that concerned her had recently come up. Regarding Dani.

She hadn’t shared them with him. She’d been keeping them to herself the entire trip. Things were getting deeper between them, and she’d begun to realize just how little she actually knew about him. About the man she was falling in love with.

And a little of what he had told her just wasn’t adding up.

As they deplaned, two cars were waiting on the tarmac. One, a black, chauffeured Mercedes C 63 AMG, was Dani’s. His familiar driver opened the door. The other was Merrill’s own silver Audi wagon.

“I have to head into the city,” Dani said in his hard-to-pin-down but definitely sexy European accent. She had guessed German; he said Dutch, with a touch of French in it, maybe, from Brussels. “I have meetings until five. Then we have this thing at the library tonight, right? I’ll change at the apartment, if that’s okay.”

“Of course. I’ll have Louis bring me in.”

“Look smashing.” He grinned, his hand sliding underneath her fur jacket and giving her butt a squeeze. “I’ll walk around until I spot the sexiest woman there.”

“Better be on time then,” Merrill said, winking coyly. “Someone else may have the same idea.”

“It’s been lovely sharing the slopes with you, Ms. Simons.” Dani clasped her fingers in his. “Let’s do it again.”

“And you, Sven.” She giggled, using the ski-instructor fantasy name she had given him after two bottles of champagne. “Please feel free to come off the trail whenever you’re in town.”

He smiled, drawing her to him to give her a kiss. Merrill put her palm against his shirt and held him off just slightly, brushing her lips across his cheek. “I’ll see you there.”

His BlackBerry rang. He sighed when he saw the caller. “I have to take this,” he said. He motioned to the driver and climbed into the backseat of the Merc. He waved to her. “Until tonight.”

The black doors shut and the darkened window rose, slowly obliterating Dani’s face.

Merrill’s houseman, Louis, packed her bags in the Audi. He opened the door and she got in.

Yes, everything is perfect, she reflected. The Audi passed through the wire gate of the private terminal and wound onto the access road leading from the airport.

Everyone loved Dani. He was charming, affable, and successful, and he made her feel twenty years younger in bed. She’d be a fool to let something get in the way.

She didn’t like the sensation of distrust gnawing inside her.

There was just this one thing.

“Back to the house, Ms. Simons?” Louis turned around and asked.

“Yes. I have to change. I have an appointment in town.”

CHAPTER FOUR

They didn’t talk about it much. Over their coffee. The grisly scene on TV.

Only that it was someone Hauck had known from around town, Annie lamenting how these break-ins were getting crazy and how lots of people were buzzing about it, even at the restaurant. She shook her head, bewildered. “And what kind of person could have done that to such a beautiful family? For what? Money?”

Hauck shook his head in dismay. He didn’t know.

He chewed on seven-grain toast, quiet, leafing through the papers, until Annie realized he was still affected by it. There was something there that didn’t seem to be going away.

“I know you feel you have to do something about this.” She came around the counter and put her arms around him from behind, stroked her knuckles softly against his face. “But that’s over now. You’re a businessman now, right?”

He nodded halfheartedly.

She winked and pinched his nose. “So, go biz.”

Hauck had been working for the Talon Group for six months now. He still felt a little awkward with the transition, being an executive for the first time in his life after being a cop for so long. Dressing up in a suit and tie, doing meet-and-greets at Fortune 500 companies, trying to close deals for data protection and internal forensics with corporate controllers and heads of company security who sometimes recognized his name from the prominent cases he had worked.

Part of him still felt like a fish out of water. Even when he deposited his paycheck and saw about three times what he’d been earning before.

Hauck showered and shaved, his short dark hair barely needing to be brushed. He still looked trim and fit in his towel, despite being on the other side of forty. He dressed, choosing an oxford shirt and a salmon-colored tie to go with his blazer. Annie hopped in as he was getting out. It was a visiting day at her son’s school. Afterward she’d trade her dress for jeans and head to the restaurant.

In her towel and with wet hair, she straightened Hauck’s knot when he came in to say good-bye. She centered his jacket across his shoulders and smiled, pleased. “You look nice.”

“So do you,” he said, his finger tracing along the edge of her towel. “We should pick up on that thought later.”

“Sorry. Later I’ve got two turns for dinner and about two dozen lobster and jicama spring rolls to make. Rain check though.”

“Deal. Anyway, say hi to Jared for me. You remind him I want to see him at practice Wednesday.” Hauck had begun coaching a twelve-and-under hockey team and he was teaching Jared, Annie’s son, who was nine and had Down syndrome, how to skate. The other kids seemed to like having him around and all picked up on his positive attitude. Jared seemed to enjoy it too.

“I will. And you sure you’re okay, babe? I know how you can’t do anything about that poor family now and how that makes you feel.”

“I’m okay,” he said, patting her butt. “Promise.”

Annie smiled and pushed him to get out. “Like you would even tell me if you weren’t…”

Downstairs, Hauck tossed the newspaper and his briefcase into the front seat of his new, white BMW 550i-the one change he’d allowed in his life since accepting the job with Talon, having traded in his ten-year-old, gas-guzzling Bronco-and pulled out of the garage.

He drove down to Greenwich on the Post Road, which ran parallel to the highway. Greenwich was different now. Even here, downturn had hit hard. For the first time in years, you could find vacancies along the avenue. Whole floors were now empty in the red-brick office complexes where once-inviolable hedge funds had reigned supreme. Word was that half the gated homes along North Street were privately for sale.

For years, the joke was that “white-gloved” cops directed the traffic on Greenwich Avenue, past Saks and Polo.

Now the cops were gone-no need anymore.

Stopping at a light, Hauck went over his day. He’d been trying to track down this mortgage “thief” who had closed on three multimillion-dollar refinancings on the same property on the same day-the county clerk’s office having taken several months to catch up with the high volume in mortgage recordings-and was now, surprise to no one, nowhere to be found. He also had a one o’clock with Tom Foley, his boss, who wanted him to meet someone.

At every light, the image of the murdered Glassman family kept edging into his mind.

C’mon, he urged himself, flicking on the radio. Like Annie said, that chapter of your life is over now. He had to accept there was nothing he could do. He turned to the all-sports channel and wove onto Bruce Park toward the bottom of Greenwich Avenue, past the station where he used to work, minutes from his new, fancy office on Steamboat. He listened vacantly to the sports jockeys rambling on about the free-agent baseball signings, basketball playoffs, all the while his blood continuing to heat like a backed-up furnace and throbbing with a familiar ardor.

Are you okay? Ty…?

No, he wasn’t okay. He sat at the light with this pent-up feeling in his chest, fingers wrapped tightly around the wheel.

Until he couldn’t take it anymore.

Hell with the new chapter.

As the light changed, he jerked the Beemer into a sharp left onto Mason, barely avoiding a turning bakery truck, its horn blaring. He sped back up the hill and onto the Post Road, swinging a left onto Stanwich, his heart racing with the same familiar rush he’d felt for twenty years.

CHAPTER FIVE

About two miles down, Hauck hung a right at Cat Rock Road, the fancy houses thinning on each side. A mile down, he ran into a police barricade, the winding road narrowing to one lane. A blue and white police car was set up blocking the road, waving only local traffic through. Hauck downshifted. A chain of news vans had pulled up on the side of the road like a caravan.

Lowering his window as he approached, Hauck saw a patrolman he recognized, Rob Feretti.

“Lieutenant!” the cop exclaimed, peering in the window, instinctually addressing Hauck with his old rank. “Nice wheels…What brings you out here?”

“Steve Chrisafoulis up there?” There were lots of flashing lights up near the house.

“He is, sir.” Feretti nodded.

“You mind if I go through?”

“Thought you gave all this up?” The patrolman grinned. “The house is just up there on the left. It’s a bad scene in there.”

“I bet it is, Rob. Thanks.”

He was waved forward, around a short bend where there were two more blue-and-whites stationed, lights flashing, blocking the entrance to a drive. Feretti had radioed ahead and Hauck was let through. Just a few months ago he was in charge of these men. No way the fact that he was a civilian would change that now.

He drove between the stone pillars and down a long, curving driveway leading up to the large house. It was an impressive red-brick Georgian. Hauck parked at the far end of the circular drive. There was a heavy congestion of police vehicles and medical vans in front. In the months since he had left, he’d been back to the office only a couple times-once for the opening of the new first responders wing, and once for a retirement party for Ray Reiger, one of the old-timers on his staff.

A couple dozen police and crime-scene techs were crowded around the entrance. Hauck said hi to a few of them, who instinctively waved back with surprise. “Hey, lieutenant!” No one stopped him. He stepped past a uniformed officer stationed at the door. Inside, there was a large, two-story foyer with a round marble table and a winding staircase leading to the second floor.

A small crowd was gathered in a room off the entrance hall. Hauck stepped in. It looked like someone’s office, probably Marc Glassman’s. Built-in shelves filled with books and photos. Signed baseballs. The actual bodies were gone, but the blue outline drawn on the floor by the desk next to a large bloodstain was marked “1.” Marc Glassman had been shot downstairs, Hauck recalled. He took a look around and saw a wall safe open and the desk drawers removed and overturned on the floor. Police believe that the motive behind this family’s tragic end was simply a robbery gone bad…

Across the room, Hauck spotted Steve Chrisafoulis, who had taken over his job as head of detectives, talking to Ed Sinclair, one of his crew.

Steve gave him a look between confusion and surprise. “Whasamatter, new job not keeping you busy, Ty?”

“First big case…” Hauck shrugged to Steve, waving hi to Ed. “Couldn’t stay away.”

“Pretty morbid, if you ask me.” He and Steve shook hands. Hauck liked the man, who’d put in fifteen years in the city before he moved up to Greenwich. In fact, Hauck had pushed for him to take his place after Freddy Munoz was killed. The detective had been devoted to him. Follow you into hell with gas tanks on, he had once joked. Chrisafoulis shrugged apologetically. “Listen, Ty, I don’t mean to be short, but you can see there’s a lot going on…”

“I know that. I was wondering if I might look around.”

“Look around?”

“April Glassman,” Hauck said. He glanced at the blue-taped outline of her husband on the floor. “We worked on a few projects together over at the Teen Center.”

His stomach shifted at the bald-faced lie.

The new head of detectives scratched at his mustache. “Look, Ty, I don’t know…Fitz could show up anytime…” Fitz was Vern Fitzpatrick, Greenwich’s chief of police, Hauck’s old boss. Hauck had left the force after they’d had a parting on his last big case, no longer certain where the chief’s loyalties were.

Instead, Hauck said, “You’re pretty sure this paints up as a robbery?”

Chrisafoulis shrugged. “Safe’s open. Whatever was in there’s gone. Drawers rifled through. The fourth such break-in in six weeks out in the backcountry…Same upstairs, next to the wife and daughter. Call me crazy…”

Hauck nodded grudgingly. “I heard there was a boy as well?”

Steve nodded. “In fact, it was the kid who called it in. Seven. Woke up with the whole thing happening. He hid out in a hall closet.”

“Unharmed?”

“Unharmed,” Steve confirmed. “Pretty resourceful bugger too. He snapped off a few shots on his sister’s cell phone as the perps took off.”

“Anything come back?”

“Two of them. Wearing ski masks, work uniforms. The lab is working them over now.” He grinned good-naturedly. “Maybe I ought to leave something for that press conference, huh, LT?”

A call came in scratchily over the detective’s handheld radio. Brenda, the department’s secretary, who used to be Hauck’s secretary too. “Chief wanted you to know, they scheduled a press conference at eleven thirty, lieutenant…”

Chrisafoulis responded, “Tell him I’ll be there.” He clicked off the radio and snorted back a laugh. “Must be a little strange to hear, huh?”

