The People vs. Alex Cross

Chapter 100

At home the next evening, I was on my back with my ankle elevated and iced, watching coverage of the shooting incident on a DC station.

“There Detective Cross goes again,” said assistant U.S. attorney Nathan Wills, peering in disgust at the camera from under an umbrella. “He’s not back on the job a week and already the bullets are flying.”

“Those bullets flew my way first,” I said and stabbed the remote until the screen went black.

“The brass know that,” Bree said, coming out of the kitchen into our great room and setting a cup of coffee on the table beside me.

“Michaels put me on leave,” I said. “Again.”

“Department regulations,” Bree said, sitting beside me. “Sampson’s no better off than you.”

“Better ankle,” I said.

“Well, there’s that,” Bree said.

We fell into a silence that got longer. I stared at the blank screen, wondering for the hundredth time why the man impersonating Alden Lindel was fixated on me. Was he part of the crew that tried to frame me for murder? Picking up where Claude Watkins and Kimiko Binx left off?

And what about Lourdes Rodriguez? Was that even her real name?

In the wake of media uproar surrounding the shooting in Philly, Chief Michaels had been in no mood to seek a search warrant for her new apartment, even when we explained that she’d set us up to be assassinated.

“I’m beginning to wonder if this is worth it anymore,” I said, looking over at Bree. “Being a cop, I mean.”

Cocking her head, frowning, she set her coffee down. “You’re serious?”

“I’m serious enough to know that I want to stay being a psychologist, a counselor, at least part-time,” I said. “I enjoy it. It feels right and matters in a way hunting down bad guys just doesn’t anymore, Bree.”

She gazed at me, blinked. “You are serious.”

“I guess I am. Maybe it’s time. They say most people have five careers in their lives. Maybe this is how I’m supposed to be the best I can be in the future.”

“A higher calling?”

I sighed. “Is that so hard to believe?”

Bree smiled at me, but there was a tinge of sadness in it. “No, I could understand it. At least of an ordinary cop, who’d seen too much. But you’re no ordinary cop, Alex Cross.”

“That’s debatable.”

“Tell that to the awards and citations you have piled in your attic office. Tell that to all the families of victims you’ve helped just by being you, relentless, smart, and professional with a moral compass that is unwavering.”

“I’m impulsive,” I said. “I get shot at. A lot.”

“Because you have the God-given knack of getting close to bad guys and upsetting their plans. You actually do that on a regular basis, Alex. Very, very few detectives can say that.”

Before I could reply, Ali pounded through the kitchen and out to us.

“Dad!” he said. “I think I’ve finally found my sport!”

Of my three children, my youngest might be the brightest, but he is, shall we say, challenged athletically. Ali had tried various sports — basketball, baseball, and even lacrosse — but nothing ever clicked, and he seemed to trip over his own feet a lot.

“I’m hoping your sport’s not ice hockey,” I said.

“What?” Ali said, almost indignant. “No.”

“Horse jumping?”

“No. Darts.”

“Darts?”

“There’s a tournament coming up,” he said. “I’ve been playing a bunch at my friend Charley’s house after school, but I need my own board and a set of good darts if I’m going to have any chance of qualifying.”

Feeling a twinge in my ankle, I closed my eyes. I heard Bree say, “Where’s this tournament?”

“At a bar on Capitol Hill,” Ali said.

“A bar?” I said, opening my eyes.

“Technically, a tavern. I walk by there all the time after the bus drops me.”

“You’re not going to a bar or a tavern to play darts.”

“It’s a ten-thousand-dollar prize, Dad!”

“You’re too young to be playing darts where people are drinking alcohol.”

“No, I went in and asked. As long as you’re with me, they said I can play.”

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” Bree said.

“Let Ali,” I said.

“Can I get the dartboard?”

“Start by getting the door.”

He hesitated, then ran out.

“Darts?” Bree said, trying to hide her smile. “In a tavern?”

“Nana Mama is going to have a cow,” I said, laughing.

“She’s going to have two cows. Maybe an entire dairy farm if this becomes a regular thing.”

“Darts,” I said, and I shook my head at how quickly Ali went from a sharp and analytical adult-like person to a young boy attracted by the next shiny object.

I heard his footsteps pound back to us, and I thought for sure he was going to ask about the darts again.

Instead, he said breathlessly, “It’s Ned and Krazy Kat!”

Chapter 101

Keith Rawlins’s Mohawk had been redyed flaming red and shellacked to jut off his head like a jaunty rooster’s comb. But the normally upbeat cybercrimes expert looked subdued when he came into the room.

“Dr. Cross, Chief Stone,” he said. “I need to show you something. With your permission, I’d like to connect my laptop to your television screen?”

“Go ahead,” Bree said.

“What’s going on?” I asked Mahoney when he came into the room after speaking with Nana and my dad.

Ned said, “Rawlins says he knows why Lourdes Rodriguez was so quick and quiet about leaving her old apartment. He started to explain it on the way here, but most of it went right over my head.”

“I’ll try to dumb it down further, Agent Mahoney,” Rawlins said, sounding annoyed as he typed on his laptop.

A moment later the television screen came on, showing a gibberish of coded numbers, letters, and symbols. Rawlins scrolled down through the mess until he found what he wanted.

He highlighted a sequence in the sea of code. “That’s a time stamp from a few days ago, immediately after Lourdes Rodriguez’s name was entered into the FBI’s database as part of the ongoing investigation.”

Rawlins typed. The screen jumped to another coded document and highlighted a new sequence.

He said, “Two seconds after Rodriguez’s name goes in, this second time stamp is triggered in a different file, a familiar file, that ingenious, eloquent piece of malware code I found in your computer and then in the FBI database.”

Bree said, “You’re saying Rodriguez’s name triggered the malware?”

“And the malware triggered Rodriguez’s swift departure from that apartment. The troubling thing is that I should have seen this sooner, but after the marathon work session I put in to resurrect Timmy Walker’s iPhone, I went home and slept for twenty hours, and I woke up with a nasty stomach bug that cost me another day.”

Rawlins said that he’d finally returned to his lab earlier that morning to see the alert from the code he’d attached to the malware.

“Where did the stuff about Rodriguez go?” Bree asked.

“Through onion routers, of course,” Rawlins said, typing. “A dozen in all. But I intentionally overrode the malware’s code so that every time it passed through the onion it would send me a ping so I could track it.”

The screen jumped to a map of the world with glowing lime-green pins denoting onion routers and orange arrows showing the direction of travel after the message cleared the device. From Quantico to India to China to the Philippines to Ecuador and on and on, until Rodriguez’s name reached Japan.

“That’s only eleven routers,” Ali said. “You said twelve.”

“I did indeed,” Rawlins said and he typed. The screen switched to Google Earth, a satellite view of a checkerboard of woods and farmland.

“You are looking at an unincorporated area in southwestern Pennsylvania due east of the Michaux State Forest,” he said, then zoomed down on a compound of three buildings. The biggest, a mansion, really, was sprawling and sat beside a large pond surrounded by hardwoods and pine thickets.

“That’s a twelve-thousand-square-foot home with carriage house, barn, and personal bass pond,” Rawlins said. “But notice the satellite dishes on the roof. Even for a big place, it’s overkill.”

“And this is where the malware went after Japan?” I said.

“Most definitely.”

“Who owns it?”

The cybercrimes expert sobered. “Nash Edward Edgars. You’ve probably never heard of him, but Mr. Edgars is infamous in certain circles. Circles that often disappear into the dark web.”

Rawlins described Edgars as a secretive, reclusive, and extremely wealthy computer-code writer in his late thirties. At seventeen, after his freshman year at Cal Poly, Edgars left and became the behind-the-scenes coder for several edgy, successful tech businesses.

