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  “So you don’t know who either of them are,” I said.

  There was another long pause. Then he laughed, as heartily as I’d ever heard from Kyle.

  “Alex Cross, are you asking me for advice?”

  “You used to be a good agent,” I said. “Remember? You used to advise me.”

  “Of course. They were the second-worst years of my life. The first being my time in that so-called Supermax out in Florence — which I have you to thank for.” He stopped, and I heard another long, slow breath. “Which also brings us full circle, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes, it does,” I said. “Your whole life seems to revolve around paying me back for that.”

  “Something along those lines.”

  “So why all the running around, playing games, Kyle? What are you waiting for?”

  “The right inspiration, I suppose,” he said without a trace of irony. “That’s the beauty of creation and imagination. Remaining open to what comes. The more seasoned the artist, the more capable he is of responding in the moment.”

  “So you’re an artist now?”

  “I suppose that I always have been,” he told me. “I’m just getting better at it, that’s all. It would be foolish to quit while I’m in my prime. But I will tell you one thing, my friend.”

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “When the end comes — trust me — we’ll both know it.”

  Book Four

  FINAL TARGET, FINAL STRATEGIES

  Chapter 72

  LEAVING DC in the old white Suburban that morning, Denny had seen in the side mirror vapor trails coming out of the exhaust, but he didn’t think too much about it. With a rig as old as this one, he couldn’t bother himself over every mechanical hiccup.

  Now, three and a half hours from home, the hiccup had turned into something more like a death rattle. There was a familiar dry clank coming from the engine.

  As they pulled over to the side of Route 70, Mitch looked up from the Penthouse he’d nabbed off the rack at their last pit stop. “What’s going on, Denny? That doesn’t sound right.”

  “Can’t you hear the head gasket going?” Denny said. It was amazing how observant Mitch could be with a rifle in his hand, considering how dim he was about most of the rest of his life.

  A quick check under the hood told Denny what he already knew, but he waited until they were limping back up the highway to say anything more about it to Mitch.

  “Now, don’t freak out or anything, buddy, but the old magic bus ain’t going to make it back to DC. I think we’re going to have to ditch it.”

  Mitch’s face lit up like a little kid’s. “I know where we can do it!” he said. “I used to go hunting around here all the time. It’s the perfect place, Denny. Nobody ever goes back there.”

  “I’m thinking we stick it in long-term parking at the airport and walk away,” Denny said. “By the time anybody figures out we ain’t coming back…”

  But Mitch wasn’t having it.

  “Come on, Denny. Please?” He was sitting sideways on the seat now and pulling at Denny’s sleeve like some kind of little punk. “Let’s just… drown this thing, man. Get rid of it once and for all.”

  Denny shouldn’t have been surprised. Mitch had been getting more and more paranoid about the Suburban ever since their traffic stop on the last road trip. It was all getting real old, real fast.

  At the same time, though, this might be a chance to calm Mitch the fuck down, Denny realized. He needed his boy focused, and that could be worth a lot in the long run.

  “Yeah, all right,” Denny said finally. “We can dump most of this stuff. It’s garbage anyway. The rest, we can pack out. Then we’ll do what any other self-respecting American patriot would do.”

  Mitch was grinning at him, ear to ear. “What’s that, Denny?”

  “Trade up, my man. You ever hot-wire a vehicle before?”

  Chapter 73

  WHEN IT WAS done, they stopped to wash up in a Mobil bathroom and stole a cone of tulips from a bucket outside the convenience store. Denny would have liked for them to be wearing ties, too, but it was getting late.

  In fact, it was after dark when they finally pulled up to the tidy little Cape on Central Boulevard in Brick Township. It was a quiet street, with big trees arching over from both sides to meet in the middle, and you could smell the salt of the ocean in the breeze.

  “You grew up here?” Denny said, looking around. “Man, why’d you ever want to leave?”

  Mitch shrugged. “I don’t know, Denny. I just did.”

