Shannon ’s outburst, the loud, shocking crash of the club against the table, pushed Nick over the edge. His wife was dead, he was being accused of her murder, and this Detective Shannon questioned his and her honor.

In the heat of confusion as Dance continued to fall backward, his sport coat flopped back, exposing his nine-millimeter in his shoulder holster, the butt of the gun protruding. Nick stepped past the point of no return and snatched the gun from Dance’s holster with lightning speed.

Nick thumbed off the safety of the Glock as his finger wrapped the trigger; his muscle memory ran true and on reflex. That he hated guns didn’t mean he’d forgotten how to use one. He spun the off-balance, tumbling Dance into a headlock and jammed the barrel against his head.

Dance’s gloved hands flew up in panic, desperately grabbing hold of Nick’s forearm.

And the moment spun out of control.

“Drop it,” Shannon screamed, as he drew his gun, fell to a knee, and pointed it straight at Nick’s head.

“You don’t understand, neither of you understand, she’s alive,” Nick yelled, sounding like a madman, his eyes jumping back and forth between Shannon and the clock. “My wife is alive.”

Shannon and Dance exchanged a quick look.

“Listen,” Dance said calmly, despite the gun at his head. “Put down the gun. I know what you must be feeling-”

“Bullshit,” Nick shouted over Dance. “You have no idea what I’m feeling.”

“-losing her and all. Let us listen to your story. If someone else killed her, let us catch him. All this is going to do is send you to the morgue. There’s no death penalty for killing your wife, but for killing a cop… it’s a capital offense, they’ll execute you for that.”

“You don’t understand, my wife is alive. I’ve been set up. I need to get out of here.” Nick dragged Dance backward toward the two-way mirror.

“Put your gun down,” Nick yelled at Shannon.

“Not a chance,” Shannon shouted back.

Nick look at the clock: 9:58. He thumbed back the hammer of Dance’s nine-millimeter Glock pistol, the click startling Dance.

“Bob,” Dance yelled, looking at Shannon. “Do it.”

“No way.”

“Do it,” Dance yelled. “You’re not playing chicken with my life.”

Shannon ’s eyes were defiant, but he complied.

And Nick instantly aimed the gun behind him at the glass and pulled the trigger, the gunshot sounding like a cannon as the two-way mirror shattered into a thousand pieces, revealing a small, dark room, a video camera in the center trained on them. Nick cocked his arm forward and tucked the gun back up against Dance’s chin, scorching his skin with the hot barrel.

“Are you out of your mind?” Dance screamed.

And Shannon was back on a knee, his retrieved gun in his hand, aimed squarely at Nick.

“Look at me.” Shannon ’s voice became eerily calm, his gun remaining fixed on Nick as he picked up the manila folder and poured a handful of eight-by-ten pictures out onto the Formica surface.

“Do you see these?” Shannon said through gritted teeth, picking them up one by one, shoving them toward Nick, inches from his face.

There were twenty in all, from various angles, in full color. The blood was thick, nothing like what Nick expected. It wasn’t like TV or some movie, where the blood repulsed, but deep down your stomach stayed calm knowing it was just the trickery of Hollywood. These images were real, and they pulled Nick in. As much as he tried to avoid doing so, he looked at each and every picture: at the floor, at her clothes, at the black skirt she was wearing when last he saw her; at her ring finger, at the wedding band he had slipped on in St. Patrick’s, and finally at her face, or what was left of it.

The left side was gone, the eye missing, the temple and forehead shattered, but the right side… It only took the sight of her blue eye, the hazel specks dancing there under her blond eyebrow, to convince him. The dead woman staring up at him was his wife.

And in that moment, the confusion rose. The scream in his head, the manifestation of his bleak reality. Julia was dead.

“I’m going to count to three,” Shannon said. “I don’t give a fuck if you shoot Dance, I’m going to kill you right here in front of the running videotape, fully justified in my actions.”

Nick pressed the gun harder up into Dance’s chin, the detective’s grip about his forearm tightening in nervous response. And Nick realized Dance’s right ring finger was missing, the vacant finger of the latex glove flopping about like an errant hair.

Nick looked up at the clock on the wall, the second hand ticking toward the top of the hour.

“One,” Shannon whispered.

“This can’t be,” Nick said in desperation as he looked again at the pictures, wishing it was all a dream, wishing he was someone else so he could escape his now dead, hollowed heart. The pain in his soul was unbearable, as Julia’s decimated image stared back at him. He tried to avert his eyes-

“Two,” Shannon ’s voice was louder this time. There was no question of his threat.

“I need to get out of here,” Nick said, an unnatural calm over taking him. “You don’t understand, I can save her.” But nothing made sense, not Julia’s death, not this impossible situation. How could he save her if she was already dead? But the tone of the man’s voice was still fresh in his ears, “You have twelve hours.”

“Three.”

And Nick watched as the hammer of Shannon ’s gun slowly drew back.

But before the hammer struck home on the back of the copper cased bullet, before it exploded out of the barrel…

… the world fell into darkness.

8:12 P.M.

THE SIXTY-INCH TV SCREEN was filled with black scorched earth, the open field dotted with white debris, which upon closer viewing was revealed to be bedsheets covering the burned and shattered remains of 212 passengers. The AS 300 had left Westchester Airport at 11:50 A.M. and fallen out of the clear blue morning sky two minutes later, burying itself in a wide-open sports field in the upscale town of Byram Hills.

Aerial footage showed a quarter-mile debris field, as if the devil had reached out and scratched the earth. But for the intact white tail section sitting upright, the small pieces bore no resemblance to the modern aircraft that had been heading for Boston.

“No survivors,” the overly blond newswoman said, her ebony eyes tinged with sorrow for having to condense such a tragic event into sound bites. “The National Transportation Safety Board has been on the scene for several hours and has recovered the badly damaged black box of North East Air Flight 502. A news conference is scheduled for 9:00 P.M.”

Images from earlier in the day began to cycle: hundreds of firefighters battling to control the intense flames that danced among the wreckage, shots of the continuing rescue effort, of luggage strewn about the ground, of weary firefighters with bowed heads and soot-covered faces. Heartbreaking video personalized the tragedy: laptops and iPods scattering the ground, a Yankees hat in perfect condition resting in a patch of undamaged grass; a child’s shoe, backpacks, and briefcases, all devastating reminders of the fragility of life.

The flat-panel TV sat within the mahogany shelves of an Old World library. Books on everything from Shakespeare to auto repair, Dumas to antiques filled the bookcases. There was a majestic painting of a lion by Jean-Leon Gerome above the mantel. On the wall above the couch were two Norman Rockwells of soldiers arriving home from World War II to the embrace of their families. Large leather club chairs sat before an unlit fireplace, while the Persian rug with its blue-flecked earthen hues completed the effect of a 1940s gentleman’s den.

Nick stood in the center of the room, his thoughts incoherent, his legs wobbly. A low, dull thumping whine echoed in his ears. He caught the arm of the button tuck sofa as he fell backward, directing himself into the maroon leather cushions.