the 13th Hour (4 page)

"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.

CHAPTER
11

8:12
P.M.

T
HE 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.

He felt as if he had awakened from a nightmare. An odd taste filled his mouth, bitter and metallic. His lips were dry from panting as he tried to catch his breath. There was a golden hue to the moment, as if a bright light's echo had been burned into his eyes, a memento of some forgotten sun glare. As he looked about the room, desperately trying to get his bearings, he unconsciously flexed his hands as if pumping an unseen bellows. His mind overwhelmed with sensory overload, he had lost the moment, his bearings, but most of all, his track of time.

He looked again about the room, its appearance finally becoming familiar, slipping in from the periphery of his mind. He recognized the dull whine as the sound of a generator, which filled the house with electricity in this town without power.

And then the name leaped out at him: Marcus Bennett . . . his best friend, his neighbor. This was his house, his library. Nick had been here an hour earlier, Marcus providing comfort, sympathy . . .

And then reality fell upon him like a two-ton stone.

Julia was dead.

As Nick closed his eyes, he saw her, her pure lips, her flawless skin, her natural beauty. Her voice was as clear in his ear as if she were speaking to him, the subtle odor of lavender fresh on her skin, fresh in his mind as it finally pulled him over the edge. The grief took him, carrying him into a darkness he had never known existed. It wrapped around his heart, squeezing it in its deadly grasp.

Nick finally looked up at the TV, at the wreckage of the jet, at the remains of the passengers strewn about like discarded keepsakes. He was surrounded by death. Life had gone from bliss to hell for many that day, but as tragic as the events before him were, he could only be greedy in his grief, selfish in his own tragedy and mourning.

He picked up the TV clicker. His thumb finding the off button, he took a final glance at the images of burning wreckage and caught sight of the ticker running along the bottom, pulling the eye with its crawling headline updates, sliding off the edge of the television only to start anew moments later. He stared at the opaque station logo in the bottom corner and finally saw the one sight that sent his mind into panic.

It was an image he had never once paid attention to. With the coverage of unthinkable death and destruction, with the too-much-information ticker crawl, with all of the confusion in his own mind, it had escaped him. It was displayed in the lower right-hand corner, in a highlighted white font, an impossible piece of information that sent his mind spinning. The clock was illuminated against its background, and he looked at it twice more as if his eyes were playing tricks on him, as if someone at the TV station had made a mistake. He read it again: 8:15
P.M
.

Nick's eye snapped to his wrist, only to be greeted by pale skin where his watch was usually bound. And he remembered . . .

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the letter. The envelope was cream-colored, with a satin finish; in the left-hand corner was an elaborate blue crest, a lion's head above a slain dragon, its throat pierced by an ornate sword. Nick wasn't sure if it stood for a club, a prep school, or the crest of the stranger who'd given it to him.

He reached back into his pocket for the watch the European man had handed him, withdrew it, and flipped it open like some Victorian dandy. The inside of the case was mirror-polished silver with a cursive Latin phrase engraved in the precious metal:
Fugit inreparabile tempus.

Nick finally cast his eye at the watch face. The roman numerals were of an old English style and read exactly 8:15, a sight that released another wave of confusion.

His interrogation had started at 9:20; he distinctly remembered the clock on the wall of the police room as it marched toward 10:00, listening to the detectives' questions, looking at the ornate Colt pistol, the tension in the air growing, culminating in his stealing Dance's nine-millimeter and the entire moment hanging on the cusp of death.

And he remembered sitting in this room with Marcus for almost an hour, sipping scotch with the dull agony of Julia's loss tearing apart his heart. They'd sat in confusion and mourning. He remembered it all like a slow-winding film. Marcus had been sitting across from him, telling him everything would be all right, when the dark library door slowly swung open, and the two detectives stood in the doorway, grim looks on their faces, Shannon's hand resting atop his holstered pistol.

This was the room he had been arrested in, taken from in handcuffs at 9:00.

His memory seemed upside down, events falling in and out of order. Last he recalled, he was in the interrogation room. He remembered seeing the pictures of Julia, the ones Detective Shannon had shoved in his face, the ones that had brought him to the edge of sanity. He remembered grabbing the detective's gun, the Mexican standoff.

But he couldn't remember anything beyond the point of watching Shannon pull the trigger.

Nick shook his head as he closed the timepiece and tucked it back into his pocket.

He looked again at the envelope, praying that it would solve the multitude of questions running about in his mind. He tore it open, pulled out two sheets of off-white paper, and began to read.

Dear Nick,

I hope the fog is lifting from your mind though I'm sure it is
now being replaced by an even greater confusion as to what is
going on . . .

N
ICK READ THE
two-page letter through three times. He folded it up and tucked it into his breast pocket, unsure what to make of it. He thought himself foolish for entertaining the idea, for allowing impossible hope to arise in his heart.

Somehow his mind was playing tricks on him.

The pictures of Julia's dead body that Detective Shannon had shoved in his face were so real, his mind and soul so wounded, Nick thought he was now surely succumbing to the loss of his sanity, to some fantasy, to wishful thinking. He felt trapped in a dream and willed himself to awaken.

He reached into his pocket and withdrew the watch that the letter spoke of, that the European man had given him in the interrogation room. Flipping it open, he stared at the Roman numerals.

Despite the doubt that coursed through his mind, despite the impossibility of it all, there was no question about where he stood at this moment, no question about the time on the watch face.

Nick had sat in this very room already, sipping scotch with Marcus, mourning Julia's death. It wasn't some figment of his imagination, some daydream. His tears were real, the pain in his heart was real, Marcus's comforting words still rang in his ears.

And the interrogation room at the Byram Hills Police Station, sitting there enduring Dance's questioning, staring at the weapon that stole Julia away from him; the photos, the harsh reality shoved before his eyes by detective Robert Shannon at 9:58
P.M.
, it was all real. And there was no doubt about the time, the wire-caged clock on the wall having been his main focus for the nine minutes leading up to 10:00.