James PATTERSON - Cross Fire

When I got there, they had Littleton on a gurney in one of the blue-curtained ER cubicles. The truss over her shoulder was stained dark with Betadine, and whatever the IV meds were doing for her physical pain, they sure weren’t helping her mental state – she still looked ghost white and scared as hell.

“Rebecca? I’m Detective Cross from Metro Police,” I said. “I need to talk to you.”

“Am I, like, being charged with anything?” I don’t think she was much more than eighteen or nineteen. Barely legal. Her voice was tiny, and it quavered when she spoke.

“No,” I assured her. “Nothing like that. I just need to ask you some questions. I’ll try to make this easy, and fast.”

The truth was, even if someone wanted to pursue the solicitation angle, there were no witnesses to it – with the possible exception of the man who had shot her.

“Did you see anything tonight that might give you an idea of who did this? Anyone outside the window? Or even just something out of place in the hotel room?”

“I don’t think so, but… I don’t remember very much. Mr. Downey started to close the curtains, and then I was just… on the floor. I don’t even know what happened after that. Or right before.”

In fact, she’d been the one to drag a phone off a side table and call for help. The incident would probably come back to her in pieces, but I didn’t push it for now.

“Was this the first time you’d met up with Mr. Downey?” I asked.

“No. He was kind of a regular.”

“Always at the Mayflower?”

She nodded. “He liked that suite. We always went to the same room.”

A nurse in pink scrubs came into the cubicle. “Rebecca, hon? They’re ready for you upstairs, okay?”

The curtain around us slid open, and several other people were there now. One of the residents started unlocking the wheels on her gurney.

“Just one more question,” I said. “How long were you in the room tonight before this happened?”

Rebecca closed her eyes and thought for a second. “Five minutes, maybe? We just got there. Detective… I’m in college. My parents…”

“You won’t be charged with anything, but your name will probably get out. You should call your parents, Rebecca.”

I walked with her as she was rolled out into the hall and toward the elevators. There didn’t seem to be any family or friends around, and it broke my heart a little that she had to go through this alone.

“Listen,” I said. “I’ve been where you are. I’ve had a bullet in my shoulder, and I know how scary this is. You’re going to be fine, Rebecca.”

“Okay,” she said, but I don’t think she believed me. She still looked terrified.

“I’ll check on you later,” I said, just before the elevator doors slid shut between us.

I HOOFED it back to the car and started scribbling notes against the steering wheel, trying to capture all the different threads running through my head.

Rebecca said she and Downey had been in the room for only a short time. That meant the snipers were set up and ready for them. The killers knew exactly when and where they needed to be, just like they knew when Vinton and Pilkey would be outside the restaurant, and just like they knew Mel Dlouhy’s neighbors were out of town when they came by to murder him.

Whoever was behind this had a firm handle on the victims’ habits, the movements of the people around them, and even the most private details of their otherwise public lives. It struck me that this kind of intelligence gathering took time, manpower, and know-how, and quite possibly money.

I thought about what Siegel had said to me on the roof of the Moore Building tonight. These guys are guns for hire. I hadn’t ruled it out then, and I was a step closer to ruling it in now. I just didn’t like thinking that Siegel had beaten me to it. Usually I’m not like that, but he just rubbed me the wrong way.

There was obviously some kind of specific and disciplined agenda behind these killings. If a shooter as skilled as this one had wanted Rebecca taken out, she would have been dead for sure. But she didn’t fit the profile; her only crime had been to land in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not so for the others. By the apparent rules of this game, Rebecca didn’t deserve to die, but Skip Downey and the other Washington “bad guys” did.

So whose game was it? Who was writing the rules? And where was it all heading?

I still couldn’t dismiss the possibility that our gunmen were operating on their own. But I also was just paranoid enough by now – or maybe experienced enough – that a list of scarier alternatives was taking shape in my mind.

Could this somehow be government backed? Some domestic agency? An international one?

Or was the Mob behind it somehow? The military? Maybe even just a very well-connected individual, with deep pockets and a serious ax to grind?

In any case, the most important questions were still left hanging: Who did they have their eye on next? And how the hell were we supposed to protect every high-profile scumbag in Washington? It just couldn’t be done.

Unless we got very, very lucky, someone else was going to die before this was over. And it was most likely somebody who many people wouldn’t mind seeing dead. That was the beauty of this terrifying game.

THE NEXT DAY was a benchmark for Nana and me. Things had been chilly between us since I’d brought in the security at the house, but when I came down and found her cooking breakfast for Rakeem and his guys, I knew we were at least partway over the hump.

“Oh, Alex, you’re here. Good. Take these plates outside,” she said as if breakfast delivery were something I did every day. “Scoot, while it’s hot!”

When I came back, my own plate was waiting for me – scrambled eggs with linguica, wheat toast, orange juice, and a steaming cup of Nana’s chicory coffee in my old favorite #1 Dad mug with the dent where Ali had thrown it against the wall.

Her own breakfasts were a lot more heart-healthy these days – grapefruit sections, toast with unsalted butter, tea, and then one half of one sausage link, because as Nana liked to say, there was a fine line between eating smart to live longer and boring oneself to death.

“Alex, I want to call a truce,” she said, finally settling down across from me.

“Here’s to that,” I said, and raised my juice glass. “I accept your terms, whatever they are.”

“Because there’s something else I need to talk to you about.”

I had to laugh. “That was just about the shortest cease-fire I’ve ever seen. What is this, the Middle East?”

“Oh, relax. It’s about Bree.”

As far as I knew, Bree was right up there with sliced bread, Barack Obama, and handwritten letters in Nana’s book. How bad could this be?

“You know, after all this, you’d be a silly fool to let that girl slip through your fingers,” she started in.

“Absolutely,” I said, “and if I may, I’d like to draw the court’s attention to the very nice diamond ring on Ms. Stone’s left hand.”

Nana waved my logic away with her fork. “Rings come off just as easily as they go on. I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but you’ve got something of a track record with women, and not in a good way.”

Ouch. Still, I couldn’t deny it. For whatever reasons, I’d never been able to find real stability in a relationship since my first wife, Maria, had been murdered so many years earlier.

At least, not until now with Bree.

“If it makes you feel any better,” I said, “I took Bree up to Immaculate Conception and asked her to marry me all over again, right there in front of God and creation.”