Cross the Line

by James Patterson

  “And then the vigilantes came in and wiped the leaders out,” Bree said.

  “Like cutting off all the hydra’s heads at one time,” I said.

  “How did Guryev get involved?”

  We told her what Elena Guryev had told us: Several years ago, her husband had overextended himself financially and gotten in huge money trouble. Members of the alliance offered him a way out of his predicament—smuggling—and his global shipping business had exploded with unseen profits.

  Elena Guryev claimed she didn’t know what her husband had gotten involved in until it was too late. When she discovered the depth of his criminality, she told him she wanted a divorce.

  “She says he threatened to kill her and their son if she tried to leave or tell the police,” I said. “That was three months ago.”

  Bree thought about that. “Why was she in the panic room?”

  “Her son, Dimitri, had had an operation two days before and needed to sleep somewhere he wouldn’t be disturbed,” I said. “She put in an appearance at the beginning of the party and then went down to be with her son. She was there when the attack began.”

  “Did she recognize Hobbes or the woman?”

  “Said she’d never seen either of them before.”

  “Where are Elena and the son now?”

  I shrugged. “Mahoney’s got them stashed in a safe house. I suspect he’ll be questioning her for days if not weeks before she goes into witness protection. Which brings us back to this guy.”

  I showed her a picture on my phone of a dead man in his late thirties, handsome, with a thick shock of dark hair and a bullet hole in his chest.

  “Who is he?”

  Sampson said, “According to Elena Guryev, his name is Karl Stavros, and he’s the owner of, among other businesses, the Phoenix Club.”

  “Wait,” Bree said. “Where Edita Kravic worked?”

  “One and the same,” I said. “So what are the odds that Tommy McGrath was onto something criminal going on in that club that Edita told him about?”

  “I’d say very good,” Bree said. “Very, very good.”

  “I think the answer to who killed Tommy is in that club,” Sampson said.

  “We’ll need warrants,” she said.

  “The Feds are filing,” I said. “Ned promised we’ll be part of any search, but it’s not going to be today.”

  I yawned. So did Sampson.

  “You two look like hell,” Bree said. “Go home. Get some sleep.”

  Sampson got up and left without any argument.

  I held up my hands. “No, I’m good. Nothing a cup of coffee won’t fix.”

  “That’s a direct order, Detective Cross. Home, nap, and then I’d bet Nana Mama would appreciate you going to Ali’s interview for the Washington Latin charter school this afternoon.”

  “Is that today?”

  “It is. Five o’clock.”

  “Then heading home as ordered, Chief Stone. See you at dinner?”

  “If I’m lucky,” she said. “Love you.”

  “Love you too,” I said, and I went out her door fantasizing about my bed and a two-hour coma.

  Chapter

  78

  Bree watched Alex leave, feeling a little cheated not to be an active part of Tommy McGrath’s murder investigation, or not really, anyway.

  If Alex and Sampson were right about the Phoenix Club, the case was essentially in the FBI’s hands now. Even though Mahoney had promised that DC Metro would be part of any search, the FBI would be calling the shots.

  Bree tried to put it out of her mind and deal with the barrage of paper that now dominated her working life. But after ten minutes of scanning a series of administrative memos, she couldn’t take it anymore.

  She had to do something that engaged her mind, that wasn’t mundane, that would do some good. Wasn’t that what being a cop was? Doing some good?

  Bree pushed the paper pile aside and found copies of the murder books for Tommy McGrath, Edita Kravic, and Terry Howard. She started back through them, trying to suppress any preconceived ideas she had about the case, trying to see it all anew, with a beginner’s mind.

  As she reviewed the investigative notes and forensics reports, she realized that they’d all been looking at the case as a revenge killing of some kind, done by Howard or someone else who had a beef with McGrath, and maybe with Edita Kravic too.

  Bree consciously tried to erase that filter from her mind and played with possible other motives. Bree started by asking herself who would benefit from Tommy McGrath dying. Or from Edita Kravic dying, for that matter.

