Cross the Line: (Alex Cross 24)

by James Patterson

  I waited a few moments. My cell beeped, alerting me to an e-mail from Judith Noble, the FBI gun tech. Subject: Remington .45.

  I pressed the elevator call button, opened the e-mail, and read it. Then I read it again, trying to get my head around her conclusions. Sonofabitch, I thought. How was that possible?

  The elevator dinged and the doors opened. I rode the elevator up to the ICU, thinking of all of the ramifications of the e-mail I’d just read.

  Part of me wanted to back off, let Mahoney know, and stand aside, let the Feds do their job. Instead, I went to the nurses’ station, showed a nurse my badge, and asked if a Marine officer with a limp had come in. She said he was down the hall, third door on the right.

  “Whose room is that?”

  “That would be Mr. Potter’s,” she said. “George Potter.”

  I squinted, said, “The wounded DEA agent?”

  “That’s the one,” she said.

  “George and I have worked together quite a bit lately. Think I’ll pay him a visit, see how he’s doing.”

  CHAPTER

  91

  SOMETIMES IT PAYS to hang back. Other times it pays to rattle a few chains.

  I didn’t knock, just stepped quietly into Potter’s room. Colonel Whitaker sat at the DEA special agent’s bedside. The patient looked waxy and sallow, but alert. The two of them were deep in a heated conversation when Potter spotted me.

  He tensed, said, “Alex?”

  “Came by to see how you were doing, George,” I said, ignoring his reaction. “Last time I saw you, you were hurting pretty bad.”

  “I’m still hurting pretty bad,” Potter grumbled as he shifted in bed. “Do you know my old friend Jeb?”

  I looked at the colonel and acted like I recognized him from somewhere but couldn’t place him.

  “We met once, Dr. Cross,” Whitaker said, getting up from his chair. “In a parking lot at the Naval Academy.”

  I snapped my fingers, pointed at him, and said, “That’s it. Colonel …”

  “Whitaker. Jeb Whitaker.”

  “Small world,” I said. “You knowing George and all.”

  “Colonel Whitaker was my commander in Iraq,” Potter said. “Best damned combat officer I’ve ever seen.”

  Whitaker made a dismissive flip of his hand. “That’s the painkillers talking. George was the brave one, taking a bullet like that.”

  “For all the good it did Elena Guryev,” the DEA agent said, crestfallen.

  I said nothing, just looked at Potter and then at Colonel Whitaker.

  Potter licked his lips and asked, “You found anything new?”

  I thought about that and then said, “When that sniper, Condon, was killed? We found a forty-five-caliber Remington in his motorcycle saddlebag. We got a report back this morning that links the Remington to a series of road-rage killings.”

  Whitaker was a cool character, battle hardened. He took the information in stride, even appeared uninterested.

  Potter, though, suddenly looked lost in thought.

  “Well,” I said, making a show of checking my watch. “I’ve got other appointments, but I wanted to see how you were doing, George.”

  Potter broke from his thoughts, smiled weakly, and said, “I don’t think I’ll be running any marathons anytime soon. Thanks for stopping by, Alex.”

  “Get better, and we look forward to seeing you back at work,” I said. “Colonel Whitaker? Until fate brings us together again.”

  “Until then,” Whitaker said.

  I showed them nothing but an expression of goodwill, shook their hands, and left.

  Outside, I waited for Sampson to bring the car around and gazed up at the hospital, thinking how much I’d like to be a fly on the wall up there in the ICU.

  CHAPTER

  92

  JEB WHITAKER’S THOUGHTS became a blur after Alex Cross left the room. The master strategist’s brain sped through three different plans of response in the few seconds before Cross’s footsteps faded and George Potter spoke.

  “Quite the coincidence,” Potter said.

  Whitaker knew immediately what the DEA agent was talking about but acted as if he didn’t.

  “How’s that?” the colonel said, crossing to the bathroom.

  “We framed Condon with diagrams of the attacks and left a gun that turns out to belong to this road-rage killer?”

  “Incredible,” Whitaker said, going inside. “Give me a second to piss.”

  A few moments later, he flushed and then washed his hands. He was drying them on a paper towel as he exited.

