Cross Justice (Alex Cross 23)

“Not really, no.”

“Not even today?”

“No. Why?”

“The girls you finished with in that last run were all-Americans.”

“Really?” Jannie said, surprised.

“Really.”

She grinned. “I think I could have beat them.”

“I bet you could have,” he said, then he grabbed a napkin, pulled out a pen, and scribbled for a minute or two.

He pushed the napkin across the table to me and Jannie. It read:

WHPT:

2018—USNC

2020—OGT5

2021—WCPOD

2022—WC

2024—OGGM

“What’s it mean?” I asked.

He told me, and it felt like everything in our lives changed.

Chapter

77

Later that afternoon, I was still struggling with what Ted McDonald had written on the napkin at lunch.

Was that possible? Should you even begin with that end in mind?

“He said we didn’t have to give him an answer right away,” Bree said from the driver’s seat of a rental car we’d picked up in Winston-Salem.

“I know,” I said. “But it’s just a lot to take in.”

“You don’t think she should try?”

“She’s only fifteen,” I said. “Is this when they start thinking like that?”

“Other kids in other sports sure do,” she said as we drove past the Welcome to Starksville sign.

I stared again at the napkin and wrestled with its meaning.

Women’s Heptathlon

2018—U.S. National Champion

2020—Olympic Games Top Five