The Dark Tide

CHAPTER ONE

6:10 A.M.

As the morning sun canted sharply through the bedroom window, Charles Friedman dropped the baton.

He hadn’t had the dream in years, yet there he was, gangly, twelve years old, running the third leg of the relay in the track meet at summer camp, the battle between the Blue and the Gray squarely on the line. The sky was a brilliant blue, the crowd jumping up and down-crew-cut, red-cheeked faces he would never see again, except here. His teammate, Kyle Bregman, running the preceding leg, was bearing down on him, holding on to a slim lead, cheeks puffing with everything he had.

Reach…

Charles readied himself, set to take off at the touch of the baton. He felt his fingers twitch, awaiting the slap of the stick in his palm.

There it was! Now! He took off.

Suddenly there was a crushing groan.

Charles stopped, looked down in horror. The baton lay on the ground. The Gray Team completed the exchange, sprinting past him to an improbable victory, their supporters jumping in glee. Cheers of jubilation mixed with jeers of disappointment echoed in Charles’s ears.

That’s when he woke up. As he always did. Breathing heavily, sheets damp with sweat. Charles glanced at his hands-empty. He patted the covers as if the baton were somehow still there, after thirty years.

But it was only Tobey, their white West Highland terrier, staring wide-eyed and expectantly, straddled turkey-legged on his chest.

Charles let his head fall back with a sigh.

He glanced at the clock: 6:10 A.M. Ten minutes before the alarm. His wife, Karen, lay curled up next to him. He hadn’t slept much at all. He’d been wide awake from 3:00 to 4:00 A.M., staring at the World’s Strongest Female Championship on ESPN2 without the sound, not wanting to disturb her. Something was weighing heavily on Charles’s mind.

Maybe it was the large position he had taken in Canadian oil sands last Thursday and had kept through the weekend-highly risky with the price of oil leaking the other way. Or how he had bet up the six-month natural-gas contracts, at the same time going short against the one-years. Friday the energy index had continued to decline. He was scared to get out of bed, scared to look at the screen this morning and see what he’d find.

Or was it Sasha?

For the past ten years, Charles had run his own energy hedge fund in Manhattan, leveraged up eight to one. On the outside-his sandy brown hair, the horn-rim glasses, his bookish calm-he seemed more the estate-planner type or a tax consultant than someone whose bowels (and now his dreams as well!) attested to the fact that he was living in high-beta hell.

Charles pushed himself up in his boxers and paused, elbows on knees. Tobey leaped off the bed ahead of him, scratching feverishly at the door.

“Let him out.” Karen stirred, rolling over, yanking the covers over her head.

“You’re sure?” Charles checked out the dog, ears pinned back, tail quivering, jumping on his hind legs in anticipation, as if he could turn the knob with his teeth. “You know what’s going to happen.”

“C’mon, Charlie, it’s your turn this morning. Just let the little bastard out.”

“Famous last words…”

Charles got up and opened the door leading to their fenced-in half-acre yard, a block from the sound in Old Greenwich. In a flash Tobey bolted out onto the patio, his nose fixed to the scent of some unsuspecting rabbit or squirrel.

Immediately the dog began his high-pitched yelp.

Karen scrunched the pillow over her head and growled. “Rrrrggg…”

That’s how every day began, Charles trudging into the kitchen, turning on CNN and a pot of coffee, the dog barking outside. Then going into his study and checking the European spots online before hopping into the shower.

That morning the spots didn’t offer much cheer-$72.10. They had continued to decline. Charles did a quick calculation in his head. Three more contracts he’d be forced to sell out. Another couple of million-gone. It was a little after 6:00 A.M., and he was already underwater.

Outside, Tobey was in the middle of a nonstop three-minute barrage.

In the shower, Charles went over his day. He had to reverse his positions. He had these oil-sand contracts to clear up, then a meeting with one of his lenders. Was it time for him to come clean? He had a transfer to make into his daughter Sam’s college account; she’d be a senior at the high school in the fall.

That’s when it hit him. Shit!

He had to take in the goddamn car this morning.

The fifteen-thousand-mile service on the Merc. Karen had finally badgered him into making the appointment last week. That meant he’d have to take the train in. It would set him back a bit. He’d hoped to be at his desk by seven-thirty to deal with those positions. Now Karen would have to pick him up at the station later that afternoon.

Dressed, Charles was usually in rush mode by now. The six-thirty wake-up shout to Karen, a knock on Alex’s and Samantha’s doors to get them rolling for school. Looking over the Wall Street Journal’s headlines at the front door.

This morning, thanks to the car, he had a moment to sip his coffee.

They lived in a warm, refurbished Colonial on an affluent tree-lined street in the town of Old Greenwich, a block off the sound. Fully paid for, the damned thing was probably worth more than Charles’s father, a tie salesman from Scranton, had earned in his entire life. Maybe he couldn’t show it like some of their big-time friends in their megahomes out on North Street, but he’d done well. He’d fought to get himself into Penn from a high-school class of seven hundred, distinguished himself at the energy desk at Morgan Stanley, steered a few private clients away when he’d opened his own firm, Harbor Capital. They had the ski house in Vermont, the kids’ college paid for, took fancy vacations.

So what the hell had he done wrong?

Outside, Tobey was scratching at the kitchen’s French doors, trying to get back in. All right, all right. Charles sighed.

Last week their other Westie, Sasha, had been run over. Right on their quiet street, directly in front of their house. It had been Charles who’d found her, bloodied, inert. Everyone was still upset. And then the note. The note that came to his office in a basket of flowers the very next day. That had left him in such a sweat. And brought on these dreams.

Sorry about the pooch, Charles. Could your kids be next?

How the hell had it gotten this far?

He stood up and checked the clock on the stove: 6:45. With any luck, he figured, he could be out of the dealership by 7:30, catch a ride to the 7:51, be at his desk at Forty-ninth Street and Third Avenue fifty minutes after that. Figure out what to do. He let in the dog, who immediately darted past him into the living room with a yelp and out the front door, which Charles had absentmindedly failed to shut. Now he was waking up the entire neighborhood.

The little bastard was more work than the kids!

“Karen, I’m leaving!” he yelled, grabbing his briefcase and tucking the Journal under his arm.

“Kiss, kiss,” she called back, wrapped in her robe, dashing out of the shower.

She still looked sexy to him, her caramel-colored hair wet and a little tangled from the shower. Karen was nothing if not beautiful. She had kept her figure toned and inviting from years of yoga, her skin was still smooth, and she had those dreamy, grab-you-and-never-let-go hazel eyes. For a moment Charles regretted not rolling over to her back in bed once Tobey had flown the coop and given them the unexpected opportunity.

But instead he just yelled up something about the car-that he’d be taking in the Metro-North. That maybe he’d call her later and have her meet him on the way home to pick it up.

“Love you!” Karen called over the hum of the hair dryer.

“You, too!”

“After Alex’s game we’ll go out…”

Damn, that was right, Alex’s lacrosse game, his first of the season. Charles went back and scratched out a note to him that he left on the kitchen counter.

To our #1 attacker! Knock ’em dead, champ! BEST OF LUCK!!!

He signed his initials, then crossed it out and wrote Dad. He stared at the note for a second. He had to stop this. Whatever was going on, he’d never let anything happen to them.

Then he headed for the garage, and over the sound of the automatic door opening and the dog’s barking in the yard, he heard his wife yell above the hair dryer, “Charlie, would you please let in the goddamn dog!”

CHAPTER TWO

By eight-thirty Karen was at yoga.

By that time she had already roused Alex and Samantha from their beds, put out boxes of cereal and toast for their breakfasts, found the top that Sam claimed was “absolutely missing, Mom” (in her daughter’s dresser drawer), and refereed two fights over who was driving whom that morning and whose cooties were in the bathroom sink the kids shared.

She’d also fed the dog, made sure Alex’s lacrosse uniform was pressed, and when the shoulder-slapping, finger-flicking spat over who touched whom last began to simmer into a name-calling brawl, pushed them out the door and into Sam’s Acura with a kiss and a wave, got a quote from Sav-a-Tree about one of their elms that needed to come down and dashed off two e-mails to board members on the school’s upcoming capital campaign.

A start… Karen sighed, nodding “Hey, all,” to a few familiar faces as she hurriedly joined in with their sun salutations at the Sportsplex studio in Stamford.

The afternoon was going to be a bitch.

Karen was forty-two, pretty; she knew she looked at least five years younger. With her sharp brown eyes, the trace of a few freckles still dotting her cheekbones, people often compared her to a fairer Sela Ward. Her thick, light brown hair was clipped up in back, and as she caught herself in the mirror, she wasn’t at all ashamed of how she still looked in her yoga tights for a mom who in a former life had been the leading fund-raiser for the City Ballet.

That’s where she and Charlie had first met. At a large-donors dinner. Of course, he was only there to fill out a table for the firm and couldn’t tell a plié from the twist. Still couldn’t, she always ribbed him. But he was shy and a bit self-deprecating-and with his horn-rim glasses and suspenders, his mop of sandy hair, he seemed more like some poli-sci professor than the new hot-shot on the Morgan Stanley energy desk. Charlie seemed to like that she wasn’t from around here-the hint of a drawl she still carried in her voice. The velvet glove wrapped around her iron fist, he always called it admiringly, because he’d never met anyone, anyone, who could get things done like she could.

Well, the drawl was long gone, and so was the perfect slimness of her hips. Not to mention the feeling that she had any control over her life.

She’d lost that one a couple of kids ago.

Karen concentrated on her breathing as she leaned forward into stick pose, which was a difficult one for her, focusing on the extension of her arms, the straightness of her spine.

“Straight back,” Cheryl, the instructor, intoned. “Donna, arms by the ears. Karen, posture. Engage that thighbone.”

“It’s my thighbone that’s about to fall off.” Karen groaned, wobbling. A couple of people around her laughed. Then she righted herself and regained her form.

“Beautiful.” Cheryl clapped. “Well done.”

Karen had been raised in Atlanta. Her father owned a small chain of paint and remodeling stores there. She’d gone to Emory and studied art. At twenty-three she and a girlfriend went up to New York, she got her first job in the publicity department at Sotheby’s, and things just seemed to click from there. It wasn’t easy at first, after she and Charlie married. Giving up her career, moving up here to the country, starting a family. Charlie was always working back then-or away-and even when he was home, it seemed he had a phone perpetually stapled to his ear.

Things were a little dicey at the beginning. Charlie had made a few wrong plays when he opened his firm and almost “bought the farm.” But one of his mentors from Morgan Stanley had stepped in and bailed him out, and since then things had worked out pretty well. It wasn’t a big life-like some of the people they knew who lived in those giant Normandy castles in backcountry, with places in Palm Beach and whose kids had never flown commercial. But who even wanted that? They had the place in Vermont, a skiff at a yacht club in Greenwich. Karen still shopped for the groceries and picked up the poop out of the driveway. She solicited auction gifts for the Teen Center, did the household bills. The bloom on her cheeks said she was happy. She loved her family more than anything in the world.

Still, she sighed, shifting into chair pose; it was like heaven that at least for an hour the kids, the dog, the bills piling up on her desk were a million miles away.

Karen’s attention was caught by something through the glass partition. People were gathering around the front desk, staring up at the overhead TV.

“Think of a beautiful place…” Cheryl directed them. “In-hale. Use your breath to take you there…”

Karen drifted to the place she always fixed on. A remote cove just outside Tortola, in the Caribbean. She and Charlie and the kids had come upon it when they were sailing nearby. They had waded in and spent the day by themselves in the beautiful turquoise bay. A world without cell phones and Comedy Central. She had never seen her husband so relaxed. When the kids were gone, he always said, when he was able to get it all together, they could go there. Right. Karen always smiled inside. Charlie was a lifer. He loved the arbitrage, the risk. The cove could stay away, a lifetime if it had to. She was happy. She caught her face in the mirror. It made her smile.

Suddenly Karen became aware that the crowd at the front desk had grown. A few runners had stepped off their treadmills, focused on the overhead screens. Even the trainers had come over and were watching.

Something had happened!

Cheryl tried clapping them back to attention. “People, focus!” But to no avail.

One by one, they all broke their poses and stared.

A woman from the club ran over, throwing open their door. “Something’s happened!” she said, her face white with alarm. “There’s a fire in Grand Central Station! There’s been some kind of bombing there.”

CHAPTER THREE

Karen hurried through the glass door and squeezed in front of the screen to watch.

They all did.

There was a reporter broadcasting from the street in Manhattan across from the train station, confirming in a halting tone that some sort of explosion had gone off inside. “Possibly multiple explosions…”

The screen then cut to an aerial view from a helicopter. A billowing plume of black smoke rose into the sky from inside.

“Oh, Jesus, God,” Karen muttered, staring at the scene in horror. “What’s happened…?”

“It’s down on the tracks,” a woman in a leotard standing next to her said. “They think some kind of bomb went off, maybe on one of the trains.”

“My son went in by train this morning,” a woman gasped, pressing a hand to her lips.

Another, a towel draped around her neck, holding back tears: “My husband, too.”

Before Karen could even think, fresh reports came in. An explosion, several explosions, on the tracks, just as a Metro-North train was pulling into the station. There was a fire raging down there, the news reporter said. Smoke coming up on the street. Dozens of people still trapped. Maybe hundreds. This was bad!

“Who?” people were murmuring all around.

“Terrorists, they’re saying.” One of the trainers shook his head. “They don’t know…”

They’d all been part of this kind of terrible moment before. Karen and Charlie had both known people who’d never made it out on 9/11. At first Karen watched with the empathetic worry of someone whose life was outside the tragedy that was taking place. Nameless, faceless people she might have seen a hundred times-across from her on the train, reading the sports page, hurrying on the street for a cab. Eyes fixed to the screen, now many of them locked fingers with one another’s hands.

