“I’ll never get used to this concept.” Marcus shook his head. “You talk about the future as if it’s the past.”
“It’s how life has been running for me for eight hours now.”
“With no continuity, with no one else remembering what happened, how do you keep it straight? I couldn’t keep my mind focused.”
“I just think of Julia. I don’t care about time, I don’t care about anything right now but finding and stopping her killer. She gives me all the focus I need.”
FLAMES CLIMBED SIXTY feet into the sky, the intense heat like a force field preventing the fire crews from getting within fifty yards. The roar of the fire sounded like an inhuman beast as it singed the air, searing the metal of the fuselage.
White cloudlike foam had been shot across the debris field to aid in dousing the gas fire. Eight water cannons and countless hoses arced streams across the sky, fighting the spreading flames as they nipped at the surrounding woods.
The tanks in the wings were mercifully half full for the short flight to Boston; no need to endure the cost of the additional weight with the price of gasoline these days. But that small piece of good luck was lost on the firemen who fought desperately to contain the three thousand gallons of impossibly flammable liquid.
Men in fire suits searched the grounds in hopes of a miracle but found nothing but shattered bodies, and mere splinters of metal. National Guardsmen arrived by the truckload to supplement the effort. Crowds of the curious, morbid, and shocked looked on before being escorted away or led to assist.
Dance walked about the perimeter of the flaming wreckage, ignoring the wayward water spouts dousing the flames as they sprinkled on his blue blazer. With all of the death before him, all of the senseless loss and suffering, Dance didn’t feel a moment of pity; he couldn’t muster a tear of sympathy for the dead. Somewhere in there was the body of Sam Dreyfus, somewhere in there was the box he wouldn’t part with, a box whose value was inconceivable. If a millionaire like Sam Dreyfus wanted it instead of all of that gold, all of those diamonds, its worth had to be in the hundreds of millions.
He couldn’t help smiling, knowing that Dreyfus had gotten what he deserved. He hoped he had been fully aware of his imminent death as the plane fell out of the sky.
There was no fear in Dance of someone’s getting near the box-if it had survived the crash-before he did. The crash site was a crime scene, and anyone caught stealing from here would be facing multiple felonies in addition to public scorn. If the heavy wooden box had managed to survive, nobody would know what it was, and Dance, as a detective in the crash’s jurisdiction, would procure access to the debris holding area and steal it before anyone was the wiser.
With Sam Dreyfus’s betrayal and death, it was up to Dance and his men to clean up the evidence, to find and erase the security tapes, to track down anyone who might have seen them.
When Sam Dreyfus had contacted him a month ago, Dance had thought it was an internal affairs setup. He thought the police-police had finally caught up to him and were luring him with promises of gold and diamonds.
But with the research tools of a detective at his disposal, he found Dreyfus to be the impotent younger brother of DSG’s chairman and founder, the designer and installer of the security system for Shamus Hennicot’s Washington House. And while DSG’s chairman, Paul Dreyfus, was hailed as a brilliant, hardworking innovator, Sam Dreyfus was his absolute antithesis, a consummate failure, always looking for more, never appreciating his ridiculous income and the lifestyle he led.
Sam Dreyfus was the perfect partner in crime: a man of weak character, an individual he knew he could control. He was also a miracle, sent by the devil himself, one that would help ensure Dance’s survival and keep Ghestov Rukaj at bay for good.
Dance had looked at drug dealers to rob, evidence rooms to rip off, criminals to blackmail, but none of the prospects would net him anywhere near the million-dollar bounty he was to pay for his own life.
As much as Rukaj’s ultimatum enraged him, he knew there was nowhere to turn, nowhere to run. The Albanian had connections everywhere, listening, watching, following whomever he chose. There would be no sympathy for a crooked detective, someone who would be hated by cop and criminal alike. And Rukaj’s reputation was based on history, not rumor. The executions he had personally participated in were legendary for their slow, unending torture, his victims pleading for death hours before it mercifully embraced them. There was no question Rukaj had Dance by the balls, and the only way out was one million dollars.
Dance had met Sam Dreyfus four times at Shun Lee Palace in Manhattan, going through the job, the plans, the security, and how they would fence their ill-gotten gains. Sam explained that there had to be a secondary backup for the security’s video feeds and that if it wasn’t in the police station then it had to be in Hennicot’s locally based attorney’s office.
Sam confirmed that Hennicot’s lawyer was Julia Quinn at Aitkens, Lerner, & Isles and that the feed ran directly to her computer with a redundant backup on her company’s server. Dreyfus was to visit her right after they completed the robbery to review what had happened under the auspices of his company’s concern for the break-in. He was then to deposit a virus in her computer system, thereby wiping that piece of the evidence from existence before it was backed up at 2:00 A.M. to a confidential off-site firm.
But now, as Sam had gone off and died, it fell to Dance to deal with Julia Quinn.
He and his men didn’t know from viruses or internal security protocols. They didn’t know the law firm’s procedures entailed in reviewing security evidence, but Dance had other means of making evidence disappear.
Now, after breaking into Shamus Hennicot’s amazing collection of gold and jewels, with Dreyfus dead, with time quickly elapsing, he couldn’t risk anything tying the crime to him.
What was supposed to be a by-the-book heist had fallen into disaster. But as quickly as best-laid plans fell to pieces, planes fell from the skies, offices and homes went dark, and death pulled everyone into distraction.
The plane crash was a fortuitous event in a morning filled with complications and betrayals. The disaster was already serving as the perfect diversion: power was out across the town, families had run to their homes in shock, leaving Byram Hills deserted. Confusion and chaos were the order of the day, providing the perfect smokescreen for cleaning up the mess made by Sam Dreyfus.
Dance’s men would shortly enter the law firm of Aitken, Lerner, & Isles to remove any video files pointing in their direction, even if it meant burning the place to the ground. And with regard to the matter of Shamus’s personal attorney…
Dance pulled the cell phone from his pocket. It was Sam’s, foolishly left behind in his panic as he escaped to the plane with his precious mahogany box. Dance flipped it open and thumbed through the phone book, finding Julia Quinn’s office and cell conveniently programmed. But Sam wouldn’t be calling her as planned, wouldn’t be meeting her at her office to discuss the robbery.
Dance chose the cell phone number and hit send. It was so convenient that the caller ID would read Sam Dreyfus, the first seed planted in his deception.
“Ms. Quinn?”
“Yes?”
“This is Sam Dreyfus at DSG,” Dance lied.
“Oh, Paul’s brother. We haven’t had the pleasure.”
“You obviously know why I’m calling.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I can’t figure how they got in.”
“Have you seen the video yet?” Dance asked, trying not to sound anxious.
“No, they destroyed the primary server at Hennicot’s place, and with the plane crash and blackout, I never got back to my office.”
“The blackout makes it hard to see those files,” Dance said, glad that they could get to the computers before she had a chance to see anything.