  Someone inside the Phoenix Club, she supposed. Karl Stavros? He was the owner. If Stavros thought Tommy was onto him, maybe he’d had Tommy and Edita killed to protect himself and the alliance.

  She started down through a list of the evidence gathered at their apartments and, after the encryption codes were broken, from their computer hard drives. For almost an hour and a half, she studied each item in turn and tried to see it as a benefit or a loss to a killer. She ran a search for the Phoenix Club on McGrath’s hard drive and got nothing. She ran a search on Edita Kravic and got the same.

  Then she started through McGrath’s financial affairs. The late COD had had $325,000 in his retirement account, $12,000 in his checking account, and zero debt. McGrath didn’t own a home, had paid cash for his car, and paid off his credit cards every month.

  His will was brief, drafted four years before. To Bree’s surprise, it named Terry Howard as his sole heir. If Howard was not alive at the time of McGrath’s death, the modest estate was to go to McGrath’s wife, Vivian.

  Bree thought about that. Tommy McGrath still cared about his old partner enough to leave him his money. Could Howard have known and killed him to collect? Or could Vivian have…

  She dismissed that out of hand. McGrath’s estranged wife was loaded, worth multimillions. Why would she kill Tommy for a measly three hundred grand and change?

  She turned to the last page of the will and saw a reference to a document in the appendix that caused her to pause. Bree dug deeper into the financial files and found the document she was looking for. She flipped through it and then stopped at one item, thinking: Now that might be something worth killing or dying for.

  Bree took the document out and went down the hall to Muller’s cubicle. She found the senior detective not looking like his ordinary disheveled self; he was sharply dressed in a nice suit and freshly polished shoes.

  “Kurt,” she said, showing him the document. “Did we ever look into this?”

  Muller took it, scanned it, and nodded. “It’s unclaimed, at least as of two days ago. I check that kind of thing regularly.”

  Some of the wind went out of Bree’s sails. She’d thought she was really onto something, something they’d missed, and she’d briefly felt like she was doing some good.

  But Muller had things under control.

  Some of her disappointment must have shown because he said, “We’ll figure it out, Chief. We always do. But for now, I have to skip out. Got a date.”

  Bree smiled. “You haven’t had a date in years.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Muller said, adjusting his tie.

  “Who’s the lucky lady?”

  “The divine Ms. Noble,” Muller said, and he winked.

  Bree laughed and clapped her hands, feeling better than she had all day. “I thought there was a spark between you two there in the FBI lab.”

  “A crackling spark,” Muller said, walking past her with a grin smeared across his face. “Just crack-crack-crackling.”

  Chapter

  79

  Nana Mama beamed at Ali.

  “You want your dessert before dinner?” my grandmother asked him. “Blueberry pie and ice cream?”

  Unnerved by this break in the routine, Ali glanced at me. I smiled and held up my hands. “You heard her.”

  “Yes, please, Nana,” Ali said. “And less Brussels sprouts at dinner?”

  “
Don’t push your luck,” my grandmother said, fetching the pie from beneath a fine-mesh cage. “Brussels sprouts are a superfood.”

  “Kind of bitter,” Ali said.

  Nana Mama squinted hard at him.

  “Just saying,” Ali said.

  My grandmother sighed, cut a thick slice of blueberry pie, plopped a scoop of French vanilla ice cream beside it, then set the plate in front of Ali.

  “Any boy who can charm the pants off the admissions board of a fine school deserves this,” Nana Mama said, and then she handed him a spoon.

  It was true. The principal and the math, science, and English teachers at Washington Latin had been waiting when we walked in. The principal introduced herself and the teachers and then asked Ali what he had been up to outside of school, on his own time. That set him off on a description of his epic quest to talk to Neil deGrasse Tyson.

  “I could tell they were going to admit him about two minutes after he opened his mouth,” Nana Mama said. “I think they were most impressed at how many drafts of that letter he’s already written.”