Then, all of a sudden, it hit Karen.

Not with a flash-a numbing sensation at first, in her chest. Then intensifying, accompanied by a feeling of impending dread.

Charlie had yelled something up to her-about going in by train this morning. Above the drone of the hair dryer.

About having to take in the car and needing her to pick him up later on that afternoon.

Oh, my God…

She felt a constriction in her chest. Her eyes darted toward the clock. Frantically, she tried to reconstruct some sort of timeline. Charlie, what time he left, what time it was now…It started to scare her. Her heart began to speed up like a metronome set on high.

An updated report came in. Karen tensed. “It appears we are talking about a bomb,” the reporter announced. “Aboard a Metro-North train just as it pulled into Grand Central. This has just been confirmed,” he said. “It was on the Stamford branch.”

A collective gasp rose up from the studio.

Most of them were from around there. Everyone knew people-relatives, friends-who regularly took the train. Faces drained of blood-in shock. People turning to each other without even knowing whom they were next to, seeking the comfort of each other’s eyes.

“It’s horrible, isn’t it?” A woman next to Karen shook her head.

Karen could barely answer. A chill had suddenly taken control of her, knifing through her bones.

The Stamford train went through Greenwich.

All she could do was look up at the clock in terror-8:54. Her chest was coiled so tightly she could barely breathe.

The woman stared at her. “Honey, are you okay?”

“I don’t know…” Karen’s eyes had filled with terror. “I think my husband might be on that train.”

CHAPTER FOUR

8:45 A.M.

Ty Hauck was on his way to work.

He cut the engines to five miles per hour as he maneuvered his twenty-four-foot fishing skiff, the Merrily, into the mouth of Greenwich Harbor.

Hauck took the boat in from time to time when the weather turned nice. This morning, with its clear, crisp April breeze, he looked off his deck and sort of mentally declared it: Summer hours officially begin! The twenty-five minutes on the Long Island Sound from where he lived near Cove Island in Stamford were hardly longer than the slow slog this time of the morning down I-95. And the brisk wind whipping through his hair woke him a whole lot faster than any grande at Starbucks. He clicked the portable CD player on. Fleetwood Mac. An old favorite:

Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night / And wouldn’t you love to love her.

It was why he’d moved back up here, four years ago. After the accident, after his marriage had broken up. Some said that it was running away. Hiding out. And maybe it was, just a little. So the hell what?

He was head of the Violent Crimes Unit on the Greenwich police force. People relied on him. Was that running away? Sometimes he took the boat out for an hour or so before work in the rosy predawn calm and fished for blues and striped bass. Was that?

He had grown up here. In middle-class Byram, near Port Chester by the New York border, only a few miles but a lifetime away from the massive estates that now lined the way out to backcountry, gates he now drove through to follow up on some rich kid who had tipped over his sixty-thousand-dollar Hummer.

It was all different now. The countrified families who had grown up there in his youth had given way to thirty-something hedge-fund zillionaires who tore the old homes down and built enormous castles behind iron gates, with lake-size pools and movie theaters. Everyone with money was coming in. Now Russian moguls-who even knew where their wealth was from?-were buying up horse-country estates in Conyers Farm, putting in helicopter pads.

Billionaires ruining things for millionaires. Hauck shook his head.

Twenty years ago he’d been a running back at Greenwich High. Then he went on and played at Colby, Division III. Not exactly Big Ten, but the fancy degree got him fast-tracked into the NYPD detectives’ training program, which made his dad, who worked his whole life for the Town of Greenwich Water Authority, proud. He’d cracked a couple of high-profile cases and moved up. Later on he worked for the department’s Information Office when the Trade Towers were hit.

So now he was back.

As he chugged into the harbor, the manicured lawns of Belle Haven to his left, a couple of small boats cruised past him on their way out-doing the same thing he was doing, heading to work on Long Island across the sound, a half hour’s ride away.

Hauck waved.

And he liked it here now, though a lot of pain had left its mark in between.

It was lonely since he and Beth had split up. He dated a bit: a pretty secretary to the CEO at General Reinsurance, a marketing gal who worked at Altria for a while. Even one or two gals on the force. But he’d found no one new to share his life with. Though Beth had.

Occasionally he hung out with a few of his old buddies from town, a couple who had made bundles building homes, some who just became plumbers or mortgage brokers or owned a landscaping company. “The Leg,” that’s what everyone still called him-with a soft g, as in “Legend.” Old-timers, who still recalled him busting two tackles into the end zone to beat Stamford West for the Lower Fairfield County crown, still toasted that as the best game they’d ever seen anyone play here since Steve Young and bought him beers.

But mostly he simply felt free. That the past hadn’t followed him up here. He just tried to do a little good during the day, cut people a break. Be fair. And he had Jessica, who was ten now, up on weekends, and they fished and kicked soccer balls around on Tod’s Point and had cookouts there. Sunday afternoons, in his eight-year-old Bronco, he’d drive her back to where she lived now, in Brooklyn. Friday nights in the winter, he played hockey in the local over-forty league.

Basically he tried to push it back a little each day-time, that is-trying to find himself back to that point before everything caved in on him. That moment before the accident. Before his marriage collapsed. Before he gave up.

Why go back there, Ty?

Hard as you tried, you could never quite push it back all the way. Life didn’t afford you that.

Hauck caught sight of the marina at the Indian Harbor Yacht Club, where the dock manager, Hank Gordon, an old buddy, always let him put in for the day. He picked up the radio. “Heading in, Gordo…”

But the marina manager was waiting for him out on the pier.

“What the hell are you doing here, Ty?”

Hauck yelled to him, “Summer hours, guy!” He reversed and backed the Merrily in. Gordo tossed a bowline to him and reeled him in. Hauck cut the engine. He went out to the stern as the boat hit the buoy and hopped onto the pier. “Like a dream out there today.”

“A bad dream,” Hank said. “Lemme take it from here, Ty. You better get your ass up that hill.”

There was something on the dock manager’s face that Hauck couldn’t quite read. He glanced at his watch-8:52. Usually he and Gordo shot the shit a few minutes, about the Rangers or what had made it onto the police blotter the night before.

That’s when Hauck’s cell phone started to beep. The office. Two-three-seven.

Two-thirty-seven was the department’s emergency code.

“You didn’t have the radio on, did you?” Gordo asked, securing the line.

Hauck shook his head blankly.

“Then you haven’t heard what the hell happened out there, have you, Lieutenant?”

CHAPTER FIVE

Karen didn’t flip out at first. That wasn’t her way. She told herself over and over to stay calm. Charlie could be anywhere. Anywhere.

You don’t know for sure if he was even on that train.

Like a few years back, when Samantha was four or five, and they thought they’d lost her at Bloomie’s. And after a frantic, heart-constricting search, retracing their steps, calling for the manager, and starting to accept the reality that something horrible had happened-that this wasn’t a false alarm!-there she was, their little Sammy, waving hi to Mommy and Daddy, paging through one of her favorite books atop a pile of Oriental rugs, as innocent as if she were on a stage at school.

This could be just like that, Karen reassured herself now. Stay calm, Karen. Goddamn it, just stay calm!

She ran back into the yoga studio, found her purse, and fumbled around for her phone. Heart pumping, she punched in Charlie’s number on the speed dial. C’mon, c’mon… Her fingers barely complied.

As she waited for the call to connect, she tried her best to flash through her husband’s schedule that morning. He’d left the house around seven. She’d been finishing her hair. Ten minutes into town, ten minutes at the dealership dropping off the car, going over what had to be done. So that was, what-7:20? Another ten or so to the station. The news said the explosion had occurred at 8:41. He could have made an earlier train. Or even ended up getting a loaner and driving in. For a second, Karen allowed herself to feel uplifted. Anything was possible… Charlie was the most resourceful man she knew.

His phone began to ring. Karen saw that her hands were shaking. C’mon, Charlie, answer…

To her dismay, his voice recording came on. “This is Charlie Friedman…”

“Charlie, it’s me,” Karen blurted. “I’m really worried about you. I know you took the train in. You’ve got to call me as soon as you get this. I don’t care what you’re doing, Charlie. Just call, hon…”

She pressed the end button feeling totally helpless.

Then she realized-there was a voice-mail message on her phone! Blood racing, she scrolled immediately to Recently Received Calls.

It was Charlie’s number! Thank God! Her heart almost climbed up her throat in joy.

Anxiously, Karen punched in her code and pressed the receiver to her ear. His familiar voice came on and it was calm. “Listen, hon, I thought as long as I’m gonna be in Grand Central, I’d pick up some of those marinated steaks you like at Ottomanelli’s on the way home and we’d grill instead of going out… Sound good? Lemme know. I’ll be in the office by nine. I got hung up. Madhouse at the dealership. Bye.”

Karen stared at the message screen-8:34. He was heading into Grand Central when he made the call. Still on the train. The sweats began to come over her again. She looked back outside at the monitor, at the pall of smoke building over Grand Central, the chaos and confusion on the screen.

Suddenly she knew in her heart. She couldn’t deny it anymore.

Her husband was on that train.

Unable to control herself any longer, Karen punched in the speed code to her husband’s office. C’mon, c’mon, she said over and over during the agonizing seconds it took for the call to connect. Finally Heather, Charlie’s assistant, picked up.

“Charles Friedman’s office.”

“Heather, it’s Karen.” She tried to control herself. “By any chance has my husband come in?”

“Not yet, Mrs. Friedman. He left me an e-mail earlier from his BlackBerry saying that he had to take his car in or something. I’m sure I’ll be hearing from him soon.”

“I know he had to take his car in, Heather! That’s what I’m worried about. Have you seen the news? He said he was taking the train.”

“Oh, my God!” His assistant gasped, reality setting in. Of course she’d seen it. They all had. The whole office was watching it now.

“Mrs. Friedman, let me try and get him on the phone. I’m sure it’s got to be crazy around Grand Central. Maybe he’s on his way over and the phones just aren’t functioning. Maybe he took a later train-”

“I got a call from him, Heather! At eight thirty-four. He said they were pulling into Grand Central in a while…” Her voice was shaking. “That was eight thirty-four, Heather! He was on it. Otherwise he would have called. I think he was on that train…”

Heather begged her to stay calm and said she would e-mail him, that she was sure she’d hear from him soon. Karen nodded okay, but when she put down the phone, her heart was racing and her blood was pumping out of control and she had no idea what to do next. She pressed the phone to her heart and dialed his number one more time.

C’mon, Charlie… Charlie, please…

Outside Grand Central, the news reporter was confirming that it had been at least one bomb. A few survivors had staggered out of the station. They were gathered on the street, dazed, faces smeared with blood and black with soot. Some were muttering something about Track 109, that there’d been at least two powerful explosions and a fire raging down there, with lots of people still trapped. That something had gone off in the first two cars.

Karen froze. That’s when tears finally started to roll down her cheeks.

That’s where Charlie always sat. It was like a ritual with him. He always camped out in the first car!

C’mon, Charlie… Karen pleaded silently, watching the screen outside. People are making it out. Look, they’re interviewing them.

She punched his number in again, her body giving over to full-out panic.

“Answer the fucking phone, Charlie!”

CHAPTER SIX

Her thoughts flashed to Samantha and Alex. Karen realized she had to get home.

What could she possibly tell them? Charlie always drove in. He had a spot in his building’s garage. He’d been doing it for years.

That this was the one goddamn morning he picked to take the train!

Karen crumpled her sweat top into her bag and ran out, past the front counter, through the outer glass doors. She hurried over to where her Lexus was parked, the hybrid Charlie had bought her barely a month ago. The console still smelled new. She flicked the automatic lock on her key chain and jumped in.

Her house was about ten minutes away. Pulling out of the lot, Karen kept the Blue Tooth phone on automatic dial to Charlie’s cell. Please, Charlie, please, answer the goddamn phone!

Her heart kept sinking. “This is Charlie Friedman…”

Tears rolled down her cheeks as she pushed back her worst fears. This can’t be happening!

Karen made a sharp right out of the Sportsplex’s lot onto Prospect, cut the light at the corner, accelerating onto I-95. Traffic was backed up, slowing everything headed into downtown Greenwich.

All sorts of new, conflicting reports were coming in. The radio said that multiple explosions had taken place. That there was a fire on the tracks, burning out of control. That the intense heat and the possibility of noxious fumes made it impossible for fire-fighters even to get close. That there were significant casualties.

It was starting to scare Karen to death.

He could be trapped down there. Anywhere. He could be burned or injured, unable to get out. On his way to a hospital. There were a hundred fucking scenarios that could possibly be playing out. Karen pressed the speed dial again.

“Where are you, goddamn it, Charlie? Come on, please…”

Her mind flashed again to Alex and Samantha. They wouldn’t have any idea. Even if word had spread to them, it wouldn’t occur to them. Charlie always drove.

Karen pulled off the highway at Exit 5, Old Greenwich, and onto the Post Road. Suddenly her car phone beeped. Thank God! Her heart almost leaped out of her chest.

But it was only Paula, her best friend, who lived nearby in Riverside, only a few minutes away.

“You hear what’s going on?” The sound of the TV was blaring in the background.

“Of course I’ve heard, Paula. I-”

“They’re saying it was from Greenwich. There might even be people we-”

“Paula.” Karen interrupted her. She could barely force the words out of her mouth. “I think Charlie was on that train.”

“What?”

Karen told her about the car and not being able to reach him. She said she was heading home and wanted to keep the lines free, in case he or his office might call.

“Of course, honey. I understand. Kar, he’s going to be okay. Charlie always comes out okay. You know that, Kar, don’t you?”

“I know,” Karen said, though she knew she was lying to herself. “I know.”