  When they got to the front door, Denny unscrewed the porch lightbulb and then rang the bell. A middle-aged woman came to answer. She had Mitch’s same girth and round face, and she squinted out into the dark to see who it was.

  “Is that… Mitchell?”

  “Hey, Mom.”

  The dish towel dropped out of her hand. “Mitchell!” The next second, she was pulling him inside and wrapping her saggy sausage arms around him. “Lord, Lord, you brought my boy home for a visit, and I thank you!”

  “Quit it, Mom.” Mitch squirmed under the kisses, but he was smiling as he detached himself, the tulips half crushed in his hand. “This is Denny,” he announced.

  “Nice to meet you, ma’am,” Denny said. “I’m real sorry about just dropping in like this. We should have called first. I know we should have.”

  Bernice Talley waved it away like so many flies in the air. “Don’t you give it a second thought. Come in, come in.”

  As she reached past Denny to close the door, her eyes lingered on the Lexus ES parked at the curb.

  “I’ll bet you boys are hungry” was all she said, though.

  “Yes’m,” Mitch answered.

  “Mitch is always hungry,” Denny said, and Bernice laughed like she knew it was true. Her right hip rode up badly when she walked, but she limped right on past the cane hooked over a doorknob in the hall.

  “Mitchell, offer your friend something to drink. I’ll see what I can shake out of this fridge.”

  Denny hung back as they passed through the living room. It was all matching furniture in here, but old stuff. “Grandma on a budget” stuff. It was the kind of place where he could imagine his old man trying to sell his vacuums, or knives, or whatever had been paying for the whiskey bottles back then. He couldn’t have been too good at it, though. The son of a bitch never drank anything better than Old Crow.

  On a side table, Mrs. Talley had three gold-framed pictures arranged in a perfect little arc. One was of Jesus, with his eyes raised up to God. One was of Mitch, looking young and doofy in a suit and tie. And the third was a military portrait of a middle-aged black man, in full uniform with a decent show of ribbons on his chest.

  Denny stepped into the kitchen, where Mrs. Talley was busying herself while Mitch sat at the old Formica table with a couple of open Heinekens in front of him.

  “Hey, is that Mr. Talley in the picture out here?” he asked.

  The old woman stopped short. Her hand floated halfway to her bad hip before she reached over and opened the fridge instead.

  “We lost Mr. Talley two years ago,” she said without looking around. “God rest his soul.”

  “I’m real sorry to hear that,” Denny told her. “So it’s just you here by yourself, huh?” He knew he was being a shit, but it couldn’t be helped.

  She mistook it for concern. “Oh, I’m fine. There’s a boy who mows the lawn and shovels the snow, and my neighbor Samuel comes over if I got something heavy needs moving.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to have brought it up, Mrs. Talley. I didn’t mean to —”

  “No, no.” She waved away more of the invisible flies. “It’s perfectly all right. He was a good man.”

  “A good man who left behind a fine son,” Denny added.

  Mrs. Talley’s face eased into a smile. “You don’t have to tell me that,” she said, and ran a hand over Mitch’s broad shoulder as she passed from fridge to counter with a bag of onions.

/>   Denny could see that, under the table, Mitch’s knee was just starting to bounce up a storm.

  Chapter 74

  EVEN WITHOUT ADVANCE NOTICE, Bernice Talley managed to pull together a fast New England–style clam chowder, some good bread, a salad, and a couple of microwaved potatoes with everything on them, from butter to sour cream to Canadian bacon. It was the best dinner Denny had eaten since he’d started this whole mess, living in the shelters and that godforsaken Suburban, which he was glad to be rid of now. He contentedly filled himself while Mrs. Talley chattered on about people he’d never heard of. Mitch mostly listened.

  Finally, after seconds of Edy’s French Vanilla with gobs of chocolate sauce, Denny pushed back and stretched his arms and legs.

  “Ma’am, that was spectacular,” he said.

  Mrs. Talley beamed. “Wait until you try my waffles,” she told him.

