Criss Cross

Chapter 54

I grabbed a hooded jacket and went out on the front porch. It was in the low sixties, as beautiful a March evening as I’d ever seen, with air that smelled like flowers.

But my heart felt more than a little heavy when I sat in Nana’s porch swing.

Bree came out and sat beside me.

“We never know, do we?” she said.

“What’s that?”

“What twist or turn will be thrown our way.”

“Jannie?”

“Yes. She’s still digesting. You okay?”

“I’m fine with it.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Sampson,” I said, and I told her all about it.

When I finished, Bree said, “He was right. And he was right to tell you.”

“I know, and I feel lousy now... but in the heat of the moment, I did what I thought was right.”

She leaned over and put her arm around my shoulders. “You took action to move toward danger. That’s more than ninety-nine percent of the population would have done.”

“It was worse than just moving in the wrong direction, Bree.”

“No, it wasn’t. Unless you intentionally dragged Sampson into a situation that could have cost him his job?”

“No.”

“There, then,” Bree said, and she hugged me tight. “Briefly lost at sea. No shipwreck. A little navigation issue. That is all.”

I smiled. “My life as a voyage?”

She laughed and kissed me on the cheek. “Something like that.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I kissed her back.

“For what?”

“Believing in me.”

“Always and forever, Alex Cross.”

I felt a whole lot better about me and Bree, but me and Sampson were still off. That conflict must have shown on my face because Bree said, “You need to see John.”

“You are a perceptive thing, aren’t you?”

“It rubbed off from someone I know.”

“I’m going to drive over and knock on his door. Make this right.”

Bree patted me on the chest and said, “If it will help you sleep.”

“It will.”

“Go on, then,” she said. “I’ll still be up.”

I got in the car, flipped on the headlights of our old Mercedes, and pulled out onto Fifth.

A headlight beam slashed across my rearview mirror. I glanced back and noticed that a small black SUV had pulled out half a block behind me.

I drove to Sampson’s home, a route I could do blindfolded, or at least without consciously thinking about it, which was good because my mind was on other things that night.

I had the screenshot of M’s last message on an old phone in my pocket, but I didn’t need to pull it out to remember it. The first three or four lines, the taunting tone, and the fish-head stuff were designed to get me anxious, to remind me that M was bizarre and unpredictable and actively plotting against me. He was trying to keep me under pressure, but I could avoid it by simply not dwelling on those parts of his message.

Those last few sentences were harder to shake.

Now things get interesting, Cross. This will all make perfect sense soon.

M is for...

I decided he was playing a game based on dwindling time, attempting to get me to burn mental energy as I tried to anticipate his next move. But there was more.

“He knows the whole M-thing bothers me,” I murmured as I slowed for a yellow light turning red on Pennsylvania Avenue. “What it stands for. Who he really is.”

Out of habit, I glanced in the rearview and saw five cars in the other lane — a service vehicle, a pickup truck, a minivan, a white Jeep, and a small black SUV.

The light turned green. I drove on toward the Beltway, the circuit of highways that girdle the nation’s capital, and my mind once again returned to that last sentence: M is for...

Moriarty.

That just popped into my head, an idea left over from the talk with Rivers earlier in the afternoon. And then, even though I knew it was impossible, I couldn’t help but think...

Mastermind.

M is for Mastermind. Kyle Craig’s alias.

Driving onto I-295 north, I dismissed the idea that Craig was somehow still alive, still playing some long and deadly game with me. But someone was playing a long and deadly game with me. Or was this all like a cat with a live mouse, the feline batting at the rodent with his paw every now and then, entertaining himself before the kill?

A horn blared behind me, startling me from my thoughts. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the delivery truck in the lane next to me veer off toward the East Capitol Street exit, revealing a black BMW SUV behind it.

It could have been another black SUV, a sheer coincidence, but my instincts screamed that I was being followed by someone.

I decided to test my instincts, and I stomped on the gas as I entered a curve.

When I came out of it, I scanned the highway ahead, saw it was nearly empty, then glued my attention to my rearview mirror.

The BMW roared out of the curve before I thought it would, in my lane now, right behind me, a total abandonment of the sophisticated tail job.

Whoever was driving no longer cared about being spotted.

He was coming after me.

And he was coming fast.