Morning came, and the worst of the storm had passed.

They were alive.

At least, Neal thought they were. They'd bumped and fallen against each other so many times that he figured his previous bruises, courtesy of Donnelly's men, probably had bruises of their own. But being dead couldn't possibly be this painful, so yeah, he was probably alive.

He looked over to where Sara was curled up, holding tight to a strap on the side of the raft. She'd suffered her own bruises at the hands of their captors, but the shiner around her left eye was new…

Courtesy of his elbow.

He shifted toward her, brushing lightly over the bruise. "Hey, it's morning," he said, pointing at the weak sunlight filtering in.

She turned slightly toward him, a wan smile on her face. "We made it?"

"Made it through the night anyway. How bad's the eye?"

She reached up, taking his fingers in hers. "Not that bad."

"I am so sorry."

"Hey, compared to getting tossed out into that ocean, I'm not complaining."

Neal pulled back and got to his knees, reaching across to the opening. When he came back, he had a chunk of seaweed in his hand. "Looks like we got room service."

Sara wrinkled her nose as she sat up. "I distinctly recall ordering eggs benedict."

"We'll file a complaint with management later."

She pushed against the side of the raft as she sat up, and frowned. "Are we losing air?"

"I think we might have a small leak. Hopefully these swells will go down a little, and then I'll try to find it."

Peter stared at the reports in front of him, trying to see how all of the pieces could come together.

Diana had managed to get a copy of the autopsy report on Barry Koontz. The official cause of death was an overdose of a heavy duty barbiturate. But other clues – like the ligature marks on the man's wrists and ankles – led the coroner to classify the death as a homicide.

Like maybe someone had been trying to get information from him…

A special investigator from the Department of Justice had been appointed to look into Koontz's death; given his connection to the police department inquiry, the case was not given to the NYPD. Peter had asked Hughes to file an official request for the file.

Jones had had some luck with his breakfast coffee date. The prosecutor had confirmed, off the record, that Koontz was providing testimony against Donnelly. The records were sealed, and Peter had no illusion that their request for a copy would come through quickly. The legal department had requested an expedited hearing, but there was no word yet.

Fortunately, the old law school friend had been a very close friend – who happened to have some personal notes not covered by the seal order. She'd be e-mailing them to Jones this morning.

They still had no real proof of anything, but there were too many clues to ignore. Peter re-tasked some agents to review the traffic footage again, looking for vehicles with police license plates. If this really was connected to the investigation into Donnelly, chances were he used some of his friends from the police force to do the dirty work. And he had quite a network, according to the files they had from Neal's phone.

It was hard to follow some of their leads, just because they didn't know who within the police force could be approached. But one person Peter did trust was Dave Shattuck, a friend of many years. Dave had agreed to come to the federal building, and was due any time now. Peter intended to lay everything out for his friend, and see if he had any suggestions.

Peter sighed, gathered a few notes, and got to his feet. He probably had time to brief Hughes before Shattuck got there. The senior agent was still considering bringing in Missing Persons, now that they were approaching the forty-eight hour mark of having no contact with Neal or Sara. The extra personnel might be helpful…

As long as Hughes didn't try to put the other division in charge.

By late morning, most of the clouds had gone away, the wind had died down, and the ocean surface retreated to gentle swells, instead of mountains of water. They were able to find the small leak in the raft and repair it.

Sara just sat back and enjoyed the view as Neal used the hand pump from the repair kit to replace the lost air. Shirtless, his muscles rippled with each movement.

When he caught her looking at him, she just smiled.

They replenished their drinkable water, trying not to think about how few syrupy desalinization packets were left. Of course, if another storm like the previous night's hit, the odds weren't good that their little raft would survive anyway.

They studiously avoided talking about the possible fate of dying at sea, never to be found.

With the sun out again, they put the canopy down for a while to let everything inside dry out. It also gave them an unobstructed view of the seemingly endless ocean as they scanned with the binoculars.

And they watched as something with an extremely large dorsal fin circled them…

The search of the traffic tapes found three vehicles with police plates around the Chantilly café on Monday around noon. The footage from near the park in Harlem, around the time that Neal's anklet showed him arriving there, showed five vehicles.

Cross-referencing led them to two vehicles – a cargo van and a SUV.

Both vehicles were assigned to One Police Plaza as a home base. That was both good and bad, Peter decided. It was good, because it was more circumstantial evidence that the Donnelly files were the reason that a certain FBI consultant and an insurance investigator were missing. But it was bad because one couldn't just march into police headquarters and demand to see the vehicle logs to find out who might have signed the van and the SUV out. Dave Shattuck was trying to work some quiet side angles to get the information, but they had nothing yet.

Shattuck had, however, been able to access a database that listed the GPS identification numbers for all of the department's vehicles. The data they sent was encrypted, readable only by a police application, but Jones and the tech team were sure they could crack that. They were working on it now.

Jones' prosecutor friend had come through with the notes she promised. There were a lot of names from the testimony Koontz had given. Blake and Westley were running background checks on everyone on the list, plus some other names Shattuck had provided to try and hide the real targets of the investigation. Franklin was digging into the financials to see who might be living above a patrol officer or detective salary.

Diana was briefing in the team from Missing Persons. Neal would probably appreciate the irony that it was Kimberly Rice who was heading the group. That was, if they found him.

