Richard Doetsch - The 13th Hour

With the unexpected delay, she’d just have to do her usual run for the gate, but she’d still make her flight. She looked at the teddy bear wrapping paper sticking out of the bag and smiled, Nick was going to be so surprised.

“So, I understand there is some concern on the matter of the children’s trusts,” Julia said out loud as she leaned back in her car seat. “Well, let’s see what we can do to protect their future.”

BOB SHANNON WALKED out of the bagel store, his bottle of Gatorade already half gone. He ate his bagel as fast as he could, trying to finish it before he got into the Mustang. He hated crumbs, and the poppy seed bagel had a tendency to make its presence felt weeks after it had been eaten, as the seeds permeated every nook and cranny.

With his last bite, he arrived at his car. Brushing himself off, he hopped in just as his cell phone vibrated with an incoming text message.

He looked at his phone, not recognizing the number. Another message came in, and then another, and another. He paged through his phone and found the incoming messages to actually be five pictures. He clicked on the first one but was interrupted by an incoming call from the same number.

“Detective Shannon,” he said as he answered.

“Did you look at the pictures yet?” the caller asked.

“Who is this?”

“I’m at the private air terminal at Westchester Airport. I’m driving a blue Audi. And detective, trust no one, especially your partner.”

The line went dead.

Shannon stared at his phone as if it was somehow pulling a prank on him. He looked again at the number but didn’t recognize it, so he pulled up the first picture.

It was a shot of a green Taurus. Dance’s piece of junk. Shannon at first hadn’t understood why he drove it. Though it had the souped-up 350 V-8 police engine, it still looked like a banged-up vehicle that someone had left at the side of the road. But as Shannon learned, Dance spent a good deal of time down county and in the Bronx, moonlighting in less-than-legal side jobs, and had chosen a car that would never be noticed, that would never call attention to itself, as a black Shelby Cobra Mustang would.

Shannon thumbed through to the next picture. It was from the rear of Dance’s car, the trunk sitting wide open. Shannon chuckled, he was being goofed on. The pictures looked like those various-angle photos you saw of used cars in the back of magazines, but he could never imagine who would buy Dance’s car.

But as he clicked on the third picture, he realized this was no game. It was a much closer shot of Dance’s trunk, and it was filled with what looked like treasure. Swords of gold, bejeweled daggers, several ornate guns, and sitting among it all was a black velvet bag, its mouth wide open, the diamonds inside sparkling in the sunlight.

Shannon grew suddenly serious. If this was a joke, someone had gone too far. But as he clicked to the next picture on his phone he knew that the situation went much farther.

The rear door on the right side hung open. The passenger was belted in, sitting in a pool of blood that seemed to cover his entire torso. Shannon looked closer but could not make out the face. But no matter, he knew he was looking at a corpse, he was looking at a murder scene.

He finally clicked to the final shot, a shot that sent his mind spinning, a shot that nearly seized his heart. It was a much closer image, this time through the left rear passenger door of the Taurus. The face could be seen plain as day. It was pale, almost blue from bleeding out. The mouth hung open, slack-jawed. The eyes were lifeless, dry, and without any sign of a soul.

Shannon looked up, suddenly feeling a rush of paranoia such as he had never known. He looked back down at his cell phone, thinking he might have been seeing things.

But there was no doubt, Bob Shannon was looking at himself.

NICK SAT IN his car at the private air terminal waiting for Shannon. He couldn’t afford to waste time explaining things again, so he had formulated the perfect device to get the detective’s attention.

He had run back to the Taurus before his last time shift, opened the door on Shannon’s side, reached in, and grabbed the cell phone from the detective’s waist. He read Shannon’s number, entered it into his own phone, and threw Shannon’s back in the car. He quickly circled Dance’s car, taking the five pictures he’d just sent, building them in intensity as he went, creating an invitation that Shannon would never refuse.

On the seat beside him was the Colt Peacemaker he had plucked from the bushes, its chambers emptied of the spent silver bullets. It was the same gun he had stared at nearly twelve hours ago in the interrogation room, the pistol that Dance had shot Julia with and had planted in the trunk of his car to frame him for her murder. It had become a symbol of death and greed. But now, the etchings upon its barrel and stock became prophetically personal, reflecting Nick’s own quest for justice: The gate that leads to damnation is wide-To hell you shall be gathered together-Yet ye bring wrath-Darkness which may be felt-Whoever offers violence to you, offer you the like violence to him.

The whining roar of an American Air jet shook Nick’s car like sustained thunder as it leaped off the tarmac into the crystalline blue sky. Planes and jets took off and landed with regular frequency, without incident, as the aviation business went about its morning routine.

Nick stared out through his windshield across the large expanse of tarmac at the central hub of Westchester Airport’s main terminal where six medium-sized passenger jets took on travelers to whisk them out to all parts of the country. On the outermost bay was a white AS 300, its red and blue circular logo prominently displayed. The North East Air jet sat quietly being fueled and prepped for flight: food and drink carts were replenished, aisles were vacuumed, fresh pillows and blankets brought on in preparation for the boarding that would commence in an hour’s time. It received the temporary designation of Flight 502 with a one-hour flight time to Logan International Airport in Boston. It was the plane that would carry Julia aloft, carry so many unsuspecting passengers only two miles before it fell from the sky, plunging them all to their death in a tangled heap of flame.

Nick had fought so hard to stop the robbery, to save Julia, he’d neglected to think about the 212 on the plane who died. But now, as impossible at it seemed, Julia was among them.

It took ten hours to save Julia from her imminent death, to remove her killer from the world. Yet despite all of his effort, he had delivered her right back to the first death she had avoided, the first death she was saved from. Through his missteps he had placed her on the plane with no excuse to get off, through his poorly executed moves she had been left to experience the most horrible of deaths, a death he had feared all his life. He couldn’t imagine what had gone through her head as they crashed in midair and tumbled out of the sky.

Nick realized all moments, every tick of the watch led to now. Led to stopping the plane crash to save not only Julia but the 212 others who had needlessly died.

And though he had initially thought it was simple to stop the tumbling domino of the robbery in order for Julia to live, he knew now that the impact of his actions could have far worse results.

He wasn’t about to rely on simply taking the key for Dreyfus’s plane, or on just leaving a message for Julia to not get on Flight 502. He couldn’t call the airline or the FAA, explaining he had a premonition. He had considered an anonymous bomb threat but dismissed the idea, knowing he had to do more than prevent the plane crash in order to keep Julia alive. He also had to keep the robbery from ever happening.