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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