“You mean ‘lieutenant’?” Hauck shrugged it off. “Listen, I knew what I was doing, Steve.”

“You know, today, you’re welcome to have it back if you want to rethink it,” the detective said, gloomily looking around. “You assured me it was just a walk in the park out here in the burbs.”

Someone called for him from outside the room. Steve waved, bobbed the radio in his palm like a heavy weight.

“Those other jobs,” Hauck said, “if I remember right, one time the perps came in and found the family at home?”

“The Nelson place.” Steve nodded. “Out on Riversville.”

Hauck looked him in the eye. “So how’d that one go?”

“I know where you’re heading…They shoved them into the pantry at gunpoint and took whatever they could and ran.”

“What I thought, Steve.”

The head of detectives looked at him and exhaled, then backed away. “The wife and daughter were in the bedroom upstairs. Lemme know if you find anything.” He winked. “Can always use the help. Take a minute, before you go.”

CHAPTER SIX

The bedroom had a few techs and detectives Hauck knew well milling around and he said hi, fielding a few questions about how things were going and what he was doing there.

He looked around the room-shades of yellow and green, colorful and warm. Hauck felt he could see April’s personality in it, the floral curtains and painted vines on the wall. The bed was still tousled from last night. A Jodi Picoult novel lay on her nightstand. A few framed pictures of her family and the dog.

Even her familiar scent-fresh, like daisies-returned to him after all these years.

He made his way over to the master closet and waited until the last CSI tech left.

Two body outlines were next to each other, almost overlapping. Hauck envisioned April shielding her daughter, their mouths taped, wrists bound, terror leaping wildly in her heart. She must’ve heard them. The gunmen coming back upstairs; the door opening, light bursting in. Her daughter’s frantic, muffled screams. The vast depth of fear subsumed in a greater sadness.

That must have been horrible for her.

He had seen it so many times. Always left him numb in his heart. People he had loved.

Why did it always feel as if it was the first?

They had been kept in here while her husband was led down to the safe. What the hell had gone wrong? Had one of them seen one of their faces and the bastards had to cover their tracks? Had Marc tried to fight back? The dresser drawers were open, clothes, photographs, papers strewn over the floor. On top of the console, an enameled jewelry box was rifled through.

Robbery.

Hauck kneeled and pressed his palm in the center of the first blue outline. For a second, it was as if he felt her warm heart still beating there. After all these years. A fist of nausea rolled up in his gut. The past rushing back, a driverless train out of control.

He had seen this so many times, he thought he could just put it aside.

But he couldn’t. Everything always came back.

In the clash between memory and forgetting, memories always won.

“Ty…?”

He recognized her as soon as he turned. After all these years.

At the back of the line behind him at the dry cleaner’s on Putnam. The soft green luminous eyes, the midwestern drawl bringing him instantly back. The pleased surprise so radiant in her smile.

“April?”

“Oh my God, Ty…” He stepped out of the line and she hugged him. “God, it’s been years…Four?”

“Maybe five!” he said, drinking in the sight of her. “How are you?”

However many years had passed, she looked the same. Better. Years had blossomed on her. Confidence shone in her face. With her honey-brown hair and freckles still dotting her cheeks, you could have mistaken her for a fairer Julianne Moore. She had on patched jeans and a long, gray sweater under a large down parka. Looking quite the country girl. There was something that sparkled in her.

“I’m fine, Ty. We’re fine. I heard you were in town here. On the force. You don’t know how many times I meant to come in and say hi.”

“So, hi,” Hauck said, grinning.

She giggled back. “Hi!”

It was like when you see someone you haven’t seen in years and you’ve forgotten just how much that person once meant to you. And then it rushes back, all at once. He took her hands and studied every line on her pretty face.

She said, “You know, I think about you a lot. I ran into Doctor Paul last month. Believe or not, we bumped into each other at the movies in Stamford. Sorta like we are now…Some art film. You ever see him anymore?”

“No. Not in years.” He shook his head. “Not since…” They moved away from the line. “So tell me how you are.”

“I’m fine. Really,” she said as if he needed convincing. “I am. We all are, actually. Marc’s still at Wertheimer. Doing great. Becca’s twelve now. She’s into ballet. She’s actually pretty good. She’s trying out for The Nutcracker at SUNY Purchase.”

He grinned. April had danced as a kid. “Why am I not surprised?”

She smiled at him. “Always the good guy to have around…So what about you?”

“Well, I’m here. Two years now. I’m living in Stamford. I’m head of the Violent Crimes Unit on the force.”

“And your wife? It was Beth, right?” He nodded. “Did things ever work out?”

“No.” He shrugged resignedly. “We never got back together. Split up for good around three years back.”

“I’m so sorry, Ty.”

“It’s okay. Jessie’s getting big now herself. She’s ten. A bit more into soccer than ballet.”

“Who would’ve ever guessed that?” April smiled knowingly.

There was a lull. Hauck realized he still had her hands in his. Finally, without drawing his eyes to them, he let them go.

“You look good, Ty. All that stuff seems like such a long time ago. Another life. We both turned corners, didn’t we? We made it through. That’s what he always said.”

“We did.” Hauck nodded. Her face brought so much back to him. “We did.”

April glanced at her watch. “Ugh. Becca’s probably waiting for me at school. Doing the high-class chauffeur thing. We ought to get together. I’d really like that, Ty.”

“Yeah, we should.” Hauck knew it was one of those things that would probably never occur.

“I should go.” Then suddenly her eyes brightened. “Hey, c’mon, out here…There’s someone I want you to meet.”

She looped an arm through his and took him outside. A silver Mercedes SUV was parked in front of the store. She led him around and unlocked the rear passenger door. There was a boy in back. Four, maybe five. A mop of straw-colored hair. Eyes as lively and moss-green as his mom’s. Maybe it was the sunlight that shone off his face, or the light that fell on April’s, radiating from her, as if she was showing him a snapshot of her own heart.

“This is Evan, Ty…”

Hauck stood up, his gimpy knees emitting a crack. A pressure built up in his stomach, the sweats coming over him. He pressed back against a sensation of tightly coiled anger and the feeling of being sick.

Memories always won.

A young CSI tech he had met once or twice named Avila came up behind him, startling him. “Bad scene, huh, lieutenant?” The kid blew his cheeks out like some twenty-year veteran who had seen this a hundred grisly times.

“It’s not ‘lieutenant’ anymore. I’m no longer on the force.”

“Still, it’s hard to put it away, isn’t it, sir? I guess it stays in the blood.”

“What stays in the blood, son?” Hauck looked at him.

“I don’t know.” Avila shrugged. “What we do.”

He looked back at the kid with his black crime kit, barely six months into his career. He gave him a wizened smile. “No, you can’t,” Hauck said. He patted the kid on the shoulder and left.

You can’t put it away.

You can’t put what’s inside behind you.

No matter what corner you turn.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Talon Group, Hauck’s new employer, was a worldwide security company doing business in thirty countries.

Most of their revenue came from the corporate division. Background screening for key employees and directors. Forensic accounting. Data recovery. Protections against internal theft. Another division handled crisis management-PR, media training. And there was another side of the company, GTM, Global Threat Management, that specialized in providing protection for diplomats and contractors in the Middle East and on dangerous posts abroad, and acted as a consultant to various foreign governments.

Hauck had joined the company as a partner in the firm’s new office in Greenwich.

Leaving police work was a big shift in his life. He’d been in law enforcement for twenty years, rising rapidly out of college through the NYPD’s detective ranks and ending up in their Office of Information. Then, after his younger daughter was killed and his marriage fell apart, he eventually found his way back near the place he had been brought up, in the drab, working-class section of Byram on the Greenwich-Port Chester border. Slowly, he built his life back up, taking over the Violent Crime division in town, graduating to head of detectives. Solving two high-profile murder-conspiracies got him on the TV crime shows and made him a bit of a celebrity around town. Put him in line for chief when Vern Fitzpatrick retired.

But rubbing up against that same established power base, he knew he could never fully be happy there.

Now he had a corner office with a fancy view of the sound. A pretty secretary out front. Access to important executives. Right off the bat he had brought in two new pieces of business: High Ridge Capital, a hedge fund-he coached one of the partners’ kids-and the town of New Canaan, which was looking into security screening on new applicants. A lot of the work had been pretty mundane. Compliance issues. His bright spot was the mortgage thief.

That afternoon, around one thirty, Hauck’s boss, Tom Foley, senior managing director of the firm, knocked on Hauck’s door. “Ty, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

Foley was tall, Princeton-educated, wore suspenders over his pinstripe shirt, and he came in with a stylish, blond-haired woman Hauck pegged as being in her midforties. She wore a white cable-knit sweater over crisp beige slacks, her hair pulled back into a re-fined ponytail. Pastel-pink lipstick. She also wore one of those fashionable white Chanel watches on her wrist.

Foley said, “Ty, say hello to Merrill Simons.”

Hauck stood up and came from around his desk. Merrill Simons looked like she could’ve been on the cover of Greenwich Magazine, hosting a garden tour at her Town and Country-style twenty-million-dollar estate. He shook her hand and motioned to the couch. “Why don’t we sit over here?”

Hauck’s office was spacious and bright, with a comfortable sitting area-a couch, two chairs, and a walnut coffee table. Above them was some kind of contemporary oil painting Hauck couldn’t figure out but that had come with the office. The windows looked out over Greenwich harbor.

“Ty’s our newest partner,” Foley explained to Merrill. “He’s heading up our Greenwich operation for us. For years, he ran the local detective unit in town and worked on some pretty high-profile cases. He likes to play it all down, but we’re lucky to have him here.”

“Tom just has a fascination with cops,” Hauck said. They all sat down. Hauck’s secretary, Brooke, stuck her head in and asked if Merrill might like a soft drink or a coffee. Merrill said she would take a tea. She appeared slightly nervous at first, uncomfortable at being there, and to Hauck, she seemed the type who was never nervous or uncomfortable, used to being in the company of important people no matter what the setting.

“Simons,” Hauck said, thinking aloud. “Any relation to Peter Simons?” Peter Simons was a big financial guy in town. Credit Suisse, Lehman, or something. To Hauck, they all seemed to merge. What he did recall was that the Simonses had some monster Architectural Digest spread up on Dublin Hill, threw lavish parties, and were influential on the charity circuit and the cultural boards in Greenwich. They were like royalty in town.

“Used to be.” Merrill shrugged, almost guiltily. “We were divorced a year ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Hauck said. “I’ve actually been up at your house. You threw a party for the French president and his new wife a couple of years back. I oversaw some of the town security.”

“I remember you.” Merrill brightened. “You’re the lieutenant from town, right?”

“Was,” Hauck said, smiling. “Change of uniform. And I think I may have once taken one of your boys on a tour of the station. He was part of a group from Brunswick. Tall, inquisitive kid. Shaggy blond hair. If I recall, he wanted to see where we locked up the first-time drug offenders…”

“That’s Jason.” Merrill laughed. “That kind of inquisitiveness we could certainly do without. Probably hoping to say hello to a few of his school chums. I hope you cured him.”

“I did my best,” Hauck said. “But as I recall, you raised a pretty determined guy.”

Merrill’s tea came. She took it and thanked Brooke. She took a sip and seemed to feel more at ease.

“So, Ty,” Tom Foley started in, arms on his knees, “you’re probably wondering just why Merrill’s here. I’ll let her tell you, but suffice it to say it’s a very private matter, one that could easily find its way into the local papers, and I assured her we’d handle it with complete discretion.”