“That we know for sure,” Rawlins said. “The dark-web stuff is rumor and conjecture, but some very smart people swear Edgars has been developing and operating in the unorganized, encrypted, and untraceable Internet for a decade. Maybe longer.”

I squinted at the screen. “What connects him to Rodriguez?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“No photo of him?”

“A poor one, seven years old,” Rawlins said. “But first...” He returned to his typing. “We’re lucky this sat view was shot in late winter or early spring, or I wouldn’t have noticed them.”

Rawlins scrolled down the Google Earth image, taking us past the compound and over the forest. The image stopped where we could look down through the branches of bare hard-wood trees.

Rawlins put his cursor on a smudge and zoomed in, revealing another structure, a long building with a tin roof. He moved his cursor to a second smudge on the satellite view and magnified it to reveal the lines of a large square.

“What is that?” I asked.

“I believe it’s an old foundation, with a high stone wall here, similar to the one Gretchen Lindel was put up against during the mock execution.”

“Jesus,” I said, sitting forward. “Can we see that photo of Edgars?”

The question seemed to irritate Rawlins, who typed and said, “Give me a second to find it. But what’s critical to understand here is that Edgars didn’t leave Cal Poly to follow Bill Gates and strike out on his own at seventeen. In fact, Edgars was expelled from Cal Poly at seventeen, when he was still a juvenile, so the case is sealed.”

“No idea why?” Bree asked.

“I know exactly why,” he said as the screen changed to a blurry photograph of two men leaving an urban restaurant. One was scruffy, dark-haired, and wore jeans, a Metallica T-shirt, and flip-flops. The other man was slightly older with a military haircut and aviator sunglasses.

Blurred or not, the picture made my stomach lurch.

Rawlins’s cursor moved to the scruffy, bearded guy. “This is Nash Edgars. The other one’s name is Mike Pratt. He’s Edgars’s bodyguard.”

I said, “Edgars was driving the pickup in Philadelphia the other night. Pratt was both the shooter and the Alden Lindel impersonator.”

Rawlins looked deflated to have some of his thunder stolen from him, but then he recovered and said, “Here’s the kicker from my corner. I hacked into Cal Poly’s system and found Edgars’s file. He was accused of sexually assaulting three coeds his freshman year. Every one of them was blond.”

Chapter 102

Clouds of steam billowed from our lips at 4:10 the following morning.

It was bitter cold as we huddled in puffy jackets, wool caps, and gloves around a laptop computer bolted to a steel table inside an FBI special weapons and tactics van parked in the barnyard of a dairy farmer who lived two miles from Nash Edgars and who had nothing good to say about his reclusive neighbor.

“Give us the drone feed,” Mahoney said into a cell phone.

The screen changed from the sharpness of Google Earth to an opaque gray-green that revealed bare-limbed trees and then the road that led past Edgars’s gate. Thermal images appeared: two men were guarding the gate, carrying weapons. Flying on, the drone found the mansion, but the screen showed no thermal images of bodies — or much of anything, for that matter.

Mahoney said, “Drone pilot says the place appears heavily insulated so there might be people inside or not. We’ll have to go on the assumption the house is manned and heavily armed.”

“Smart,” I said.

Mahoney said into his cell, “Fly to that structure out in the woods.”

The drone found the building. A thermal sensor revealed four faint images of people inside, all lying flat or curled up, located in separate little rooms.

“Those could be some of our missing women,” Special Agent Batra said.

“Easily,” Bree said, and she sipped from a go-cup of steaming coffee.

“That changes things,” Mahoney said. “Show me the Google Earth image again.”

Rawlins switched it back to the satellite image.

Mahoney pointed to a rocky knoll on the estate’s far north boundary. “This is excellent high ground. We’ll put four agents there to cover the back door.”

I noticed something in the trees along a creek well to the east of the knoll, but before I could say anything, Rawlins switched back to the drone’s feed showing more gray-green forest but no other distinct thermal images.

“Thanks for the flyby,” Mahoney said into his cell, then he ordered four agents to enter the woods at the estate’s northeast corner. He also moved a six-man hostage-rescue team, or HRT, into position to get to and storm that building in the woods as soon as possible. Bree and Sampson would ride with Mahoney and follow a breach team of FBI agents onto the property to arrest Edgars and Pratt.

“Alex, you’ll be with Batra and Rawlins in a follow car, where you will remain until the clear is given,” Mahoney said.

Before I could protest, Bree said, “Be practical, Alex. With your ankle like that, you won’t be much help if things go south.”

“It’s not that bad, really,” I said. “I’m not even on crutches. But I hear you.”

“We’ll give you a radio,” Mahoney said. “For once you’ll have to just listen to the action.”

Chapter 103

As I limped into the backseat of Agent Batra’s black Chevy Tahoe, I had to admit I was feeling guilty for wanting to be part of the raiding party and hostage-rescue attempt.

The evening before, I’d been telling Bree that I wanted to get out of police work, away from dangerous moments like these when the adrenaline starts to drip and your senses get super-sharp and super-clear.

But as I shut the door and Batra started the engine, I knew a part of me could never leave the police game. Not entirely. Being a psychologist had its own deep and fruitful rewards, but it could never replace the rush of catching bad guys, ending their dark work, and seeing them get just punishment.

“Let’s roll,” Mahoney said.

I heard his voice over the radio and the light headset they’d given me.

“Isn’t this exciting, Dr. Cross?” Krazy Kat Rawlins said, looking over the front seat at me as Batra put on her headlights and followed Mahoney’s Tahoe onto a rural route heading east.

“The trick is not to get too excited,” I said. “You have to keep your head.”

“Oh, of course,” he said, slightly crestfallen. “I guess I’m just looking forward to seeing Nash Edgars in handcuffs and telling him that I beat him. Do you ever feel that way?”

“From time to time, sure,” I said.

“Right now?”

“Right now, I look forward to seeing those women safe and sound.”

Over my headset, Mahoney said, “Half a mile out. HRT, you are go. Breaching team, you are go.”

The acknowledgments came back fast, and in my mind I was seeing the rescue team flipping on their thermal-imaging goggles, surging into the woods, and angling through the forest toward the shed and four of the missing women.

We came over a rise in the road and saw a huge, black, six-wheel-drive armored FBI truck roll to the gate. I expected the guards to immediately stand down, but instead there were flashes from behind the gate and reports of gunfire over the radio.

“Take it down,” Mahoney said.

The big armored rig backed up and then sped at the steel gate and blew it off its hinges. Agents inside the truck fired from portholes at the guards, who’d retreated up the hill into the trees toward the compound. Mahoney followed the armored truck, driving across the downed gate, with us trailing.

“HRT?” Mahoney said.

“Two hundred yards out, SAC,” came the reply. “No visuals on the shed yet, but you have lights going on up the hill.”

The breaching rig sped up on that news, disappeared around a curve in the long serpentine driveway. By the time we reached the edge of the compound, spotlights were blazing on the courtyard between the main house, the carriage house, and the barn.

Ten FBI agents in full SWAT gear poured out of the armored vehicle, divided into teams of two, and fanned out toward the mansion, a modern building made of stone, redwood, and glass.

The doors of the carriage house at the far side of the yard were up. The interior wasn’t lit, but there was enough light from the exterior spotlights to reveal a white Range Rover and a black pickup truck in the first two bays and several ATVs and dirt bikes in the third.

Black pickup truck, I thought. Bet it has a window with a bullet hole or two in it.

In front of us, Mahoney got out of the Tahoe. Caught in Batra’s headlights, he blinked, held up a hand, and signaled for her to shut them off. Bree and Sampson got out. The radio chatter from the raiding team and the HRT forces started coming nonstop. I got whining feedback in my headset for a moment.

Four agents went to the front door, used a battering ram to break it open, and then vanished inside.

