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  Ethan pointed down to the concertgoers who were standing on the floor, dancing and waving their arms in unison. “Look down there. That’s where the real party is!”

  Skylar stood slightly to see over the adults’ heads in front of her. She shrugged and sat back in her seat, apparently uninterested. She was enduring the concert because her father brought her there, and because this was the happiest she’d seen Ethan in a long time.

  Ethan was rocking back and forth in his seat when he leaned over to his sister so he could speak into her ear. “Hey, you know our passes let us go anywhere we want, right?”

  Skylar nodded.

  “I’ve got an idea. Come with me.”

  “Where?” asked Skylar.

  “You’ll see. Come on.” Ethan stood and grabbed his sister by the hand. She set down her Coke and scrambled to keep up as he led her down the pedestrian ramps leading to the lower level. They made their way through the throngs of people crowded around the field-level entrances, and they joined the massive party going on in front of the stage.

  “Ethan, I don’t like this. Let’s go back to our seats.” Skylar was overwhelmed and uncomfortable by the size and closeness of the crowd. A drunk girl staggered into her and spilled some of her beer on Skylar’s shoe, which added to her feelings of concern.

  “It’ll be fun, trust me. Let’s get closer to the stage.” Ethan grabbed his sister by the hand and wove his way through the mostly inebriated crowd, who were oblivious to the two making their way closer.

  They were now close enough to see Beyoncé, clad in a white beaded leotard, strolling the stage in her customary sensual manner. While Jay-Z rapped, Beyoncé added the lyrics, both adoringly looking into each other’s eyes.

  Ethan had reached the front corner of the stage, and they got settled in for the up-close-and-personal performance of “’03 Bonnie & Clyde,” the couple’s first collaborative duet from years ago. As the heart-pounding music slowed for the more sensual tune, Ethan noticed a group of pretty girls off to his left. They made eye contact with him and he immediately was smitten.

  Two of the girls made their way over to where he and Skylar were standing near the temporary barriers.

  “Hey, wanna burn one with us?” asked one of the girls, referring to smoking a marijuana cigarette.

  “Yeah, but, um, I’m with my sister,” replied Ethan, embarrassed that he was tasked with what amounted to babysitting in his mind.

  “Man, we’ve got enough for everybody,” said the other girl as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small Ziploc bag full of pre-rolled joints.

  Ethan vigorously shook his head and held up his hands. “Nah, she doesn’t smoke and can’t know that I do. I’ll meet you back over there with your friends in a minute.”

  They giggled and swatted playfully at his long hair. The two left, glancing back over their shoulders to make sure Ethan was watching. He turned to Skylar.

  “Hey, Sky, there are a couple of girls over there I wanna say hi to. You wait right here.”

  She immediately protested. “Ethan, no. You just said hello to them. Don’t leave me alone.”

  “Come on, Skylar. Don’t mess this up for me. You’ll be fine. Just stay right here on this rail and I’ll be back in a minute. You’ll be fine.”

  Skylar thought for a moment and glanced to where the girls were standing. It was about thirty feet around the curved, temporary barriers. “Okay, but please hurry. When you’re done, I wanna go back to our seats. Okay?”

  “Yeah, sure, Sky. That’s what we’ll do.” Ethan spun around and forced his way through the crowd as the tempo picked up onstage and the concertgoers increased their energy.

  Skylar dutifully remained behind, clutching the steel barrier with both hands, an eleven-year-old girl in a light blue track suit amidst thousands of drunk and high people dancing to the hip-hop music of Mr. and Mrs. Shawn Carter, also known as Jay-Z and Beyoncé.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Delta Flight 322

  The two men continued making obnoxious jokes about the relative safety of flying compared to jogging, riding a bike, driving in a car, and swimming the English Channel. None of it was coherent and only served to frighten the women next to Cort even more.

  One of the elderly women reached over and touched Cort’s arm. “Sir, what does he mean by that?”

  Cort, who was disgusted by the two men for many reasons, shook his head. “Ma’am, that’s just an old tired joke muttered by a man who’d be well served to keep his mouth shut. Delta is a good airline with an excellent safety record.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, of course. Listen, Delta operates about fifteen thousand flights a day.” Cort paused to do the math in order to make his point and soothe her flight jitters. “Think about it. That’s five and a half million flights a year. Granted, all airplanes are susceptible to accidents, but to my knowledge, Delta’s only had about a dozen in the last forty or fifty years. That’s a pretty good track record.”

  She pursed her lips and then allowed a slight smile. She appeared relieved. “Okay, thank you, young man. I’m sorry for bothering you. It’s just, well, my sister and I are returning home from burying a dear friend in Atlanta. She’s younger than the two of us, and it just seems odd that someone could pass before we did.”

  “Ma’am, I think it’s natural to think about our own mortality after burying a friend or loved one. I just left the bedside of my father-in-law and he’s not well. Sadly, I have to figure out how to tell my wife and his granddaughter the bad news. While most people are enjoying New Year’s festivities, I have to tell my wife her father is very ill and possibly near death.”