  Potter studied him, said, “You have a special agenda, Colonel?”

  Whitaker balled the paper towel loosely in his hand.

  “I’m not following,” he said, coming to the wounded agent’s bedside and studying the lines that connected Potter to various machines.

  “You’ve been killing drivers like that shithead who killed Lisa,” Potter whispered harshly. “You stuck that gun in Condon’s motorcycle bag to throw them off you.”

  Whitaker thought of himself as Mercury, said, “And what if I did? Isn’t that what we’re all about, George? Cleaning up things that need cleaning up and getting on with a better life for all?”

  Potter sputtered, “Who’s to say Cross is not onto you because of these road-rage killings?”

  “Impossible.”

  “No, we have to assume Cross suspects,” the DEA agent said. “Order everyone to destroy phones and computers. Tell them to—”

  Whitaker thought of himself as John Brown then and said, “Who gave you command of this operation, Potter?”

  “I did, sir,” Potter said. “I took a goddamned bullet to make sure that the Guryev bitch shut her mouth. Your secret vendetta has threatened us all, the entire Regulator movement. From now on, I’m calling the shots, Colonel.”

  Whitaker stared at Potter, blinking slowly for several moments, then passed the balled-up paper towel from one hand to the other and tossed it over Potter toward the wastebasket. The DEA agent’s eyes followed it as it went in.

  Nothing but net.

  When Potter looked back, Whitaker was gazing at him sympathetically.

  Click. Click.

  The colonel pressed the push-button device the DEA agent used to control his narcotic drip. Whitaker had used one of these hundreds of times after his war injury.

  Click. Click.

  The colonel said, “I’m giving you a monster dose of morphine here, George. It will help things go quicker.”

  Potter looked puzzled until he glanced at Whitaker’s right hand. The colonel held a hypodermic needle attached to an empty syringe; he’d taken it from a medical-waste container in the bathroom. The colonel pulled the plunger of the syringe back and inserted the needle into the injection port of the DEA agent’s IV line.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Potter asked even as the narcotic hit him in a rush and he started to swoon and slur. “What’s in that … syringe, Colonel?”

  “Air,” Whitaker said, and he pressed the plunger down.

  CHAPTER

  93

  BREE STONE AND Kurt Muller pulled into the Fort Hill Rifle and Pistol Club in rural Cumberland, Maryland. After the winds the night before, it was a calm, late-summer day in the Mid-Atlantic, a perfect afternoon for the national combat-pistol championship regional qualifier.

  The place was surprisingly packed. There were twenty or more motor homes parked at the Morningside Range. With the tents, flags, food vendors, and booths selling various wares, it could have been a county fair were it not for the irregular blasts of staccato gunfire coming from the range.

  Bree and Muller pushed in foam ear protectors and donned sunglasses. Acting like spectators, they worked forward through the crowd to where they could see the competitors attack the course.

  A shooter with a fancy custom pistol had just finished, and the score was going up on a digital readout by a judges’ table. Polite applause indicated it was only a so-so effort desp
ite his tricked-out gun.

  Next up was a Pennsylvania state trooper; he used his service pistol and shot well, knocking down two metal silhouettes at thirty yards and avoiding shooting a civilian target. When the course demanded the trooper move laterally while shooting, however, his weakness was revealed, and he turned in a score lower than the previous man’s.

  Bree watched the competition with interest. She’d had combat-pistol training and scored reasonably well on yearly exams, but this course was set at an entirely different level. She saw several strong runs during the next forty minutes, but nothing spectacular, nothing close to perfection.

  Then out stepped a tall, lanky guy wearing a Shooter’s Connection ball cap, black earmuffs, and rose-lensed sunglasses. Bree had been talking to Muller and missed the shooter’s name, but heard that he was using a CK Arms Hardcore pistol in .45 caliber with a holo sight.

  When the buzzer went off, the shooter drew the pistol, leaped forward to the first line, and touched off two rounds. Two metal silhouettes tipped over at thirty yards. He killed the bad guy at the window of the next building. He held off on two civilian pop-up targets and hit everything else put in front of him clean and tight. When his pistol action locked open after the last target, the sign flashed a near-perfect score.

