“Give me what you got on the ‘he.’”

Odessa pulled over for another police cruiser, which went blasting past, going the opposite direction they were.

“Plane is reg’d to the CEO of Stow-Away Corporation. That’s a rental storage facility company, those big, boxy orange buildings. Suspected stolen, though. We have one dead on the ground at Teterboro, an airport worker. Hold on, Walt—”

The audio went muffled as Davey put his hand over the microphone, calling out to another agent nearby. Odessa and Leppo looked at each other.

“Stow-Away,” she said, feeling a dark ping in her chest.

Leppo nodded. “Not good.”

The CEO of Stow-Away, a man named Isaac Meerson, was a major donor to the New Jersey Republican Party…and a close friend of the governor of New Jersey, and Cary Peters.

“Can’t be,” said Leppo.

“What can’t be?” said Davey, coming back on the line.

“Stow-Away is getting pulled into the Peters corruption case Hardwicke and I have been working. Any description of the hijacker?”

“The pilot? No. I’ll check.”

Odessa was at a red light. The wipers worked frantically, making the traffic light look like it was flashing. “What should we do?”

“I don’t know,” said Leppo. “Can’t be related to us. Right?”

“Peters has been depressed and basically off the grid,” said Odessa. “There was that thing about the wife in the paper yesterday—”

“Her filing for divorce? No surprise there, though.”

“No,” said Odessa. “Still…”

Odessa knew Leppo well enough to sense that he was keying in on Peters now. “Stealing a plane? That’s way outside his profile.”

“He had taken flying lessons,” she said. “Remember? Stopped short of getting his license due to anxiety attacks. That was all on his background.”

Leppo nodded. He didn’t know what to do. He said, “Shit shit shit shit shit.”

Davey’s voice came back again. “Okay, I’ve got nothing on the hijacker yet.”

“Forget about that, Davey,” said Leppo. “What’s the plane’s last known position?”

“Northwest from Newark,” he said. “Over Glen Ridge. That’s the latest I got. Hey, Walt, I gotta go—”

“Go, yeah,” said Leppo, killing the call.

“Heading toward Montclair,” said Odessa. It was all happening so fast. “Do you think…?”

Leppo finished her thought. “He would crash an airplane into his own house?”

Odessa said, “It’s not going to be his house for very long. His wife’s house.”

Leppo nodded. It was decided. “Light it up.”

Odessa reached under the center console, flipping the switch that activated the Impala’s grille lights, blue and red, front and rear. She punched the gas and started weaving through traffic toward the nearby town of Montclair.

The aerial distraction caused multiple automobile accidents on the streets below, the worst being a seven-car pileup on the Garden State Parkway that snarled northbound traffic in a hopeless gridlock.

After a brief rise in altitude over East Orange, the airplane banked west and dipped below radar yet again. The aircraft’s left wing clipped a treetop over Nishuane Park, but the pilot leveled out the plane and flew on. Observers theorized that the pilot was looking for a place to land, or perhaps a familiar landmark to use for navigation.