  Cort closed his eyes and pictured his father-in-law, who despite the sudden onset of his debilitating illness, remained one of Washington, DC’s top powerbrokers. At least, his words were still powerful.

  The woman patted Cort on the arm again, somehow relieving her burdens and also comforting his own nerves, a troubled passenger who happened to sit by her side. They exchanged knowing smiles and turned their attention toward the aisle.

  The attractive flight attendant approached the passengers and the exit row. She went through her FAA-mandated questioning of those passengers regarding their abilities to comply with exit-row requirements and their familiarity with the operation of the exit doors. After she asked each passenger whether they understood and were able to perform their duties, one of the men began flirting with her.

  “You know, if I have to open this door, you’ll be the first one I rescue.”

  “That’s very nice of you, sir,” she said as her face blushed.

  She began walking to the back of the aircraft, prompting the men to gaze at her backside.

  Cort, however, reached out for her arm and stopped her progress. “Miss, may I mention something to you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  He motioned for her to lean down as he lowered his voice. “Before I boarded, I saw those men in the bar drinking and talking loudly. I can’t say whether they’re drunk, but I am saying they might not be the best passengers suited to handle the exit-row duties.”

  Sometimes Cort came across as an attorney, which, of course, he was. He’d always been one to choose his words carefully, a trait he shared with his father-in-law.

  “Sir, thank you, but it is New Year’s Eve. Three-quarters of the passengers on this flight are most likely tipsy.”

  Cort shrugged and the flight attendant continued toward the rear of the aircraft, running her hands along the overhead bins to make sure they were adequately secured. She was probably right. The passengers appeared to be in high spirits. Perhaps it was the excitement of getting home, as he doubted anyone was traveling to Mobile to celebrate. Naturally, alcohol had been consumed, as was tradition on the last night of a year.

  Cort finally settled in for the trip. He’d logged many miles on airplanes, but this was his first New Year’s flight, and his last.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

&n
bsp; Metrorail System

  Washington, DC

  Hayden walked through a large crowd of people in the vicinity of Lafayette Park to enter the McPherson Square Station two blocks away. As she walked past them, she moved largely unnoticed despite her appearance. Most of the people were dressed in sweatpants or jeans, coupled with heavy jackets. They were equipped to endure the elements in order to stand up for their cause.

  She was standing on the platform, waiting for the blue line train to arrive. She studied the people who surrounded her. In stark contrast to the protestors aboveground, the awaiting passengers looked more like her. Her building was located near K Street, known worldwide for its numerous think tanks, lobbying firms, and political advocacy groups.

  Dressed in high-end trench coats and carrying expensive briefcases like she was, these people made a living from the influence they held with lawmakers and bureaucrats. By contrast, the protestors surrounding the White House felt it was their duty to influence the government through their voices.

  Certainly, quite a few of the protestors were astroturf, an ostensibly grassroots movement that was actually funded by the types of political interests and advocacy groups that inhabited K Street. That didn’t diminish their beliefs, but it did explain their ability to organize so quickly while lending the appearance they came together as a spontaneous uprising.

  She rode the blue line to the transportation hub of the DC Metrorail system—L’Enfant Plaza Station. Located more than one hundred feet belowground just a block south of the Smithsonian Museum, L’Enfant Plaza was packed with New Year’s revelers, protestors, and late-working professionals like Hayden.

  Inside the station, the noise level was high, and the cold wind that blew through the tunnels did nothing to tamp down their spirits. The mix of people in the station was a microcosm of what was happening around DC on this holiday weekend. Some conversations were consumed with politics, discussing the fate of the president. Others were slightly inebriated as they talked about their plans for the evening. Some, like Hayden, stood quietly waiting for the green line train’s arrival to carry them to their homes in Maryland or, in Hayden’s case, Congress Heights on the DC-Maryland border.

  Hayden was keenly aware, as always, to watch for signs of troublemakers. After she’d moved to DC from North Carolina, she’d learned to practice situational awareness. During her first month of working in the District, she learned that the city that held the leader of the free world was just as susceptible to crime as Chicago, Detroit, or Los Angeles. She’d witnessed purse snatchings, muggings, and even a knife attack in those early days. She vowed not to become a victim.

  The first thing she did was research how to be aware of her surroundings, but without becoming paranoid. She studied numerous websites on the subject and then applied it to her experiences riding the subway.

  She quickly learned that the vast majority of people were simply tuned out to the world around them. Most were engrossed in their smartphones, catching up on the local news or reviewing their social media accounts. Others were in a daydream state, focusing on a song or radio program rather than their surroundings. She often wondered if any of them remembered how they got from point A to point B.

  Some people were more responsible, practicing what she considered to be a relaxed state of awareness. She equated it to defensive driving, constantly scanning her mirrors or looking ahead for possible hazards. In the city, it could be as simple as looking both ways before entering a crosswalk as opposed to following the herd with their nose in their phone’s display.

  After her early experiences in the city, Hayden learned to adopt a more focused level of awareness, one which she equated to driving on an icy road back in Tennessee. Sometimes, if she felt her mind wandering while she was taking the subway to and from work, she’d remind herself by thinking—both hands on the wheel, an admonishment her father used often when teaching her to drive.

