James PATTERSON - Cross Country

Then he started out the kitchen door. He stopped and turned back. “I’ll talk to the men outside. Maybe put on one more car.”

I didn’t bother to agree or disagree. I was in no shape to make decisions right now. “Thank you.”

“We’ll be fine,” Bree said.

“I have no doubt,” Sampson said and nodded. “Call me if anything happens!” Finally he shut the door behind him.

I went over and locked the door, which would give us an extra few seconds if somebody tried to come in. Maybe we’d need it.

“You all right with this?” Bree asked.

I nodded. “You staying with me?”

“Of course I am.” She drifted over and hugged me again. “Let’s go upstairs, then.” She took my hand. “Alex, come.”

I let Bree take me upstairs. I was numb and in a faraway dreamscape anyway.

“There’s a phone in here,” she said as we entered the bedroom. Then she hugged me again and reached down and started to unhook my belt. I didn’t think that was what I needed, but I was wrong about that.

Until the phone in the bedroom rang.

THE CALLS TO the house started at a few minutes past four in the morning. Hang-ups, one after the other, virtually nonstop.

The calls were emotional torture for me, but I answered every time; and I didn’t dare take the phone off the hook. How could I? The phone was my lifeline to Nana and the kids. Whoever was calling had them. I had to believe that.

Bree and I held each other through the night, probably the worst night of my life.

I told her some of what I’d done and seen in Africa – about the horrors and Adanne and her family, their senseless murders. But I also talked about the goodness and naturalness of the people; their helplessness, caught in a nightmare they hadn’t created and didn’t want.

“And this Tiger, what more did you learn about that bastard, Alex?”

“Terrorist, assassin – seems to work both sides of the street. Anyone who pays him. He’s the most violent killer I’ve ever seen, Bree. He likes to hurt people. And there are others like him. It’s a name they have for killers for hire: Tiger.”

“So he took Nana and the kids? He did this? You’re sure about that?”

“Yes,” I said as the phone rang again. “And that’s him.”

The phone kept ringing and I began to pace around the house, going from room to room, thinking about my family all the while. Rosie followed me everywhere.

In the kitchen, Nana’s favorite cookbook was still out – The Gift of Southern Cooking . I checked and saw it was open to a starred recipe for chocolate-pecan cake.

Nana’s famous gabardine raincoat was draped over the back of a kitchen chair. How many times had she told me, “I don’t want another raincoat. It took me half a century to get this one worn in right”?

I walked around Ali’s room.

I saw his Pokemon cards laid out carefully on the floor. His beloved plush toy Moo. A hand-painted T-shirt from his fifth birthday party. A copy of Ralph S. Mouse spread open on the night table.

When I got to Jannie’s room, I sat down heavily on the bed. My eyes ran over her precious collection of books. And the wire baskets brimming with hair accessories, lip glosses, fruit-scented lotions. Then I spotted her reading glasses, prescribed only a month or so ago. That got to me. There was something so vulnerable and telling about her new glasses sitting on the desk.

I sat there holding Rosie and heard the phone ring again. Bree picked it up.

She said, very quietly, “Fuck you.”

And she hung up on whoever it was this time.

I WAS GOING to get my family back. I had to believe that. But was it true? What were the real odds that I would? They were definitely getting worse.

From six-thirty until close to seven that morning, I sat out on the front porch and tried not to go completely crazy. I thought about taking a drive, to see if it would relax me.

But I was afraid to be away from the house for any length of time.

At a little past seven, the phone hang-ups stopped and I got about an hour of sleep.

Then I showered and dressed and called in one of the patrolmen from the street. I told him to take any calls for me and gave him a cell number where I could be reached.

At nine, Bree and I attended an emergency meeting at the Daly Building.

I was surprised to find about a dozen officers inside the conference room. These were top people too, the best in Washington. I understood that it was a show of support and concern for me. Most of the detectives were people I’d worked with on other cases. Chief of Detectives Davies, Bree, and Sampson had reached out to officers with street connections who might help locate my family.

If anyone could.

FROM THERE, THE day got stranger and stranger for me.

At eleven o’clock, I faced a smaller group inside a windowless conference room at CIA headquarters out at Langley. The atmosphere in the room couldn’t have been more different from the one at Daly. Everyone except me wore a suit and tie. The body language was stiff and uncomfortable. No one wanted to be there except me – I needed their help.

A case officer from the National Clandestine Service named Merrill Snyder greeted me with a firm handshake and the unpromising line “Thanks for coming to see us, Dr. Cross.”

“Can we start?” I asked him.

“We’re just waiting for one more,” Snyder said. “There’s coffee, soft drinks.”

“Where’s Eric Dana?” I asked, remembering the leader’s name from the last time I’d been out to Langley.

“He’s on vacation. The man we’re waiting on is his superior. Sure you don’t want some coffee?”

“No, I’m fine. I don’t need any more caffeine this morning, trust me.”

“I understand. You still haven’t heard from whoever abducted your family?” Snyder asked. “No communication?”

Before I could answer him, the door to the conference room swung wide open. A tall, dark-haired man in his early forties, wearing a gray suit and silver-and-red-striped tie, entered. He carried himself like someone important, which he probably was.

And right behind him came… Ian Flaherty.

THE MAN EVERYONE had been waiting for introduced himself as Steven Millard. He said he was with National Clandestine Service but gave no rank. I remembered now that Al Tunney had mentioned his name before I went to Africa. Millard was the group chief, who’d been involved from the start.

All Flaherty said was, “Dr. Cross.”

“Has there been any word about your family?” Millard wanted to know right off.

Snyder cut in. “No word so far. They haven’t contacted him.”

“There are cops from Metro at my house now,” I told them. “They’ll answer my phone and call me.”

“That’s good. About all you can do,” said Millard. I couldn’t figure out what to make of him. I was sure he knew about my meeting with Eric Dana before I’d left for Africa, but how much more did Millard know?

“I need whatever help you can give me,” I finally said. “I really need some help.”

“You can count on it,” said Millard. “But I have a couple of questions you might be able to help us out with first. Detective Cross, why did you go to Africa in the first place?”

“A friend of mine and her entire family were killed. I had a lead that the killer fled to Lagos. It was my homicide case.”

Millard nodded and seemed to understand. “Tell me this, then, what did you learn in Africa? Something useful, I assume? Otherwise, why would this professional killer want to come after you and your family in Washington?”