In the woods to our north, the HRT unit had the plywood-faced building surrounded. Thermals showed the four people were still inside, still lying flat or curled up. That didn’t seem right to me; they should have been sitting or standing. But maybe they hadn’t heard the gunfire? Or maybe they were restrained?

“HRT, go in and get them out,” Mahoney said over my headset. “Now.”

“Lower front hall clear,” said an agent inside the house.

“Walkout basement clear,” said another.

“Where is he?” Rawlins said from the front seat of Batra’s car. “Don’t tell me Edgars isn’t here.”

Even with the windows up, even with the heater going and the radio chatter in our ears, we all heard the first explosion.

Chapter 104

“HRT agent down,” the rescue commander said. “Repeat, HRT agent down. The place is booby-trapped.”

“Back out and contain,” Mahoney said. “How bad?”

“We’ll need Life Flight ASAP.”

“Calling now.”

On the radio, the search commander inside Edgars’s mansion said, “Watch for booby traps, gentlemen.”

“Kitchen clear,” said another.

“Home theater clear,” said a third.

“All first-floor closets and bathrooms clear,” said a fourth. “First floor cleared in full,” the commander said.

Bree and Sampson left Mahoney and started toward the mansion. I got anxious, felt claustrophobic, and opened the car door.

“You’re to remain in the car, Dr. Cross,” Batra said.

“I’m going to stand outside.” I got out and shut the door.

My wife and my partner entered Edgars’s house with the FBI agents inside already moving to clear the second story. Mahoney told the HRT commander that Life Flight was eleven minutes out and then he headed inside as well.

I caught some of the communications between the hostage-rescue commander and the incoming Life Flight medic. The agent had opened a door to the building and triggered a small explosive. He had shrapnel in his right thigh and a severed femoral artery. They’d applied direct pressure to the wound so he wouldn’t bleed out and were preparing to move him from the woods to the county road for pickup.

“Roger that,” the medic replied. “We are seven minutes out.”

An agent in the house said, “Second-floor landing and hallway clear.”

“All bedrooms cleared,” another said. “Place is empty, Cap.”

A high-pitched tone screeched through the headset, so loud I thought my eardrums would burst. I tore the headset off, stuck it in my pocket.

The dark second-floor windows facing the courtyard suddenly flashed as automatic-weapon fire broke out inside the house. Two guns, three, maybe more.

I took several limping steps toward the courtyard and the mansion, wanting to see Bree, Sampson, and Mahoney retreat out the front door. But they didn’t, and the shooting went on in bursts and waves, and—

“Dr. Cross!” Agent Batra yelled behind me.

I ignored her, pulled toward the violence, wanting to end it. But the gunfire stopped as I passed Mahoney’s Tahoe and entered the courtyard. I caught a flicker of motion in the third bay of the carriage house just before a second bomb exploded, much closer, on the other side of the mansion.

At the blast, the spotlights flickered and died. The shooting stopped too.

Then I heard a noise I’ll never forget — shrill, primitive, and terrified — coming from the carriage house.

I pulled out my weapon and flashlight and hobbled fast in that direction as something large and boxy tore out of the third bay. I got my flashlight beam on it as it was leaving the courtyard for the woods: a red-and-black side-by-side Honda Pioneer 1000 utility vehicle.

I caught only a glimpse of the driver and the front-seat passenger before it disappeared, but the blond teen in the bed, blindfolded, gagged, and hog-tied, was plain as day. Gretchen Lindel was writhing and trying to scream, and then she was gone.

“Batra!” I yelled, flashing the light around and seeing a Kawasaki ATV in the third bay. “Batra!”

The shooting started again inside, drowning my second cry.

Ignoring the pain shrieking in my ankle, I hobbled to the ATV, yanking the radio from my pocket and tearing free the headset cord, figuring to stop the feedback. But it was worse, and I had to turn the squelch almost off.

My flashlight found the ATV ignition but with no key in it. I lifted the seat, revealing a storage for helmets, and located the key. I straddled the seat, looked at the controls, turned on the headlights, and started the engine.

I roared out of the garage, praying Batra could see me, turned onto the two-track lane that went from the compound to the woods, and accelerated.

Chapter 105

Bree, Sampson, and Mahoney had gone into a large, open, and vaulted space on the main level of the mansion to wait while the upper floors were cleared. The room contained Edgars’s state-of-the-art kitchen, a rustic dining area, and several leather couches set before a massive stone fireplace that was flanked by built-in wooden cabinets and shelves crammed with books.

Sampson said, “Place looks spick-and-span.”

Mahoney nodded. “Ready for that Architectural Digest photographer.”

Their radios crackled: “Second-floor landing and hallway clear.” “All bedrooms cleared. Place is empty, Cap.”

Empty? That felt wrong to Bree. She’d been on edge since hearing the bomb explode in the distance. Why booby-trap the outer building and not—

A piercing whine went off in her earbud, the worst feedback ever, and she tore it out. Sampson did the same.

Across the room, Mahoney threw his down too. “What the hell is—”

Automatic weapons began to bark and rattle upstairs. Bree instinctively dived behind the kitchen counter with Sampson right beside her.

The shooting stopped, leaving them shaken and going for their guns.

“Agents down!” someone shouted upstairs. “Arthur and Boggs. Bedroom five. Far east end of upper hallway.”

The search commander at the bottom of the stairs bellowed back over the shooting, “How many? I thought the place was cleared!”

“It was, Cap! Shooters must have been—”

An explosion outside shook the house. The lights died.

“It’s an ambush!” Mahoney yelled from over by the couches. “They’re jamming our radios and cells. Bree, take Sampson and get out of here, establish communication with—”

Bree was about to turn on her flashlight when sound-suppressed automatic weapons lit up. She covered her head as slugs ripped into granite countertops, splintered cabinets, and shattered dishes.

The bullets moved left to right and then right to left, punching holes in the stainless-steel appliances, ten, maybe fifteen shots in all, raining debris down on Bree and Sampson before stopping.

Bree shook from fear and adrenaline. Smelling the burned gunpowder, she felt nauseated, but her mind whirled. Where was the shooter? Where had he hidden? Those cabinets weren’t big enough to hide a grown man, were they?

She felt a tug on her leg.

“Chief?” Sampson whispered. “You okay?”

“Fine. Where’s the shooter?”

“Hit,” Mahoney croaked.

The fear fled her. Bree flicked on her flashlight and belly-crawled across the kitchen tiles, calling, “How bad, Ned?”

Mahoney gasped. “Gut. You tell me.”

Somewhere a generator coughed and hummed. Dim light returned. Agents upstairs were shouting, but Bree ignored them.

“Where’s the shooter, Ned?” she called, louder.

“Behind me. Cabinets.”

Bree turned her flashlight off, inched forward, and peered around the bottom corner of the kitchen cabinets. She could see well enough to tell Mahoney was sitting upright on the floor by one of the leather couches, but there was no sign of the shooter.

“We have to get him out, Chief,” Sampson said behind her. “Now!”

“Not until I know where that shooter is. I won’t get us all killed.”

She thumbed on her flashlight again, peeked around the corner, and let the beam play over Mahoney about forty feet away. He was hunched over and squinting. Bree focused on the large patch of dark blood showing on his white shirt, just below his armored vest.

Low liver hit, she thought, and fought to swallow down the panic creeping in the back of her throat. They did have to get him out fast. But the shooter...

Bree shifted her light toward the stone fireplace and the cabinets and shelves to either side. The beam flickered over doors far too small for a child, much less a man, and then over rows of books before stopping cold on a small open cabinet.

“Jesus Christ,” she whispered.

Chapter 106

The ATV was equipped with a heavy-duty muffler, so the engine barely made any noise as I drove on the two-track deeper and deeper into the estate.

