With full resolve, Nick turned to find the captain talking to a tall, muscled man in a tight-fitting black shirt, his badge and gun worn on the belt of his blue jeans. His hands were darkened by soot, streaked with sweat. His tousled black hair told the story of his day.

“Mr. Quinn,” the captain called him over.

Nick approached the detective, hoping he finally had an ally who would listen and help him stop Julia’s killer.

“Mr. Quinn, this is Bob Shannon.”

Nick turned around and looked straight into Shannon ’s slate-blue eyes, and a wave of panic fell upon him as he realized who he was looking at.

“Bob Shannon.” The detective held out his hand in greeting.

Nick’s world spun. For standing before him was the man who had arrested him in the future, who had treated him as something less than a rodent. The man who in the interrogation room had wielded a billy club; who had screamed and accused Nick of murdering Julia; who had held a gun to his head with every intention of pulling the trigger.

The look in Shannon ’s eyes was one shared by most of the volunteers Nick had seen today: exhaustion, devastation, and hopelessness.

“What’s up?” Shannon asked.

Nick’s eyes fell to Shannon ’s neck, his tight-fitting black shirt unbuttoned in the heat, exposing his well-muscled chest. There was no St. Christopher medal there, which eased his mind a little about trusting the police.

Nick didn’t know where to start, finding it hard to shake the fear that the man would somehow recognize him and shoot him for his escaping the interrogation room. Reminding himself that that was yet to happen, he said, “Someone is after my wife.”

“What do you mean ‘after’?” There was a weariness in Shannon ’s voice.

“Trying to kill her.”

“Shit,” Shannon said with surprising concern. “Okay, what’s your name?”

“Nick Quinn.”

“And your wife’s?”

“Julia.”

Shannon led him over to a corner of the tent, pulled up two folding chairs, and took a seat, indicating Nick to follow suit. “Can I get you a drink: water, soda, or something?”

Nick shook his head as he sat down.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” Shannon said.

Nick told him of the robbery, of Julia’s computer’s being swiped from her office. He explained how the thieves were erasing their tracks, each word out of his mouth carefully chosen so as not to indicate anything from the future.

“May I ask where she is now?”

“She’s…” Nick paused. Though Shannon didn’t appear like the animal he had been in the interrogation room, he had yet to earn Nick’s trust, so he thought it best to hold back some truths. Though he didn’t know exactly where she was, he lied. “She’s with friends.”

“Alone?”

“She’s with some coworkers at one of their homes in Bedford.”

“Why didn’t she come with you?”

“She’s scared, she didn’t want to leave. And she said she couldn’t bear coming down here.”

“I understand that,” Shannon said, looking out at the mayhem.

“Yeah, she was supposed to be on that plane.”

“Whoa.” Shannon ’s eyes went wide with surprise “Okay, you failed to mention that.”

“She got off because she got a text message about the robbery in progress.”

Shannon sat there, his face registering the irony. “Fate is so unpredictable. She must be a mess, thinking she lived only to be in the gun sight of some maniac.”

Nick begin to see sympathy in Shannon. There was more to him than the single-note man who arrested him. “Are you married?”

“I was. My wife couldn’t handle being married to a cop. She didn’t think the pay matched the risk.”

“Sorry.”

“Her loss,” Shannon said quickly. “She just doesn’t get it. Life’s not about money, its not about getting paid for risking one’s life for others. You do it because it’s the right thing to do.”

Nick began to see the world a bit from Shannon ’s point of view. When Shannon had interrogated him, he had thought he was interrogating a killer, a husband who murdered his wife. While his intensity had been intimidating, it was part of his process, part of getting to the truth of a murder, and when Nick grabbed the other detective’s gun… Well, Shannon reacted as anyone would have.

“Listen, I know you think your wife is in danger,” Shannon said. “And I believe you. If I was in your shoes, I’d come right to us. It’s the right thing, the best thing to do.

“Even with the information you mentioned on the people who own the security company, you’re asking for us to track down these individuals on a day where minds can’t possibly think straight, and electrical power is haphazard at best. Now, I’ll tell you, I’m good, we’re good, but not that good. From the security you described, these people knew exactly what they were doing, they’re well informed and intelligent, and if they’re that good, the evidence they left behind is minimal. Not to say there isn’t any, but it’s going to take manpower, something we’re sorely lacking in.”

Nick knew Shannon ’s words to be true; he had drawn the same conclusion in his mind. The chances of finding Julia’s killer were slim, but then again, what were the chances of being called off a plane just before it crashed? The last six hours he had experienced were impossible, beyond the imagination, yet they had happened-it was a day where odds could be beaten and he was not about to give up so easily.

“I printed this out from the security tapes,” Nick said as he handed Shannon the picture of the dark-haired thief from the video feed.

“I’d like to see the rest of this tape.” Shannon studied the man’s face before finally looking up. “Let me ask you a question. You said the security system at Washington House was disabled and that the backup in your wife’s office was stolen. If that’s the case, you’re not telling me something.”

Nick silently berated himself for his foolishness. He had wanted to keep the information on Julia’s PDA private, as he knew that was her killer’s ultimate goal. “She had the info backed up from her computer,” Nick admitted, knowing that if he appeared secretive suspicions would rise.

“Well, I definitely need to see that. Where is it?”

“In my car,” Nick said. It was actually in his pocket but the walk to his car would give him a few minutes to decide whether he was making the right move.

“There’s also a blue Chevy that drove by my home. A rental car leased by Paul Dreyfus. His company did the security for the building where the robbery took place.”

“Okay, well, between the security video backup you have, the car, and this guy Dreyfus, we’ve got some pieces to work with. I’ll tell you what, let’s take a ride over to Washington House, you never know, we may just get lucky.” Shannon rose from his chair.

“There’s nothing to find,” Nick said.

“There’s always something to find,” Shannon said confidently as the captain came over, hearing the end of the conversation.

“Why don’t you take Dance with you as backup?” Delia said, more as a statement than a question.

“I’ll be fine,” Shannon said, more than a little annoyed.

“I don’t recall giving you the option. I’ll have him meet you down by your car.”

“THIS IS JUST the worst nightmare I’ve ever been in. Nothing prepares you for this,” Shannon said as they walked down the road that wound about the fields where the wreckage scattered the grounds. “We all have those morbid thoughts of how we’ll die. They’re few and far between but I can guarantee 90 percent of the world fears death in an airplane above all else. Helpless, trapped inside a metal tube, your heart in your throat as you’re tossed about, catching glimpses of the ground rushing toward you out the porthole windows. Don’t let your wife come down here-seeing this will send her over the edge.”

Nick couldn’t pull his eyes from the blackened ground, from the white sheet-covered bodies that seemed to lie everywhere. “No one should ever have to see something like this.”