Cross Kill

Chapter 14

“She’s got the right to demand that,” Bree said later in the hospital cafeteria. “John took a bullet to the head, Alex.”

“I know,” I said, frustrated and heartsick.

It felt like part of John had died and was never coming back. And it would never be the same between us, as partners anyway. That was dead, too.

I explained this to Bree, and she put her hands on mine and said, “You’ll never have a better friend than John Sampson. That friendship, that fierce bond you two have, will never be broken, even if he’s no longer a cop, even if he’s no longer your partner. Okay?”

“No,” I said, pushing my plate away. “But I’ll have to learn to live with it.”

“You haven’t eaten three bites,” Bree said, gesturing at the plate.

“No appetite,” I said.

“Then force yourself,” Bree said. “Especially the protein. Your brain has to be tip-top if you’re going to find Soneji.”

I laughed softly. “You’re always looking out for me.”

“Every moment I can, baby.”

I ate quite a bit more, and washed it down with three full glasses of water.

“Not quite Nana Mama’s cooking,” I said.

“I’m sure there’ll be leftovers,” Bree said.

“You trying to get me fat?” I said.

“I like a little cushion.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, and we both burst out laughing. Then I looked over and saw Billie standing in the doorway, watching us with bitterness and longing in her expression. She turned and left.

“Should I go after her?” I asked.

“No,” Bree said. “I’ll talk to her tomorrow.”

“Home?”

“Home.”

We left the hospital and were crossing a triangular plaza to the Foggy Bottom Metro station when the first shot rang out.

I heard the flat crack of the muzzle blast. I felt the bullet rip past my left ear, grabbed Bree, and yanked her to the ground by two newspaper boxes. People were screaming and scattering.

“Where is he?” Bree said.

“I don’t know,” I said, before the second and third shots shattered the glass of one newspaper rack and pinged off another.

Then I heard squealing tires, and jumped up in time to see a white panel van roar north on 23rd Street, Northwest, heading toward Washington Circle, and a dozen different escape routes. As the van flashed past us, I caught a glimpse of the driver.

Gary Soneji was looking my way as if posing for a mental picture, grinning like a lunatic and holding his right-hand thumb up, index finger extended, like a gun he was aiming right at me.

I was so shocked that another instant passed before I started running across the plaza to 23rd, trying to get a look at his license plates. But his plate lights were dark, and the van soon disappeared into evening traffic, headed in the direction of whatever hellhole Gary Soneji was calling home these days.

“Did you see him?” I asked Bree, who was shaken, but calling in the shots to dispatch.

She shook her head after she’d finished. “You did?”

“It was him, Bree. Gary Soneji in the flesh. As if he hadn’t been blown up and burned, as if he hadn’t spent the past decade in a box under six feet of dirt.”