Edgars’s side-by-side was no more than three or four minutes in front of me. I couldn’t see tracks in the frozen mud, but the leaves were broken and shiny where it had passed.

Snowflakes hit my face. With my free hand, I tugged out the radio and turned it up. There was no longer screeching coming over it, just a dense hiss.

“This is Alex Cross,” I said. “Copy?”

Out of the static, I heard clicking and fragments of an unfamiliar voice. I turned it off, stuffed it back in my coat, tried my cell. No service.

The snow flurries turned to thick heavy flakes.

They’re going to get away, I thought. The sadistic bastards are going to get away.

There was an intersection ahead, and I stopped. The snow covered the leaves, making it impossible for me to say which way Edgars had taken Gretchen Lindel.

I tried to recall the satellite view of the property. The shed and the wounded HRT agent were somewhere to my left. The knoll at the rear of the property — where Mahoney had sent four agents — was somewhere straight ahead of me. That unidentified smudge on the satellite picture was down the right fork in the trail.

I went with my instincts, twisted the ATV throttle, and went right. The snow slapped my face, got in my eyes, and forced me to drive at a crawl.

Ten minutes later, the snow squall ended as abruptly as it had started. I rolled downhill to a wide, shallow, iced-over creek, seeing where Edgars’s machine had broken up the ice. My instincts were dead-on. I drove across the creek, noticing the sky brightening in the east.

How far ahead were they? Were those four people back in that booby-trapped building all dead? The HRT guys said they hadn’t moved when the booby trap went off. Or was Edgars taking Gretchen to where he had the other blondes stashed?

One hundred yards beyond the creek crossing, I lost the tracks and drove on through virgin snow to a turnabout walled in by pines. A dead end.

But Edgars had come this way. I was positive. That ice had absolutely been freshly broken, and those tracks...

I drove back, shining the headlights on the crossing, seeing ice covering the creek upstream. I used my flashlight to look downstream. The ice there had been broken up to where the stream disappeared beneath a steep embankment, eight, maybe ten feet high, and covered with green and tan vegetation frosted with new snow.

Where the hell had they gone? I couldn’t imagine any machine climbing straight up the side of that wall of...

I looked closer at the embankment. Green plants? That was impossible. The leaves had fallen. The ferns were dead.

I drove into the creek and rolled slowly to the embankment, headlights on and my flashlight playing around. Even through the frosting of snow, I could see I hadn’t been looking at plants but at thin strips of dull green, gray, and brown cloth, thousands of pieces sewn into a huge swath of camouflage fabric that hung from a stout length of black metal bolted into the rocks above me.

I grabbed the radio again and turned it on. The static was weaker. I triggered the transmit button, said, “This is Alex Cross, come back.”

Almost immediately a garbled, oddly familiar voice answered.

“Batra?” I said.

The voice replied, but I couldn’t understand a word.

I said, “Repeat, this is Alex Cross. I am in pursuit of Edgars, who has Gretchen Lindel. I am somewhere in the northeast quadrant of the estate.”

The voice came back even more garbled.

I almost stuffed the radio in my pocket but then had a moment of inspiration and said, “If you can hear me, track me by Find My iPhone.”

I put away the radio that time, traded it for my service weapon. Staring at the camouflage curtain, I hesitated, anxious about what might be waiting on the other side. I killed the headlights, teased the throttle. The bumper touched the fabric and then ripped apart the Velcro that had been keeping it closed.

I held my pistol in my left hand, rested the barrel on the handlebar, eased off the safety, gave the throttle more gas, and went through into darkness.

Chapter 107

Bree gaped at the smoking Uzi machine pistol mounted on a thin metal post inside the open cabinet. A long banana clip hung below the gun, too big for just ten or fifteen shots.

Mahoney coughed and shifted. The gun pivoted his way, and she saw the thin scarlet line of the laser sight fixed to its barrel pass six inches over the wounded agent’s head. It stopped.

“What the hell’s going on?” Sampson whispered, crawling up beside her.

She pulled back, said, “Remote-control Uzis. Unless...”

Bree peeked around the corner again, flashed the light at the machine pistol and the cabinet, looking for a camera.

Mahoney groaned and shifted, and the couch moved, hitting a table behind it. The lamp on the table wobbled.

The Uzi opened up again, that same left-to-right, right-to-left spray of bullets; it cut the lamp in half, and then the gunfire continued on toward the kitchen. Bree looked up after the shooting stopped, saw that the slugs had hit some of the same things they’d hit during the first barrage.

No, she took that back. They had ripped into the exact same things at the exact same height.

“No one’s operating that gun, Ned!” Bree shouted. “I think there’s a motion detector involved. See it?”

“No,” he grunted, sounding weaker.

An agent yelled down from upstairs that he had to move his wounded men.

“The whole place is booby-trapped!” Sampson yelled. “Hold your position!”

“One’s critical! He’ll die if we don’t move him!”

“You’ll all die if you come down those stairs,” Bree shouted as she wriggled back past Sampson and crawled to a low line of untouched cabinets next to the stainless-steel stove.

She looked in three cabinets before she finally found the items she wanted. She grabbed them and scooted back to Sampson.

“What’s with the cookie sheets?” he asked.

“Motion,” Bree said, then she called out, “Ned, if you can, get down.”

She flung one of the cookie sheets over the counter that separated the kitchen from the living area.

The Uzi lit up, rattling bullets left to right, right to left again. She threw another cookie sheet and then a third before the action of the machine pistol locked open, the breech and barrel smoking hot.

She stood up cautiously, saw Ned lying on his side by the couch. His eyes were open but glassy, and his breathing looked shallow.

“We’re clear!” she shouted to the FBI agents upstairs as she ran to Mahoney. “Get your men out!”

Kneeling by Alex’s old FBI partner, Bree refused to cry. “You with me, Ned? Talk to me.”

Mahoney nodded and blinked. “Gut shot.”

“I can see that.”

Sampson came up behind her. “We’ve got to get him to a hospital, and the jamming’s still going on.”

“Help me get him up,” Bree said.

They lifted Ned to his feet. Mahoney passed out from the pain, becoming deadweight, and Sampson got him up on his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Bree ran in front of him to the front door and stepped out into the falling snow, shouting, “Alex? Agent Batra?”

A flashlight went on. Keith Rawlins called timidly, “Just me, Chief Stone.”

Sampson came out the door with Mahoney over his shoulder.

The snow fell in big flakes and coated the pavers as they hustled across the courtyard to the Tahoe Mahoney had driven into the estate. Rawlins stood outside it, looking as bedraggled as a cat in the rain.

“Drop the rear seat backs, would you?” Sampson said.

Seeming grateful to have something to do, Rawlins sprang into action, saying, “The jamming system is remarkable.”

“We know,” Bree said impatiently. “Where’s Batra’s car?”

“When the jamming started and then all the shooting, she decided to drive out, try to call for reinforcements.”

“Good,” Bree said as Sampson put Mahoney in the back of the Tahoe. “Where’s—”

“Don’t leave yet!” an FBI agent yelled down in the courtyard.

He carried a badly wounded man. They’d gotten blood-clotting agent into a chest wound, but his breathing was ragged and harsh.

“Get him in,” Bree said. “And the next one.”

“I’ll drive,” Sampson said, going through Mahoney’s coat pockets and finding the keys.

Everything was moving fast, and Bree was still in semi-shock from the ambush, so it was not until she saw Sampson throw the Tahoe in reverse and fishtail back down Edgars’s long driveway that she realized the snow had stopped.

She felt confused and overwhelmingly tired. She looked up at the sky, saw the clouds parting and a shaft of moonlight shining through, making the frosted courtyard look like a movie fantasy.

“Did Alex go with Agent Batra?” she asked Rawlins.