Karen drove through town, her heart beating madly, then turned onto Shore Road near the sound. Then Sea Wall. Half a block down, she jerked the Lexus into her driveway. Charlie’s old Mustang was pulled into the third bay of the garage, just as she’d left it an hour earlier. She ran through the garage and into the kitchen. Her hope was momentarily raised by a message light flashing on the machine. Please… she prayed to herself, and pushed the play button, her blood pulsing with alarm.

“Hey, Mrs. Friedman…” a dull voice came over the speaker. It was Mal, their plumber, droning on and on about the water heater she’d wanted to have fixed, about some goddamn valve he was having a bitch of a time finding. Tears ran down Karen’s cheeks as her legs started to give out, and she pressed herself to the wall and sank helplessly onto the floor. Tobey wagged his way up, nuzzling into her. She mashed her tears with the palms of her hands. “Not now, baby. Please, not now…”

Up on the counter, Karen fumbled for the remote. She flicked on the TV. The situation had gotten worse. Matt Lauer was on the screen-with Brian Williams now-and the reports were that there were dozens of casualties down on the tracks, that the fire was spreading and uncontained. That some of the lower part of the building had collapsed, and while they were flashing to some expert about Al Qaeda and terrorism, they split-screened to the dark cloud seeping into the Manhattan sky.

He would’ve called them, Karen knew, at least Heather at the office-if he was okay. Maybe even before he would’ve called her. That’s what scared her most. She closed her eyes.

Just be okay, Charlie, wherever you are. Just be okay.

A car door slammed outside. Karen heard the doorbell ring. Someone called out her name and came running into the house.

It was Paula. She fixed on Karen huddled on the floor, in a way she had never seen her before. Paula sank down next to her, and they just hugged each other, tears glistening on each other’s cheeks.

“It’s gonna be okay, honey.” Paula stroked Karen’s hair. “I know it will. There could be hundreds of people down there. Maybe the phones aren’t working. Maybe he needed some medical attention. Charlie’s a survivor. If anyone’s gonna get out, it’s him. You’ll see, baby. It’s gonna be okay.”

And Karen kept nodding back and repeating, “I know, I know,” wiping the tears with her sleeve.

They called over and over. What else was there to do? Charlie’s cell phone. His office. Maybe thirty, forty times.

At some point Karen even sniffled back a smile. “You know how mad Charlie gets when I bug him at the office?”

By nine forty-five they had settled onto the couch in the family room. That’s when they heard the car pull up and more doors slamming. Alex and Samantha burst in through the kitchen with a shout. “School’s closed!”

They stuck their heads into the TV room. “You heard what happened?” Alex said.

Karen could barely answer. The sight of them struck terror in her heart. She told them to sit down. They could see that her face was raw and worried. That something was terribly wrong was written all over it.

Samantha sat down across from her. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

“Daddy took the car in this morning,” Karen said, “for service.”

“So?”

Karen swallowed back a lump, or she was sure she would start to cry. “Afterward,” she paused, “I think he went into the city by train.”

Both kids’ eyes went wide and followed hers, as if drawn, to the wide screen.

“He’s there?” her son asked. “At Grand Central?”

“I don’t know, baby. We haven’t heard from him. That’s what’s so worrisome. He called and said he was on the train. That was eight thirty-four. This happened at eight forty-one. I don’t know…”

Karen was trying so hard to appear positive and strong, trying with all her heart not to alarm them, because she knew with that same unflinching certainty that any moment Charlie would call, tell them he had made it out, that he was okay. So she didn’t even feel the trail of tears carving its way down her cheeks and onto her lap, and Samantha staring at her, jaw parted, about to cry herself. And Alex-her poor, macho Alex, white as parchment-eyes glued to the horrifying plume of smoke elevating into the Manhattan sky.

For a while no one said a word. They just stared, all in their own world between denial and hope. Sam, arms hung loosely around her brother’s neck, her chin resting nervously on his shoulder. Alex, grasping Karen’s hand for the first time in years, watching, waiting for their father’s face to emerge. Paula, elbows on knees, poised to shout and point, Look, there he is! Jump up in glee. Waiting with all the certainty in the world to hear the phone she was sure was about to ring.

Alex turned to Karen. “Dad’s gonna make it out of there? Isn’t he, Mom?”

“Of course he is, baby.” Karen squeezed his hand. “You know your father. If anyone will, it’s him. He’ll make it out.”

That was when they heard a rumble. On the screen the camera shook from another muffled explosion. Onlookers gasped and screamed as a fresh cloud of dense black smoke emerged from the station.

Samantha wailed, “Oh, God…”

Karen felt her stomach fall. She cupped Alex’s fist tightly and squeezed. “Oh, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie…”

“Secondary explosions…” muttered a fire chief coming out of the station, his head shaking with a kind of finality. “There are many, many bodies down there. We can’t even get our people close.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Around noon

When the call came in, Hauck was on the phone with the NYPD’s Emergency Management Office in the city.

Possible 634. Leaving the scene of an accident. West Street and the Post Road.

All morning long he’d kept a close tab on the mess going on in the city. Panicked people had been calling in all day, unable to reach their loved ones, not knowing what else to do. When the Trade Towers were hit, he’d been working for the department’s Office of Information, and it had been his job for weeks afterward to track down the fates of people unaccounted for-through the hospitals, the wreckage, the network of first responders. Hauck still had friends down there. He stared at the list of Greenwich names he’d taken down: Pomeroy. Bashtar. Grace. O’Connor.

The first time around, out of the hundreds unaccounted for, they had found only two.

“Possible 634, Ty!” the day sergeant buzzed in a second time. Hit and Run. Down on the Post Road, by West Street, near the fast-food outlets and car dealerships.

“Can’t,” Hauck said back to her. “Get Muñoz on it. I’m on something.”

“Muñoz is already on the scene, Lieutenant. It’s a homicide. It seems you got a body down there.”

It took only minutes for Hauck to grab his Grand Corona out of the lot outside, shoot straight up Mason, his top hat flashing, to the top of the avenue by the Greenwich Office Park, then down the Post Road to West Street, across from the Acura dealership.

As he was the head of Violent Crimes in town, this was his call. Mostly his department broke up spats at the high school, the occasional report of a break-in, marital rows. Dead bodies were rare up here in Greenwich.

Stock fraud was a lot more common.

At the bottom of the avenue, four local blue-and-whites had blocked off the busy commercial thoroughfare, their lights ablaze. Traffic was being routed into one lane. Hauck slowed, nodding to a couple of patrolmen he recognized. Freddy Muñoz, one of the detectives on his staff, came over as Hauck got out.

“You gotta be kidding, Freddy.” Hauck shook his head in disbelief. “Today of all days…”

The detective made a grim motion toward a covered mound in the middle of West Street, which intersected the Post Road and cut up to Railroad Avenue and I-95.

“It look like we’re kidding, LT?”

The patrol cars had parked in a way that formed sort of a protective circle around the body. An EMS truck had arrived, but the tech was standing around waiting for the regional medical team out of Farmington. Hauck knelt and peeled back the plastic tarp.

Christ! His cheeks puffed out a blast of air.

The guy was just a kid-twenty-two, twenty-three at most-white, wearing a brown work uniform, long red locks braided in cornrows in the manner of a Jamaican rasta. His body was twisted so that his hips were swung over slightly and raised off the pavement, while his back was flat, face upward. The eyes were open, wide, the moment of impact still frozen in their pupils. A trickle of blood ran onto the pavement from the corner of the victim’s mouth.

“You got a name?”

“Raymond. First name Abel. Middle name John. Went by AJ, his boss at the auto-customizing shop over there said. That’s where he worked.”

A young uniformed officer was standing nearby with a notepad. His nameplate read STASIO. Hauck assumed he’d been first on the scene.

“He was just off-shift,” Muñoz said. “Said he was going out to buy some smokes and make a call.” He pointed across the street. “Seems like he was headed into the diner over there.”

Hauck glanced over to a place he knew called the Fairfield Diner, an occasional police hangout. He’d grabbed a meal there a couple of times himself.

“What do we know about the car?”

Muñoz called over Officer Stasio, who looked about a month removed from training, and who read, a little nervously, from his spiral pad. “It appears like the hit-car was a white SUV, Lieutenant. It was traveling north up the Post Road and turned sharply onto West Street here… Ran into the vic just as he was crossing the street. We got two eyewitnesses who saw the whole thing.”

Stasio pointed to two men, one stocky, sport coat, mustached, sitting in the front seat of an open patrol car rubbing his hair. The other in a blue fleece top talking to another officer, somberly shaking his head. “We located one in the parking lot of the Arby’s over there. An ex-cop, it turns out. The other came from the bank across the street.”

The kid had put it together pretty good. “Good work, Stasio.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Hauck slowly raised himself up, his knees cracking. A parting gift from his football days.

He looked back at the rutted gray asphalt on West Street -the two extended streaks of rubber about twenty feet farther along than the victim’s cell phone and glasses. Skid marks. Well past the point of impact. Hauck sucked in an unpleasant breath, and his stomach shifted.

Son of a bitch hadn’t even tried to stop.

He looked over at Stasio. “You doin’ okay, son?” That this was the young officer’s first fatality was plainly written all over his face.

Stasio nodded back. “Yessir.”

“Never easy.” Hauck patted the young patrolman on the shoulder. “That’s true for any of us.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

Hauck pulled Muñoz aside. He guided his detective’s eye along the Post Road south, the route that the hit-car traveled, then in the direction of the tire marks on the pavement.

“Seeing what I’m seeing, Freddy?”

The detective nodded grimly. “Bastard never made a move to stop.”

“Yeah.” Hauck pulled out a latex glove from his jacket pocket and threaded it over his fingers.

“Okay.” He knelt back down to the inert body. “Let’s see what she says…”

Hauck lifted Abel Raymond’s torso just enough to remove a black wallet from the victim’s trouser pocket. A Florida driver’s license: Abel John Raymond. There was also a laminated photo ID from Seminole Junior College, dating back two years. Same bright-eyed grin as on the license, hair a little shorter. Maybe the kid had dropped out.

There was a MasterCard in his name, a card from Sears, others from Costco, ExxonMobil, Social Security. Forty-two dollars in cash. A ticket stub from the 1996 Orange Bowl. Florida State-Notre Dame. Hauck recalled the game. From out of the wallet’s divider he unfolded a snapshot of an attractive dark-haired woman who appeared to be in her twenties holding a young boy. Hauck handed it up to Muñoz.

“Doesn’t look like a sister.” The detective shrugged. The victim wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. “Girlfriend, maybe.”

They’d have to track down who it was.

“Someone’s not going to be very happy tonight.” Freddy Muñoz sighed.

Hauck tucked the photo back into the wallet and exhaled. “Long list, I’m afraid, Freddy.”

“It’s crazy, isn’t it, Lieutenant?” Muñoz shook his head. He was no longer talking about the accident. “You know my wife’s brother took in the 7:57 this morning. Got out just before it happened. My sister-in-law was going crazy. She couldn’t reach him till he got into the office. You roll over in bed for a few more minutes, get stuck at a light, miss your train… You know how lucky he is?”

Hauck thought of the list of names back on his desk, the nervous, hopeful voices of those who had called in about them. He glanced over to Stasio’s witnesses.

“C’mon, Freddy, let’s get an ID on that car.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Hauck took the guy in the sport jacket, Freddy the North Face fleece.

Hauck’s turned out to be a retired cop from South Jersey, name of Phil Dietz. He claimed he was up here cold-canvassing for state-of-the-art security systems-“You know, ‘smart’ homes, thumbprint, ID sensors, that sort of thing”-which he’d been handling since turning in the badge three years before. He had just pulled into the Arby’s up the street to grab a sandwich when he saw the whole thing.

“He came down the street moving pretty good,” Dietz said. He was short, stocky, graying hair a little thin on top, with a thick mustache, and he moved his stubby hands excitedly. “I heard the engine pick up. He accelerated down the street and made this turn there.” He pointed toward the intersection of West Street and the Post Road. “SOB hit that kid without even touching the brakes. I didn’t see it until it was too late.”

“Can you give me a make on the car?” Hauck asked.

Dietz nodded. “It was a white late-model SUV. A Honda or an Acura, I think, something like that. I could look at some pictures. Plates were white, too-I think blue lettering, or maybe green.” He shook his head. “Too far away. My eyes aren’t what they were when I was on the job.” He jiggled a set of reading glasses in his breast pocket. “Now all I have to do is to be able to read POs.”

Hauck smiled, then made a notation on his pad. “Not local?”

Dietz shook his head. “No. Maybe New Hampshire or Massachusetts. Sorry, I couldn’t get a solid read. The bastard stopped for a second-after. I yelled, ‘Hey, you!’ and started to run down the hill. But he just took off up the road. I tried to grab a picture with my cell phone, but it happened too fast. He was gone.”

Dietz pointed up the hill, toward the heights of Railroad Avenue. West Street went into a curve as it bent past an open lot, an office building. Once you were up there, I-95 was only a minute or two away. Hauck knew they’d have to be lucky if anyone up there saw him.

He turned back to the witness. “You said you heard the engine accelerate?”

“That’s right. I was stepping out of my car. Thought I’d kill some time before my next appointment.” Dietz pressed his inter-locked hands around the back of his head. “Cold calls…Don’t ever quit.”

“I’ll try not to.” Hauck grinned, then redirected him, motioning south. “It was coming from down there? You were able to follow it before it turned?”

“Yup. It caught my eyes as it sped up.” Dietz nodded.

“The driver was male?”

“Definitely.”

“Any chance you caught a description?”

He shook his head. “After the vehicle stopped, the guy looked back for an instant through the glass. Maybe had a second thought at what he’d done. I couldn’t get a read on his face. Tinted windows. Believe me, I wish I had.”

Hauck looked back up the hill and followed what he imagined was the victim’s path. If he worked at J &D Tint and Rims, he’d have to walk across West Street, then cross the Post Road at the light to get to the diner.