  “We ain’t staying the night, Mom,” Mitch said, more into his ice-cream bowl than to her.

  Right away, the woman’s face fell. “What do you mean? Where are you going to go at nine thirty at night?”

  “We’re just coming back from a conference in New York,” Denny put in quickly. “Mitch thought it would be nice to drop by, but we’ve got to be back in Cleveland tomorrow morning. We’ll be driving all night just to get there for work.”

  “I see,” she said quietly, but the heartbreak in her voice was hard to miss.

  “Tell you what” — Denny got up and started clearing dishes — “why don’t you two go talk in the living room for a while? I’ll clean up in here.”

  “No, no,” she started in, but he eventually wheedled her out of the room.

  When she was gone, he put on the woman’s yellow Playtex gloves and washed all the dishes by hand. He wiped down the sink, the counter, the table, the fridge, and the two bottles of beer he’d drunk. Then he pocketed the gloves.

  Half an hour later, he and Mitch were on their way down the front walk.

  “Nice lady, sweet lady, great cook,” Denny said. “Sorry we couldn’t stay any longer.”

  “That’s okay,” Mitch told him. “We got things to do back in DC.”

  Denny gave him a fist bump on that one. It seemed maybe Mitch was getting focused again, back to his old self.

  Once they reached the curb, Denny stopped short and snapped his fingers. “Hang on. I left my wallet on the counter. I’ll be right back.”

  “I’ll get it,” Mitch said, but Denny put a hand out to stop him.

  “Bad idea, Mitchie. You saw your mom’s face just now. Don’t want to make her cry all over again, do you?”

  “I guess not,” Mitch said.

  “Of course you don’t. Now just sit tight in the car, and don’t come inside. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  Chapter 75

  I WAS SPENDING as many hours at the house as I could, including all of my desk time. Between Kyle Craig, the Patriot snipers, and these new homicides with the numbers, my attic office was as stuffed with case materials as it had ever been. That meant a lot of crime-scene photos, so I told the kids that Dad’s office was off-limits for the time being, which explained the phone call I got from Jannie that afternoon.

  “Hello, Alex, this is Janelle the Banished, calling from the faraway land of the second floor.”

  My daughter’s always been one to put the “smart” in smart aleck. I just try to keep up. “Hail thee well, Janelle. How goes it in the nether regions?”

  “You have a visitor, Daddy,” she said, back to business. “There’s a man named Mr. Siegel at the front door. He’s an FBI agent.”

  At first I thought I’d heard wrong. What could Max Siegel be doing at my house? The last time we’d tangled had been the worst so far.

  “Daddy?”

  “I’m coming right down,” I said.

  When I got to the second floor, Jannie was still waiting there. She trailed after me down the stairs, but I told her to stay inside.

  Then I closed the front door behind me on the way out.

  Siegel was on the front steps, looking very Brooklyn in jeans and a black motorcycle jacket. He also had a black helmet in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other.

  One of our security guys, David Brandabur, had positioned himself on the stoop, between Max and the door.

  “It’s fine, David,” I said. “I know him.”

  We both waited for David to go back to his car before either of us spoke.

  “What are you doing here, Max?” I asked.

  Siegel came up another step, just far enough to hand me the bag. Right away, I could see on his face that something had changed.

  “I wasn’t sure what you liked,” he said.

  I pulled out a fifth of Johnnie Walker Black. Some kind of a peace offering, I supposed, but with Siegel, I really didn’t know what to think.

  He shrugged. “I know, I know. Agent Schizo, right?”

  “Something like that,” I told him.

  “Listen, Alex, I realize what I’m like to work with. I take all this shit very personally. I shouldn’t, but I do. I’m passionate as hell. Maybe it’s part of what makes me good at my job, but I can also be a real asshole sometimes.”

  I wanted to say, “Sometimes?” but I just listened to what Siegel had to tell me.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “I just came by to say I know you’ve got your hands full these days, and if there’s anything you need, you should let me know. Anything at the Bureau, or even just security backup here at the house — someone to pull an overnight or whatever.”