“Uh, no.”

She turned to look at him. “What? Where is—”

Thaa-wumph!

Bree felt the ground tremble. The muted explosion sounded like it had come from deep inside the mansion.

“What was that?” Rawlins said, backing away.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I... where is Alex?”

“Dr. Cross? He—”

A second, much louder explosion cut him off; it lit up one of the second-story bedrooms like aluminum in the sun, blew out the windows, and ignited a fierce blaze. Yellow, orange, and ruby flames billowed out of the mansion and licked at the shake-shingle roof.

Bree moved back fast, feeling dread grow in her stomach. “Where’s Alex, Rawlins?” she shouted. “Where’s my husband?”

Chapter 108

The heavy camouflage curtains flapped shut behind me. My eyes adjusted. I was in a storm-drain culvert, a good ten feet in diameter. Either the potential existed for extreme flash-flooding in the creek or Edgars had put the culvert in place as an escape route. I was betting that the smudge I’d seen on the satellite view was dirt from an excavation.

Forty yards ahead of me, the culvert ended, and gray light was building.

If Edgars and Pratt knew I was trailing them, they could be waiting at the other end of the culvert. But by my reckoning, the culvert had to pass beneath the dirt road that ran along the estate’s eastern boundary, which meant the other end would leave me somewhere inside the Michaux State Forest.

They’re not waiting to ambush me, I thought. They’re getting out of here and as far away as possible.

I gunned the throttle and shot out of the culvert, feeling exposed, a target.

But no shots rang out as I left the creek bed for a trail through hardwood trees. With dawn nearing, I could see tire tracks, obscure at first but growing more distinct the farther I followed them.

As I drove, I tried to anticipate Edgars’s next move. Either he was in full flight mode, in which case I would find his UTV abandoned and the tracks of a car leaving the area, or he had something more sinister planned.

In my mind, I saw Gretchen Lindel writhing in the truck bed. I began to fear that Edgars did not intend to take her or any of the other women with him. If he was as ruthless as I thought he was, he would kill Gretchen and the other blondes. Maybe he already had.

No witnesses, I thought. He’ll want no witnesses.

It was full daylight when I reached the rim of a bluff that looked out over a broad patchwork of farmland a good five miles from the estate. Looking down the steep trail, almost a quarter mile below me, I could see a farm, or at least the roof of a ranch-style home, most of a steel building, and definitely Edgars’s side-by-side Honda Pioneer 1000 parked in the snow beside it.

I switched off the Kawasaki and left it. Carrying my pistol and my phone, I sidestepped down the hillside, staying tight to the brush, hoping no one would spot me from below. I kept checking my phone for service, but there was none.

My ankle and shin were swollen and unhappy, but I refused to stop.

Snow was starting to melt off branches when I reached the rear of the farm. I stopped behind a tree, listening, watching. Nothing moved in the yard. Nothing showed in the windows of the ramshackle ranch house.

The three overhead doors on the long side of the steel building were closed. The porthole windows in the doors looked covered. The small sash window twenty feet to the right of the back door, however, was not shaded. I could see bright, glaring light inside.

I checked my phone. Still no service. But the fact that Edgars was a master coder, a creature of the dark web, made me check to see if he had Wi-Fi. He did, a password-protected access called Pharm, and another, Pharm Guest. I tried to log in to that one, thinking I could e-mail or text Bree, but it too required a password.

Inside the steel building, someone let loose with a heart-wrenching scream.

I clenched my jaw and went over the fence, moving with a stiff, painful gait. The scream faded and died. When I reached the rear window, I ducked beneath it, got to the right side of the sash, and turned to face the back door.

“No!” a woman screamed.

“Please!” another yelled. “Just let us go!”

I snuck a peek through the window and saw a John Deere tractor and some other farm equipment parked around a large open space in the middle of the building. Running down from pulleys attached to a steel beam overhead, seven taut cables were clipped to leather restraints around the wrists of Gretchen Lindel and six other women, who dangled in a line, arms stretched overhead, their toes barely brushing the floor.

I couldn’t tell exactly who was who among the other six at first or second glance. They were soaked in dark blood that dripped and pooled beneath them. Only Gretchen was clean.

Six others? I thought. Seven all together? I thought there were only six blondes missing.

In any case, three of the women looked unconscious, their chins sagging to their chests. Gretchen and the other three had their heads up, were focused on the two men in black clothes moving around them.

Wearing the GoPro camera on his head, Nash Edgars seemed agitated, hopped up, like he was on something chemical and a lot of it. In his left hand he held an SLR camera and in his right an AR-style assault rifle with a halo sight.

Edgars kept moving, videoing the women and the other man, who wore a black balaclava and carried a red plastic bucket and a knife with an obsidian-black blade that curved tightly back toward an ornate knuckle guard. It was the same knife I’d seen in several of the mock-execution videos.

The hooded man walked around behind Gretchen Lindel, who twisted, trying to see him, and dumped a bucket of blood over her head. She shuddered and trembled with revulsion but did not cry out.

“Last baptism before the fire,” he said, and I recognized his voice. It was Pratt, Edgars’s bodyguard.

Pratt dropped the empty bucket next to a second assault rifle leaned up against the tractor’s tire. He came around behind another of the alert women and pressed that wicked-looking knife to her throat.

She began to shriek and shriek. “Nash! Don’t let him! Please don’t let him! I’m not one of them! I’m Latina! I’m not a blonde!”

Edgars, the cameraman, came in close and laughed. “You’re a blonde in this scene, Lourdes.”

“Please, Nash,” Lourdes Rodriguez said, weeping. “You don’t have to do this!”

“Of course we do,” Edgars said in a reasonable tone. “It wouldn’t be a real snuff film if we didn’t snuff the blondes at the end.”

Pratt took the knife away from Rodriguez’s throat and gestured to one side at two stout green metal tanks about five feet tall and two feet around. They were chained to a metal post.

“We’re giving you a chance,” Pratt said. “You can die by the knife or take your chances and pray you pass out from the gas before this whole place ignites and blows you to kingdom come.”

Still videoing their reactions, Edgars moved sideways toward the gas tanks. He put the AR down, reached behind the tanks, and came up with a gas mask, which he tossed to Pratt before getting a second for himself. He put it half on his head, knelt, and retrieved the assault rifle.

Pratt said, “So what is it, ladies? Knife or fire?”

“Can’t you just make it look like we died, like all the other times?” another of them whimpered, and I recognized her. Delilah Franks, the bank teller.

“Everyone’s had it with special effects,” Edgars said. “We’re going all the way. For the first time. Show her, Pratt. Wake up the others. Let them see tough little Gretchen die first. Then they can decide how to go.”

Chapter 109

I stiff-legged and hopped to the back door. The handle turned and the door swung slowly open on well-oiled hinges. I smelled something dead.

Sliding inside, my back to the wall, I saw Pratt forty feet away. He’d kicked awake the other three women and gotten behind Gretchen Lindel. His right leg was extended to the rear, braced against the floor. His left knee was pressed into the teenager’s spine, arching her back. Pratt had her by the hair too, her head wrenched back, his wicked-looking blade at her windpipe.

“Scared now, blondie?” Pratt said.

“No,” Gretchen said. “You can’t hurt me.”

“Oh yes, I can.”

He was so close to Alden Lindel’s daughter, I didn’t dare try a killing shot, and I didn’t want to shout a warning that might cause him to slit her throat. I aimed at the meat of Pratt’s extended right leg, touched the trigger, and fired.

The slug went through his right ass cheek, spun him around, and broke his pelvis. He fell down screaming, the flung knife clattering away.

I limped hard and fast to my right, seeing Edgars spin toward me with the cameras and the AR. Just as he opened up in full automatic, I dived and landed behind a steel seed spreader. Slugs clanged off the spreader and punctured the sheet-metal wall behind me.

