Where are you Damon? Where are you, son?
Please, God, make my boy okay.
Chapter
97
Jannie Cross had never felt like this before. It was as if in one day, one afternoon really, she’d become a different kind of creature, like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly in 54.9 seconds. This morning she’d come to school as Jannie Cross, the only freshman varsity runner, and she’d just left, heading toward the Howard University Metro station with people calling her a phenom and Will Crawford asking if she was interested in going to the senior prom.
The senior prom! With Will Crawford!
It was easily the greatest day of her life, exhilarating and scary and fun and too many other emotions to count. Could it get any better than this? Was what Coach Anderson said true? Could I break more records? Run in college? Or even go to the Olympics?
That last question sent shivers down her spine. Could I do that? Run at that level? Faster than anyone in the world?
Jannie felt indescribably warm and complete at that idea. It was as if she’d found her purpose and identity in life, doing something that she loved, something that made her very, very happy. The fact that her dad had been there to see it was so good. And Bree, too. It was all good, all—
“Jannie Cross?” a woman asked in a soft south
ern drawl.
Jannie startled and looked up. She was still two blocks from the Metro station. There was a very pretty woman with curly blond hair, in jeans and a leather jacket, in front of her at the curb, holding a car door open.
“Yes?” Jannie said, feeling uncertain about the situation.
“My name’s Dee-Dee,” she said. “I’m a friend of your brother Damon. And, well, you were the first person he wanted to see when he got home.”
Jannie cocked her head, confused. “He’s in there? Damon?”
“Still asleep after helping me on the long drive from school,” the woman said so softly that Jannie was forced to come closer to hear. “I think he had a long night with his friends.”
“I thought my dad was picking him up at the train station,” Jannie said, taking several steps toward the car. She looked into the backseat and saw Damon sleeping on a pillow leaned up against the rear right window.
“I was coming right through DC,” Dee-Dee said. “And he helped with gas and driving, but before he went to sleep, he forgot to give me your address.”
“That’s easy,” Jannie said. “I’ll show you.”
Pleased, the woman closed the rear door and opened the front passenger door. “Thank you so much. He was actually very excited to be coming home, before he hit the snooze button.”
Jannie’s head was so full of thoughts and dreams that she barely heard the woman. It was enough that her big brother was in the car and she could wake him and tell him all that had happened that day.
She climbed into the front seat and was putting on her safety belt when she finally realized that something was off about the situation. “How did you know where I—?”
When the needle jabbed into the side of her neck, Jannie made a yipping noise, like a puppy that’s had its paw stepped on, and almost immediately saw dots and then blackness.
Chapter
98
At that same moment, Marcus Sunday waited in the shadows where the new addition met the old house. Thanks to Nana Mama’s key, he’d been able to sneak in the back a solid half hour before Bree Stone returned home. He’d gone upstairs and printed a few items, and then had returned here to wait.
Through the plastic sheeting that sealed off the construction site, he watched Cross’s wife enter the dining area, moving stiffly, her face bandaged. She’d been hurt somewhere in her core, he thought. That was good. A trained cop is a difficult person to manage. An injured cop not so much.
Bree put two sacks of blue crabs on the dining room table and then set about filling a big pot with water to put on the little two-burner they’d been using. Gingerly she removed her jacket. She was wearing her shoulder holster, left side, the injured side, so she’d have to reach across her body to draw.
Sunday was so close to the second-biggest prize of the day that he had to fight not to hyperventilate. The writer lived for these kinds of moments, when he was free, unencumbered by any convention whatsoever, a stranger in many ways even to himself.
Boundaries? Limits? There were none now, as far as he was concerned. No reason to be subtle here, he thought. When you get the chance, you take her.