“Of course. Goes without saying,” Hauck assured her. “That’s why we’re here.”

Merrill nodded, gearing herself up. She opened her large crocodile-leather bag and took out a manila envelope. “For the past year, I’ve been seeing someone…,” she began to explain. She removed a black and white photo and laid it, tentatively, on the table.

Hauck picked it up.

It was of a man of about thirty-five or forty. Handsome. Dark, European features. A rugged chin. Short, wiry, dark hair. “His name is Dieter Thibault. He goes by Dani. He’s Dutch. His mother was Belgian, I think. At least that’s what he’s led me to believe. Things have moved along quite quickly. I suppose you could say we’ve fallen in love.”

Hauck waited while she took another sip of tea and faced her, putting down the photo. “Go ahead.”

“This is a little difficult for me…,” Merrill said, glancing at Foley.

He nodded her on.

“You’re doing a bit of due diligence, perhaps? In case things get on to the next level,” Hauck inferred.

Merrill gave him a slight nod. “I should stress that Dani is quite successful in his own right. He’s built hotels, done some Internet deals in Eastern Europe. Some members of the Belgian royal family are investors with him. Photos of him with them are very prominent in his office in New York. He’s never needed my money. In fact, it’s his lifestyle I’ve sort of fallen into. It’s just that…”

Hauck waited for a moment while Merrill moistened her lips. She seemed to hesitate.

“It’s just that what, Ms. Simons?”

“It’s just that some of these things…I’ve had my people looking into them. Informally, of course. Some of the transactions he’s made, his personal background…family, university degrees. Sources of income. I’m not exactly sure how to say this. But all of a sudden, I’m not sure they’re adding up.”

“Adding up?” The unease was etched deeply into Merrill Simons’s face. Hauck moved closer.

“It’s as if anything that goes more than a few years back is a complete blank.” Merrill looked up and faced him. “I’m not sure Dani is who he says he is, Mr. Hauck. And before this gets deeper, I want to know who the man I’m supposed to be falling in love with really is.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Roger Cantwell stared at his Bloomberg screen in dismay.

High above Park Avenue, on the forty-eighth floor of the sleek glass tower that bore his company’s iconic name, the managing director of Wertheimer Grant read the banner headline flashing across CNBC: MURDERED TRADER WAS WERTHEIMER’S INVESTMENT STAR.

His stomach knotted. He took a breath the way his personal trainer had instructed him to do to ramp down the stress. But no simple cleansing breath could wash this mess away.

It was awful.

The days since Marc Glassman’s murder had thrown the once-shining firm into a maelstrom. A frigging roach motel of rumor and distortion, Cantwell thought with dread. He himself had gone through a mix of emotions and worries he had never experienced before. First, the shock. The disbelief, imagining the horror of it. Cantwell had known the trader well. Though it was his rule to leave the investment responsibilities to his senior staff, as head of the firm, and as someone who had never lost his love for the trenches, he’d been in dozens of strategy sessions with Glassman over the years, not to mention sales conferences, golf outings, charitable events. My God, Cantwell thought, we were all together just a few days ago at the firm’s winter opera event at the Met.

But soon the grief started to morph into worry. CNBC’s headline was correct. Marc was Wertheimer’s brightest shining star. In the midst of this year from hell-with the mortgage crisis eviscerating the firm’s balance sheet, their earnings dropping like a weight, their stock price tanking in the midst of the global sell-off, rumors flying-Glassman was one of the rare people actually making money for the firm. Some might even say the only thing propping it up.

Now that was gone.

Now there were just these headlines.

Cantwell turned around and gazed gloomily out his office window. He could see the skyline of lower Manhattan to the south, the East River. To the west, the skating pond in Central Park. He liked this view. He wanted to keep it for a while. He wanted to keep the company jet too.

Along with sponsoring Phil Mickelson and hobnobbing with world movers and shakers at places like Davos and the Aspen Institute, not to mention the appearances on Fox and CNBC, where attractive reporters sought out whatever he said.

He just didn’t know how much longer he’d be able to keep any of it.

The board was growing weary. The firm had a ton of toxic mortgage exposure. Christ, they’d been packaging that shit all the way up, right from the start. Now no one knew what anything out there was worth. “Mark to market,” it would kill them! Not to mention the stock price. Some big-name hedge fund asshole was out there shorting the shit out of it. The market cap had already plummeted from one hundred and ten billion down to fourteen. Not to mention their dwindling cash reserves. And their overnight borrowing on the repo market drying up, all these whispers…If the true picture ever got out, if there was ever a run on the accounts-Cantwell swallowed-they’d be toast.

He looked at the wall of photographs of him with leaders and celebrities that had been taken over the years. Yes, he’d been paid millions over that span. Yes, he had the cushy duplex on the park and the compound at Lyford Cay in the Bahamas, not to mention the place on the beach in East Hampton. But most of what he had was still tied up in company stock. And he’d been buying it all the way down. He had to show faith, didn’t he? Now, having borrowed against a substantial part of it, he had to wait it out. At their current value, his holdings were only worth maybe double what he owed.

And now Marc. Cantwell turned away from the screen. He had barely been able to sleep the past two nights. There was pressure from everywhere. The board. The investor community. Even the Fed. Now the fucking press…People were saying they might have to merge. Cantwell responded with defiance. Wertheimer Grant doesn’t merge. The firm had been around for ninety-five years. It was an American icon. Wertheimer Grant acquires firms. Maybe it stumbles; maybe it loses its way for a while. But it doesn’t fall.

Wertheimer Grant is Wall Street.

Cantwell’s stomach tightened as he watched the stock tick down to a new yearly low. Eight and a quarter. Just two months ago it had been fifty! “Murder of prominent trader creates market unrest…Redemptions reportedly high. Wall Street speculating on whether the firm can remain independent…”

They didn’t need this kind of exposure now.

“Mr. Cantwell…” His secretary Mary’s voice buzzed in. “Mr. Biondi and Ms. Pearlstein are here to see you.”

“Sure, yes,” Cantwell answered. He got up and turned away from the screen. “Send them in.”

Stan Biondi was his senior investment manager who oversaw all trading at the firm. He was Marc Glassman’s senior boss. Brenda Pearlstein was their corporate counsel in charge of compliance issues. They’d buzzed him a while ago to see if they could come on up. What the devil could the two of them be up to?

“We have to stem this fallout over Marc,” Cantwell said, stepping over to the conference table as they came in.

Biondi shut the door behind them. He and Brenda came over to the table. Biondi’s face looked like the Dow had just nose-dived eight hundred points. “Roger, we need to talk.”

Brenda, always tough to read, wasn’t providing any more cheer.

“Here, sit down.” Cantwell pulled out a chair. But as he did, Biondi pointed to his desk. “No, over at the screen.”

The head of trading went around Cantwell’s large architect’s desk. He bent over his monitor and punched in a request. At the prompt, he added his security code.

Cantwell tried to read their faces. “What’s going on, guys?”

“It’s about Marc.”

“I know. A complete nightmare.” Cantwell sighed. “I don’t know how we’re ever going to replace…” He was about to say him, but, in fact, what Cantwell knew he meant was the trader’s earnings.

“Roger,” Biondi said, “I don’t give a shit about replacing him. Come around.”

An unsettling feeling rose up in Cantwell’s gut as his manager steered the computer screen around. Several columns appeared on the screen. Cantwell immediately saw it was Marc Glassman’s trading positions. They would be current as of today, and Cantwell saw many of the numbers were highlighted in green, representing profits.

He exhaled. “We’re actually lucky to have all that now, Stan, considering…”

“Considering what?” Biondi clicked to the summary page, known as the Recap. It listed the cost and current value of all of Glassman’s positions. “Look,” he said to Cantwell, and fixed his eyes on him, his face ashen.

He ran the cursor to “Total Outstanding Position.” It showed Glassman had open positions of $4.9 billion. Cantwell looked at his head of trading, puzzled. That couldn’t be right. No individual had that kind of limit. The firm’s exposure could be fatal. Even a senior trader like Marc had maybe three, three and a half as his max.

“What’s going on here, Stan?”

“Okay, Roger, l-look…” Biondi always spoke in a rapid cadence, but now he was almost stammering. “I admit, I may have let some of this go on…We needed earnings. You know that. Marc always delivered. I realize how this looks. It didn’t all happen in one swing. It was gradual, over time. I know I’m on the line here…”

“Let what happen, Stan?” Cantwell went to advance the screen. “The guy’s more than a billion dollars overdrawn. What kind of effing controls do we have here, anyway?”

Sheet-white, Biondi grabbed his arm. “Roger, there’s more.”

Cantwell looked up, his eyes no longer just on Stan but on Brenda as well, the compliance lawyer, wondering what she was doing here, a deepening worry building in his chest. “How much more?”

Biondi wet his lips. He typed in another account on the screen. A second ledger of stocks and open positions came up.

Glassman’s.

Another trading account.

Roger Cantwell’s eyes stretched wide. The dread in his chest wormed straight to his bowels. “Stan, tell me what the hell is going on here, now…”

This new account held over $3.7 billion. That made over eight total. “It’s out of the Singapore office,” the head of trading said. “Roger, I don’t even know how this got set up. I know I once signed some letter of authorization that he could trade the Pac markets out of there…But a lot of this is just murky. Papered over. I still don’t understand-he’s been shifting funds between accounts, all over the globe, covering his trades…”

Now a tremor of panic ran through Cantwell. This was all they needed. He put his fingers to his temples. “Are there more?”

Sweat had come out on Biondi’s brow and he hesitated, glancing at Brenda.

“Don’t screw with me, Stan!” Cantwell’s glare bore right through him. “Are there more?”

“One,” Biondi said, swallowing. He brought up a last screen.

The Recap read $2.8 billion. Two-point-eight billion. Dizzily, Cantwell started doing the math, but Brenda Pearlstein beat him to it. “It’s over eleven billion dollars, Roger.”

Eleven billion dollars. Cantwell felt his legs buckle. He sank back down. Biondi could be fired for this.

He could be fired.

“How long has this been going on?”

“A while.” Biondi fell into the leather chair across from him. “Look, you know the numbers, Roger. We needed earnings. Marc’s always been driving them. I just let it go on. But, Roger, listen, there’s-”

Cantwell leaned forward and clicked back to the three Recap pages again. Most of the positions were in green. Gains. Each account showed Glassman well ahead. Up almost 7 percent. Close to eight hundred million. Thank God. An exhalation of relief poured out of him.

“At least the little prick knew what the hell he was doing.” Cantwell blew out his cheeks, feeling a second wind, sitting back down. The bastard had done it again! This might actually help them.

“Tell him,” Brenda said, her eyes trained on Biondi.

The head of trading nodded, gulping.

“Tell him,” Brenda said again, “or I will.”

“Tell me what?” The iciness of her expression didn’t suggest she was buying Cantwell’s image of a happy ending. “Tell me fucking what, Stan,” he turned back to Biondi, “before I throw you off the forty-eighth floor!”

“It’s a disaster,” the trading manager said, spitting it all out. “Worse than a disaster, Roger. All these gains…” He pointed to the screen, the columns of green. “Here, and here…They’re merely paper trades. Made up. To cover his losses. They never took place, Roger.” Biondi’s face was white. “They’re all completely false.”

“False…”

Cantwell’s jaws parted as he stared at the screen, the full enormity of what Biondi was telling him slowly, impossibly, settling in. Their reserves were already shredded. The market would drop six hundred points tomorrow on the news. Their stock would open up at two.

This could sink the firm.

“How much are we in for?” Cantwell uttered.