“You say you used to be on the force?”

“ Township of Freehold.” The witness’s eyes lit up. “ South Jersey. Near Atlantic City. Twenty-three years.”

“Good for you. So what I’m going to ask you, Mr. Dietz, you may understand. Did you happen to notice if the vehicle was traveling at a consistently high rate of speed prior to making the turn? Or did it speed up as the victim stepped into the street?’

“You’re trying to decide if this was an accident or intentional?” The ex-cop cocked his head.

“I’m just trying to get a picture of what took place,” Hauck replied.

“I heard him from up there.” Dietz pointed up the block toward the Arby’s. “He shot down the hill, then spun into the turn-outta control. To me it was like he must’ve been drunk. I don’t know, I just looked up when I heard the impact. He dragged the poor kid’s body like a sack of wheat. You can still see the marks. Then he stopped. I think the kid was underneath him at that point, before he sped away.”

Dietz said he’d be happy to look at some photos of white SUVs, to try to narrow down the make and model. “You find this SOB, Lieutenant. Anything I can do, you let me know. I wanna be the hammer that drives the nail into his coffin.”

Hauck thanked him. Not as much to go on as he would have liked. Muñoz stepped over. The guy he’d been talking to saw the incident from across the street. A track coach from up in Wilton, twenty miles away. Hodges. He identified the same white vehicle and same out-of-state plates. “AD or something. Maybe eight…” He was just stepping out of the bank after using the ATM. It had happened so quickly that he, too, couldn’t get much of a read. He gave roughly the same sketchy picture Dietz had of what had taken place.

Muñoz shrugged, disappointed. “Not a whole lot to go on, is it, Lieutenant?”

Hauck pressed his lips in frustration. “No.”

He went back to his car and called in an APB. A white late-model SUV driven by a white male, “possibly Honda or Acura, possibly Massachusetts or New Hampshire plates, possibly beginning AD8. Likely front-end body damage.” They’d put it out to the state police and the auto-repair shops all over the Northeast. They’d canvass people farther up along West Street to see if anyone spotted him racing by. There might be some speed-control cameras along the highway. That was their best hope.

Unless, of course, it turned out someone had it in for Abel Raymond.

There was a guy in a Yankees cap standing nearby, huddled against the chill. Stasio brought him over. Dave Corso, the owner of the auto custom shop where AJ Raymond worked.

“He was a good kid.” Corso shook his head, visibly distressed. “He’d been working with me for about a year. He was talented. He remodeled old cars himself. He was up from Florida.”

Hauck recalled his license. “You know where?”

The body-shop owner shrugged. “I don’t know. Tallahassee, Pensacola…He always wore these T-shirts, the Florida State Seminoles. I think he took everyone out for a beer when they won that college bowl last year. I think his father was a sailor or something down there.”

“You mean like in the navy?”

“No. Tugboat or something. He had his picture tacked up on the board. It’s still inside.”

Hauck nodded. “Where did Mr. Raymond live?”

“Up in Bridgeport, I’m pretty sure. I know we have it on file inside, but you know how it is-things change. But I know he banked over at First City…” He told them that AJ got this call, maybe twenty minutes before he left. He was in the middle of doing this tinting. Then he came and said he was going on early break. “Marty something, I think the guy said. AJ said he was going across the street to grab some smokes. The diner, I think. It has a machine.” Corso glanced over at the covered mound in the street. “Then this…How the hell do you figure?”

Hauck removed the victim’s wallet from out of a bag and showed Corso the photo of the girl and her son. “Any idea who this is?”

The auto-body manager shrugged. “I think he had some gal up there… Or maybe Stamford. She picked him up here once or twice. Lemme look… Yeah, I think that’s her. AJ was into working on classic cars. You know, restoring them. Corvettes, LeSabres, Mustangs. I think he’d just been up at a show this past weekend. Man…”

“Mr. Corso.” Hauck took the man aside. “Is there anyone you can think of who’d possibly want to do Mr. Raymond harm? Did he have debts? Did he gamble? Do drugs? Anything you can think of would help.”

“You’re thinking this wasn’t an accident?” The victim’s employer’s eyes widened in surprise.

“Just doing our job,” Muñoz said.

“Jeez, I don’t know. To me he was just a solid kid. He showed up. Did his job. People liked him here. But now that you mention it, this gal…I think she was married or recently split up from her husband. I know somewhere back I heard AJ mention he was having trouble with her ex. Maybe Jackie would know. Inside. He was closer to him.”

Hauck nodded. He signaled to Muñoz to follow that up.

“While we’re in there, Mr. Corso, you mind if we check where the phone call he received came from, too?”

There was something in Hauck’s gut that wasn’t sitting well about this.

He went out to the side of the road, looking back down the knoll to the accident site. It was visible-clearly. The West Street turnoff. Nothing obstructing the view. The assailant’s car hadn’t slowed. It hadn’t made a move to stop or avoid him. A DUI would have had to have been drop-dead out of his gourd on a Monday at noon to have hit this kid head-on.

The medical team from upstate had finally arrived. Hauck went back down the hill. He picked up the victim’s cell phone. He’d check the recently dialed numbers. It wouldn’t surprise him if the number that had called in would be traced to the same guy.

Things like this often worked that way.

Hauck knelt over Abel Raymond’s body a last time, taking a good look at the kid’s face. I’m gonna find out for you, son, he vowed. His thoughts flashed back to the bombing. There were a lot of people in town who weren’t going to be coming home tonight. This would only be one. But this one he could do something about.

This one-Hauck stared at the locks of long red hair, the ache of a long-untended wound rising up inside him-this one had a face.

As he was about to get up, Hauck checked the victim’s pockets a final time. In the guy’s trousers, he found some change, a gas receipt. Then he reached into the chest pocket under the embroidered patch that bore his initials. AJ.

He poked his finger around and brought out a yellow scrap of paper, a standard Post-it note. It had a name written on it with a number, a local phone exchange.

It could’ve been the person AJ Raymond was on his way to meet. Or it could’ve been in there for weeks. Hauck dropped it in the evidence bag with the other things he had pulled, one more link to check out.

Charles Friedman.

CHAPTER NINE

I never heard from my husband again. I never knew what happened.

The fires raged underground in Grand Central for most of the day. There’d been a powerful accelerant used in the blast. Four blasts. One in each of the first two cars of the 7:51 out of Greenwich, exploding just as it came to a stop. The others in trash baskets along the platform packed with a hundred pounds of hexagen, enough to bring a good-sized building down. A splinter cell, they said. Over Iraq. Can you imagine? Charlie hated the war in Iraq. They found names, pictures of the station, traces of chemicals where the bombs were made. The fire that burned there for most of two days had reached close to twenty-three hundred degrees.

We waited. We waited all day that first day to hear something. Anything. Charlie’s voice. A message from one of the hospitals that he was there. It seemed like we called the whole world: the NYPD, the hotline that had been set up. Our local congressman, whom Charlie knew.

We never did.

One hundred and eleven people died. That included three of the bombers, who, they suspected, were in the first two cars. Where Charlie always sat. Many of them couldn’t even be identified. No distinguishable remains. They just went to work one morning and disappeared from the earth. That was Charlie. My husband of eighteen years. He just yelled good-bye over the hum of the hair dryer and went to take in the car.

And disappeared.

What they did find was the handle of the leather briefcase the kids had given him last year-the charred top piece still attached, blown clear from the blast site, the gold-embossed monogram, CMF, which made it final for the first time and brought our tears.

Charles Michael Friedman.

Those first days I was sure he was going to crawl out of that mess. Charlie could pull himself out of anything. He could fall off the damn roof trying to fix the satellite and he’d land on his feet. You could just count on him so much.

But he didn’t. There was never a call, or a piece of his clothing, even a handful of ashes.

And I’ll never know.

I’ll never know if he died from the initial explosion or in the flames. If he was conscious or if he felt pain. If he had a final thought of us. If he called out our names.

Part of me wanted one last chance to take him by the shoulders and scream, “How could you let yourself die in there, Charlie?” How?

Now I guess I have to accept that he’s gone. That he won’t be coming back. Though it’s so effing hard…

That he’ll never get to drive Samantha to college that first time. Or watch Alex score a goal. Or see the people they become. Things that would have made him so proud.

We were going to grow old together. Sail off to that Caribbean cove. Now he’s gone, in a flash.

Eighteen years of our lives.

Eighteen years…

And I don’t even get to kiss him good-bye.

CHAPTER TEN

A few days later-Friday, Saturday, Karen had lost track-a police detective came by the house.

Not from the city. People from the police in New York and the FBI had been by a few times trying to trace Charlie’s movements that day. This one was local. He called ahead and asked if he could talk with Karen for just a few moments on a matter unrelated to the bombing. She said sure. Anything that helped take her mind off things for a few moments was a godsend to her now.

She was in the kitchen arranging flowers that had come in from one of the outfits that Charlie cleared through when he stopped by.

Karen knew she looked a mess. She wasn’t exactly keeping up appearances right now. Her dad, Sid, who was up from Atlanta and who was being very protective of her, brought him in.

“I’m Lieutenant Hauck,” he said. He was nicely dressed, for a cop, in a tweed sport jacket and slacks and a tasteful tie. “I saw you at the meeting in town Monday night. I’ll only take a few moments of your time. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you.” Karen nodded and pushed her hair back as they sat down in the sunroom, trying to shift the mood with an appreciative smile.

“My daughter’s not feeling so well,” her father cut in, “so maybe, whatever it is you have to go over…”

“Dad, I’m fine.” She smiled. She rolled her eyes affectionately, then caught the lieutenant’s gaze. “It’s okay. Let me talk to the policeman.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m out here. If you need me…” He went back into the TV room and shut the door.

“He doesn’t know what to do,” Karen said with a deep sigh. “No one does. It’s tough for everyone right now.”

“Thank you for seeing me,” the detective said. “I won’t take long.” He sat across from her and took something out of his pocket. “I don’t know if you heard, but there was another incident in town on Monday. A hit-and-run accident, down on the Post Road. A young man was killed.”

“No, I didn’t,” Karen said, surprised.

“His name was Raymond. Abel John Raymond.” The lieutenant handed her a photo of a smiling, well-built young man with red dreadlocks, standing next to a surfboard on the beach. “AJ, he was called. He worked in a custom-car shop here in town. He was crossing West Street when he was run over at a high speed by an SUV making a right turn. Whoever it was didn’t even bother to stop. The guy dragged him about fifty feet, then took off.”

“That’s horrible,” Karen said, staring at the face again, feeling a stab of sorrow. Whatever had happened to her, it was still a small town. It could have been anybody. Anybody’s son. The same day she’d lost Charlie.

She looked back at him. “What does this have to do with me?”

“Any chance you’ve seen this person before?”

Karen looked again. A handsome face, full of life. The long red locks would’ve made it hard to forget. “I don’t think so. No.”

“You never heard the name Abel Raymond or maybe AJ Raymond?”

Karen stared again at the photo once again and shook her head. “I don’t think so, Lieutenant. Why?”

The detective seemed disappointed. He reached back into his jacket again, this time removing a yellow slip of paper, a wrinkled Post-it note contained in a plastic bag. “We found this in the victim’s work uniform, at the crime scene.”

As Karen looked, she felt her insides tighten and her eyes grow wide.

“That is your husband’s name, isn’t it? Charles Friedman. And his cell number?”

Karen looked up, completely mystified, and nodded. “Yes. It is.”

“And you’re sure you never heard your husband mention his name? Raymond? He did tinting and custom painting at a car shop in town.”

“Tinting?” Karen shook her head and smiled with her eyes. “Unless he was gearing up for some kind of midlife crisis he didn’t tell me about.”

Hauck smiled back at her. But Karen could see he was disappointed.

“I wish I could help you, Lieutenant. Are you thinking this was intentional, this hit-and-run?”

“Just being thorough.” He took back the photo and the slip of paper with Charlie’s name. He was handsome, Karen thought. In a rugged sort of way. Serious blue eyes. But something caring in them. It must have been hard for him to come here today. It was clear he wanted to do right by this boy.

She shrugged. “It’s a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it? Charlie’s name on that paper. In that boy’s pocket. The same day…you having to come here like this.”

“A bad one”-he nodded, forcing a tight smile-“yes. I’ll be out of your way.” They both stood up. “If you think of anything, you’ll let me know. I’ll leave a card.”

“Of course.” Karen took it and stared at it: CHIEF OF DETECTIVES. VIOLENT CRIMES. GREENWICH POLICE DEPARTMENT.

“I’m very sorry about your husband,” the lieutenant repeated.

His eyes seemed to drift to a photo she kept on the shelf. She and Charlie, dressed up formal. At her cousin Meredith’s wedding. Karen always loved the way the two of them looked in that picture.

She smiled wistfully. “Eighteen years together, I don’t even get to kiss him good-bye.”

For a second they just stood there, she wishing she hadn’t said that, he shifting on the balls of his feet, seemingly contemplating something and a little strained. Then he said, “On 9/11, I was working in the city at the NYPD’s Office of Information. It was my job to try and track down people who were missing. You know, presumed to be inside the buildings, lost. It was tough. I saw a lot of families”-he wet his lips-“in this same situation. I guess all I’m trying to say is, I have a rough idea of what you’re going through…”

Karen felt a sting at the back of her eyes. She looked up and tried to smile, not knowing what else to say.

“You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do.” He took a step to the door. “I still keep a few friends down there.”

“I appreciate that, Lieutenant.” She walked him through the kitchen to the back door in order to avoid the crowd in front. “It’s awful. I wish you luck with finding this guy. I wish I could be more help.”

“You have your own things to be thinking about,” he said, opening the door.

Karen looked at him. A tone of hopefulness rose in her voice. “So did anyone ever turn up? When you were looking?”