The shooting stopped. The women were all screaming and crying. Pratt moaned in agony, then shouted, “Kill him! Shoot his ass, Nash!”

Amid the shouting and the confusion, Edgars yelled, “Come on out, Cross. Join the wrap party for the whole cast and crew!”

Saying nothing, peering all around me, I noticed a three-inch gap between the bottom of the spreader and its wheels. I rolled onto my side and extended my right arm and pistol, trying to spot Edgars’s feet and lower legs.

But he was too far to my right, blocked from view by the blade of a small bulldozer. I needed the man to move.

“The FBI is surrounding this place, Edgars!” I yelled out. “Put your weapons down!”

“Bullshit,” Edgars said, holding his ground. “The FBI would never let you come in here alone. I’ve hacked into their systems, read their protocols.”

“They’re right behind me. I radioed them my position!”

“Impossible. I’ve jammed everything within ten miles.”

That idea seemed to embolden him because he burst out from behind the bulldozer blade at a steep retreating angle, so fast I had no shot. He skidded to a stop right behind the gas tanks. Definitely no shot.

Unaware of what I could and couldn’t see, Edgars kept his camera rolling, set his rifle on the ground, and stood back up.

He’s filming and needs a free hand to open the gas valves, I thought, realizing in a split second that I had only one option, and I needed to take that option right now or never. I aimed at the top turret of the halo sight, right above the AR’s action, and fired my.40 S&W.

The hundred-and-fifty-grain bullet hit the turret, blew through the sight, and smashed into the action with four hundred foot-pounds of energy. The gun went skidding across the concrete floor and under a combine’s blades.

I pushed myself up into a crouch, saw a shocked Edgars spin away from the gas tanks, yank down his gas mask, and run toward the combine. I took off after him, gun up.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!” I yelled a moment before I smelled the propane hissing full force from the tanks.

With my left arm and jacket sleeve across my nose and mouth, I hobbled past the women and Pratt, who was unconscious, and the tanks. Edgars was flat on his belly thirty feet beyond them, reaching under the combine. I feared shooting because of the gas. Before I could get close enough to jump on him, he twisted around, pointing the rifle and the camera at me. I skidded to a stop, aiming my pistol at him.

“Shoot him!” Lourdes Rodriguez screamed.

“Shoot him!” the other women cried.

Edgars bellowed from inside the mask, “He shoots, you all die!”

I stared at him. “You shoot, we all die.”

“Maybe that’s the point.”

“Why the hell are you doing this, Edgars?”

He looked at me as if I were stupid and said, “I hate blondes. I always have. Bitches, every one of them.”

“No one will see your last little film if you shoot and blow this place up.”

He beamed at me through the glass eyeholes of the gas mask. “The cameras are streaming, uploading over Wi-Fi.”

“We can all walk out of here.”

“No, we can’t,” he said, and he looked over the top of his busted sight at me. “Best thing? I can’t miss from here, so I get to see you die first. Just a half second before we all go up in flames.”

For the first time, I felt woozy from the gas. Edgars lifted his camera higher and glanced at the screen on the back as if trying to frame me, the gas canisters, and the women behind me for one final shot.

“All blondes must die eventually,” Edgars said. “And cops and geniuses.”

“Don’t!”

He pulled the trigger.

Chapter 110

There was a clank and a tremendous bang, and my heart almost stopped; I expected the gas to ignite and blow up the tanks, and me and everyone else with them.

Instead, Edgars screamed and writhed on the concrete floor, his bleeding hands clawing at the gas mask, his rifle three feet to his right, ruptured and smoking. Adrenaline poured through my veins, making me shake so bad that several moments passed before I realized what had happened.

Damaged by my earlier shot, and set to full automatic fire, the action of Edgars’s gun must have backfired, jammed, and exploded, sending chunks and slivers of metal back into the coder’s face and neck.

Edgars tore off the gas mask. His left eye was punctured and weeping blood. His cheeks and forehead were gashed horribly, flayed open, and gushing blood.

My head swooned from the gas. Throwing my jacket sleeve across my mouth again, I kept my gun on him and moved forward fast, meaning to subdue and handcuff him.

But when I got close, Edgars lashed out with his steel-toed boot and connected squarely with my bad ankle. I felt something snap. A bolt of fire shot through me; my leg buckled, and I went down on my side.

My ankle felt like someone had set a torch to it. My stomach turned over from the agony and the gas, and my head swam; I thought I was going to pass out.

“The gas!” Gretchen Lindel cried weakly behind me. “The gas!”

I shook my head, saw Edgars struggling, trying to get to his feet. I aimed my gun at him but didn’t shoot because he seized up before he could fully stand, looked at me puzzled, and then felt his neck.

Something had ruptured, probably the carotid, pumping out blood. He staggered, moving his lips but making no sound, and then fell for the last time.

The gas, I thought through a building daze.

Forcing myself up onto all fours, I turned my back to Edgars and crawled toward the tanks. I reached the post they were chained to and, holding my breath, used the post to pull myself to my feet.

I grabbed the knob to the hissing gas valve, tried to twist it shut. But it wouldn’t budge. Neither would the other one. They were locked open somehow.

My stomach roiled. I fought the urge to puke. But then I looked to Gretchen Lindel and the other six women hanging from the cables. Heads down. Bodies slack. They were dying.

Dying.

My head spun again, and I almost went down for a second time.

You’re dying, Alex.

It was Bree’s voice. It was Nana Mama’s voice. And my children’s voices. All at once, telling me to fight.

In a haze I raised my head, looked around, saw the door where I’d entered the building. Open it, Alex.

Not enough air.

I saw the window I’d looked through. Break it too, I thought.

Not enough, the voices said.

Turning my thickening, spinning head, I looked past the dying women and spotted my only hope.

Do it, my family said.

My love for them surged up inside me. I used it to steel myself and push away from the post and the gas tanks. The pain in my ankle felt electric, and it jolted me, made me more alert and more determined.

My head started to pound. Every step was brutal. With every breath I wanted to stop, lie down, and surrender. But my family’s voices kept urging me on, telling me that pain was temporary, but death was not. Death was...

I reached the long wall of the steel building and fell against it, gasping, tasting the gas, and feeling like my ankle and my head were going to burst at the seams and split apart. Dark dots danced before my eyes, gathered, and threatened to blind me.

Dad!

Alex!

On the edge of collapse, I reached up and flailed at three buttons on the front of a metal box attached to the wall. I missed, groped, stabbed at them again, and felt them click one by one.

Nothing happened, and for a single, disbelieving moment, I thought there was no hope. That I was—

Gear engaged. Electric winch motors turned. And one, two, and then three of the overhead garage doors began to rise.

I ducked under the one closest to me and felt a strong cold breeze hit me in the face as I stumbled and went to my knees outside in the melting snow and mud.

I coughed and swooned but then scooped up a handful of snow and cold mud and splashed it in my face. I had to go back. I had to get them out.

I crawled back and saw Pratt lying motionless on top of his gas mask. Taking a big breath, I scrambled to him, rolled him over, and put the mask on.

After opening the door I’d come through, and the window, and feeling the air moving, I found the ropes attached to the cables holding the women and cut them all down.

One by one, I grabbed them and, still crawling, dragged them out into the snow. They were all outside and breathing when I heard the chug of a helicopter, looked back toward the bluff, and saw a Life Flight chopper coming in for a landing.

Chapter 111

Shortly after four that afternoon, Eliza Lindel broke down sobbing in Bree’s arms. I leaned over on my crutches and rubbed her back.

“Please,” she cried softly to me when she drew away from Bree. “You’ll have to come with me to tell Alden.”

I glanced at Bree, who nodded.