No, when they found him…

At first, he was sure it was a figment of his imagination.

Neal lowered the binoculars, rubbed his eyes, and then raised the field glass again…

It was still there. Too far away to make out any detail, but definitely something that was altering the otherwise flat horizon.

Could they really have been lucky enough to have been storm-tossed into a shipping lane?

"Hey!" He held out the binoculars toward Sara, pointing with his other hand. "Look out there and tell me if you see something."

She took the binoculars, looked, dropped her hands for a moment, then raised them to look again. "Is that a ship?"

"I think it might be."

"Do you think it'll come close enough to see us?"

"I can't tell yet, it's too far away. But we'll watch it. We've got paddles, flares, and that short-range emergency beacon."

"They have to see us," Sara whispered. "We have to make sure."

He put his hands on her arms, leaned against her shoulder, and shared her hope.

They finally had something.

After two days of tantalizing hints, but nothing they could actually do something with, there was finally a concrete lead to follow.

The police van that had shown up in both the West Village and at the park in Harlem had continued on to the river. And that's where they caught a break. Two traffic cameras from near the Madison Avenue bridge caught grainy images of men carrying bundles down to a boat – bundles that looked suspiciously human-like.

The tech guys were trying to clean up the video, but Peter's gut already knew – they were looking at Neal and Sara being loaded onto a boat in the Harlem River. Neither of them appeared to be struggling at all, which led to the conclusion that they were at least unconscious, if not…

Dead.

No, he couldn't let his thoughts go there. Until they had evidence to the contrary, Neal and Sara were hostages – live hostages.

Even with Dave Shattuck's connections, they didn't have names yet for who had checked the van out on Monday; hopefully the tech lab would have some luck getting the faces clearer. In the meantime, they had the GPS tracking information. He and Dave were going to follow the path, down to the Harlem River, and then the locations the van had been to afterward. While they were doing that, he hoped the search warrant for the van came through, because they knew where it was now, hidden away in a police garage in Yonkers.

That left Diana and Jones to lead the team here, something they were both eminently qualified to do. They would continue to track down the names that were identified as key suspects, either from the prosecutor's notes or from the financial records.

Rice had gotten a court order to check Sara's apartment. The renovations she had contracted when she moved into the new place were not yet finished, so they found a lot of boxes still packed and sealed. It would be a long haul for them, looking for anything helpful. In addition, Sterling Bosch had insisted on having a representative there, in case any sensitive company information was discovered.

Peter didn't envy Rice having to deal with that.

So, they still didn't have much, but they had something. He shrugged on his suit coat and headed for the conference room to corral Shattuck.

Time to get on the road.

They paddled frantically in the late afternoon light, trying to close some distance between them and what Neal was now sure was a freighter. His concern was that there was still too much light to be sure that a flare would be seen. And they didn't know what the effective distance was on the emergency beacon.

The ship was still east of them, so he didn't want to waste a flare just yet. They'd get as close as possible before trying that. But he wouldn't let it pass them to the west without firing a flare. It was far more likely that there would be lookouts facing forward than to the rear.

"Time to switch," he said, drawing in a deep breath after just those three words. They were changing sides every so often, hoping that the different positions would let them keep paddling a little longer.

Sara just nodded and moved in front of him to the other side. As he moved, Neal grabbed the emergency beacon and started it pinging. This was the only ship they had seen in almost two days.

It might be their only chance.

He also grabbed two of the flares, placing them close to his knees as he started to paddle again. They'd be handy, when it was time.

Time…

In reality, time had little meaning just then. There was only the constant paddling, the burn in his muscles as he forced himself to keep working.

Finally, he set the paddle aside, trying to ignore the bloody handprints he left behind. It was difficult to judge distances, with no landmarks to use as a reference. But they seemed to be nearly opposite the freighter, and the big ship had shown no sign of slowing or changing course in response to the beacon.

He picked up one of the flares, removed the safety cover, and fired it.

It rose into the air, burning and sputtering, flying high over their heads. It rose higher, higher…

Neal found that he was holding his breath by the time the flare reached the zenith of its trajectory and burned brightest. One look over at Sara showed that she, too, had stopped paddling and was watching the sputtering flare.

As the light at last sputtered and died, Neal finally looked back to the freighter.

Was it just his imagination, or was the freighter slowing, turning slightly…

He crawled over to Sara, one weary arm across her shoulders, and they watched.

Hands on his hips, a tight scowl on his face, Peter surveyed the scene. Neal always called it Peter's uptight agent pose…

With a conscious effort he unclenched his hands and loosened his jaw. After more than two days, there wasn't much to find down by the river – but the evidence recovery team was coming anyway, just in case. They were also waiting for some additional agents to arrive to start canvassing the area for any witnesses who might have seen something out of the ordinary on Monday afternoon.

He turned as Shattuck approached. "Anything?"

The police captain nodded, the late afternoon sun making his glasses sparkle. "Judge Compton is due out of court within the next half hour. My guys are there with the search warrant request. We should know soon if we can go after the van."

Peter forced himself to nod, calmly. "As soon as we get some more people here to do the canvas, you and I can follow the rest of the van's track for Monday, see if it leads us anywhere."

"Any update on your teams? Some of these businesses are going to be closing soon."

Peter started to reply, then looked over Shattuck's shoulder. "They're here now."