  The crowd went wild, and even the shooter seemed amazed at his skill.

  He walked back, smiling, his entire body balanced and fluid. Bree barely listened to the announcer’s remarks, just watched him and marveled at the shooting ability he’d just displayed.

  “Best I’ve ever seen,” Muller said.

  Bree said, “I think congratulations are in order.”

  They angled through the spectators toward the tall shooter. He stopped at the judges’ desk, took off his sunglasses, and handed his weapon over for a brief inspection. Then he shook hands with one of the judges, joked with another, retrieved his gun, and left the area.

  Bree and Muller followed, seeing him go to a pretty sandy-blond woman in the crowd. She patted him on the arm and smiled. They turned and walked away, heading toward the exit.

  Bree and Muller waited until the couple had gotten to where the food and merchandise vendors were set up.

  When they were in range, Bree called out, “Mrs. McGrath? I thought that was you.”

  CHAPTER

  94

  TOMMY MCGRATH’S WIDOW looked startled. “Detective Stone? Kurt? What are you doing here?”

  “It’s Chief Stone now, Vivian,” Muller said.

  Vivian smiled at Bree. “I heard you’d gotten Tommy’s job. He would have been proud.”

  “Thank you for saying so,” Bree said.

  “Are you both competing?” Vivian said.

  “Just here supporting some friends on the force,” Bree said. “You?”

  “I was here to watch Mr. Gordon. My attorney.”

  “You’re a hell of a shot,” Bree said to Gordon. “Where’s that come from?”

  He gave her an aw-shucks shrug and said, “My dad taught pistol at Ranger School, Fort Benning. I guess you could say I was a range rat.”

  “That explains it,” Bree said before turning to Vivian. “Tommy’s insurance company notified us that you were claiming his life insurance policy.”

  Vivian sighed, said, “I didn’t even know Tommy had that policy, Chief Stone, honestly. Not until Mr. Gordon called to say I was named as beneficiary.”

  “Four million dollars,” Bree said.

  “I had no intention of claiming the money at first,” she said, her chin raised. “Then Mr. Gordon had the idea I could use it to start a charitable foundation, something in Tommy’s honor.”

  “Is there a foundation at the moment?” Muller asked.

  Gordon said, “I have associates working on it as we speak.”

  “Well, then,” Bree said, and she smiled. “That helps. But just to tie up another loose end, how much are you worth these days, Mrs. McGrath?”

  Gordon said, “You don’t have to answer that, Vivian. That’s really none of their business.”

  “It is if the answer is germane to a murder investigation,” Bree said.

  “You’re asking if I need four million dollars?” Vivian said. “The answer is unequivocally no.”

  “Perfect—asked and answered,” Muller said. “I’m sorry we had to ask.”

  Bree said, “Mr. Gordon, you walked by me the day of our initial interview with Mrs. McGrath. You were just leaving as we were coming in.”

  “Yes, I remember that.”

  “I caught this strangely familiar scent trailing after you.” Gordon looked confused and said, “What?”

  “I couldn’t name the smell until yesterday,” Bree said. “It was Hoppe’s Number Nine. Gun-cleaning solvent. It has a peculiar smell.”

  “Okay?”

  “The smell made me realize that you handle guns. But then a little research revealed you’re an incredible marksman. Right from the start, given the way Tommy and Edita Kravic were gunned down, we were thinking trained shooter, someone with mad skills. Someone, well, like you, Mr. Gordon.”

  Gordon glanced at Vivian incredulously and then back at Bree. “What possible reason would—”

  “You and Viv are secret lovers,” Bree said. “That’s the real reason for the lack of passion in her marriage and her decision to ask Tommy to leave the house while she considered divorce.”

  “That is not true,” McGrath’s widow said. “None of it!”

  “You hide it fairly well,” Bree said. “No public displays of affection. A lot of late-night calls and fervent secret trysts.”

  “We don’t have to listen to this nonsense,” Gordon said. “We’re leaving.”

  Bree stepped up and stood in the way, said, “Tell me, Mr. Gordon, what bullets do you shoot in that fancy gun of yours?”