“Of course,” I said.

Gretchen Lindel’s mother wiped at her tears, then reached up and kissed my face. “I want you to know that you’re a good man, Dr. Cross.”

My eyes started to water. “Thank you.”

Bree held her hand. I followed them through the door at the far end of the kitchen into Alden Lindel’s small world. The shriveled man in the bed took his eyes off the latest Game of Thrones episode.

Eliza Lindel came around me and shut it off. “Dr. Cross has news, Alden.”

His eyes went to the tablet. The synthetic voice said, “Gretch?”

I smiled. “She’s safe, Mr. Lindel. They’re all safe. She’s on her way here. We tried to convince her to stay in the hospital, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”

Lindel shut his eyes tight, and then he looked to his tablet. “Thank God,” his mechanical voice said. “Thank God.”

Tinker, the Jack Russell terrier, started barking and yipping with excitement in the kitchen.

“Mom? Dad?” Gretchen cried weakly.

An EMT was pushing her in a wheelchair. She’d been washed clean of pig’s blood and wore a pair of hospital scrubs. An IV in her arm was connected to a bag mounted on a pole attached to the chair.

Her mother ran to her and hugged her, and they sobbed with joy, the little dog dancing on her hind legs and barking madly. They all went to Alden’s side. The dog jumped on his bed. Gretchen got up on wobbly legs, threw her arms around her dad, and kissed him.

“I never gave up, Dad,” she said, weeping. “They tried to reach inside and destroy me, but they couldn’t. Because of you, and what you taught me, they couldn’t.”

He broke down, made choking sounds of love, which Bree and I took as our cue to slip out, our job done. Outside, we smiled like happy idiots. It was a crisp late-fall afternoon, and I felt damn lucky to be alive.

“That Find My iPhone app is something, isn’t it?” I said, putting the crutches in the backseat and then hopping to the front, grimacing as I gingerly drew my splinted lower leg inside. “It can track the phone even if the phone’s not signed in.”

“Definitely helped find you faster,” Bree said, starting the engine. “That and Batra and the Life Flight pilot hearing your radio call.”

We drove toward GW Medical Center, where Ned Mahoney was in surgery. While Bree called Chief Michaels and filled him in, I prayed for Ned, and for Delilah Franks, Cathy Dupris, Ginny Krauss, Alison Dane, and Patsy Mansfield, hoping to God that they’d come to find peace with what had happened to them. Somehow, I knew Gretchen Lindel was going to be all right.

I thought about the four mannequins the HRT team had found in the shed, all lying on electric heating pads that made them look like real people on the infrared scopes. I thought about the FBI agent who’d been closest to the first thaa-wumph! in the basement of Edgars’s house, which he’d said held computers and large editing screens.

He said a fireball had gone off in there, fueled by an accelerant, and that, together with the explosion upstairs, had burned the mansion to the ground. Edgars had thought of almost everything; it was as if he’d been certain we’d find him at some point and had planned for it.

Bree ended her call with the chief.

“Michaels says, ‘Well done,’ and you’re on paid leave pending an investigation again.”

“Is it possible to be double-suspended?”

“You’re going to be cleared, Alex. Pratt was going to kill Gretchen Lindel. There are multiple witnesses. You had to shoot him. And Edgars effectively shot himself.”

“I know.”

“Then why the long face?”

I hesitated, wondering if I was still suffering from the effects of the gas, but then I said, “I’ve decided not to go back even if I am cleared.”

She was quiet for a while. “What would you do? Just counseling?”

“No, I’ve got some big ideas. And the best part about them? They all include you.”

When I glanced over at her, she was smiling. “That makes me happy.”

I reached over and squeezed her hand. “Me too.”

Chapter 112

Ten days after we reunited his daughter with her family, Alden Lindel passed away in his sleep, a happy man.

I heard the news from his wife on a chill, windy Saturday afternoon as I crutched after my family on the east side of Capitol Hill. Mrs. Lindel was grief-stricken, of course, but also relieved. With Gretchen at his side constantly since she’d returned home, Lindel had found grace, and he’d passed holding his daughter’s hand and his wife’s. I promised Eliza that I would be at the funeral, and I pocketed my phone.

Ali was dancing around. “C’mon, Dad. I’m going to be late.”

“Go on in, then,” Nana Mama said, shooing him toward the door of Elephants and Donkeys, a relatively new pub with a poster in the window advertising the District Open Darts Championship.

Ali yanked open the door like he owned the place and went in.

Bree started laughing.

“What’s so funny, young lady?” my grandmother demanded.

Bree waved a hand. “I just never thought I’d see the day when you’d be attending a darts tournament in a bar, Nana.”

“I’m not done growing yet, dear,” she said good-naturedly and winked.

We followed her inside and found Sampson, Billie, and Krazy Kat Rawlins having drafts at the bar. I helped Ali sort through the release forms and got a number to pin on the back of his shirt.

“They have a practice board,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

“You’ve been practicing every night for two hours.”

He frowned, said, “Repetition is the mother of skill, Dad.”

“Yeah, okay, I’ve heard that too,” I said, surrendering. “Go on.”

I smiled as he walked toward the knot of older darts competitors gathered at the rear of the pub, thinking that I had never been that fearless at his age.

Sampson handed me a beer, offered me his stool.

I took it and kissed Billie on the cheek. “You guys didn’t have to come.”

“What else were we going to do on a cold day off?”

Nana Mama sat up on a bar stool beside Jannie watching a college football game, eating buffalo wings, and drinking a Sprite.

“I know we’re technically on leave pending investigation,” Sampson said to Bree. “But is Lourdes Rodriguez still spilling her guts?”

Bree hesitated.

Rawlins said, “I’ve talked to her. The woman won’t shut up.”

“It’s true,” Bree said with a sigh.

Between the two of them, we got a thumbnail sketch of Rodriguez’s involvement with Nash Edgars. They’d met at a coding conference she’d attended because she’d heard coders made better money than satellite-dish installers.

Edgars seemed to have anything he wanted whenever he wanted it. Better, he could get her anything she wanted whenever she wanted it. Rodriguez wasn’t going to inherit a dime from any uncle ever, and here was this genius computer guy offering her the world.

“Through the dark web,” Rawlins said. “She claimed he was worth forty to fifty million in Bitcoin alone.”

“But it wasn’t until he started acting on his hatred of blond women that the real money started coming in,” Bree said, disgusted.

“Hundreds of thousands of subscribers,” Rawlins said, shaking his Mohawk, which was a startling violet that day. “All of them paying to see those women terrified and abused.”

Rodriguez told Bree that Edgars’s hatred of blondes stemmed from years of dealing with a drunken blond mother and more years of fair-haired girls harassing him when he was grossly obese and growing up in Southern California. Because he was an avowed computer nerd, the abuse continued even after he’d dropped the weight.

“So, what, he decided to get his revenge and help others live out their anti-blonde fantasies?” Sampson said.

“It was more twisted and diabolical than that,” Bree said. “She said he planned on putting the clips together into a horror documentary film called All Blondes Must Die.”

“That’s something we’ll never be seeing, thank God,” Sampson said. “What about that kid Timmy Walker?”

“Lourdes said if anyone killed that poor kid, it was Pratt,” Bree said. “She said there wasn’t a good bone in his body, that Alex did the world a service.”

Billie said, “How’s Ned?”

“Better,” I said, brightening. “I saw him this morning. Like you said the day he was shot, the liver’s a remarkable thing. It’s already starting to regenerate. The docs are saying he’ll make a full—”

Nana Mama appeared, said, “Enough of that. C’mon, your son’s about to throw or toss or whatever they do with darts.”