“Two.” He shrugged. “One at St. Vincent ’s Hospital. She had been struck by debris. The other, he never even made it in to work that morning. He witnessed what happened and just couldn’t go home for a few days.”

“Not the best odds.” Karen smiled, looking at him as if she knew what he must be thinking. “It would just be good, you know, to have something…”

“My best to you and your family, Mrs. Friedman.” The lieutenant opened the door. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”

OUTSIDE, HAUCK STOOD a moment on the walkway.

He had hoped the name and number in AJ Raymond’s pocket would prove more promising. It was pretty much all he had left.

A check of the phone records where the victim worked hadn’t panned out at all. The call that he’d received-Marty something, the manager had said-was designated a private caller. From a cell phone. Totally untraceable now.

Nor had the girlfriend’s ex. The guy turned out to be a low-life, maybe a wife beater, but his alibi checked. He’d been at a conference at his kid’s school at the time of the accident, and anyway he drove a navy Toyota Corolla, not an SUV. Hauck had double-checked.

Now all he was left with were the conflicting reports from the two eyewitnesses and his APB on the white SUVs.

Next to nothing.

It burned in him. Like AJ Raymond’s red hair.

Someone out there was getting away with murder. He just couldn’t prove it.

Karen Friedman was attractive, nice. He wished he could help in some way. It hurt a little, seeing the strain and uncertainty in her eyes. Knowing exactly what she would be going through. What she was going to face.

The heaviness in his heart, he knew it wasn’t tied quite as closely to 9/11 victims as he’d said. But to something deeper, something never very far away.

Norah. She’d be eight now, right?

The thought of her came back to him with a stab, as it always did. A child in a powder blue sweatshirt and braces, playing with her sister on the pavement. A Tugboat Annie toy.

He could still hear the trill of her sweet voice. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily…

He could still see her red, braided hair.

A car door slammed at the curb, rocketing him back. Hauck looked up and saw a nicely dressed couple holding flowers walking up to Karen Friedman’s front door.

Something caught his eye.

One of the garage doors had been opened in the time since he’d arrived. A housekeeper was lugging out a bag of trash.

There was a copper-colored Mustang parked in one of the bays-’65 or ’66, he guessed. A convertible. A red heart decal on the rear fender and a white racing stripe running down the side.

The license plate read CHRLYS BABY.

Hauck went over and knelt, running his hand along the smooth chrome trim.

Son of a bitch…

That’s what AJ Raymond did! He restored old cars. For a second it almost made Hauck laugh out loud. He wasn’t sure how it made him feel, disappointed or relieved, the last of his leads slipping away.

Still, he decided, heading back across the driveway to his car, at least he now knew what the guy was doing with Charles Friedman’s number.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Pensacola, Florida

The huge gray tanker emerged from the mist and cut its engines at the mouth of the harbor.

The shadows of heavy industry: steel-gray trestles, the refinery tanks, the gigantic hydraulic pumps awaiting gas and oil, all lay quiet in the vessel’s approach.

A single launch motored out to meet it.

At the helm the pilot, who was called Pappy, fixed on the waiting ship. As assistant harbormaster, Pensacola Port Authority, his job was to guide the football-field-size craft through the sandy limestone shoals around Singleton Point and then through the busy lanes of the inner harbor, which bustled with commercial traffic as the day wore on. He’d been bringing home large ships like this since he was twenty-two, a job-more like a rite, handed down from his own father, who had done it himself since he was twenty-two. For close to thirty years, Pappy had done this so many times he could pretty much guide home a ship in his sleep, which in the darkened calm before the dawn this morning-if it were a normal morning and this just another tanker-would be exactly what he was about to do.

She’s tall there, Pappy noted, focused on the ship’s hull.

Too tall. The draft line was plainly visible. He stared at the logo on the tanker’s bow.

He’d seen these ships before.

Normally the real skill lay in gauging what the large tanker was drawing and navigating it through the sandbars at the outer rim of the harbor. Then simply follow the lanes, which by 10:00 A.M. could be livelier than the loop into downtown, and make the wide, sweeping arc into Pier 12, which was where the Persephone, according to its papers carrying a full load of Venezuelan crude, was slotted to put in.

But not this morning.

Pappy’s launch approached the large tanker from the port side. As he neared, he focused on the logo of a leaping dolphin on the Persephone’s hull.

Dolphin Oil.

He scratched a weathered hand across his beard and scanned over his entry papers from Maritime Control: 2.3 million barrels of crude aboard. The ship had made the trip up from Trinidad in barely fourteen hours. Fast, Pappy noted, especially for an outdated 1970 ULCC-class piece of junk like this, weighed down with a full load.

They always made it up here fast.

Dolphin Oil.

The first time he’d just been curious. It had come in from Jakarta. He had wondered, how could a ship loaded with slime be riding quite that high? The second time, just a few weeks back, he’d actually snuck below after it docked-inside the belly of the ship, making his way past the distracted crew, and checked out the forward tanks.

Empty. Came as no surprise. At least not to him.

Clean as a newborn’s ass.

He’d brought this up to the harbormaster, not once but twice. But he just patted Pappy on the back like he was some old fool and asked him what his plans were when he retired. This time, though, no glorified paper pusher was going to slip this under a stack of forms. Pappy knew people. People who worked in the right places. People who’d be interested in this kind of thing. This time, when he brought the ship in, he’d prove it.

2.3 million barrels…

2.3 million barrels, my ass.

Pappy sounded the horn and pulled the launch along the ship’s bow. His mate, Al, took over the wheel. A retractable gangway was lowered from the main deck. He prepared to board.

That’s when his cell phone vibrated. He grabbed it off his belt. It was 5:10 in the morning. Anyone not insane was still asleep. The screen read PRIVATE. Text message.

Some kind of picture coming through.

Pappy yelled forward to Al to hold it and jumped back from the Persephone’s gangway. In the predawn light, he squinted at the image on the screen.

He froze.

It was a body. Twisted and contorted on the street. A dark pool beneath the head that Pappy realized was blood.

He brought the screen closer and tried to find the light.

“Oh, Lord God, no…”

His eyes were seized by the image of the victim’s long red dreadlocks. His chest filled up with pain as if he’d been stabbed. He fell back, an inner vice cracking his ribs.

“Pappy!” Al called back from the bridge. “You all right there?”

No. He wasn’t all right.

“That’s Abel,” he gasped, his airways closing. “That’s my son!”

Suddenly, he felt the vibration of another message coming through.

Same: PRIVATE NUMBER.

This time it was just three words that flashed on the screen.

Pappy ripped open his collar and tried to breathe. But it was sorrow knifing at him there, not a heart attack. And anger-at his own pride.

He sank to the deck, the three words flashing in his brain. SEEN ENOUGH NOW?

CHAPTER TWELVE

A month later-a few days after they’d finally held a memorial for Charlie, Karen trying to be upbeat, but it was so, so hard-the UPS man dropped off a package at her door.

It was during the day. The kids were at school. Karen was getting ready to leave. She had a steering-committee meeting at the kids’ school. She was trying as best she could to get back to some kind of normal routine.

Rita, their housekeeper, brought it in, knocking on the bedroom door.

It was a large padded envelope. Karen checked out the sender. The label said it was from a Shipping Plus outlet in Brooklyn. No return name or address. Karen couldn’t think of anyone she knew in Brooklyn.

She went into the kitchen and took a package blade and opened the envelope. Whatever was inside was protected in bubble wrap, which Karen carefully slit open. Curious, she lifted out the contents.

It was a frame. Maybe ten by twelve inches. Chrome. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble.

Inside the frame was what appeared to be a page from some kind of notepad, charred, dirt marks on it, torn on the upper right edge. There were a bunch of random numbers scratched all over it, and a name.

Karen felt her breath stolen away.

The page read From the desk of Charles Friedman.

The writing on it was Charlie’s.

“Ees a gift?” asked Rita, picking up the wrappings.

Karen nodded, barely able to even speak. “Yes.”

She took it into the sunroom and sat with it on the window seat, rain coming down outside.

It was her husband’s notepad. The stationery Karen had given him herself a few years back. The sheet was torn. The numbers didn’t make sense to her and the name scrawled there was one Karen didn’t recognize. Megan Walsh. A corner of it was charred. It looked as if it had been on the ground for a long time.

But it was Charlie-his writing. Karen felt a tingling sensation all over.

There was a note taped to the frame. Karen pulled it off. It read: I found this, three days after what happened, in the main terminal of Grand Central. It must have floated there. I held on to it, because I didn’t know if it would hurt or help. I pray it helps.

It was unsigned.

Karen couldn’t believe it. On the news she’d heard there were thousands of papers blown all over the station after the explosion. They had settled everywhere. Like confetti after a parade.

Karen fixed intently on Charlie’s writing. It was just a bunch of meaningless numbers and a name she didn’t recognize, scribbled at odd angles. Dated 3/22, weeks before his death. A bunch of random messages, no doubt.

But it was from Charlie. His writing. It was a part of him the day he died.

They had never given her back the piece of his briefcase they’d recovered. This was all she had. Holding it to her, for a moment it was almost as if she felt him there.

Her eyes filled up with tears. “Oh, Charlie…”

In a way it was like he was saying good-bye.

I didn’t know if it would hurt or help, the sender had written.

Oh, yes, it helps. It more than helps… Karen held it close. A thousand times more.

It was just a jumble of stupid numbers and a name scratched out in his hand. But it was all she had.

She hadn’t been able to cry at his memorial. Too many people. Charlie’s blown-up photo looming above them. And they all wanted it to be upbeat, not sad. She’d tried to be so strong.

But there, sitting by the window, her husband’s writing pressed against her heart, she felt it was okay. I’m here with you, Charlie, Karen thought. She finally let herself really cry.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Down the street a man hunched in a darkened car, rain streaming on the windshield. He smoked as he watched the house and cracked the window a shade to flick the ashes onto the street.

The UPS truck had just left. He knew that what it brought would send things spinning. A short while later, Karen Friedman rushed out, a rain jacket over her head, and climbed into her Lexus.

Things promised to get interesting.

She backed out of the driveway and onto the street, reversed, and headed back toward him. The man hunched lower in the car, the Lexus’s headlights hitting his windshield, glistening sharply in the rain as it went by.

Hybrid, he noted, impressed, watching in the rearview mirror as it went down the block.

He picked up his phone, which was sitting on the passenger seat across from him, next to his Walther P38, punching in a private number. His gaze fell to his hands. They were thick, coarse, workman’s hands.

Time to get them dirty again, he sighed.

“Plan A doesn’t seem to be moving,” he said into the phone when the voice he was expecting finally answered.

“We don’t have forever,” the person on the other end replied.

“Exactamente.” He exhaled. He started his ignition, flicked an ash out the window, and took off at a slow pace, following the Lexus. “I’m already on Plan B.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

One of the things Karen had to deal with in the weeks that followed was the liquidation of Charlie’s firm.

She’d never gotten deeply involved in her husband’s business. Harbor was what was termed “a general limited partnership.” The share agreement maintained that in case the principal partner ever became deceased or unable to perform, the assets of the firm were to be redistributed back to the other partners. Charlie managed a modest-size fund, with assets of around $250 million. The lead investors were Goldman Sachs, where he had started out years before, and a few wealthy families he’d attracted over the years.

Saul Lennick, Charlie’s first boss at Goldman, who had helped put him in business, acted as the firm’s trustee.

It was hard for Karen to go through. Bittersweet. Charlie had only seven people working for him: a junior trader and a bookkeeper, Sally, who ran the back office and had been with him since he’d first opened shop. His assistant, Heather, handled a lot of their personal stuff. Karen pretty much knew them all.

It would take a few months, Lennick advised her, for everything to be finalized. And that was fine with her. Charlie would’ve wanted them all to be well taken care of. “Hell, you know better than anyone that he practically spent more time with them over the years than he did with me,” she said, smiling knowingly at Saul. Anyway, money wasn’t exactly the issue right now.

She and the kids were okay financially. She had the house, which they owned clear, the ski place in Vermont. Plus, Charlie had been able to pull out some money over the years.

But it was tough, seeing his baby dismantled. The positions were sold. The office on Park Avenue was put up for lease. One by one, people found new jobs and began to leave.

That was like the final straw. The final imprint of him gone.

About that time the junior trader Charlie had brought into the firm just a few months before, Jonathan Lauer, called her at home. Karen wasn’t around. He left a message on her machine: “I’d like to speak with you, Mrs. Friedman. At your convenience. There are some things you ought to know.”

Some things… Whatever they were, she wasn’t up to it right then. Jonathan was new; he had started working for Charles only this past year. Charlie had lured him from Morgan. She passed the message on to Saul.

“Don’t worry, I’ll handle it,” he told her. “All kinds of sticky issues, closing down a firm. People are looking out for their own arrangements. There may have been some bonus agreements discussed. Charlie wasn’t the best at recording those things. You shouldn’t have to deal with any of that right now.”

He was right. She couldn’t deal with that right now. In July she went away for a well-needed week at Paula and Rick’s house in Sag Harbor. She rejoined her book group, started doing yoga again. God, how she needed that. Her body began to resemble itself once again and feel alive. Gradually her spirits did, too.

August came, and Samantha had a job at a local beach club. Alex was away at lacrosse camp. Karen was thinking maybe she’d look into getting a real-estate license.

Jonathan Lauer contacted her again.

This time Karen was at home. Still, she didn’t pick up. She heard the same cryptic message on the machine: “Mrs. Friedman, I think it’s important that we talk…”

But Karen just let the message tape go on. She didn’t like avoiding him. Charlie had always spoken highly of the young man. People are looking out for their own arrangements…

She just couldn’t answer. Hearing his voice trail off, she felt bad.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

It was September, the kids were back in school when Karen ran into Lieutenant Hauck, the Greenwich detective, again.

