Benton loops the strap of my briefcase over his shoulder, pretending he didn’t hear anything we just said. He follows me as I duck through the black fabric flap, passing from glaring brightness to the pitch dark. For an instant I can’t see. But the great hot outdoors is a pleasant relief, and I fill my lungs with air that’s not as stifling and doesn’t stink.

“How are you feeling? Are you okay to head out? Tell me the truth,” Benton says, and maybe it’s my muddled condition but I feel a vibration.

“As long as I don’t jog.” I detect the unmistakable thud-thud.

“Slow and easy please,” he looks at me as my attention is pulled toward the river.

The whomp-whomp-whomp reverberates in my bones, percussing in my organs. I scan around us as mechanical turbulence bounces off buildings and bridges, making it difficult to pinpoint the location of what sounds big and scary.

I’m fairly certain it’s the same helicopter we’ve been hearing or another one like it, and I notice a bright white light in the distant dark to the northeast, a searchlight probing, headed toward us. We stop walking to watch the blazing finger pick its way along the MIT and Harvard campuses.

It paints over the ruffled water, slashing through thick treetops and over the fitness path on this side of the river.

CHAPTER 34

THE BELL 429 THUNDERS in low and slow, whirling and churning, lit up and strobing at an altitude of maybe four hundred feet and a speed of sixty knots. Rotor wash agitates the canopies of trees, shaking them violently, and it’s a good thing we’ve collected the evidence. I wouldn’t be happy if this thing had roared in before the tent was up.

“I hope it doesn’t decide to hover here,” I raise my voice to Benton as if he has something to do with the deafening spectacle, and maybe he does.

The twin-engine bird roars past in a fierce wind, and I recognize the gun platforms on the skids, the fifty-million-candlepower NightSun on the belly, the rescue hoist, the Forward-Looking Infrared (FLIR) camera.

The silhouette of the twin-engine warship brings to mind a monster tadpole, a carnivorous one, and I notice the doors haven’t been removed or opened. Typically they would be if this were a tactical operation or a search-and-rescue mission, and that hints the objective is surveillance. But as far as I’m concerned, mostly what I’m seeing is for show.

“One of yours?” I ask Benton, our necks craned, looking up. “Because it’s not Boston, the state police or Med Flight. It’s not the Army, Marines, Navy or Coast Guard. And it’s certainly not Lucy even though she changed into a flight suit a few hours ago. That’s definitely not her helicopter,” I add.