Chapter 113

I wish I could say that Ali slayed it, threw darts with consistent, dazzling accuracy, but that didn’t happen. He did toss three bull’s-eyes and an almost, but he was wild otherwise and lost in the first round to a nice guy from Texas named Mel Davis who owned a barbecue joint downtown.

Ali was crushed until Davis offered him and his friends free barbecue brisket the next time he was in. My youngest was back to his old self walking home, gabbing nonstop with Jannie and Nana Mama about his plans to make a comeback in the tournament next year. We lagged behind.

After a few moments, Bree said, “What did Ned think about your big idea?”

“He likes it. A lot.”

“Michaels?”

“We haven’t had that talk yet.”

“You’re sure you’ll be happy?”

“Extremely. I’ll have the best of both worlds.”

Ali, Nana, and Jannie went into Chung’s convenience store to pick up milk and ice cream. Bree and I kept walking.

Night had fallen when we reached our steps. The house and porch were dark. We climbed onto the porch together, hand in hand, and but for a few unresolved issues, I felt as solid as I had in—

“Hands up, or I’ll shoot you both right now.”

We startled and looked to our right, saw the silhouette of someone crouched by the railing and aiming a revolver at us. We raised our hands.

“Hello, Dr. Cross,” he said, straightening. “Chief Stone.”

Dylan Winslow, Gary Soneji’s son, swung the gun back and forth between us, and even in the low light I could see a demented smile on his face. It was a smile I’d seen before, months ago, when I’d caught him torturing pigeons in his mother’s barn in rural Delaware.

“What do you think you’re doing, Dylan?” I said.

“Giving you what you deserve for killing my mom.”

“He was framed,” Bree said. “Drugged. The jury agreed.”

“I saw him do it with my own two eyes,” he snarled.

“So you were in the factory that night,” I said. “I’ve thought about that possibility quite a bit since the trial.”

“Who cares? Winning and seeing you gone is what’s important.”

“You took the holographic film off everyone’s hands, didn’t you?”

He snorted. “That’s bullshit. That whole excuse was cooked up by your brat of a kid and his gay buddy. Where is he, anyway? Your brat of a kid?”

“Far away,” I said, my eyes flickering to the street and the sidewalk.

“I’ll find him later, after I’m done here.”

“No, you won’t.”

Dylan shook the pistol at me. “Don’t tell me what I will or won’t do, Cross! Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I’m the guy who notices things, Dylan. Even after seeing the film of me shooting your mother over and over in court, I couldn’t figure out what about it was driving me crazy.”

“Shut up. Get on your knees. Both of you.”

I stood my ground. So did Bree.

I said, “Your mother stumbled when she came into view. Did you push your mother, Dylan? Did she know what you meant to have happen?”

“Lying again.” He sneered. “Making shit up. It’s what you do, Cross. But not this time. This time, you’re gonna die. Like you should have before.”

I heard the click of the revolver’s hammer cocking.

“Don’t do it,” Bree said. “Killing cops never ends well.”

“I don’t care,” Dylan said. “This is where I end too. Once I see you both—”

I caught a flicker of movement behind and to his right a split second before Soneji’s son screamed and spun around, firing. The shot hit the porch ceiling.

Plaster dust and splinters hit me in the face as I charged, smashed my shoulder into his rib cage, and drove him hard against the railing. I heard ribs crack and saw all the wind go out of him before I dragged him to the porch floor and pinned him.

Bree kicked away his gun, backed up, and turned on the porch light.

Dylan Winslow lay under me, gasping for air, one hand groping for the vanes and shaft of the competition dart buried deep in the left side of his neck.

“Who’s the brat now, jackass?” Ali cried, leaping onto the porch, pumping his fist, and then pointing a finger triumphantly at Soneji’s kid. “I smoked you with a ten-ringer from thirty-five feet!”

Chapter 114

Late the following April, Ali and I drove out to Assateague State Park on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It was a glorious spring day, unnaturally warm, and it felt good in my bones when I climbed from the car after parking beside a familiar Jeep Wagoneer.

“Why would Mr. Aaliyah want to teach me to fish?” Ali said, coming around the back. “He doesn’t even know me.”

“He’s heard of you. Besides, he likes to teach kids to fish.”

“Why?”

“Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.”

Ali gave me a funny face. “Who said that?”

“Someone smarter than me,” I said as a Volvo pulled into the lot.

A woman in her thirties with ash-blond hair climbed out and looked over at us uncertainly. “The beach isn’t far, is it?”

“Just over the dunes,” I said and motioned to Ali to kick off his sneakers.

Barefoot, we walked the sand path through the dunes. My ankle didn’t feel too bad at all, and there was a nice breeze blowing that smelled like spring.

“What’s going to happen to him, Dad?” Ali said. “Dylan Winslow?”

“That’s out of my hands. He’ll get his day in court.”

“I heard Bree say they think something’s wrong with his brain.”

That was sadly true and, if the doctors’ suspicions proved correct, unsurprising. Dylan had been born on the wrong end of a DNA chain, one where psychopathic tendencies were passed on by a criminally insane father and first expressed through a delight in torturing defenseless animals. Abetting the murder of his mother and then attempting to murder us were natural progressions for him, in some ways as predictable as diseases.

“Doctors are looking at that possibility,” I said. “If so, Dylan will go to an institution for people like that.”

We emerged on the beach. The sky was ridiculously blue. The sea heaved and rolled in a deeper azure. Early-season sunbathers and a smattering of fishermen dotted the pristine sand.

“That guy’s got a big fish!” Ali said, pointing to a man pulling one ashore.

“Nice one.”

“I like this place, Dad. I want to learn to fish.”

“Thought you might.”

We walked south a hundred yards and found Bernie Aaliyah and his daughter, Tess, waiting for us.

“Heard a lot about you, kid,” Bernie said, shaking Ali’s hand. “Remind me not to get between you and a dartboard.”

Ali grinned, and I knew they were going to be buds. Bernie started to show Ali how the tackle worked. I went to Tess, said, “Long time, no see.”

She put her hands in her back pockets, said, “I’m doing better. Most days.”

“Take a stroll?”

“Why not?”

We walked back the way I’d come.

“I’ve heard rumors of you leaving Metro,” Tess said. “On to bigger and better things.”

“It’s true,” I said, and I explained the deal I’d forged.

Similar to Rawlins, I was now an independent contractor for the FBI, working as a consultant on the most sensitive and high-profile cases. The same was true with Metro.

“I was getting restless,” I said. “I needed a new challenge, and I’ll get it. And because I’ll be called to work only the most demanding cases, I’ll have time to dedicate to my counseling practice, where I find a lot of personal fulfillment.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“I think so.”

I saw the ash-blond woman from the parking lot walking our way. She’d put on big sunglasses and a tennis visor and held the hand of a pretty young girl in pigtails who wore pink culottes and carried a little bucket and shovel.

“Detective Aaliyah?” the woman said.

Tess pulled her head back, clearly not recognizing her.

The woman glanced at me and then took off her sunglasses. “My name is Patricia Phelps.”

Tess took a sharp breath. Her shaking hands traveled to her lips in disbelief. The mother of the little girl she’d shot was standing right there.

“I’ll let you two talk,” I said, and I walked toward the dunes.

I climbed up on one and sat on top for the longest time, rubbing my ankle and watching life play out on the beach below me. I saw Patricia Phelps forgive Tess Aaliyah as she’d promised she would. Tess fell into the woman’s arms, and later they built a sand castle with Meagan, the little girl.

It took a while, but Ali finally got the hang of casting and later hooked his first fish, a nice striper. He danced all around, throwing his hands up in the air, and I could hear his shouts of victory over the surf.

I smiled and gazed beyond the breaking waves to the sea and the far horizon, feeling that these kinds of moments, these small triumphs, were more than enough to keep me working for the good in the world despite all the dark webs I’d been thrust into over the course of my life.