Cross Justice (Alex Cross 23)

“Somewhere we can wait them out for a little while,” I said. “Then we’ll circle back to Birney on the Eighth Street bridge.”

My cell phone rang. Bree.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“With Pinkie.”

“Did you hear those shots?”

“Yes,” I said, and I told her what happened.

“Don’t you think you should go to the hospital?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I want to stay under the radar on this.”

“Why?”

“I’ll explain when I get home,” I said. “Give me forty-five minutes.”

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine, and I love you.”

“I love you too, Alex.”

I hung up.

We’d left the east side of town and were heading down a long, gradual slope on a windy rural road when Pinkie finally turned his headlights back on.

“What the hell were you doing out on the bridge anyway?” he asked.

I started to tell him about my dream but stopped when I realized that wasn’t why I’d gone out there.

“It was something Cliff said about my dad.”

Pinkie shot me a quick glance. “What about your dad?”

“He said there were deep pools below the gorge, and when I said I didn’t know them, he told me my dad used to swim in them.”

“Okay…”

“I don’t know. The conversation just made me want to go to the bridge and look at the river, you know?”

Pinkie said, “I guess I can see that.”

We were almost to the bottom of the hill by then and traveling through deep forest.

“You know where those pools are?” I asked, looking out the side window.

A nearly full moon hung in the sky, throwing the woods into dark blue light.

Pinkie was quiet, but he slowed the truck and said, “Sure.”

A minute later, he stopped and gestured at a muddy lane that left the pavement. “That will take you in there.”

“Your truck make it?” I asked.

Pinkie hesitated, but then he turned us into a two-track that cut across a wooded pine flat. I could see by the ruts that the road was well used, but the forest pressed in from both sides, and thorny vines and branches scratched at the side of the truck.