The Realtor had told them that the tiny space off the master bedroom suite originally was supposed to have been a nursery for the people who had built the place, but the wife had miscarried, so they’d just left it empty.

Unforeseen botched circumstances, Reyland thought, passing a hand back and forth soothingly over the shaved-smooth skin of his head.

He placed his BlackBerry back down on the top of the gun safe he’d just taken it out of.

My, oh, my, can I empathize.

He shifted his weight on his wife’s tiny vanity chair he’d brought in from the bathroom. He was still in the suit and overcoat he was wearing when he’d gotten out of the car from the airport two hours before.

He’d been in London waiting to hear word from his boss when he’d gotten the report about his plane falling completely out of contact. The eight-and-a-half sleepless hours he’d just spent on the British Airways flight back to DC had felt like the most useless of his entire life.

He refused to even consider all the worst-case scenarios. At least not yet. Even for him, some things were just too terrible to contemplate.

He had gone immediately from Reagan International downtown to his office and called everyone he could. Twice. They had done some projections, but there were too many factors. The wind, the orientation of the instruments. It was a needle in a haystack even with the satellites.

Reyland palmed at his head like LeBron on a mid-dunk basketball.

Now he was home to get some sleep.

Yeah, right, he thought as the phone suddenly rang.

He felt his heart thump like a kick drum as he looked at the screen.

It was his right-hand man, Emerson.

Here we go, Reyland thought, closing his eyes as it rang again. In his mind, he pictured a coin flipping.

Heads, you live. Tails, you die.

He forced himself to take a very deliberate breath before he thumbed down the accept button.

“Where?” Reyland said.

“The ocean. Atlantic Ocean, northwest of the Bahamas.”

“The Bahamas! What?” Reyland said as he let out a breath. “How the hell did it get there?”

“It must have happened before the second turn in the flight plan,” Emerson said. “They never made the turn, and it just kept going till the gas ran out.”

“What a damn disaster! Is he alive?”

“No. It got ripped up on impact. Tore in two. Dunning is dead. All of them are dead. No survivors, just like they said.”

Reyland pondered that for a long silent beat. His mentor, the great Dunning, was gone. Just like that. It was hard to wrap his mind around. He put it aside.

“How far out from land?” he said.

“Ten, fifteen miles offshore of… Let’s see… Little Abaco. It landed underwater on a coral shelf.”

“Who called it in? Civilian?”

“No. The coast guard found it. A drug-interdiction cutter out of Miami Beach. They spotted the wreckage with their radar. Thought it was a drug boat.”