  “Though at some point he needs to just send it,” I said.

  “Soon,” Ali said, his mouth full of blueberry pie and ice cream.

  “You do me a favor, sugar?” my grandmother said to me. “Take a twenty from my purse and go on down to Chung’s and play my numbers?”

  “The next drawing’s not for two days,” I said.

  “Those jackpots are getting big,” she said. “I’d rather get in on the action before the stampede.”

  “Get in on the action?” I said, smiling.

  “Just laying my bets early, that’s all. Now, are you going to help an old lady out or not, Alex Cross?”

  “You knew the answer the second you asked,” I said, and I got the money from her purse.

  I went outside, feeling pretty good. The two-hour nap had helped. And it was only early September, but a front had come in and cooled things off. It felt nice to walk, and I did my best to focus on nothing but putting one foot in front of the other.

  In my line of work, where I’m often bombarded by details and exposed to the worst of life, I have to clear my mind completely at least once a day. Otherwise, it all gets to be stressful chatter upstairs, an endless series of questions, theories, arguments, painful memories, and regrets. It can get overwhelming.

  I was feeling even better by the time I reached the grocery and went inside. Chung’s was frigid, like always.

  “Alex Cross, where you been, my man?” cried a woman behind the counter. “I was waiting on you or Nana Mama all day yesterday.”

  Chung Sun Chung, a Korean American in her late thirties, sat framed in an arched hole in a plate of bulletproof glass. Sun, as she liked to be called, wore a puffy coat and fingerless mittens. She managed to keep an electronic cigarette in the corner of her mouth while smiling broadly at me.

  I walked over to her. “We’ve both been busy.”

  “How’s Damon like college?”

  “Loves it.”

  “I saw your Jannie on the YouTube.”

  “Crazy, right?”

  “She’s gonna be famous, that one. How many chances will Nana Mama be taking at an unlimited future today?”

  “That’s your line?”

  “Good one, huh?” She beamed and drew on her e-cigarette.

  “Give her ten chances each on Powerball and Mega Millions,” I said, laying down the cash.

  My grandmother played only the big-money lotteries. If you’re going to dream, you might as well dream big, she liked to say.

  “Same number?” Sun asked.

  “Sure. Wait! You know what? Let’s change it up. Five each on her numbers and for the rest, add a one to the last number.”

  Sun glanced at me. “Nana Mama’s not going to like that.”

  “She won’t even look,” I said.

  “You like taking your life in your hands?”

  We both laughed. We were still laughing as I left.

  On my way home to dinner with my family, I decided there were still good people in the world, very good people, like Chung Sun Chung. I guess I’d needed reminding of that after the past couple of weeks I’d had.

  The cumulative violence and bloodshed inflicted by the vigilantes was sobering when I thought about it. Climbing the steps to my front porch and smelling a pie Nana Mama had baked, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the violence wasn’t over, that Hobbes and Fender and the other vigilantes were somehow just getting started.

  Chapter

  80

  John Brown sat forward in a chair, his eyes glued to the big-screen TV, where an NBC news reporter was standing in front of Antonin Guryev’s compound.

  “This is the fourth such massacre in less than a month,” she was saying. “Up to now, the killers have left little evidence behind. But FBI special agent in charge Ned Mahoney says that has changed. Mistakes were made.”

  Low voices rumbled through the room behind Brown. Many of his followers were looking at one another.

  “Mistakes?” Hobbes said, putting down his beer. “No way.”

  “Why don’t you shut up and listen,” Cass said, pacing and watching the screen. The scene jumped to Mahoney standing before a bank of microphones.

  “We are confirming seventeen dead,” Mahoney said gravely. “We are also confirming that we have a witness, a survivor who saw many of the killings on security cameras in a secret panic room in the basement of the house. This witness got solid looks at two of the killers when they took off their hoods.”