It was halftime of a high-school football game at Greenwich Field. They were playing Stamford West. Karen had volunteered to sell raffle tickets for the Teen Center drive for the athletic department. The stands were packed. It was a crisp, early-autumn Saturday morning. The Huskies band was on the field. She went over to the refreshment stand to grab herself a cup of coffee against the chill.

She almost didn’t recognize him at first. He was dressed in a navy polar-fleece pullover and jeans, a young, pretty girl who looked no more than nine or ten to Karen hoisted on his shoulders. They sort of bumped into each other in the crowd.

“Lieutenant…?”

“Hauck.” He turned and stopped, a pleased glimmer in his eye.

“Karen Friedman.” She nodded, shielding the sun out of her eyes.

“Of course I remember.” He let the girl down. “Jess, say hi to Mrs. Friedman.”

“Hi.” The pretty girl waved, a little shy. “Nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, sweetie.” Karen smiled. “Your daughter?”

The lieutenant nodded. “Just as well,” he groaned, clutching his back, “she’s getting way too big for me to do this for very long. Right, honey? Why don’t you go ahead and find your friends. I’ll be over in a while.”

“Okay.” The girl ran off and melded into the crowd, heading in the direction of the far sidelines.

“Nine?” Karen guessed, an inquisitive arch of her eyebrows.

“Ten. Somehow she still pushes for the Big Ride. I figure I’ve got another year or two at best before she’ll start to cringe if I ever offer to do it again.”

“Not girls and their daddies.” Karen shook her head and grinned. “Anyway, it’s sort of like a bell curve. At some point they come all the way back. At least that’s what I’m told. I’m still waiting.”

They stood around for a minute, bucking the flow of the crowd. A heavyset guy in a Greenwich sweatshirt slapped Hauck on the shoulder as he went by. “Hey, Leg…”

“Rollie.” The lieutenant waved back.

“I was just headed to get some coffee,” Karen said.

“Let me,” Hauck offered. “Trust me, you won’t be able to beat the price.”

They stepped over to the refreshment line. A woman who was running the coffee station seemed to recognize him. “Hey, Ty! How’s it going, Lieutenant? Looks like we could use you out there today.”

“Yeah, just gimme about twenty of these straight up plus a shot of cortisone in both knees and you can put me in.” He pulled out a couple of bills.

“On the house, Lieutenant.” She waved him away. “Booster program.”

“Thanks, Mary.” Hauck winked back. He handed a cup to Karen. There was a table free, and Hauck motioned her toward it and they each grabbed a metal chair.

“See what I mean?” He took a sip. “One of the few legal perks I have left.”

“Rank has its privilege.” Karen winked, pretending to be impressed.

“Nah.” Hauck shrugged. “Tailback. Greenwich High, 1975. Went all the way to the state finals that year. They never forget.”

Karen grinned. She brushed her hair back from under her hooded Greenwich High sweatshirt and cupped her hands on the steaming cup.

“So how are you doing?” the detective asked. “I actually meant to call a couple of times. When I last saw you, things were pretty raw.”

“I know.” Karen shrugged again. “They were then. I’m doing better. Time…” She sighed, tilting her cup.

“As they say…” The lieutenant did the same and smiled. “So you have kids in the high school?”

“Two. Samantha’s graduating this year. Alex is a sophomore. He plays lacrosse. He’s still taking things pretty hard.”

“’Course he is,” the lieutenant said. Someone brushed him in the back, rushing by. He nodded, pressing his lips together. What could you say?

“You were looking into a hit-and-run then,” Karen said, shifting gears. “Some kid out of Florida. You ever find that guy?”

“No. But I did find out why your husband’s name was in his pocket.”

He told Karen about the Mustang.

“‘Charlie’s Baby.’” She nodded and smiled. “Figures. Still have it. Charlie asked in his will not to sell it. How about it, Lieutenant? You want your own American icon, only year they made the color Emberglow. Only costs about eight grand a year to take it out of the garage a couple of times?”

“Sorry. I have my own American icon. College account.” He grinned.

The PA announced that the teams were heading back on the field. The Huskies band marched off to a brassy version of Bon Jovi’s “Who Says You Can’t Go Home?” The lieutenant’s daughter ran out of the crowd and yelled, “Daddy, come on! I want to sit with Elyse!”

“Second half ’s starting up,” the lieutenant said.

“She’s pretty,” Karen said. “Oldest?”

“My only,” the detective replied after a short pause. “Thanks.”

Their eyes met for a second. There was something Karen felt hiding behind his deep-set eyes.

“So how about a raffle ticket?” she asked. “It’s for a good cause. Booster program.” She chuckled. “C’mon, I’m running behind.”

“I’m afraid I already paid my dues.” Hauck sighed resignedly, patting his knees.

She tore one off the pad and penciled his name in the blank. “It’s on the house. You know, it was nice what you said to me that day. About how you knew how I felt. I guess I needed something then. I appreciated that.”

“Man…” Hauck shook his head, taking the raffle slip out of her hand, their fingers momentarily touching. “The gifts just don’t stop coming today.”

“Price you have to pay for doing a good deed, Lieutenant.”

They stood up. The lieutenant’s daughter called out impatiently, “Daddy, c’mon!”

“Good luck with the raffles,” he said. “You know, it might be good if you actually ended up selling a few of them today.”

Karen laughed. “Nice to see you, Lieutenant.” She shook her fists like imaginary pom-poms. “Go Huskies!”

Hauck waved, backing into the crowd. “See you around.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It took him by surprise that night, Hauck decided as he dabbed at the canvas in the small two-bedroom home he rented on Euclid Avenue in Stamford, overlooking Holly Cove.

Another marina scene. A sloop in a harbor, sails down. Pretty much the same scene from his deck. It was all he ever painted. Boats…

Jessie was in her room, watching TV, sending text messages. They’d had a pizza at Mona Lisa in town and went to the new animated release. Jess pretended to be bored. He’d enjoyed it.

“It’s for, like, three-year-olds, Daddy.” She rolled her eyes.

“Oh.” He stopped pushing it. “The penguins were cool.”

Hauck liked it here. A block from the small cove. His little two-story sixties Cape. The owner had fixed it up. From the deck off the second floor, where the living room was, you could see Long Island Sound. A French couple lived next door, Richard and Jacqueline, custom furniture restorers-their workshop was out in their garage-and they always invited him to their parties, full of lots of people with crazy accents and not-half-bad wine.

Yes, it took him by surprise. What he was feeling. How he had noticed her eyes-brown and fetchingly wide. How laughter seemed a natural fit in them. The little lilt in her voice, as if she weren’t from around here. Her auburn hair tied back in a youthful ponytail.

How she stuffed that raffle ticket into his pocket and tried to make him smile.

Unlike Beth. When her world fell apart.

Hauck traced a narrow line from the sailboat’s mast and blended it into the blue of the sea. He stared. It sucked.

No one would exactly confuse him with Picasso.

She had asked him if Jess was his youngest, and he had replied, pausing for what seemed an eternity-my only. He could have told her. She would have understood. She was going through it, too.

C’mon, Ty, why does it always have to come back to this?

They’d had everything then. He and Beth. It was hard to remember how they were once so in love. How she once thought he was the sexiest man alive. And he, her.

My only…

What had he forgotten at the store that made him rush back in? Pudding Snacks…

Jamming the van hastily into park. How many times had he done that-and it stayed? A thousand? A hundred thousand?

“Watch out, guys. Daddy’s got to back out of the garage…”

As he headed back to the garage, receipt in hand, wallet in hand, they heard the shriek. Jessie’s.

Beth’s frozen eyes-“Oh, my God, Ty, no!”-as through the kitchen window they watched the van roll back.

Norah never even uttered a sound.

Hauck laid down his brush. He rested his forehead on the heel of his hand. It had cost him his marriage. It had cost him ever being able to look in the mirror without starting to cry. For the longest time, being able to put his arms around Jess and hug her.

Everything.

His mind came back to that morning. The freckles dancing on her cheek. It made him smile.

Get real, Ty… She probably drives a car worth more than your 401(k). She’s just lost her husband. A different life, maybe.

A different time.

But it surprised him as he picked up the brush again. What he was thinking…what it made him feel.

Awakened.

And that was strange, he decided. Because nothing surprised him anymore.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

December

Their lives had just begun to get back on some kind of even keel. Sam was applying to colleges, Tufts and Bucknell, her top choices. Karen had made the obligatory visits with her.

That was when the two men from Archer knocked on her door.

“Mrs. Friedman?” the shorter one stood at the door and inquired. He had a chiseled face and close-cropped light hair, was wearing a gray business suit under a raincoat. The other was gaunt and taller with horn-rim glasses, carrying a leather lawyer’s briefcase.

“We’re from a private auditing firm, Mrs. Friedman. Do you mind if we come in?”

At first it flashed through Karen’s mind that they might be from the government fund that was being set up for victims’ families. She’d heard through her support group that these people could be pretty officious and cold. She opened the door.

“Thank you.” The light-haired one had a slight European accent and handed her a card. Archer and Bey Associates. Johannesburg, South Africa. “My name is Paul Roos, Mrs. Friedman. My partner is Alan Gillespie. We won’t take too much of your time. Do you mind if we sit down?”

“Of course…” Karen said, a little hesitant. There was something cool and impersonal about them. She glanced closer at their cards. “If this is about my husband, you know Saul Lennick of the Whiteacre Capital Group is overseeing the disposition of the funds.”

“We’ve been in touch with Mr. Lennick,” answered Roos, a little matter-of-factly. He took a step toward the living room. “If you wouldn’t mind…”

She took them over to the couch.

“You have a lovely home, Mrs. Friedman,” Roos told her, looking around intently.

“Thank you. You said you were auditors,” Karen replied. “I think my husband was handled by someone out of the city. Ross and Weiner-I don’t recall your firm’s name.”

“We’re actually not here on behalf of your husband, Mrs. Friedman”-the South African crossed his legs-“but on the part of some of his investors.”

“Investors?”

Karen knew that Morgan Stanley was Charlie’s largest by far. Then came the O’Flynns and the Hazens, who had been with him since he began.

“Which ones?” Karen stared at him, puzzled.

Roos looked at her with a hesitant smile. “Just…investors.” That smile began to make Karen feel ill at ease.

His partner, Gillespie, opened his briefcase. “You received proceeds from the liquidation of your husband’s firm assets, did you not, Mrs. Friedman?”

“This sounds more like an audit.” Karen tightened. “Yes. Is there something wrong?” The funds had just been finalized. Charlie’s share, after some final expenses to close down the firm, came to a little less than $4 million. “Maybe if you just told me what this is about.”

“We’re looking back through certain transactions,” Gillespie said, dropping a large bound report in front of him on the coffee table.

“Look, I never got very involved at all in my husband’s business,” Karen answered. This was starting to make her worried. “I’m sure if you spoke to Mr. Lennick-”

“Shortfalls, actually,” the accountant corrected himself, clear-eyed.

Karen didn’t like these people. She didn’t know why they were here. She peered at the business cards again. “You said you were auditors?”

“Auditors, and forensic investigators, Mrs. Friedman,” Paul Roos told her.

“Investigators…?”

“We’re trying to piece through certain aspects of your husband’s firm,” Gillespie explained. “The records are proving to be a little…shall we call it hazy. We realize that as an independent hedge fund, he was not bound by certain formalities.”

“Listen, I think you’d better go. I think you’d be better off if you took this to-”

“But what is clearly inescapable,” the accountant continued, “is that there seems to be a considerable amount of money missing.”

“Missing…” Karen met his eyes, holding back anger. Saul had never mentioned anything about any missing money. “That’s why you’re here? Well, isn’t that just too bad, Mr. Gillespie? My husband’s dead, as you seem to know. He went in to work one morning eight months ago and never came home again. So please, tell me”-her eyes burned through him like X-rays, and she stood up-“just how much money are we talking about, Mr. Gillespie? I’ll go get my purse.”

“We’re speaking of two hundred and fifty million dollars, Mrs. Friedman,” the accountant said. “Do you happen to keep that much in cash?”

Karen’s heart almost stopped. She sat back down, the words striking her like bullets. The accountant’s expression never changed.

“What the hell are you saying?”

Roos took over again, edging slightly forward. “What we’re saying is that there’s a hell of a lot of money unaccounted for in your husband’s firm, Mrs. Friedman. And our clients want us to find out where it is.”

Two hundred and fifty million. Karen was too stunned to even laugh. The proceeds had been finalized without a hitch. Charlie’s entire business was barely larger than that.

She looked back into their dull, unchanging eyes. She knew they were implying something about her husband. Charlie was dead. He couldn’t defend himself.

“I’m not sure we have anything further to discuss, Mr. Gillespie, Mr. Roos.” Karen stood again. She wanted these men to leave. She wanted them out of her house. Now. “I told you, I never got involved in my husband’s business. You’ll have to address your concerns to Mr. Lennick. I’d like you to go.”

The accountants looked at each other. Gillespie folded his file back into his briefcase and clasped it shut. They rose.

“We don’t mean any insult, Mrs. Friedman,” Roos said in a more conciliatory tone. “What I would tell you, though, is that there may well be some sort of investigation launched. I wouldn’t be spending any of those proceeds you received just yet.” He smiled transparently and glanced around.

“Like I said, you have a lovely home… But it’s only fair to warn you.” He turned at the door. “Your personal accounts may have to be looked at, too.”

The hairs on Karen’s arms stood on edge.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It took just minutes, frantic ones, for Karen to get Saul Lennick on the phone.

It was hard for his office to find him. He was out of the country, on business. But his secretary heard the agitation in Karen’s voice. Finally they tracked him down.

“Karen…?”

“Saul, I’m sorry to bother you.” She was almost on the verge of tears. She told him about the upsetting visit she’d had with two men from Archer.

“Who?”