  Hayden considered her mental acuity while in public to be a form of managed paranoia. She practiced staying in the present when in vulnerable situations rather than thinking about the rigors that accompanied her career.

  Managed paranoia. Both hands on the wheel.

  Hayden smiled to herself as she stepped onto the train for her quick, ten-minute ride to Congress Heights and home for a quiet evening with Prowler.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Delta Flight 322

  “Ladies and gentlemen, from the flight deck, this is Captain Bowen. I’d like to thank you for joining us on this short flight to Mobile this evening. We’ve received an updated weather report from our folks on the ground, who’ve advised us that we’ll be experiencing a little boost from those cold, northerly winds, which will place us in Mobile a few minutes early. However, the turbulence and shortened flight time requires me to suspend cabin service for the safety of our flight attendants. I know that you have a choice of airlines when you fly, and on behalf of Delta, let me say thank you, as well as wish you a happy New Year.”

  The men seated in the exit row in front of Cort moaned and lamented to one another how they were being prevented from keeping their buzz going with another drink. After some complaining back and forth, they finally quietened down, and within a few minutes, one of them was snoring loudly.

  Cort checked his watch and made the adjustment from Eastern to Central time. Their scheduled arrival was 10:47 local time, an hour earlier than DC time.

  The aircraft shook and wobbled slightly as a gust of wind grabbed the wings. Cort instinctively leaned toward the porthole window to look outside. Although it was pitch black, when something happens on an aircraft as a result of turbulence, most passengers believe they can catch a glimpse of the culprit, giving them a sense of relief that nothing further is going to occur.

  Cort saw darkness, but a hint of frosty ice forming on the window. His dad used to say bad weather always looks worse through a window. Growing up on the Gulf Coast, the bad weather didn’t ordinarily resemble ice on glass, but rather, pummeling rain and high winds brought by hurricanes. This past hurricane season had come in like a lamb and left like one as well, leaving many dumbfounded. For the second year in a row, a major hurricane had not made landfall in the United States.

  Cort sighed as he considered that a storm of a different kind was coming. One that had been brewing for many years and was truly giving credence to the saying that history often repeats itself.

  His melancholy mood carried him right back to Washington and the visit with his father-in-law. George Trowbridge came from a long line of New Haven, Connecticut, aristocrats dating to the early 1800s. The Trowbridge name was synonymous with shipping and the founding of the Wisconsin Territory before it achieved statehood.

  Like many families, the Trowbridges had risen and fallen over the centuries as they made a living in America. George was a self-made man, parlaying his connections in New Haven with the Bush family into a career in politics, although not in public service. George Trowbridge had learned that true power was wielded with money, which bought influence, and that in turn provided him power.

  Nothing happened on K Street—the major thoroughfare in Washington known for its lobbyists, political think tanks, and public advocacy groups—without Trowbridge’s knowledge. Over many decades in Washington, Trowbridge established connections within, and outside of, government. Without a doubt, he had a pulse on everything that was happening in Washington, and was rarely surprised by an outcome.

  Trowbridge was a Yale graduate, having attended undergraduate there with his friend, former President George W. Bush. While President Bush was floundering with a 2.35 grade point average, so low that the Texas School of Law rejected his application, Trowbridge excelled in his studies and rose to the top of his class. Over the next five decades, he epitomized the movers and shakers of Washington, establishing contacts on both sides of the aisle to benefit his clients.

  Now he was withering way, suffering from failing kidneys, and forced to remain at home near his dialysis machin
e. His mind, however, was sharp. And while he was no longer an imposing, physical force, like he once was, George Trowbridge was still dialed into the secrets of K Street, Capitol Hill, and the White House.

  Cort was a senior at Yale when he met Meredith Trowbridge. She was a stunningly beautiful girl, who, as a freshman, set the male population abuzz when she arrived that fall. She was not necessarily at Yale because of her desire to follow in her father’s footsteps. She had little interest in politics and didn’t intend to pursue a postgraduate degree. Her goals were to obtain an education degree and pursue her passion of teaching. If a nice young man came along during the process, then all the better.

  Cort met Meredith at a fraternity event following an early-season basketball game, and the two hit it off immediately. They began dating and he eventually was offered the opportunity to meet her parents.

  For a small-town Alabama kid, it would’ve been easy for Cort to be intimidated by his first visit to the Trowbridge home. An imposing house overlooking Long Island Sound, the Trowbridge home represented years of successes achieved in Washington by Meredith’s father.

  At first, his interaction with her parents was somewhat cold. She was a freshman, and Cort was a senior and four years older than she was. However, after a private conversation with her father, Cort was accepted with open arms. As it turned out, he and his would-be father-in-law had a lot more in common than one might surmise at first glance.

  It was a commonality that sealed his fate.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Delta Flight 322

  After that fateful dinner party, Cort’s life was never the same, nor did it belong to him. Prior to meeting George Trowbridge, he planned on returning to Mobile and getting a job. He was an above-average basketball player, but on an Ivy League team like Yale, he was never bound for the NBA. Cort had no interest in politics, unlike the vast majority of students at the university.