One word fell off the head of trading’s lips. “Billions.”

CHAPTER NINE

Over the next days, Hauck began digging into the background of Dani Thibault.

Merrill had given him some things to work with, Thibault’s Dutch passport number and the name of two businesses he supposedly owned: Christiana Capital Partners, of which his business card listed him as managing director and founder, and Trois Croix Investments, Limited, out of Luxembourg (which Merrill suggested was supposedly named after the street in Brussels where Thibault had been born). She also indicated he had served in the Dutch army. “Dani said he was in Kosovo. Part of the peacekeeping forces there.” That was one of the things that initially had set off her doubts. Her lawyer had been unable to find a record of any military service.

That first visit, after Tom Foley had walked her to the door, he came back to Hauck’s office. “Impressive woman, huh, Ty?”

“What’s going on?” Hauck asked him. “I thought we don’t normally handle this kind of thing. It’s pretty routine PI work.”

“Normally we don’t.” His boss stepped over to the door. “But this time we do. You may have had a chance to look over the client list here, Ty.” Of course Hauck had. Talon had a worldwide contract with Reynolds Reid, Merrill Simons’s ex-husband’s firm. “Keep me up to date,” he said, patting Hauck on the back, telling him what a great job he was doing, backing down the hall.

So Hauck started in. He began with the same steps Merrill Simons’s own attorneys had taken. Thibault was a Dutch citizen. But his background was supposedly Belgian. He purported to have ties to the royal family there, the source of his network of contacts and income. He also claimed to have a degree from the London School of Economics.

Hauck began with a criminal history. He put in for it in the U.S. and internationally with Interpol too. He Googled “Thibault.” A trail of gossip references popped up. Linked with Merrill in the society pages. Galas they had attended. Charitable foundation dinners. Prior to that he was seen in the presence of a couple Bollywood actresses and a British female race car driver. The article was headlined 2007’S GLAMOUR COUPLES.

Thibault played in the big leagues.

There was also a series of references and articles in business publications. Thibault’s firm Trois Croix had been negotiating for a small Caribbean resort chain along with a large Spanish retailer. Trois Croix was described as an investment firm based out of Luxembourg and Thibault as a “well-connected Dutch financier.” One article mentioned a series of companies Hauck had never heard of that were part of his holdings: I-Mrkt; Havesham Property Holdings in London; a boutique hotel on Mustique. He was said to have been a board member of several large firms and a former investment manager at Bank AGRO in the Netherlands. Apache Partners, a prominent New York private equity firm, was mentioned as a financial adviser on the acquisition.

An article dated four months later, in something called Caribbean Business News, described how the hotel-chain purchase had not gone through and that the company was now seeking another option.

At the end of Merrill Simons’s visit, as she stood up to leave, Hauck had said discreetly, “I don’t mean to trouble you, Ms. Simons, but it would help if I could have one or two additional things.”

She took out her car keys from her purse. “I’m listening…”

“I could use a current cell phone number for Mr. Thibault. And his e-mail account, if you’re okay with that. Banking information…”

“I don’t know…,” Merrill said, appearing a bit concerned.

“It would make things easier,” Hauck said. “I promise, he won’t know.”

“I’m sure you know how hard this is for me,” she said, hesitating. “I have deep feelings for Dani. I’m actually hoping this all is just a small waste of your time…” She went to the door. “Why don’t we just see how this initial pass-through goes?”

Hauck nodded, walked her over to Foley, and handed her his card. He didn’t like what he was doing either. Ripping up the floorboards of someone’s life. Digging into his affairs. On the job, he had done it a million times. But this was different.

Dani Thibault wasn’t under suspicion for committing any crime.

After Merrill had left, Hauck typed in what she had given him, creating a data file.

This time we do, Tom Foley had said. Take on the PI case. As well as what Hauck saw, with Peter Simons’s ex involved, as an obvious conflict of interest.

He picked up the phone and buzzed Brooke outside. “See if you can get me Richard Snell at our office in London.”

CHAPTER TEN

At the same time, Hauck did his best to keep his hand in the Glassman murders as well.

He couldn’t put away the image of April. It dogged him-the sweet, bright eyes that shone back from the photographs of her. The light touch of her hand on his when they had last bumped into each other in town.

It’s been what, Ty-she beamed, happily-four years…??

Five.

They had met in a support group Hauck had gone to for a while after Norah was killed. He couldn’t escape the dreams that made him constantly relive it. Grief that wouldn’t go away. Blame unwilling to soften. By then, Beth and he had given up. September 11 had brought with it a whole new scrapbook of faces and lives he had been unable to save. Names of the unaccounted for he was charged with following up on. Frantic loved ones calling in. Not knowing. It was as if he was trying to find a glimpse of Norah, his dead daughter, in every face, every call he fielded.

Only two out of two hundred he followed up on ended up being found alive.

It just got to him. For the first time in his life what was constraining him was greater than what he could do. One day he put in his notice. Out of nowhere, he walked into the office of the assistant chief of the NYPD and told him he couldn’t do it anymore. Their shining star. He had made detective, got fast-tracked into management, faster than anyone before. His career had arced upward in a steady, unflagging line.

As part of the settlement he agreed to talk it out with someone. A police shrink. The doctor urged him to come to the group. Just to show he didn’t need it, he went.

Hauck didn’t think about those years much anymore. The Dark Ages, he liked to call them. Depression. Maybe it was a chemical thing, lurking in his brain for years. Maybe it was like the towers, the well-built wall he had erected around himself-sports hero, Colby grad, the pretty wife, the picture-book family, his career-all brought down. Leaving ashes behind.

Whatever it was, he had built himself back up. He had moved away, to Greenwich. Found a new home. Slowly found new people to love. Rebuilt his career. Clearly, his life was moving upward once again.

The Dark Ages.

The memories were back again.

He remembered watching her from across the circle of twelve patients. She was both pretty and at the same time quiet, hurt. Their eyes met with a brief smile. Both of them saying, in the way everyone there seemed to say, I really don’t belong here, you know.

“April,” Dr. Paul Rose said, “we have a few new people here. Would you give us a little about yourself and tell us why you’re here?”

“Sure,” she said, shrugging diffidently. “I’m, uh, Frasier got canceled on Thursday nights, so I was free…” There were a few polite laughs. “Sorry,” she said, flattening her lips. A delicate light shone on her face.

Then she told everyone about her darkness.

The Glassman murders received a lot of attention. Marc Glassman’s notoriety and position made all the cable news shows and the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The FBI was involved. Along with the SEC. It seemed unbelievable that Marc Glassman had turned out to be some kind of rogue trader. That he had cost Wertheimer Grant billions of dollars. What kinds of controls were there? Now the firm hung on the verge of collapse. Rumors were everywhere. THE MURDER THAT MAY SINK ONE OF WALL STREET’S MOST RESPECTED FIRMS, the New York Times headline read.

All sprung from a local crime spree that had gotten out of control.

Finally Hauck knew the right thing was just to stay out. He made his decision. Let the right people back at Havemeyer Place handle it. He walked away. He had Annie.

April, could you tell us why you’re here…?

Hauck recalled that most mornings Steve Chrisafoulis dropped off his daughter at the high school before heading into work. A few days after the story broke he waited for him, until he saw the blue Chrysler minivan pull up and Emily jump out and shut the door, merging with a group of kids on the sidewalk. She waved. “Bye, Daddy…”

Steve waved back. “See you tonight, hon…”

Hauck stepped up just as he was rolling up the window.

“Funny, I didn’t know you had kids in the school here.” The detective smirked with a roll of his cynical eyes.

Hauck shrugged. “Can’t help myself. Sometimes I still hang around here, just to make sure everything’s okay.”

“You better watch yourself. Someone may get the wrong idea and you’ll get yourself arrested, Ty.”

“Look, I know it’s awkward to talk to me on this, Steve.”

“It’s not awkward,” the detective said. “It’s more like inappropriate. You’re not wearing a badge now.”

“You don’t find it just a shade peculiar how this break-in seemed to bust the Wertheimer thing wide open?”

“Peculiar? I also think it’s peculiar how the safe in the house was emptied and the drawers were rifled through, Ty.”

“Any thoughts on what they might have been looking for?”

Now it was Steve who shrugged. “Money, jewelry. Call me crazy…Look, I really gotta get on to the office now.”

“How’s the boy? How’s he doing?”

“Spooked.” Chrisafoulis nodded. “Like anyone might be. He’s with his grandparents up in Darien. One day he’s gonna have to come to terms with what he saw in there. The rest of his family murdered. How’s your kid doing, Ty?”

“Jessie? She’s doing great, thanks. Starting high school this year. You said the kid had taken some pictures…Anything ever pan out?”

“Ty, you’re asking something I can’t divulge. You know that. This is the second time you’ve pumped me for what’s going on. Want to let me in on the story, dude?”

Hauck bent down at the window. He met the new head of detectives face-to-face. “You remember that career night we did at the high school a year or two back?”

“Yeah.”

“April Glassman set it up. We just got friendly.”

“Friendly…?”

“Not that kind of friendly, Steve. We just had a cup of coffee. Bumped into each other once or twice. Started talking. You know how it is; sometimes you just find a person you can open up to. Stuff comes out.”

“Pretty gal.” Chrisafoulis’s mustache twitched, amused. “Look…” He reached across to the passenger seat and unfastened his case. He lifted out a large white envelope. “Fitz finds this out, I’m gonna have you barred from the office Christmas party, you understand?” He grinned. “I know how tough it is to find someone you can open up to.”

“Got it.” Hauck smiled and met his eyes. “Thanks.”

“We blew up the shots.” Steve lifted out a series of eight-by-ten photos. “He snapped them off from the upstairs window overlooking the drive.”

The first was a shot of the backs of two men, wearing masks and what seemed to be dark work uniforms, one carrying a black trash bag, heading away from the house. The second shot showed them climbing into a black SUV at the end of what Hauck recalled was the Glassmans’ long driveway. “A Chevy Suburban,” Steve said. “Too bad the plates were obscured. Would have made things easy. Amazing what these little buggers will do, huh?”

Hauck flipped through the photos and the last ones were tight blowups of the first. Magnified around fifty times. The two men hurrying off. The first just had the side of one of their faces; he had taken off his mask. White. Thirties. Looking away from the camera. Not much there.

The last one did have something distinguishing. It was a close-up of the perp’s neck. He was white as well. A knot of hair, braided up like in a small ponytail, peeking out from under the mask.

And something on the back of his neck.

“We thought it was a birthmark or something,” Chrisafoulis said, seeing Hauck pause. “But the lab was able to enhance it. Turned out to be a tattoo.”

“Like a dragon’s tail?” Hauck asked, squinting.

“Or the tip of an arrow. Hard to tell. You know the only reason I’d even show you these is what you did for me. This stays between us, right? You got your own job now. You left. This one’s mine.”

Hauck handed him back the photos. “Not much of a getaway bag for all that loot,” he said skeptically.

Chrisafoulis looked at him. Steve might have been new to the rank and all the crap it brought with it, but he’d been a detective in the city for fifteen years, knew his work as well as anyone and exactly where Hauck was heading. “Okay, there was something I might not have mentioned…Upstairs. By the wife and daughter. We did find something unusual, now that I think of it.”

“What?”

“You know how the drawers were all rifled through, stuff thrown about? But right on the dresser we found a jewelry case. Rings, bracelets. Some pretty juicy stuff left in it.”

Hauck winked. “They must’ve been in quite a rush.”

“Yeah.” The head of detectives nodded. “Quite a rush.”