  The attorney frowned. “I don’t know. Whatever my sponsors send me.”

  “Bear Creek moly-coated two-hundred-grain RNHBs?”

  “No,” Gordon said, but his lower lip twitched.

  Muller turned to Vivian, said, “And you’re lying about your financial situation. We got a court order and looked into your investments. You’ve lost more than nineteen million dollars since the Chinese economy tanked, which was right before you asked Tommy to leave.”

  Bree said, “We figure you found out about the life insurance policy and decided that since Tommy was leaving anyway, you’d profit by making sure he checked out permanently. You’d hide that, of course, behind a foundation you could loot to build back your fortune. Sound right?”

  The widow McGrath tried to maintain her poise, but her eyes got glassy. She moved her lips but made no sound before fainting dead away.

  Vivian hit the ground hard, cracking her head on the cement walkway. Bree went to her knees next to her.

  Gordon put his competition pistol to the back of Bree’s head and said, “We’re leaving real quiet, now, you and me, Chief Stone.”

  CHAPTER

  95

  GORDON GRABBED THE lapel of Bree’s jacket and jerked her to her feet, her body between him and Muller, who was going for his gun.

  “Don’t,” Gordon said, keeping the gun on the back of Bree’s head. “Toss it.”

  Muller looked pissed but did as he was told.

  “Your backup gun.”

  “I don’t carry one.”

  “C’mon,” Gordon said, pushing Bree. “We’re moving out.”

  He marched her into a maze of parked cars. She felt him relax a bit as they passed out of Muller’s sight.

  “You’re making a big mistake,” Bree said.

  “No, I’m not,” Gordon said.

  Bree backed up fast and hard. She slammed into the attorney’s chest and grabbed for her service pistol. He pulled his gun away from her head, flipped it, caught it by its barrel, and used the grip like a hammerhead against her wrist.

  The blow was excruciating. Her gun fell into the dust. Gordon flipped the gun again and had the pistol back to Bree’s he
ad before she realized her wrist was probably broken.

  “You’ll never get out of here alive,” she said, gasping.

  “That’s where you’re mistaken,” he said, dragging her along.

  “We have a SWAT team surrounding this place,” Bree said.

  Gordon stopped short and jerked Bree tight to him.

  “Bring on the amateurs, then,” he said. “I’ll watch them fall one by one, starting with you, Chief Stone.”

  “You’re just going to shoot me in cold blood?”

  “Just as you would shoot me.”

  Bree felt the pressure from his gun barrel increase against her head, and she saw Alex and the kids and Nana Mama in her mind. It broke her.

  “No,” she whimpered. “Don’t. Please.”

  “To go out in a blaze of glory, you got to start somewhere,” Gordon said.

  “Drop the gun, Gordon,” Muller shouted.

  Bree caught the old detective in her peripheral vision, crouched in a horse stance between two cars fifteen yards away and aiming a .357 Magnum Colt Python revolver at Gordon.

  “Now, I’m nowhere near the shot you are, Mr. Gordon, but I can’t miss from this distance,” Muller said calmly. “And I won’t hesitate to shoot a cop killer. So put the gun down, Mr. Gordon. Put it down real slow, and surrender.”

  Muller would later say that he saw Gordon’s shoulders relax and his eyes turn peaceful then, as if he’d gone inside himself, preparing for whatever was to come.

  Bree felt the pressure of the pistol muzzle increase, as if Gordon were squeezing the trigger. But then it eased, and Gordon dropped the gun slowly from her temple and then snapped it toward Muller.

  The shots were so close, they were deafening and disorienting.

  Bree staggered forward, her ears ringing. Several seconds passed before she realized that Muller was still on his feet and at her side and that Lance Gordon was dead on the ground, a bullet hole between his eyes.

  CHAPTER

  96

  NIGHT HAD FALLEN. A rainstorm was predicted. Sampson and I were sitting in a black unmarked Dodge pickup parked in a barnyard roughly a thousand yards down the road from Colonel Jeb Whitaker’s place. We’d followed the signal from the bug we’d planted on his motorcycle back to his property.