Fear No Evil

Chapter 40

I arrived at the Paris gate a sweaty mess. Officer Finch had alerted the United representative at the counter, who told me they had a seat in business class available. It cost me a small fortune, even with the miles I threw at it from my frequent-flier account, but I was glad I’d done it when I settled into my window seat and got ready for takeoff.

There was a delay in departure due to a sensor malfunctioning, which allowed me to continue to dial Bree’s number in Paris. After three more strikeouts, I called the Washington office of Bluestone Group and got Elena Martin on the phone.

When I told her what had happened on my call with Bree, Martin said she knew nothing about a firefight in Paris but she’d find out immediately and get back to me either by phone before we took off or by text if we’d left the ground. I hung up and confirmed with the flight attendant that the plane had Wi-Fi.

“Something to drink?” he asked.

“How long’s the flight?”

“Eleven and a half hours.”

I told him I’d take a beer, and I started trying Bree again. Nothing. Ten minutes later, the pilot came on and told us the sensor issue had been resolved and we’d been cleared to button up the doors and leave for Paris.

I was about to put my phone on airplane mode until takeoff when it rang. Elena Martin.

“I can confirm a firefight in Paris in the seventeenth arrondissement,” she said. “The entire area has been cordoned off and is under the control of French anti-terror police. As of now, they are not telling us anything more.”

“Do we know if Bree’s in there? If she’s alive?”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Cross, I cannot confirm anything else. But I have Marianne Le Tour, chief of our Paris office, en route to the scene. We should know more soon.”

Over the loudspeaker, the flight attendant told us to turn our phones off before we pulled back from the gate.

“Text me the second you hear anything,” I said.

“Absolutely. And our thoughts and prayers are with you and Bree, Dr. Cross.”

I thanked her, hung up, and switched the phone to airplane mode. The flight attendant who came to take my empty beer glass said the Wi-Fi for texting and internet would come on above thirty thousand feet.

We took off and my mind started to play tricks on me. It shifted to the oldest part of the brain, the limbic system, the reptilian place where fear and worry and terrible images and impossible questions dwell and fester.

Bree’s dead, the lizard brain said. You have to prepare yourself for it, Alex. You’ve been down this road before. Your first wife was taken from you without warning or mercy, a beautiful mommy out for a stroll with your young children, cut down in a senseless drive-by shooting. You don’t think that kind of thing happens in Paris?

I kept trying to counter the argument as we climbed steeply northeast away from Denver. Bree was one of the most competent and well-trained law enforcement officers I’d ever known. For a year before becoming a detective and meeting me, she’d been on the city SWAT team and knew how to handle herself in dangerous scenarios involving weapons.

But we’re talking automatic weapons. What did Bree say she had with her? A small nine-millimeter? You heard several bursts of machine-gun fire, at least one of them sustained. Those shots that sounded closer could have been Bree firing back. But a machine gun versus a pistol? The odds aren’t good.

This battle in my head couldn’t be won, so I abandoned my mind to it, closed my eyes, and went to my heart and my faith, praying for Bree’s safety, reminding the Almighty what a good and decent person she was, how human and connected she was, even in her past role as chief of detectives, where she’d had to deal with all sorts of personalities, politics, and pressures. Bree was more than my wife, my partner, my best friend, and my equal in every sense — she was my love, my greatest gift from God.

Don’t take a second one from me, Lord, I prayed. Please don’t let Bree—

A loud ding interrupted my prayer. I opened my eyes as the loudspeaker crackled. I anticipated the flight attendant again, but the pilot’s voice came on.

“Well, folks, I’ve got some good news from the cockpit, some not-so-good news, and some bad news. Bad news: that sensor-light issue we had on the ground is back.”

People began to groan all around me.

“But the good news is we are still on our way to Paris. The sensor has nothing to do with the way we fly. It’s linked to our Wi-Fi system. So while we are still expecting to touch down at de Gaulle on schedule, I’m afraid you’ll have to spend your time on this flight the old-fashioned way, without text or internet.”