Hauck tapped on the edge of the window and stood up. “Thanks. Pretty resourceful kid, that boy, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yeah, very.” The head of detectives bore in on him as he turned the ignition and put the car in gear. “I feel a little strange saying this, Ty, but try not to do anything that might tick you off if you still had this job.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Within days, the first responses on Thibault began to arrive.

A search of his criminal history came up empty, both in the States and with Interpol. His photograph hadn’t matched any that caused alarm. An asset check showed no liens or judgments against him. His personal bills were paid in full and on time.

Thursday, Hauck was at his desk with a coffee, going over an immigration search on the guy who had perpetrated that mortgage fraud, when Richard Snell from London called back. “I’ve got an update on that subject you had me looking into.”

“Thibault,” Hauck confirmed. He grabbed a pen. He had never met Snell, but the Brit was ex-Goldman, ex-Kroll, and had a reputation in the firm as a top-notch manager. “Go ahead.”

“First, as you suggested, I checked his name against the alumni roll of the LSE. There is no record of anyone named Dieter Thibault having been there, which I know is to no one’s surprise. There was a Simone Thibault, who received a degree in 1979. You’re certain you have the correct school?”

“I’m only going on what I was told,” Hauck replied. It only confirmed what Merrill Simons had already said.

“You also stated you did a criminal and Interpol check,” Snell continued. “No reason to be redundant then. I did a quick search into the two investment companies you supplied. Christiana Capital Partners and Trois Croix. Both companies are basically investment shells. For a network of individual funds that are hard to track. They’ve been mentioned a couple of times in the business press here as among the bidders trying to buy up various real estate and Internet properties. Combined, they do list assets under management as over one hundred million euros. No one really has a sense of where the cash originates from. You mentioned some kind of connection to the Belgian royal family…”

“Supposedly there are photos of them in his New York office.”

“Haven’t been able to confirm that one yet. These families tend to go on and on, of course. More minor royals running around Europe than the rest of us. But no one I’ve run Thibault’s name by has ever heard of him in those circles, Ty. I’ll keep at it. But I did raise some peculiar issues though…”

“Fire away.”

“Thibault’s own CV lists stints at various banks. The KronenBank in Lichtenstein is one. It’s a bank that has been under some scrutiny in the past, coinciding with the time Thibault was there. It’s known as a loose place for people who would like to transfer assets quietly and without detection. They set up instruments known as stiftungs…Heard of them?”

“Remind me.”

“Stiftungs are, in effect, trusts,” the Brit explained, “protected from most outside scrutiny, perfectly legal, but where the identity of the benefiting recipient can be a bit murky, shall we say. By intention. These assets can then move about from bank to bank across the globe, not so easy to trace.”

Hauck had had some experience with money transferred through these vehicles into offshore accounts in the race to locate Charles Friedman in the Grand Central bombing case. Very difficult to trace without a subpoena from Interpol, which was almost impossible to get.

“KronenBank is a small, restricted private bank,” Snell went on. “Thibault was listed as a Vermogensverwalter, the equivalent of an investment manager. The bank was also in the news some years back for something they call ‘doubling up.’ Taking commissions from both the client and the financial broker where they placed their money-say, a U.S. hedge fund. It all could be perfectly legitimate, of course, but in this particular case, there are reasons I’m slightly skeptical.”

“Why is that?” Hauck asked.

“I don’t know…Thibault’s company lists Simpston Mews, Limited, as one of the real estate transactions they have been a part of. It’s a big development along the Thames. Along with the Kai Shek Waterfront Project in Shanghai.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I asked our people who would know here. No one’s ever heard of Christiana or Trois Croix in this arena. Not to mention something else…”

Hauck flicked his pen. “What’s that?”

“Thibault also lists the AMV Bank in Belgium as a place he once worked. I contacted the head of personnel there. A man named Gruens. He confirmed that a Dieter Thibault did, in fact, hold a position there. Between the years of 1992 and 1994. His title was key account-holder manager. Looked after VIP depositors, I assume. Very efficient, Gruen remembered. Well regarded. Good marks from his clients as well. In 1994, he moved on.”

“To Bank AGRO. In Amsterdam,” Hauck concluded, checking Thibault’s history.

“No. To manage some investment fund in Switzerland, as Gruen recalled,” the Brit corrected him. “It’s been almost fifteen years. The records are boxed away in some warehouse somewhere.”

“Switzerland? I don’t see that in Thibault’s background anywhere,” Hauck said, flipping through his papers.

“No,” Snell confirmed, “you won’t.” The Brit seemed to be hesitating, as if he was holding something back. “Gruen asked me why I was interested in Thibault after all these years. Not to divulge anything, I said he had a cash bequeath set aside for him, that he’d been named in a will. Which seemed to generate no small surprise…”

“Why?”

“Because Herr Gruen, as it happens, seemed to recall that the Dieter Thibault who worked at their bank went missing while on a business trip to France and was never seen again. A year or two after he left.”

Hauck stopped writing. “That would be 1994 or ’95?” he said, surprised.

“He said that one of Thibault’s clients had read about it somewhere and passed it along to the bank. As I said, fifteen years ago. I went so far as to wire him a photo of your Thibault, from the Internet.”

“And?”

“And the Thibault who worked there was apparently short and already starting to go bald,” Snell said flatly.

“Oh,” Hauck grunted, his mind flashing to Merrill Simons, sinking back in his leather chair.

Thibault had falsified his past. More than that, he had taken over someone’s identity. A likely dead person’s. If that was false, everything about him could be false. Who did that-except a person with a great deal to hide? Hauck thought of Merrill. The awkward smile, the hopeful expression on her face when she talked about how she hoped things would turn out. I suppose you could say we’ve fallen in love.

“It would be of help if you could find me a set of fingerprints,” Snell said. “Or better yet, a sample of his DNA. Soon as you give me the go-ahead, we’ll track down just who this bugger really is.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Wednesday and Saturday nights Hauck coached a team of twelve-and-under kids in a local youth hockey league. The dad of his second-line winger was the sponsor: the Trident-Allen Value Fund Bruins.

Hauck had played peewee and Catholic league hockey since his early days in town, when he was more of a football star. When he moved back, he’d played defenseman in an over-forty league until a bullet from the Grand Central bombing case (coupled with another to his abdomen) put an end to his playing days.

Now he took some joy in teaching the kids a few of the basic skills and how to come together as a team. Not to mention twice a week he got to lace up the skates-though a few of the kids could outrace him end-to-end without even busting, and he could barely spray up any ice these days.

Wednesdays, they practiced at the Dorothy Hamill rink in town. That night, he picked Jared up at Annie’s place. He had taught the boy how to skate and Jared liked being on the ice in makeshift pads and a helmet with a stick in his hands. Hauck thought it was good for him to be with the regular kids. And Annie agreed. There was always a shoot-around net set off in one of the corners and Jared would try to steer pucks into it, never quite able to lift them off the ice. Every once in a while he’d call out to Hauck in an elated voice. “Look, Ty, er, coach, I scored a goal!”

That night, practice was getting a little spirited. They were playing a team from Long Island that weekend that was supposed to be really strong and nothing seemed to be working. Jeremy Purdo, the goalie, was stopping everything that got to him, daring the offense to get one by. By the time Annie showed up after nine to take Jared back, tempers were flaring. He didn’t want to leave until the team did. Hauck said it was okay for her to let him stay.

The frustration on the offense grew. “Schuer, you’re supposed to be over here!” Tony Telco, the first-line center, shouted. Another kid yelled, slamming his stick, “Balzon, are you even awake, dude?”

Maybe Hauck let it go on a bit too long.

Near the end, a shot from the point came in and there was a scrum in front of the net. One of the attackers went down as the forwards tried to jam the puck in the net. Jared skated close by.

“Hey!” Hauck blew the whistle loudly, trying to settle everyone down.

For a second, no one stopped. A lot of pushing and shoving. The pile moved closer to Jared. Hauck grew a little worried. He skated in Jared’s direction and blew the whistle three times. “Alright, that’s enough, now!”

The players finally stopped and the puck squirted out of the pileup in front of the goal. With everyone standing around, Jared slowly wove his way in and pushed out his stick, lifting a neat chip shot past Purdo, the sprawled goalie, who shot out his stick to try to stop it as the puck went by.

“Goal!” Jared shouted, raising his stick into the air.

For a second everyone just stood around, Jared’s call echoing through the rink. Then the buzzer went off and the rest of the attacking squad shot their sticks up. “It’s in!”

Jared gleefully looked around. “Goal, coach! Goal!”

“It’s a goal!” Hauck confirmed, signaling with a point toward the ice that it was in.

The members of the power play all skated over, smirking at the goalie, patting Jared on the helmet. Even Purdo came up and tapped his stick against Jared’s pads. “Sweet one, dude!”

Jared made his way along the boards to where Annie was seated, bundled in a knit cap and muffler. “I scored a goal, Mom!”

“I saw! I saw! Yes, you did, babe.”

Hauck skated over. He affectionately patted Jared on the back. “So whaddaya think, you ready to take a regular shift?”

“I don’t know, Ty. Maybe it was a little lucky.” He had a smile as wide as the Long Island Sound.

And so did Annie, beaming, except there was a hint of tears in it.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

In the stylish dining room of her Normandy on Dublin Hill Road, Merrill Simons sat around the dinner table with her guests.

On her left was Ralph Tamerin, founding partner of Tamerin Capital, a large hedge fund in town, and his wife, Kitty; Tom Erkin, a wealthy investor in biotechs; Ace Klein, the flamboyant president of U-Direct! who had his own cable show; and George and Sally Ravinowich, wealthy investors whose famous yacht was one of the largest schooners in the world.

Dani was holding court as well.

Merrill had assembled the evening for him; he was hoping to stir up a little interest for the buyout of an auto-parts company in the Baltic he was trying to put together. She watched how he worked the table. Charming and worldly, he created confidence by painting a picture of prior deals he had done over there, along with their dazzling returns.

Deals, Merrill was now realizing, she had never quite seen.

She’d decided not to confront him with any of her suspicions just yet. She’d asked about certain things, and for each question Dani always had a glib reply. She decided to wait until something firm from Talon came back.

And for now, everyone seemed suitably dazzled. Except for George, who was even more dazzled by the Del Dotto cabernet.

“Merrill, this is first-rate juice,” he said, tipping over the third empty bottle. Dani had made sure the wine steadily flowed.

“I bet there’s another one or two down there,” Merrill replied. Wine was always Peter’s thing, not hers, and his cellar, from which they used to entertain a who’s who of industry, was one of the perks of the divorce. She smiled impishly at Sally and Kitty. “I’m sure Peter wouldn’t mind.”

Normally, she would have asked Louis, who handled things like that, to bring it up, but he was overseeing the desserts in the kitchen, so she headed out of the dining room to the door leading down to the basement.

On the way she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror. She knew she looked good for forty-four. She’d had a little work done, like most of her friends. Eyes smoothed, tummy tucked, a little Botox, of course. But she still looked perfectly natural. She worked out regularly and had her own private yoga instructor. She smoothed out her ruffled, white off-the-shoulder blouse and headed down.

One thing you could definitely say was that Merrill Simons knew how to entertain.

In the basement, she passed through the gym, the yoga studio, the private surround-sound theater with fifteen seats. The accumulated toys of her twenty-two years with Peter. While he was growing in the firm, they were able to share each other’s rise into means and importance. They were invited to lavish parties, traveled to exotic places. Had the kids in prestigious schools. They had science wings and squash centers named after them.

