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sky, blotting out the sun, simultaneously breaking off at the feet of the towers and racing down the streets like a living force.
    He’d frozen then, too, his feet becoming part of the ground, as hundreds of spectators started toward him, trying to escape the carnage. Then he’d been thrown from his stupor by the stampede, and nearly trampled a few moments later.
    Now he came out of the daze himself, as the camera in his mind turned to Lauren’s crying at her mother’s funeral. Lauren at five. Lauren at nine, as she tried to comprehend. At thirteen, as she began asking questions about the mother she was losing all over again in her head. “I can’t remember her, Dad. It’s like a photo from an old newspaper; she just keeps fading and fading.”
    As the floor shook, Nick spread his feet farther apart to maintain his balance. He needed to get the hell out of the courthouse—because Lauren couldn’t lose another parent.
    Swiftly, Nick turned, his eyes searching for Feroz Saeed Alivi like a heat-seeking missile. In the chaos he couldn’t see him. Was Alivi behind this? Had the bastard made good on his threats? Were the poems he wrote in prison a coded call to a sleeper cell here in the city to unleash hell on the first day of his trial?
    In his ears Nick heard random shrieks.
    â€œIt’s a bomb!”
    â€œWe’re under attack!”
    â€œA plane hit the courthouse!”
    Nick turned and saw the courtroom spectators battling each other with stiff arms and sharp elbows as they tried to squeeze through the tall mahogany double doors all at once. The court officers clawed at the edges of the human heap, but were outnumbered and helpless to control the crowd.
    Nick spun, searching for another exit. The jurors were following the judge’s clerk into chambers. He envisaged the chambers and immediately knew his jury was doomed; in the judge’s chambers there was nothing to duck under and there was no way out.
    He swung his head back in the direction of the defense table. No sign of Alivi, but Kermit Jansing was following a pair of U.S. marshals into the lockup. As a prosecutor Nick had never been back there, but he was sure there was no easy way out. The worst of the worst stepped through those doors almost daily; none, to his knowledge, had ever escaped.
    The shaking continued. Windows suddenly shattered and the walls around him began to crack and crumble. A few feet away a chandelier crashed to the floor, and Nick’s mind turned again to the threats Alivi had made before his trial.
    Could they have struck again? he thought.
    Right now it didn’t matter. Regardless of the cause, Nick needed to make it out of the courthouse alive, for his daughter.
    The tremor continually worsened and finally took Nick to the floor. As he rose, he spotted the judge’s black robe swooshing toward him.
    â€œ Your Honor ,” he cried, “ this way! ”
    He grabbed her arm and led her straight toward the throng trying to get through the tall mahogany double doors.
    â€œWe’re going to be trapped ,” the judge shouted, trying to pull away from him.
    Nick tightened his grip on her wrist to the point where he could feel bone. “It’s the only way out,” he said. “You have to trust me.”
    It was a surreal moment; Nick had spent his entire adult life trying to persuade federal judges to trust him. Never before, though, was so much riding on one judge’s faith in him.
    In front of them, the dense pile looked like crazed players in a lawless rugby match. Nick saw no openings, at least not at first. Then his gaze lifted. The doors to the courtroom were at least fourteen feet high. Above the top of the throng he could see the white marble wall in the hallway.
    Nick quickened his pace to gather steam, dragging the judge along with him. As they neared the human obstruction, he turned his head and shouted “ Up ” into Justice Gaydos’s