“They’re from something called Archer and Bey Associates. They’re auditors, forensic investigators. It’s says they’re out of South Africa. They said they spoke with you.”

He made her go through every detail again, injecting a few sharp questions about their names and specifically what they said.

“Karen, listen. First, I want to assure you this is nothing you have to be concerned about. Harbor’s partnership dissolution is moving along smoothly, and I promise you it’s one hundred percent by the book. For the record, yes, Charlie may have taken a few losses at the end. He bet pretty heavily on some Canadian oil leases that took a hit.”

“Who are these people, Saul?”

“I don’t know. Some overseas accounting group, I suspect, but I’ll find out. They could have been hired by some of Charles’s investors over there, hoping to hold up the process.”

“They’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, Saul! You know Charlie didn’t handle money like that. They were making these insinuations, warning me not to spend any of the proceeds. That’s Charlie’s money, Saul! It was creepy. They told me our personal accounts might be examined, too.”

“That’s not going to happen, Karen. Look, there are some details pending that someone could make some issues on if they wanted-”

“What kind of details, Saul?” She hadn’t heard any of that before.

“Maybe some plays one could question. A glitch or two in one of Charles’s lending agreements. But I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. This isn’t the time.”

“Charlie’s dead, Saul! He can’t defend himself. I mean, how many times did I hear him fretting over goddamn nickels and dimes for his clients? Fractions of a fucking point. And these people, making innuendos like that…They had no right to come here, Saul.”

“Karen, I want to assure you there’s no basis at all to what they’re talking about. Whoever they are, they’re just trying to stir up trouble. And they just went about it the wrong way.”

“Yeah, Saul, they did.” The fury in her blood began to recede. “They damn well did go about it the wrong way. I don’t want them back in my house again. Thank God Samantha and Alex weren’t here.”

“Listen, I want you to fax me that card, Karen. I’ll look into it from here. I promise, I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Charlie was a reputable guy, Saul. You know that better than anyone.”

“I know that, Karen. Charlie was like a second son to me. You realize I always have your interests at heart.”

She pushed the hair off her face to cool herself down. “I do…”

“Send me the card, Karen. And I want to be the first to know if they contact you again.”

“Thank you, Saul.”

Suddenly something strange came over Karen, an unexplainable rush of tears. Sometimes it just happened like that. Out of nowhere. The thought of having to defend her husband. She let a few seconds elapse on the line while she regained control.

“I mean it, Saul… Really, thank you.”

Her husband’s mentor told her softly, “You don’t even have to say it, Karen.”

HE DIDN’T HAVE the heart to tell her now. Or the will.

Lennick replaced the house phone in its cradle in the Old World lobby of the Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel in Munich.

A week ago his contact from the Royal Bank of Scotland had called, one of the lenders he had arranged for Charlie, who advanced his firm funds. It sounded perfunctory. The banker had a tone of slight concern.

A random check of an oil tanker by a customs official in Jakarta had reached their attention.

Lennick’s heart had come to a stop. He wheeled around back to his desk. “Why?”

“Some kind of discrepancy,” the banker explained, “in the stated contents of the cargo.” Which was declared to have been 1.4 million barrels of oil.

The tanker was found to be empty, the bank official declared.

Lennick had turned ashen.

“I’m sure there’s simply been some kind of mistake,” the Scottish banker said to him. It seemed that 1.4 million barrels at sixty-six dollars per had been previously pledged by Charles Friedman as collateral against their loan.

The banker cleared his throat. “Is there any cause for alarm?”

Lennick felt a shiver of concern race down his spine. He’d look into it, he told the man, and that was enough to make the banker feel appeased. But as soon as he put down the phone, Lennick closed his eyes.

He thought of Charlie’s recent losses, the pressure he’d been under. The pressure they’d all been under. How heavily he’d leveraged up on his funds.

You stupid son of a bitch, Charlie. Lennick sighed. He reached for the phone and started to dial a number. How could you be so desperate, you fool, so careless? Don’t you have any idea who these people are?

People who didn’t like to be looked into. Or have their affairs examined. Now everything had to be reconstructed. Everything, Charlie.

Even now, weeks later, in the Vier Jahreszeiten’s lobby, the banker’s all-too-delicate question made Lennick’s mouth go dry.

Is there any cause for alarm?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was the second day of field-hockey practice, near the end of February. Sam Friedman tossed her stick into the bottom of her locker.

She played right forward for the girls’ team. They’d lost a couple of their best attackers from last year, so this season it was going to be tough. Sam grabbed her parka off the hook and scanned over a few books. She had an English quiz tomorrow on a story by Tobias Wolfe, a chapter to skim on Vietnam. Since she’d gotten into Tufts, Early Decision 2 in January, she’d pretty much been coasting. Tonight a bunch of them were meeting in town at Thataways for wings and maybe sneak a beer.

Senior slump was in full throttle.

Outside, Sam ran over to her blue Acura SUV, which she’d parked in the west lot after lunch. She jumped in and tossed her bag onto the seat, and started up the engine. Then she plugged her iPod into the port and scrolled to her favorite tune.

“And I am telling you I’m not going…,” she sang, belting it out as closely as she could to Jennifer Hudson in Dreamgirls. She went to slip the Acura into drive.

That’s when the hand wrapped around her mouth and jerked her head back to the headrest.

Samantha’s eyes peeled back and she tried to let out a muffled scream.

“Don’t make a sound, Samantha,” a voice from behind her said.

Oh my God! That scared her even more, that the person knew her name. She felt a bolt of fear race down her spine, her eyes darting around, straining to glance at him in the rearview mirror.

“Uh-uh, Samantha.” The assailant redirected her face forward. “Don’t try to look at me. It’ll be better for you that way.”

How did he know her name?

This was bad. She ratcheted through a million things she had always heard in case something like this occurred. Don’t fight back. Let him do what he wants. Give him your money, jewelry, even if it’s something important. Let him have his way.

Anything.

“You’re scared, Samantha, aren’t you?” the man asked in a subdued voice. He had his hand wrapped tightly over her mouth, her eyes stretched wide.

She nodded.

“I don’t blame you. I’d be scared, too.”

She glanced outside, praying someone might come by. But it was late, and dark. The lot was empty. She felt his breath, hot on the back of her neck. She closed her eyes. Oh, God, he’s going to rape me. Or worse…

“But it’s your lucky day. I’m not going to hurt you, Samantha. I just want you to deliver a message to someone. Will you do that for me?”

Yes, Samantha nodded, yes. Stay together, stay together, she begged herself. He’s going to let you go.

“To your mom.”

My mom… What did her mom have to do with this?

“I want you to tell her, Sam, that the investigation is going to start very soon. And that it’s going to get very personal. She’ll understand. And that we’re not the types to wait around patiently-forever. I think you can see that, can’t you? Do you understand that, Sam?”

She shut her eyes. Shaking. Nodded.

“Good. Be sure and tell her that the clock’s ticking. And she doesn’t want it to run out, I can promise that. Do you hear me, Sam?” He loosened his hand just slightly from her mouth.

“Yes,” Sam whispered, her voice quaking.

“Now, don’t look around,” he said. “I’m going to slip out the back.” The man had a hooded sweatshirt pulled over his face. “Trust me, the less you see, the better for you.”

Samantha sat rigid. Her head moved up and down. “I understand.”

“Good.” The door opened. The man slipped out. She didn’t look. Or turn to follow. She just sat there staring. Exactly as she was told.

“You are your father’s little girl, aren’t you, Sam?”

Her eyes shot wide.

“Remember about the sum. Two hundred and fifty million dollars. You tell your mom we won’t wait long.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Karen clung to her daughter on the living-room couch. Samantha was sobbing, her head buried against her mother’s shoulder, barely able to speak. She’d called Karen after the man had left, then driven home in a panic. Karen immediately called the police. Outside, the quiet street was ablaze in flashing lights.

Karen went through it with the first officers who’d arrived. “How could there be no protection at the school? How could they just let anyone in there?” Then to Sam, in total frustration, “Baby, how could you not have locked the car?”

“I don’t know, Mom.”

But inside she knew-her daughter’s fingers tight and trembling, her face smeared with tears-that this wasn’t about Samantha. Or more protection at school. Or locking the car door.

It was about Charlie.

This was about something he had done. Something she was growing more and more afraid that he had withheld from her.

They would have found Samantha at the mall, or at someone’s house, or at the club where she worked. But they weren’t trying to get to Samantha, she knew.

They were trying to get to her.

And the scariest part was, Karen had no idea what these people wanted from her.

When she spotted Lieutenant Hauck come through the front door, her body almost gave out all at once. She leaped up and ran over to him. She had to hold herself back from hugging him.

He placed a hand on her shoulder. “Is she all right?”

“Yes.” Karen nodded in relief. “I think so.”

“I know she’s already been through it a couple of times, but I need to talk with her, too.”

Karen took him over to her daughter. “Okay.”

Hauck sat down on the coffee table directly across from Samantha. “Sam, my name’s Lieutenant Hauck. I’m the head of detectives with the Greenwich police here in town. I know your mom a little from when your dad died. I want you to tell me exactly what took place.”

Karen nodded to her, sitting next to her on the couch and taking her hand.

Sniffling back tears, Sam went through it all again. Coming out of the gym after practice, stepping into her car, putting on her iPod. The man in the backseat, completely surprising her from behind. Cupping her mouth so she couldn’t scream, his voice so chilling and close to her ear that his words seemed to tingle down her spine.

“It was so scary, Mom.”

Karen squeezed. “I know, baby, I know…”

She told Hauck that she’d never gotten a good look at him. “He told me not to.” She was certain she was about to be raped or killed.

“You did right, honey,” Hauck said.

“He said that the investigation was going to start soon. And that it was going to get very personal. He said something about two hundred and fifty million dollars.” Samantha looked up at Karen. “What the hell did he mean by that, Mom?”

Karen fitfully shook her head. “I don’t know.”

When they’d finished, Karen eased herself away from her daughter. She asked Hauck if he would come outside with her. The awning on the patio wasn’t up yet. Still too cold. In the darkness there were lights flashing out on the sound.

“Do you have any idea what she’s talking about?” he asked.

Karen drew a sharp breath and nodded. “Yes.”

And no…

She took him through the visit she’d received. The two men from Archer and Bey, who had pressured her about all that missing money. “Two hundred and fifty million dollars,” she admitted.

Now this.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on.” She shook her head, eyes glistening. “Charlie’s trustee-he’s a friend-he promises that everything in the partnership was one hundred percent by the book. And I’m sure it was. These people…” Karen looked at Hauck, flustered. “Charlie was a good man. He didn’t handle that kind of money. It’s like they’ve targeted the wrong person, Lieutenant. My husband had a handful of clients. Morgan Stanley, a few well-to-do families he’d known a long time.”

“You understand I have to look into this,” Hauck said.

Karen nodded.

“But I need to tell you that without a physical description from your daughter, it’s going to be very tough. There are cameras at the school entrances. Maybe someone around spotted a car. But it was dark and pretty much deserted at that time. And whoever these people are, they’re clearly professional.”

Karen nodded again. “I know.”

She leaned toward him, suddenly so full of questions she felt light-headed, her knees on the verge of buckling.

The lieutenant placed his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t pull away.

She’d handled Charlie’s death, the long months of uncertainty and loneliness, the breakup of his business. But this was too much. Tears rushed in her eyes-burning. Tears of mounting fear and confusion. The fear that her children had suddenly become involved. The fear of what she did not know. More tears started to flow. She hated this feeling. This doubt that had so abruptly sprung up about her husband. She hated these people who had invaded their lives.

“I’ll make sure you have some protection,” the lieutenant said, squeezing Karen’s shoulder. “I’ll station someone outside the house. We’ll see that someone follows the kids to school for a while.”

She looked at him, sucking in a tense breath. “I have this feeling that my husband might have done something, Lieutenant. In his business. Charlie always took risks, and now one of them has come back to haunt us. But he’s dead. He can’t untangle this for us.” She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “He’s gone, and we’re still here.”

“I’ll need a list of his clients,” Hauck said, his hand still perched upon her shoulder.

“Okay.”

“And I’ll need to talk to Lennick, your husband’s trustee.”

“I understand.” Karen pulled back, taking in a breath, trying to compose herself. Her mascara had run. She dabbed her eyes.

“I’ll find something. I promise you. I’ll do my best to make sure you’re safe.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” She leaned against him. “For everything.”

Static from her sweater rippled against his hand as he took it away.

“Listen.” He smiled. “I’m not exactly a Wall Street guy. But somehow I don’t think this is how Morgan Stanley goes about collecting its debts.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The call came in at eleven-thirty that night. The limo had just dropped Saul Lennick at his Park Avenue apartment, home from the opera. His wife, Mimi, was in the bathroom removing her makeup.

“Can you get that, Saul?”

Lennick had just pulled off his shoes and removed his tie. Calls this late, he knew what they were usually about. He picked up the phone in frustration. Couldn’t it wait for the morning? “Hello.”

“Saul?”

It was Karen Friedman. Her voice was cracking and upset. He knew that something was wrong. “What’s happened, Karen?”

Exasperated, she told him what had happened to Samantha leaving school.

Lennick stood up. Sam was like a grandniece to him. He had been at her bat mitzvah. He had set up accounts for her, and for Alex, at his firm. Every bone in his tired body became rigid.

“Jesus, Karen, is she all right?”

“She’s okay…” Karen sniffed back a sob in frustration. “But…” She told him what the man who had accosted her had said, about wanting their money. The same two hundred and fifty million dollars as before. The part about how she was her father’s little girl.

“What the hell did they mean by that Saul? Was that some kind of threat?”

In his underwear and socks, Lennick sank down on the bed. His mind ran back to Charles. The avalanche he had unleashed.

You stupid son of a bitch. He shook his head and sighed.

