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followed them inside. She wrapped her arms around him.
    “It’s, uh, no problem,” he said, flustered. “Bud,” he said, awkwardly extending a hand. “Bud Hooper.”
    “Alex.”
    “Are you okay?” asked Clark.
    She touched her ear, half-expecting to find it dangling from a thin strip of skin. It was wet with blood, but otherwise seemed intact. “Yeah, I’m fine.” So far, she said. But now, they were trapped inside Grand Central Terminal. Whatever was going on, she had a feeling it was just beginning.

9:01 a.m.
    Lisa Frieze pounded the pavement in her uncomfortable dress flats. She hit redial on her phone for the fourth time as she wove around a yellow cab on Park Avenue. Traffic was at a standstill and angry drivers leaned on their horns. She heard the plastic click of the receiver being picked up off its cradle.
    “Chambers.”
    “This is Frieze.” She stayed on the street, avoiding the hordes that were plugging up the sidewalks.
    “Frieze who?” came the brusque response, then, before she had time to respond, “The rookie. Right. Take it you’ve heard the news.”
    “I just caught wind of it on the radio, sir,” she said, reaching the small crowd that had gathered around the Waldorf, drawn by the arrival of the motorcade. She tried to plunge in through the outer layer and failed. “I need to know if there’s something I should be doing. I’ve studied the emergency response procedures, I can—”
    “Are you at the hotel yet?”
    “I’m right outside.” A woman in a green jogging suit elbowed her, nearly knocking the phone from her hand. Frieze elbowed her back but couldn’t budge the mass of people blocking her way.
    “Get me the report I asked for,” he said. “And stay out of everyone’s way. I can’t spare anyone to hold your hand today.”
    “Sir, I’ve got experience with forensic—” He hung up before she could finish. Adding to her frustration was the solid wall of bystanders that stood before her.
    “FBI!” She yelled out. “Out of my way!”
    The crowd parted, finally, and she pushed through to the police cordon. A young man in aviators wearing the black uniform of the NYPD and holding a Styrofoam cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee stepped forward to meet her.
    “Special Agent Lisa Frieze,” she said, flashing her badge. “I need to get inside.”
    “I can let you through, but the hotel’s locked down,” he said, lifting and pulling the steel barrier one-handed with a grunt, opening a crack just wide enough so she could pass. “No one’s going in or out. There was a bomb, you know. At Penn Station.”
    “Yeah, I heard.”
    “Emergency procedures,” he said and sipped his coffee. “To protect the president of Iran. Although if you ask me, I don’t know why we’re trying to protect the bastard, anyway.”
    “I didn’t,” she said.
    “Didn’t what?”
    “Ask you. I just need to get inside.”
    “You can try,” he said, shrugging.
    She walked up to one of the glass double doors to the Waldorf lobby and knocked on the glass, holding up her badge. A man in a suit who was standing guard, blond and bony-faced, either Secret Service or Diplomatic Security, mouthed locked down. She raised her badge higher and raised her eyebrows, but he just shook his head.
    She turned back and looked up and down Park, running her fingers through her drawn-back hair. She pulled out her cell phone and dialed. No signal.
    Great.
    “Looks like you and I are late to the party.”
    She wheeled about to find the man who’d spoken. He was tall and wiry with a strong chin and nose, in khakis and a blue button-down with rolled up sleeves despite the cold. Handsome, in a sort of professorial way. But he was no professor. The faint scars on the back of his hand pegged him as a man of action. And if he was on this side of the police barriers, he was no mere civilian.
    “Peter Conley,” he said, holding up his ID. “State Department.”
    “FBI. Agent Frieze. Lisa.” She held out her hand