But once Peter reached the top, everything seemed to change. He grew to think he was the most important man in the universe, and the people he surrounded himself with usually verified that fancy. He no longer seemed to recall that she knew him as an insecure bond trader who couldn’t even decide what tie to wear. He became a fixture on CNBC and took calls from finance ministers from around the globe. He traveled with knockout Ivy League assistants. First it was the kids, then it was the stress and demands of the job. He stopped touching her. Then it was the long-legged lingerie model with the hard-to-pronounce name.

Now, Merrill mused, how the “powers that be” had swung.

He had the dwindling stock price and the impossible-to-get-rid-of-at-any-price apartment.

She had the hundred-million-dollar settlement!

She went to the wine room and opened the ornate Lalique etched doors. It was a giant space, Peter’s showcase, packed with prestigious first growths and cult wines from California only a Wall Street CEO could afford. She went over to the far wall, remembering from where they had pulled the Del Dotto. She took out the last two bottles of the case. She heard the door reopen behind her and spun around.

Dani came in.

“You scared me,” she said, her heart skipping a beat. “What are you doing down here?”

“I needed a break,” he said, a sly look on his face. He shut the door.

He went up and took the bottles from her and placed them on the table. In the chill of the cellar, she realized her nipples were showing through.

Dani smiled. “A proper hostess never serves her own wine.”

“Emily Post, I suppose?” she asked, brushing past him.

“No. Dani Thibault.” He grinned. He moved his hand along her slim body and drew her to him. “You smell intoxicating, darling…”

“Dani, please. Everyone’s waiting. Not here…”

“Everyone’s talking about interest rates and how Obama is screwing them.” He shifted her around so that his pelvis pressed against her rear and she felt him all hard. “Trust me, they don’t even know we’re gone.”

“You’re crazy,” Merrill said, trying to pull away. “Besides, Louis may come down any second.”

“Louis’s got his dick in the crème anglaise…” He kissed her neck, running his tongue along the curve of her exposed shoulders. “And I’ve got mine in…”

He cupped a hand over one of her breasts and with the other pulled the blouse out of Merrill’s jeans, deftly pinning her hips against the table. It sent sparks of excitement mixed with uncertainty traveling down her spine. “Dani, please…”

She felt the warmth of his lips brush along her neck and almost involuntarily felt herself shifting against the hardness pressing against her.

“It’s the fucking wine cellar,” she said, her blood heating, and at the same time wondered what the group around the dinner table, two of whom were in her garden and book clubs, would say.

“Exactly.” Dani grinned, mischief in his eyes.

With one hand he unbuckled her gold chain belt and flicked open the snap of her jeans. Merrill felt a flame of desire dance through her. With the other, he ripped at his own belt and zipper and slid his trousers down. This was rougher than he usually was, more forceful, and she thought, for a brief second, that it was as if it was almost in answer to her own doubts and fears. He slid her red panties down.

“Goddamnit, Dani, please…”

Merrill wanted to pull herself away, end this, but before the words made it to her lips, he had lifted her up against his pelvis and pushed inside. She gasped at the first feeling of the size of him filling her. He rocked, pinning her by the thighs, and her blood surged with the secrecy of what they were doing, holding off the forces of weakness and shame. She begged herself to say Stop, stop, but all she heard was her own trembling breaths, everything intensifying. Her skin started to heat, and Dani’s animal grunts became louder and more excited.

The banter at the dinner table was a million miles away.

They both came within a minute, shivers of satisfaction relaxing Merrill’s spine. She shut her eyes, feeling both as alive as she ever had and angry at her own weakness at the same time. She felt used-used in many ways tonight.

“Who are you?” Merrill whispered as he pulled out of her, leaning against him.

“I’m the man who makes you feel alive again,” he said, releasing his hand from her waist. “What more do you need to know?”

Dani lifted away. He rebuckled his pants. He took the two bottles. “I’ll take these up,” he said. “You may want to get yourself together.”

Merrill rose, readjusting her blouse and jeans. She didn’t turn around, even after he had left. Instead she closed her eyes.

I meant, really, who are you, Dani?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Later, after everyone had left, Merrill took off her earrings in the bedroom while Dani took a shower.

Up until tonight, deep down, she had always really trusted him. She’d been sure that whatever might come out would only confirm the feelings she had for him.

But tonight she sensed something completely different in him. A side she’d never seen before. She’d watched him operate, and a ripple of suspicion had wormed through her that he might, in fact, be using her to gain access to people. She observed him artfully describing his deals, the opportunities that the Baltic and Eastern Europe were now presenting, in that polished, sexy accent of his. The network of contacts she had never quite met. The history of past deals she saw no evidence of.

She had never really seen them, had she?

For the first time, she saw him as someone trying to weave a kind of spell. As an operator. And then there was the way he had taken her in the wine cellar. An animal side of him she had never felt before. Rougher than he had ever been. Almost as if he had sensed some suspicion in her. And was telling her something.

I’m the man who makes you feel alive.

She felt his arms wrap around her again. Coming at her from behind. The exhilaration that both thrilled her and repulsed her. C’mon, Merrill, she said, composing herself. Your mind is getting away from you. This is crazy. This is not your style.

She placed a bracelet in the jewelry box on her dresser and pulled off her ruffled blouse. She spotted Dani’s wallet on the night table.

She had to know. But something suppressed her urge to look inside.

If he wanted to keep part of his past life secret, that was his business, not hers. He had never harmed her, never asked for anything. He made her feel youthful and vibrant and wanted again. The rest…

Why are you giving yourself over to doubt?

But gradually the urge to know him more deeply took hold of her. She went over to the nightstand in her bra and panties, hesitating, the temptation fighting her better instincts. She opened the billfold, listening for confirmation that Dani was in the shower.

It was a billfold he had bought at Harrods in London. Dani always walked around with wads of cash. Euros and dollars. He was like a walking cash machine.

Where did it all come from?

Merrill slipped it open. In the card folder, there were several credit cards: Amex, one personal, one from the business; Visa; a Eurocard; and several bank cards, from here and in London. All made out to Daniel Thibault or D. Thibault. Or Christiana Partners. These she had seen many times before.

Behind the see-through window, there was an international driver’s license. His face. Dieter Franz Thibault. The address was the apartment Dani maintained in London. Behind it, there was another local Dutch license as well.

A tremor of shame traveled through her. This was silly. Suspicion was not a space she felt comfortable being in. What was she even looking for? Dani was a charming and generous man. He had proved it countless times to her. It wasn’t about what was in a person’s wallet. She could see into his heart. She wasn’t some school-girl carried away by her feelings…

Feeling guilty and foolish, Merrill quickly scanned the remaining cards. There was the University Club in New York. He must’ve gone to the LSE, like he said, to be a member there. Some other private clubs in the city. One Alfred Place in London. Various other membership cards in places like Paris and Madrid.

She quickly fanned out some business cards. A private banker at ABN AMRO in Amsterdam. A contact from Cerberus Capital, one of the largest private equity firms in the U.S. Everything was normal. No secrets.

See. There’s no scary man in the attic, Merrill. Dani is who he says he is. She shoved the contents of his wallet back inside, starting to feel like a fool.

The shower stopped. Merrill heard Dani climb out.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” he called. She could hear him toweling off.

“I’m just taking my jewelry off.”

“Along with everything else, I hope,” he called.

She went to put the wallet back when, fumbling, her heart quickening, some photographs fell out of the inside flap. “Oh, damn…”

The first was of the two of them. Sailing off the Dalmatian coast last August. Dani could handle a skiff like the snap of a bra. She hadn’t felt so swept off her feet since she was a young girl. They had anchored and made love on the deck in a rocky cove. It filled her with biting shame to even be questioning those memories.

She was about to fold the wallet back up when the second photo came out. It had been stuck to the first.

Something made her look more closely.

The photo was of two women. One was young, in her thirties, her hair pulled back in a bun. The second woman was older, maybe in her seventies, hardened lines across her drawn, unpampered face. They stood in front of a streetcar. It looked like any undetermined European city.

Merrill was struck by the faces.

There was something remarkably familiar in them.

It was Dani. In both of them. Merrill stared wide-eyed. The resemblance was clear as day.

One could be his twin, definitely. But he had never mentioned one. The older woman, Merrill thought, bringing the photo into the light, the older woman could be his…

It gave her a start. The feeling of doubt reflexively springing back up. Can’t be…

Dani had told her many times his parents were dead. Since his university days. His father had died in an automobile accident, his mother from cancer. He said that he had no sisters. No family. They had been in Europe several times together. He’d never said anything about any relatives.

But the similarity was unmistakable.

This had to be his mother. And his sister. Maybe even a twin.

Merrill searched for the signs of age on the photo. Maybe it was from long ago. But the edges were still remarkably firm. And what she saw next sent her head spinning even more.

In the background, on the streetcar, behind the two women, was an advertisement. It was for a film. Partially blocked by the two women in front of it.

They died when he was at university, Merrill told herself, but the image she was looking at was the same in any language.

The film was The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger starring as the Joker.

You had to have been in a cave somewhere the past year not to have been aware of it.

The Dark Knight had come out only last year.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It was after eleven, that same night, when Kevin Mitman turned his BMW X5 onto John Street, the kids finally dozing in the back.

Timmy had only calmed down about the game a few minutes ago. The Rangers coming back from two goals down in the third against the Devils and winning in overtime. Petr Prucha, Melissa’s favorite player, had tipped in the winning goal. The crowd went crazy. When Prucha had skated out for his star-of-the-game ovation, Tim stood on his chair and cheered, fists in the air. As they left the Garden, they even bought Melissa his number 25 jersey.

In the front passenger seat, Kevin’s wife, Rosemary, stirred.

“We’re home!” Kevin said.

“Mmmm.” Ro opened her eyes. “How’re you doing, honey?”

“Not bad. Everyone’s asleep.”

“No, we’re not!” Tim suddenly chimed in.

Ro glanced at the clock and groaned. “Well, you will be soon, mister.”

They were supposed to have left the night before. Up to Mount Snow for a few days of skiing on their spring break. But then some business things came up and Kevin figured they might as well go to the game, as opposed to giving the seats away, though Ro, who thought hockey duller than listening to the business channel, had to be dragged.

“I’ll get the kids in bed,” she said. “You take out the recycling.”

“Uh, yeah, okay,” he said with a sigh. The driveway was fifty yards long and it was twenty degrees. Doesn’t driving count for anything?

He wound the SUV down toward their home, a large ranch on two backcountry acres, which they’d bought when Kevin had taken over the family’s printing company. It was pretty remote-a twelve-minute drive from town and the nearest market. You don’t want to forget the milk, he always joked. But they liked it. They had deer and even coyote, and in the spring, the same geese always on their pond.

Kevin was about to turn in. “We’re here, gang…”

Suddenly something didn’t seem right. Instead of turning, he slowed at the gate.

There was an empty black van parked on the side of the road-unusual, because no one ever parked out here. The nearest house to them was hundreds of yards away. Everyone had driveways and garages large enough to hold a dozen cars.

He noticed something else too.

“Ro, did you leave the lights on in the house?”

“No,” she said, staring down the driveway. They were always strict on that one. Thousand-dollar electric bills and Kev’s business was soft. “Just in the foyer,” she said. “Like we always do.”

From the street, they could see lights on throughout the house.

“Shit!” Kevin pulled up on the darkened street, keeping out of sight.

In the back, Timmy leaned forward. “What’s going on, Dad?”

“I don’t know.”

Melissa woke up. “Why aren’t we turning? What’s happening?”

Kevin turned to Rosemary. They’d all heard about the string of burglaries in the backcountry. The local papers had had it all over. They were supposed to be in Vermont. He flashed through the possibilities. Who would have known? The newspaper delivery people. The mailman. The gardeners…

He passed the house and pulled up to a stop about a hundred yards down. “What do we do, Ro?”