  He looked up at my blank face and finally smiled. “Really. No tricks. No bullshit.”

  I wanted to believe Siegel. It certainly would have made things easier. But my instinct was still to distrust him. I couldn’t just shake that off because he came over with a peace offering.

  Then the door opened behind me, and suddenly Bree was there. “Everything okay out here?” she asked.

  Siegel chuckled. “I guess my reputation precedes me.”

  “Actually, we’ve got a teenage news service sitting on the stairs inside,” Bree said. She put out her hand, ever the peacemaker. “I’m Bree Stone.”

  “Detective Stone,” he said. “Of course. Good to meet you. I’m Max Siegel, Alex’s nightmare from the Bureau. We occasionally see things a little differently.”

  “So I’ve heard,” she said, and they both laughed. It was a little surreal actually. This was a side of Siegel I’d never seen before, the friendly, interested-in-anyone-but-himself side. And it seemed to have come out of nowhere.

  “Max was just dropping this off,” I said, showing her the bottle of scotch.

  “Right.” Siegel took a step down toward the sidewalk. “So, anyway, mission accomplished. Nice to meet you, Detective.”

  “Stay for a quick drink,” she said, and gave my hand a squeeze. “It’s the afternoon. I’m sure we could all stand to wind down a little.”

  There was no pretense here; we all knew what she was trying to do. Siegel looked up at me and shrugged. This was my call, and honestly I would have liked to have said no, but that seemed as if it could just create more trouble than it was worth.

  “Come on in,” I said, and led the way. “Mi casa es su casa, Max.”

  Inside, Jannie had fallen back as far as the kitchen table. Nana and Ali were there, too, in the middle of a game of Go Fish. It was Ali’s latest obsession these days, but they all stopped and looked up as we came in.

  “Max, this is everyone. Regina, Jannie, Ali, this is Agent Siegel.”

  Ali’s eyes bugged out at the motorcycle helmet, and Siegel put it down in front of him. “Go ahead, little guy. Try it on if you want to.”

  “It’s fine,” I said to Ali.

  I took out some glasses and ice, and a couple of SmartWaters for the kids. Nana went to open the cabinet where we keep the chips and crackers, but I shook my head no just enough for her to see.

  “You’ve got a nice place here,” Siegel said, looking out the w
indow at the backyard. “Great setup in the middle of the city.”

  “Thanks.” I handed him a short pour of the scotch, and then one for Bree and myself, and one with water for Nana.

  “So here’s to fresh starts,” Bree said pointedly, and raised her glass.

  “Here’s to summer coming!” Ali chimed in.

  Siegel smiled down at him and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “And here’s to this good family,” he said. “It’s really nice to meet you all.”

  Chapter 76

  SOMETIMES THE BREAKS in a murder case come out of the blue — like a phone call on a Sunday morning, from somewhere you never expected.

  “Detective Cross?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is Detective Scott Cowen from Brick Township PD, in New Jersey. I think we may have a line on your sniper problem up here.”

  MPD had been fielding literally hundreds of tips every week on a newly dedicated sniper hotline. More than 99 percent of those calls were fantasy fiction or dead ends, but whatever Cowen was sitting on, it had gotten him past Dispatch. He now had my attention.

  I turned my newspaper sideways and started writing in the margin next to the crossword. Cowen. Brick Township.

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “Yesterday afternoon, we pulled a white ninety-two Suburban out of the water over at Turn Mill Pond near here. The plates were already gone, no surprise, but I don’t think whoever put it there expected us to find it, at least not this fast. The thing was, we had an ultralight air show going on at the airport this weekend, and a couple of guys flying over saw something down there and called it in —”

  “Yes?” I said. Cowen seemed to talk without taking any breath at all.

  “Yeah, so it couldn’t have been in the water more than forty-eight hours, I’m thinking, because we still managed to pull some damn good prints off of it. Six of them had a dozen or more points each, which was great in theory, until none of them came up on my first pass through IAFIS —”