“Something’s going on, Saul. You were about to tell me something a couple of weeks back. You said it wasn’t the right time… Well I just put my daughter in my own bed,” Karen said, her voice stiffening. “She was scared within an inch of her life. What do you think, Saul-is it the right time now?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Archer and Bey turned out to be phony.

Just a name on a business card. A call to an old contact at Interpol and a quick scan over the Internet for companies registered in South Africa determined that. Even the address and telephone number in Johannesburg were bogus.

Someone was trying to extort her, Hauck knew. Someone familiar with her husband’s dealings. Even his trustee, Lennick, whom Hauck had spoken with earlier and who appeared like a stand-up guy, agreed.

“Incoming, Lieutenant!”

The call rang out from the outside squad room, followed by the low, pretend whoosh of a mortar round exploding.

“Incoming” was how they referred to it when Hauck’s ex-wife was on the line.

Hauck paused a second, phone in hand, before picking up. “Hey, Beth, how’s it going?”

“I’m okay, Ty, fine. You?”

“How’s Rick?”

“He’s good. He just got an increase in territory. Now he’s got Pennsylvania and Maryland, too.” Beth’s new husband was a district manager in a mortgage firm.

“That’s real good. Congratulations. Jess mentioned something like that.”

“It’s sort of why I’m calling. We thought we’d take this long-overdue trip. You know how we’ve been promising Jessie we’d take her down to Orlando? The theme-park thing.”

Hauck straightened. “You know I was sort of hoping she and I could do that together, Beth.”

“Yeah, I know how you’ve always been saying that, Ty. But, um…this trip’s for real.”

The dig cut sharply into his ribs. But she was probably right. “So when are you planning on doing this, Beth?”

Another pause. “We were thinking about Thanksgiving, Ty.”

“Thanksgiving?” This time the cut dug all the way through his intestines. “I thought we agreed Thanksgiving’s mine this year, Beth. I was going to take Jess up to Boston to my sister’s. To see her cousins. She hasn’t been up there in a while.”

“I’m sure she’d like that, Ty. But this came up. And it’s Disney World.”

He sniffed, annoyed. “What, does Rick have a sales conference down there then or something?”

Beth didn’t answer. “It’s Disney World, Ty. You can take her Christmas.”

“No.” He tossed his pen on his desk. “I can’t take her Christmas, Beth. We discussed this. We had this planned. I’m going away Christmas.” He’d made these plans to go bonefishing with a group of school buddies off the Bahamas, the first time he’d been away in a long time. “We went over this, Beth.”

“Oh, yeah.” She sighed as if it had somehow slipped her mind. “You’re right. I remember now.”

“Why not ask Jess?”

“Ask Jess what, Ty?”

“Ask her where she’d like to go.”

“I don’t have to ask her, Ty. I’m her mother.”

He was about to snap back, Goddamn it, Beth, I’m her father, but he knew where that would lead.

“We actually sort of already booked the tickets, Ty. I’m sorry. I really didn’t call you to fight.”

He let out a long, frustrated exhale. “You know she likes it up there, Beth. With her cousins. They’re expecting us. It’s good for her now-for her to see them once or twice a year.”

“I know, Ty. You’re right. Next time, I promise, she will.” Another pause. “Listen, I’m glad you understand.”

They hung up. He swiveled around in his chair, his eyes settling on the picture of Jessie and Norah he kept on the credenza. Five and three. A year before the accident. All smiles.

It was hard to remember they had once been in love.

There was a knock against Hauck’s office door, startling him. “Hey, Loo!”

It was Steve Christofel, who handled bunko and fraud.

“What, Steve?”

The detective shrugged, apologetic, notepad in hand. “You want me to come back, boss? Maybe this isn’t a good time.”

“No, it’s fine. Come on in.” Hauck swiveled back around, mad at himself. “Sorry. You know the routine.”

“Always something, right? But, hey, Lieutenant, you mind if I see that case file you always keep in here?”

“Case file?”

“You know, the one you always keep hidden on your desk over there.” The detective grinned. “That old hit-and-run thing. Raymond.”

“Oh, that.” Hauck shrugged as if exposed. He always kept it buried under a stack of open cases. Not forgotten, not for a second. Just not solved. He lifted the stack and fished out the yellow case file from the bottom. “What’s going on?”

“My memory’s a little fuzzy, Lieutenant, but wasn’t there a name that was connected to it somewhere? Marty something?”

Hauck nodded.

The person who had called up AJ Raymond at the shop, just before he’d left to cross the street. Something like Marty, his boss had said. It had just never led anywhere.

“Why?”

“This wire just came in.” Christofel came around and placed his notepad on Hauck’s desk. “Some credit-card-fraud division has been trying to chase it down after all this time. An Amex card belonging to a Thomas Mardy-that’s M-A-R-D-Y-was used to pay for a limo ride up to Greenwich. Dropped him off at the Fairfield Diner at a little before noon, Lieutenant. April ninth.”

Hauck looked up, his blood starting to course.

April 9. That was the morning of the hit-and-run. Mardy, not Marty-that fit! A Thomas Mardy had been dropped off across the street from where AJ Raymond was killed.

Now every cell in Hauck’s body sprang alive.

“There’s just one catch, Lieutenant.” The detective scratched his head. “Get this… The Thomas Mardy the Amex card belonged to was actually killed on April ninth. In the Grand Central bombing. On the tracks…”

Hauck stared.

“And that was three full hours,” the detective said, “before the Greenwich hit-and-run.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

That night Hauck couldn’t sleep. It was a little after twelve. He climbed out of bed. Letterman was on the TV, but he hadn’t been watching. He went to the window and stared out at the sound. A stubborn chill knifed through the air. His mind was racing.

How?

How was it possible someone had died on the tracks and yet hours later his card had been used to pay for a ride to the Fairfield Diner? To the very spot where the Raymond kid was killed.

Someone had called him right before he left to cross the street. Something like Marty…

Mardy.

How did Charles and AJ Raymond fit together. How?

He was missing something.

He threw on a sweatshirt and some jeans and slipped on some old moccasins. Outside, the air was sharp and chilly. He hopped into his Bronco. The block was dark.

He drove.

They had kept the protection on for four days now. He’d had a car in front of the house, another that followed the kids to school. Nothing had happened. Not surprising. Maybe whoever was bothering her had backed off? The temperature had already been turned up pretty high.

Hauck pulled off the highway at Exit 5. Old Greenwich. As if by some inner GPS.

He headed onto Sound Beach and into town. Main Street was totally dark and deserted. He turned right on Shore toward the water. Another right onto Sea Wall.

Hauck pulled up twenty yards down from her house. The rookie, Stasio, was on duty tonight. Hauck spotted the patrol car, lights out, parked across from the house.

He went up and rapped on the window. The young officer rolled it down, surprised. “Lieutenant.”

“You look tired, Stasio. You married, son?”

“Yessir,” the rookie answered. “Two years.”

“Go home. Grab some sleep,” Hauck said. “I’ll take over here.”

“You? I’m fine, Lieutenant,” the kid protested.

“It’s okay. Go on home.” Hauck winked at him. “I appreciate your doing the job.”

It took a final remonstration, but Stasio, outranked, finally gave in.

Alone, Hauck balled his fists inside his sweatshirt against the cold.

Across the street the house was completely dark, other than a dim light upstairs shining through a curtain. He looked at his watch. He had meeting with Chief Fitzpatrick at 9:00 A.M. A replacement shift wouldn’t be on until 6:00. He inhaled the crisp, damp air from off the sound.

You’re crazy, Ty.

He went back to his Bronco and opened the door. As he was about to climb in, he noticed that the drapes had parted upstairs. Someone looked out. For a moment, in the darkness, their gazes met.

Hauck thought he made out the faint outline of a smile.

It’s Ty, he mouthed, looking up. He had wanted to tell her that every time she called him “Lieutenant.”

It’s Ty.

And about your husband. What you’re feeling, what you’re going through now…I know.

I damn well know.

He waved, a wink of recognition he wasn’t sure she could even read. Then he pulled himself inside the Bronco, shutting the door. When he looked back up, the drapes had closed.

But that was okay.

He knew she felt safe, knowing he was there. Somehow he did, too.

He hunkered down in the seat and turned the radio on.

It’s Ty. He chuckled. That was all I wanted to say.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

April

And then it was a year.

A year without her husband. A year spent bringing up her kids by herself. A year of sleeping in her bed alone. An anniversary Karen dreaded.

Time heals, right? That’s what everyone always says. And at first, Karen wouldn’t allow herself to believe it. Everything reminded her of Charlie. Everything she picked up around the house. Every time she went out with friends. TV. Songs. The pain was still too raw.

But day by day, month into month, the pain seemed to lessen each morning. You just got used to it. Almost against your will.

Life just went on.

Sam went to Acapulco with her senior classmates and had a blast. Alex scored a game-winning goal in lacrosse, his stick raised high in the air. It was nice to see life in their faces again. Karen had to do something. She decided to get her real-estate license. She even dated, once or twice. A couple of divorced, well-heeled Greenwich financial types. Not exactly her type. One wanted to fly her to Paris for the weekend. On his jet. After meeting him the kids rolled their eyes and went “yick,” too old, giving her a big thumbs-down.

It was still too soon, too creepy. It just didn’t seem right.

The best news was that the whole situation with Archer gradually just died down. Maybe there was too much heat. Maybe whoever was trying to extort money from them got cold feet and gave up. Gradually things relaxed. The protection came off, their fears subsided. It was as if the whole frightening episode just went away.

Or at least that’s what Karen always prayed, every night as she turned off the lights.

April 8 there was a TV documentary airing on the bombing, the night before the one-year anniversary. Shot by some camera crew that had been embedded with one of the fire teams that had responded, along with footage from handheld cameras by people who just happened to be in Grand Central at the time, or on the street.

Even still, Karen had never watched anything about that day.

She couldn’t. It wasn’t an event to her-it was the day her husband was killed. And it perpetually seemed to be around: On the news. Law & Order episodes. Even ball games.

So they all talked it over-as a family. They made plans to be together the following night, by themselves, to recognize the real anniversary of Charlie’s death. The night before was just a distraction. Sam and Alex didn’t want to see it, so they hung out with friends. Paula and Rick had invited Karen out. But she said no.

She wasn’t even sure why.

Maybe because she wanted to show she was strong enough. Not to have to hide. Charlie had gone through it. He’d gone through it for real.

So could she.

Maybe there was just the slightest urge to be part of it. She was going to have to deal with it sometime. It might as well be now.

Whatever it was, Karen made herself a salad that night. Read through a couple of magazines that had piled up, did a little work on some competitive real-estate listings on the computer. With a glass of wine. All the while it was like she had some anxious inner eye fixed to the clock.

You can do this, Karen. Not to hide.

As it approached nine, Karen switched off the computer. She flicked the TV remote to NBC.

As the program came on, Karen felt anxious. She steeled herself. Charlie went through this, she told herself. So can you.

One of the news anchors introduced it. The show began by tracing the 7:51 train to Grand Central, docudrama style, starting with its departure out of the Stamford station. People reading the papers, doing crossword puzzles, talking about the Knicks game the night before.

Karen felt her heart start to pound.

She could almost see Charlie in the lead car, immersed in the Journal. Then the camera switched to two Middle Eastern types with knapsacks, one stowing a suitcase on the luggage rack. Karen brought Tobey up into her arms and squeezed him close. Her stomach felt hollow. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.

Then on the screen, the timeline suddenly read 8:41. The time of the explosion. Karen looked away. Oh, God…

A security camera on the tracks in Grand Central captured the moment. A shudder, then a flash of blinding light. The lights on the train went out. Camera phones in cars farther back recorded it. A tremor. Darkness. People screaming.

Concrete collapsing from a hundred pounds of hexagen and accelerant-the fire raging near two thousand degrees, smoke billowing into the main concourse of the station and onto the street. Aerial shots from traffic helicopters circling. The same pictures Karen saw that terrible morning, all hurtling back. Panicked people stumbling out of the station, coughing. The deadly plume of black smoke billowing into the sky.

No, this was a mistake. Karen clenched her fists and shook her head. She squeezed Tobey, tears flooding her eyes. It’s wrong. She couldn’t watch this. Her mind flashed to Charlie down there. What he must have been going through. Karen sat, frozen, thrust back to the horror of that first day. It was almost unbearable. People were dying. Her husband was down there dying…

No. I’m sorry, honey, I can’t do this.

She reached for the remote and went to turn it off.

That was when the footage shifted up to the street level. One of the remote entrances on Forty-eighth and Madison. Handheld cameras: people staggering onto the street, shell-shocked, gagging, blackened with char and ash, collapsing onto the pavement. Some were weeping, some just glassy-eyed, grateful to be alive.

Horrible. She couldn’t watch.

She went to flick it off just as something caught her eye.

She blinked.

It was only an instant-the briefest moment flashing by. Her eyes playing tricks on her. A cruel one. It couldn’t be…

Karen hit the reverse button on the remote with her thumb, waiting a few seconds for it to rewind. Then she pressed the play arrow again, moving a little closer to the screen. The people staggering out of the station…

Every cell in her body froze.

Frantically, Karen rewound it again, her heart slamming to a complete stop. When she got back to the spot a third time, she took a breath and pressed pause.

Oh, my God…

Her eyes stretched wide, as if her lids were stapled open. A paralyzing tightness squeezed her chest. Karen stood up, her mouth like sandpaper, drawing closer to the screen. This cannot be…

It was a face.

A face that her mind was screaming to her couldn’t be real.

Outside the station. Amid the chaos. After the explosion. Averted from the camera.

Charlie’s face.

Karen’s stomach started to crawl up her throat.

No one might have ever noticed it, no one but her. And if she had so much as blinked, turned away for just an instant, it would have been gone.

But it was real. Captured there. No matter how much she might want to deny it!

Charlie’s face.

Karen was staring at her husband.