“There’s no way we’re going in there, Kev.” His wife shook her head, fear in her eyes.

He nodded. He bit his lower lip and punched in 911 on the Bluetooth. A female duty officer answered on the second ring.

“Greenwich Emergency.”

“This is Kevin Mitman. I live at 2019 John Street,” he said, meeting his wife’s eyes. “We just came back from a hockey game. I’m outside in the car.” He took a breath and grabbed his wife’s hand. “I think someone’s broken into our house.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It wasn’t them.

The two stunned burglars, clad in athletic sweatshirts and jeans, were descended upon by the Greenwich police-lights flashing and guns drawn-carrying a plasma TV up the Mitmans’ driveway, heading back to their van.

The two robbers were barely adults. Yemeni kids from Norwalk. One was twenty-two, the other nineteen. They were shaking in their boots. An hour’s interrogation back at the station had them giving up who they had felt up in the fifth grade. They owned up to several of the break-ins. The McLains. The Polashes. The St. Angelos. They gave up the whereabouts of a basement apartment where the police still could find much of the stolen cache.

It wasn’t them.

They got their prospective locations through another cousin who delivered the local paper each morning. That’s how they knew when homeowners planned to be away. Neither of them had much of a record. The older one had been pinched for shoplifting. The nineteen-year-old was actually enrolled in Norwalk Community College and this was his first arrest. The older one had a gun on him, an old, passed-down Beretta.22 that he’d bought on the streets. More for show than any real effect.

No match for the Heckler and Koch nine-millimeter that had been used on the Glassman family.

When they were confronted with the murders, everything started coming out of them. They even had an alibi for that night. The younger one’s cousin was having a betrothal celebration in Passaic, New Jersey. He had spent the night at the cousin’s house.

The older one had spent the night at a bar in White Plains. Until two A.M. Closing time.

They were stupid and out of their league, and it was good to finally shut their little operation down.

It just wasn’t them. Hauck knew. It wasn’t the two who murdered Marc and April Glassman.

That morning, he caught Chrisafoulis on the phone as he was scrambling between news briefings. “You got one minute,” the head of detectives snapped. “You see what’s happening out there, don’t you?”

Hauck said, “Yeah, I see it.”

What he was talking about were the ten news vans that were backed up like cattle cars onto Mason Street outside the station. CNN, Fox, the local Connecticut stations. Reporters surrounding anyone who came out who looked like they might have some connection to the case. The Glassman murders were page-one news-the grisly scene, the rich suburban family murdered in their secluded home, the calm of Greenwich shattered. And it had brought down a Wall Street icon too.

“It wasn’t them, was it?” Hauck pressed. He doubted the motive was robbery from the start.

“Ty, you know I can’t keep doing this. I only have so much room.”

“Steve…” His voice was insistent. “Were they the ones who did the job?”

“They admitted to several jobs,” the detective said evasively. “The two out on North Ridge and Willow. They told us where some of the loot was stashed. How they staked out the homes…”

“You said that one of the Glassman perps had long reddish hair. You said he had some kind of tattoo on his neck.” Hauck knew he was going further than he should. “You said they wore work uniforms. You found tire tread marks on the street. The gun that killed the Glassmans was an H and K nine-millimeter. C’mon, Steve, you know damn well what job I’m talking about.”

He waited a beat before Chrisafoulis replied. And when he did, it was short and under his breath. “No. They copped to the other break-ins. But not the Glassmans. One of them is nineteen, the other twenty-two. The guns didn’t match up, or the tire tread. Or the descriptions. You should’ve seen them; shit came out of their pants-”

“Are you buying?”

“They said they set up the jobs through a friend who handled the local paper route. That’s how they knew who was away. The Glassmans-they didn’t even get the Greenwich Times. These guys also had solid alibis for the night of March sixth. We’re getting confirmation, but there was a gas receipt in the car that already put one of them on the Jersey Turnpike around that time…

“Yeah, I’m buying.” Chrisafoulis sighed resignedly.

Hauck let out a grunt of disappointment. But not surprise. He never thought this fit the pattern of a burglary. It may just have all been a diversion. The safe left open, the drawers rifled through. It may have all been to mask what they were really there for.

Who would have wanted Marc Glassman dead?

“You know where this is leading, don’t you, Steve?”

“You’re driving around in a BMW now, Ty. You don’t have business of your own to spend your time on?”

“Glassman sank the firm. I don’t know who would’ve had anything to gain, but I know what the result of all this is, and it’s sitting there on the front page of the Wall Street Journal today.”

The detective paused. Maybe he was thinking it over. “You never used to read the Journal, Ty. You never made it past the sports.”

“I guess things change.”

“No, they don’t,” the detective said. Hauck wasn’t sure what he was talking about. But he didn’t think it was the paper. “They don’t.”

They hung up. Hauck stared at the bold headline of the Wall Street Journal on his desk: FED WEIGHING BAILOUT ON WERTHEIMER; HUNDRED-YEAR-OLD FIRM COULD LEARN FATE TODAY.

Marc’s still at Wertheimer. Doing great, April had said.

He balled his fists and dropped them against his desk in frustration. Who had something to gain?

His line rang again and Hauck waited before picking up, lost in that question. When he did, on the fourth loud ring, the caller surprised him.

“Mr. Hauck, it’s Merrill Simons.”

“Ms. Simons…” Hauck hadn’t contacted her yet with what he knew. He didn’t want to cause her any real hurt until he had put it all together. “So far I haven’t heard back on much yet. What can I do for you?”

“The last time we spoke…,” she said, hesitating. Then she cleared her throat. “I have those other things on Dani you asked me for.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Roger Cantwell stared out at the dark Manhattan sky. The illuminated spire of the Chrysler building shone brightly a few blocks south. It had been a week since the initial disclosures on Marc Glassman. A week of hell. Sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, Cantwell had poured himself a tall Springbank single-malt, his favorite. It had been poured many a time to toast a successful deal or an acquisition.

He couldn’t believe it had come to this.

Wertheimer Grant was one of the most respected names on Wall Street. It had weathered twenty financial downturns. Led the recoveries on the way back up. The firm’s commercials-“Your future is our future”-were broadcast during the Super Bowl. Just a year ago they had a market cap of a hundred billion.

How could no one be coming to their rescue? How could there be no fix?

It was insane.

He had made a final pitch to Tom Keating at Treasury. Christ, they had known each other for thirty years, used to get hammered together to celebrate their deals. Both of them had started as bond salesmen. Wertheimer was far too important to ever fail. Yes, Cantwell realized, life would clearly change for him. The cushy bonuses were gone. And the plane. His legacy would forever be scarred by the company’s having to accept public money. He didn’t look forward to how it would play-in the papers or at his golf club. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure if he’d be able to even stay on.

Still, they had to keep themselves in business.

They were Wertheimer Grant, for God’s sake.

He threw back another hard swig. The scotch, smooth as it was, burned, and that felt good on the way down. Frigging Glassman… That little prick had brought down the whole firm. Whatever their fate, the market was going to tank six hundred points tomorrow!

No, Cantwell thought, gazing out at the city he was once such a commanding force in; if he was honest, the bastard had only been the last indefensible boot that had pushed them over the edge. It had been years of the belief that nothing could stop them. More arrogance than greed. The end came so suddenly it hit them like a truck. No one had seen it coming. Not the risk managers, not the rating agencies, not the press. A giant with muscles, as someone had described it once, stuffing itself with cake.

That’s what they were. Accountable to no one.

Well, now the giant was about to take a mighty fall.

Cantwell rolled the scotch around his tongue, his mind drifting to a time years before when he was just starting out, wet behind the ears. They had this bond issue from Texas from a basically bankrupt town no one could sell. He was twenty-six, thrust into a job he had no training for, with a boss, Charlie McAfee, a real bastard, Cantwell recalled, who was happy to throw him to the wolves.

“Sink or swim up here,” the fat fuck said, grinning, puffing on a cigar. “You know how to swim, Roger?”

Asshole didn’t know who he was dealing with. Roger Cantwell chuckled.

He swam. With the goddamn dolphins, he swam! He sold it. He got it done. Every last share. Damn thing ended up oversubscribed. He took it across the country, to pension funds and small brokerage houses. He wrapped the purchase into a twofer with solid triple-A’s. Three hundred and fifty million dollars. That night, he had a feeling of self-importance he would never forget. He’d puffed on his first Cuban cigar. Screwed a hot waitress at Doubles like he was some kind of porno star.

Six months later he had the old fart’s job.

Cantwell drained the last of his drink. Funny, he thought now, two years later the bond defaulted. They all knew it would. Blamed it all on Charlie.

It had made his damn career.

There was a knock at his door. Cantwell turned. Ronald Wu, his CFO, with Brenda Pearlstein. They’d just been finishing up with Treasury and had come to give him the painful news.

“Come on in,” Cantwell called, resigned. He came away from the window and sat on the long walnut conference table. “So what are the terms?” he inquired. “Just how much flesh do those vultures want us to give up?”

Wu was a brilliant financial mind and over the years had negotiated many tough acquisitions. But this time he was somber.

“Terms? There are no terms, Roger. They passed.” He came up and collapsed in a chair at the end of the conference table. “No more discussions. I’ve alerted the attorneys. We’re done.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

Once-Mighty Wertheimer Collapses as Treasury Department Declines Bailout; Wall Street Stunned

Once one of Wall Street’s most historic companies, Wertheimer Grant was forced to shut its doors as last-minute options for the troubled firm, including a prospective bailout by the United States Treasury, failed in the wake of the damage done by a rogue equities trader recently murdered in his Greenwich home. The beleaguered firm was also the victim of a balance sheet weighted down by questionable mortgage-backed assets.

Wertheimer, whose shares last summer traded at over a hundred dollars, sold off in heavy after-hours trading last night for under fifty cents a share.

The once-defiant CEO, Roger Cantwell, who is said to have spent the night in constant talks with potential partners from around the globe, was unavailable for comment. Ronald Wu, Wertheimer’s CFO, released a short statement saying the firm “is committed to protecting the interests of its loyal account holders and investor base and right now is studying all available options, including selling off its assets.”

Employees of the hundred-year-old firm came to its forty-eight-story glass headquarters on New York’s Park Avenue in shock, let in to collect their personal belongings by security personnel. Secretaries and analysts huddled on the street in disbelief.

“The ship sank,” one veteran hedge fund manager said. “Since the news of that trader, there’s been a weeklong run on the accounts. They no longer had the reserves to fight it off.”

The firm succumbed to a balance sheet eroded by heavy investments in toxic subprime mortgages and hurt further by the recent admission that one of their most highly regarded traders had lost as much as twelve billion dollars through unauthorized activity. These latest losses only came to light in the wake of the Glassman family shooting deaths, thought to be a robbery at his spacious Greenwich, CT, home, but now questions have arisen as to whether it was indeed part of a recent home break-in spree there.

“They were too big, too brash,” one Wall Street insider said. “They didn’t see the oncoming train. How fitting that it was being driven by their own star.”

For the fifth straight day, the stock market was expected to tumble to new lows, dragging the financial sector farther down. Shocking revelations of losses and malfeasance have become part of daily life on Wall Street, and the biggest concern, given the loss of reserves and the increasingly questionable value of all mortgage-related securities, is no longer whether Wertheimer Grant will survive, but which “unsinkable” Wall Street icon will be next.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

In her cluttered, windowless office, in the basement of a drab gray building a block from the Treasury Department in Washington, DC, Naomi Blum was trying to put it all together too.