  “Secret panic room!” Fender said. “And who the hell took off their hoods?”

  “I did,” Hobbes said. “It was frickin’ hot and I had the security hard drive.”

  “Who else broke protocol?” Brown roared.

  Cass, looking stricken, said, “I did. It was hot and I…I thought we were good. And my hair was different. And my eyes that night.”

  On the screen, reporters were yelling questions at Mahoney. Who was the witness? Could the witness identify the killers?

  “We’re not identifying the witness for the time being,” Mahoney said. “We believe the witness can identify the killers. We’ll have more for you tomorrow.”

  The screen cut back to the standup reporter, who said, “The FBI seems confident that this is the break they needed to at last bring the vigilantes to justice.”

  Fender stared at Hobbes. Brown stared at Cass, who looked devastated.

  “This is bullshit,” Hobbes said, grabbing the remote and punching off the TV. “What are they going to get from the witness? At best, an artist’s sketch.”

  Brown was about to explode, but then his burn phone began to buzz.

  He answered, said, “You saw it?”

  “Of course, I fucking saw it,” the man on the other end of the line snapped. “The witness is Guryev’s wife.”

  “That’s not good,” Brown said.

  “No, it goddamned isn’t. Our ship has a hole. You need to plug it.”

  Brown flushed with anger. “How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

  “I have her location and a way inside.”

  “Attack an FBI safe house?” Brown said. “I don’t know if that’s such a—”

  “You want to take this to the next level or not?”

  The next level. Brown felt all doubt leave him then, and said, “You know it’s the only long-term solution. If we don’t, nothing we’ve done will really matter.”

  “Exactly. So steel yourself and get rid of Elena Guryev.”

  Chapter

  81

  At eight thirty the morning after the massacre, Ned Mahoney and I sprinted down Monroe Street in Columbia Heights. Patrol cars and an ambulance blocked the street, their lights flashing.

  We showed our badges. The patrol officer pointed at the open door of a town house. The call had come into 911 only twenty minutes before. I’d been on my way to work and came straight over. Mahoney had been heading to FBI headquarters, heard about the
call, and came straight over as well.

  After putting on gloves and booties, we stepped inside and saw a dead man lying facedown in the entryway, another one beyond him.

  “Simms and Frawley,” Mahoney said angrily. “Good agents. Seasoned agents.”

  “Shot in the back,” I said.

  “They were replacing the night team,” Mahoney said. “The killers must have come in right behind them.”

  The locations of federal safe houses are some of the most secure and heavily guarded secrets in law enforcement, so it was understood that the killers had had inside intelligence. Mahoney had a traitor in his midst, and we both knew it.

  We stepped over and around the dead agents, passed a television room on our left where the carpet was smeared with blood, and went into the kitchen, where a third FBI agent lay dead. Two EMTs worked on a fourth man, George Potter, the DEA’s acting special agent for the Washington, DC, office.

  Potter’s face was covered with blood from a nasty wound to his scalp. His shirt was off, and there was a clotting patch pressed into a chest wound. The medics had him hooked up to IVs and oxygen.

  “How is he?” Mahoney asked the EMT.

  Potter opened his eyes and said, gasping, “I’ll live.”

  “How is he?” Mahoney asked again.

  The EMT said, “Took a slug through his right lung, and he has a hell of a gash on his head. But he’s lucky. He’ll live.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “We need to get him to the hospital,” the medic said.

  “Wait, they need to know,” Potter said, looking at me. “Ned asked me to come in with the replacements and start talking to Mrs. Guryev first thing.”

  I glanced at Mahoney, who nodded.

  “Everything looked fine coming through the door,” Potter said. “I was walking down the hall with Simms and Frawley behind me. Out of nowhere there were sound-suppressed shots. Three of them. Fast. I got hit by the third shot. Spun me into that TV room. Went down, hit my head on the coffee table. When I came to, I called 911. What’s happened? Has anyone gone upstairs to see?”