Everyone was buzzing about it. Wertheimer Grant going under. Years of believing they were the right hand of God had dragged them to the edge. Not to mention huge bets on the subprime mess and leveraging up thirty to one.

All it took was a single rogue money manager to push them over.

But what was adding to the trouble was the new news feed on her computer: MURDERED TRADER NOT LINKED TO LOCAL BREAK-INS.

Not linked…

Naomi sucked on a kiwi-mango smoothie, her lunch. On her desk was a slim blue folder labeled SECRET AND CONFIDENTIAL. She had been copied on it by a liaison over at the FBI. The file contained a series of transcripts picked up from the cell phone of a wealthy Bahraini businessman long suspected of being a financial go-between with people in the region who might want to do the U.S. harm. Probably why the transcript had landed on her desk in the first place. She put on her glasses and browsed through the last, cryptic entry, dated February 8.

What did it mean?

As the lead investigator for the newly formed Financial Crime and Terrorism Task Force, a unit of eight under the Department of the Treasury, her job was to identify and interrupt wide-scale financial fraud and conspiracies that might have national-security or market-impact implications.

They were the first responders, so to speak, in potential economic attacks against the United States. They followed money around the world, charted patterns of deposits in nonconforming banks, monitored the real work of certain questionable “charities,” and pretty much “chalkboarded” various potential security threats to the financial landscape here.

It all sounded very important-at least that’s what Naomi’s mother always told her.

Still, Treasury wasn’t exactly the glamour posting these days.

In her two years on the job, they had laid open giant health care schemes aimed at bilking hundreds of millions of subscribers with underpaid claims. They’d prosecuted two prominent hedge fund principals who had diverted billions in duped investors’ assets-one who was apprehended trying to fake his own death in an attempt to flee the country, the other presently serving a twenty-year RICO charge at the federal correctional facility in Jesup, Georgia.

Of course, by the time it all got to an arrest, Treasury was no longer running the show. It would be turned over to the financial terrorism section of the FBI. Or the AG’s office.

Still, Naomi didn’t mind. She sort of liked being the behind-the-scenes investigator. Like CSI. The real CSI, not the TV glamour guys who took the bad guys down and, guns out, were first through the door.

Not that she couldn’t handle herself in that way if she had to.

Naomi was five foot three, fit as any field agent, wore stylish black glasses, and kept her dark hair short, Mika Brzezinski-style. She had what guys might call a sort of “bookish” look, like a library rat, despite, behind her frames, her brilliant gray eyes.

She hadn’t set out to be in this role. She had actually started out studying music theory at Princeton. Under Amos Kershorn. Her big claim to fame was being first cello in the Anne Arundel County High School Orchestra outside of Baltimore. Along with being an all-Ivy striker on the women’s field hockey team.

After 9/11, her twin brother, Jeremy, a lacrosse player at UVA, had dropped out and enlisted. All he said was it was something he just had to do. Growing up, the two of them couldn’t have been less alike and still come from the same womb. Jeremy was six foot two, wide shouldered, charismatic, solid as a rock. Cocky as all hell. Only started cracking the books the night before a test.

She was a foot shorter, quiet, to this day actually kept her driver’s license hidden behind her library card. She’d gotten the brains, they always joked, and Jer got whatever was leftover. After a tour in Iraq, he was sent to Fort Benning in Georgia as part of Airborne Ranger training, but in his second week there, the copter he was flying in crashed. He survived but lost both his legs. When she went to see him in the hospital-this big, brave, brawny guy, first-team all-ACC-he turned away. Empty. A shell of what he once was. Even a blind person could have seen the disappointment written on his face.

Two days later, she left Princeton and signed up herself.

She had never really been into the military or overly patriotic before. Her dad was a newspaper editor in Baltimore. She just felt inside that it was something she had to do. In the steps of her big brother. She even pushed for Jim’s old regiment, but the army took a look at the fancy school she’d come from and those impressive test results and placed her into an intelligence unit. Naomi spent two years in Iraq as a junior member on the army’s internal investigative team. One of her assignments was to look into the bloodbath that occurred at Nisoor Square in Baghdad, where a handful of private security guards, claiming they were provoked, fired wildly into a crowded square, leaving seventeen Iraqis dead. Naomi pushed hard in her search, sure that an unprovoked and criminal act had been committed. She urged her superiors to detain the participants, but by that time the agency had secretly whisked the guilty contractors “out of country,” and the government seemed intent on papering everything over and letting them go.

Years later, it still burned her.

Naomi realized that the accountability went much higher, but by that point the result was merely a whitewash, a PR exercise, though in the wake of press exposure from her findings, the security outfit was forever banned from Iraq.

After her second tour-she saw action on a couple of hairy convoys-she opted out and went back to school. Changed her major to economics. A degree in music no longer carried the same weight in her new way of thinking of the world. She figured she’d go to law school, maybe Wall Street, do the sixteen-hour-days-until-you-make-partner thing, but when she was recommended to Treasury by a superior she had worked with in the field, and he told the department they would never find anyone smarter or more dogged on a case, something just clicked.

What clicked was the chance to finally feel she was making a difference.

She’d always been on the small side physically, and private. Part of her had always needed to prove that she was tough enough. It went back to the way she played attack on the field-hide on the flank, spot the opening, worm her way in among the bigger girls. Use her speed and guile and knowledge of the game.

Then hammer it home.

It was what she was still doing. At Treasury. She just happened to be the only one doing it with the five-note opening progression of Glass’s “Music in the Shape of a Square” tattooed on her butt.

Naomi looked again at the FBI security transcript. She sipped her smoothie. She didn’t know the caller, but she damn well knew the person he was caught speaking to.

And it wasn’t making a whole lot of sense.

The conversation had taken place about a month ago. Since then the world financial markets had fallen apart. The Dow was down 20 percent. One of the largest institutions brought down by a rogue trader.

And here was one of the most influential financial managers in the world, who oversaw one of the largest pools of investment capital anywhere, in contact with a suspected terrorist money mover.

And the cryptic words uttered in Arabic that had been passed along to her. That scared her. That left her wondering what this was all about.

The planes are in the air.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Monday afternoon, Hauck sat in his car across the street from the Lake Avenue Lower School in Greenwich.

Three weeks had passed since the Glassman murders. Still no link to their killers had been found.

At a little after two forty in the afternoon, a stream of kids began to emerge from the gray concrete building. Moms, in capri pants and yoga outfits, chatting with other moms or on their cells, pulling up their SUVs. Some of the kids carted stuff from school, brightly colored presentation boards or artwork, knapsacks slung over their shoulders. Others carried baseball gloves or lacrosse sticks, shouting excitedly about the Rangers’ playoff game tonight or American Idol. The cars pulled up; the kids climbed in; the moms waved good-bye to one another and drove away.

The entrance quieted down.

A couple of minutes later, Hauck saw the small, sandy-haired boy in jeans and a Derek Jeter jersey come out, holding on to the hand of an older man. His grandfather. He carried a piece of paper all rolled up, a red knapsack slung over on his back.

Hauck remembered him as he saw him three or four years ago. In April’s car.

Evan.

It was his first day back at school after the incident. The local papers had picked it up. A couple of school officials came out and watched as he and his granddad made their way to the parking lot, making sure there were no reporters badgering them.

Hauck wanted to make sure too.

The boy had done well. He had snapped a couple of photos that might one day be used as evidence. He was a chip off the old block. His mom would have been proud.

Hauck didn’t know what had made him come here. Other than it made him feel close. Still attached. Mindful of his promise. He hadn’t forgotten. He wouldn’t.

See, I wasn’t just passing through, he said.

The boy climbed into a silver Volvo wagon and his granddad drove away.

Hauck had an urge to follow him. But he just put the car in gear and remained there.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

It took some time for the picture of Dani Thibault to begin to come together.

Merrill had hoped it might all just be a big waste of his time. A bit of overcaution on her part that would calm a few fears but ultimately lead nowhere.

It wasn’t.

Hauck tapped on the office phone, deciding whether to call her.

Thibault had lied about where he had gone to school. He had lied about having served in the Dutch army, assigned to a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. He had lied about his connection to the Belgian royal family too. The truth was he had dated a party-happy cousin of the queen for a couple of weeks and maybe attended a family outing or two with her where the photos that hung on his office walls were taken. The relationship fizzled out, except for the requisite gossip-column snapshots of the two of them in posh clubs that Richard Snell had located on the Internet.

For the most part Thibault’s career consisted of a few progressively more senior positions in various shady banks, managing wealthy clients’ money and setting up hard-to-pierce financial trusts. He had taken his name and part of his background from a man who had been killed fifteen years ago in France.

Who does that, Hauck wondered, but a person with something very important to hide?

These last two weeks, Hauck had learned everything he could about Thibault’s personal affairs. He knew where he got his suits in London-at Kilgour on Savile Row. He knew where he stayed while in Dubai-at the Burj, seven stars. He knew what restaurants he frequented when he was in New York-Veritas, Daniel, Spartina. He paid his bills. There were no liens or judgments against him. His e-mail traffic showed a variety of normal business and personal contacts. Nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe a bit of a kinky side when it came to Merrill. He didn’t even seem to have anyone else on the side.

And he hadn’t committed any crimes.

All Hauck found was a shadowy past that surely covered up something that the man had gone to great lengths to conceal. Even from Merrill. Why was it up to Hauck to destroy him? He wasn’t with the police any longer.

We don’t do this kind of work, he had said to Foley. Mess with people’s lives.

This time we do.

He opened a thick folder filled with photos he had compiled of Dani. Some were from Greenwich Magazine at charity events. He and Merrill. A few were from the Shiny Sheet in Palm Beach. The Garden Club Ball. Page Six in the New York Post. He didn’t exactly shy away from publicity.

He thumbed through a few contact sheets a friend of his who worked for Fairfield Style had sent over. A gathering for the state’s attorney general on Ron Tillerson’s yacht. “Merrill Simon and financier Dani Thibault.” Saturday polo matches at Conyers Farm. Thibault had some horses. The two of them looked happy, in love. Holding hands.

It was her choice, what to do with what they had found. Her call.

This wasn’t exactly the kind of work he had signed up for when he changed careers.

He picked up the phone and dialed Tom Foley to let him know what information they had. Let his boss decide how to take it to Merrill. Her ex-husband was still a very important account. It was still a new job for Hauck, and the whole thing was a bit uncomfortably politically charged. The receptionist at Talon’s New York office put him on hold.

He opened the folder and slid the photos back in.

One, near the bottom, caught his eye.

It was at the Conyers Farm polo gathering. A Patrons of Greenwich Library literacy thing. A bunch of the usual types Hauck had dealt with over the years: men in blazers and green pants, the women in expensive sundresses and large hats.

Thibault, wearing a white linen blazer and open white shirt, was caught in conversation with someone who seemed slightly familiar, behind dark sunglasses, his back turned to the camera but his profile clearly visible. It was an outtake, cropped from a larger shot. The two of them never even knew it was being snapped.

Hauck was about to stuff it back in the file when it hit him with a jolt just who the man Thibault was talking to was.

He put down the phone.

It made the next step with Thibault no longer Merrill Simons’s call.

It was a face Hauck had seen in the papers and on TV. Very much in the news. He flipped it over, his antennae buzzing like crazy, looked for the date. June, last year.

It would have been meaningless back then, the two of them talking.

But now, with the Dow dropping a couple of thousand points, with one of Wall Street’s biggest firms toppled, a close friend from his past brutally killed, Hauck fixed numbly on the forgotten photo, his blood on fire.

The man caught with Dani Thibault, looking away, was April Glassman’s husband, Marc.