Double Cross (Alex Cross 13)

First thing, we made the residential buildings our priority, working in teams of two and knocking on every door up and down the street. Everything else had to wait, including any attempt at cr

owd control. The scene was already too crazy—camera crews matched us step for step, shooting from every angle.

We hadn’t been searching long when one of the uniformed officers called out, “Detectives. Something over here. Detectives!”

Bree and I ran to see what was up. The house in question was bright yellow, with large single-pane windows facing out onto Nineteenth Street. The front door was ajar and had been heavily gouged around the doorknob and faceplate. It looked like somebody had recently broken in.

“Good enough for me,” Bree said. “Sufficient evidence of a break-in. Let’s go.”

Chapter 84

WE WENT IN CAREFULLY, silently, along with one of the neighborhood officers, a scared kid named DiLallo. The other uniforms stayed outside to keep back any particularly reckless reporters, or even a daring looky-loo on the scene.

Inside, the house was perfectly still. The air was stale and thick with heat—no open windows, no air-conditioning. The decor was modern, like the exterior. I saw an Eames-lounger knockoff in the living room to my left, a red lacquered table, mesh chairs in the dining room beyond. Nothing to go on yet, but I sensed something had happened here.

Bree ticked her head to the left—she’d take the living room—and motioned for the patrol officer to go straight back, probably to the kitchen.

I took the stairs.

They were solid floating slabs of wood with an iron railing that made no sound as I climbed. The place was too quiet—Dead-body quiet, I couldn’t help thinking, and I dreaded what we might find here.

Were we the audience this time? Was that the big, new twist here? Had this all been staged for us?

A domed skylight overhead let in plenty of sunshine, and I could feel the sweat dripping down my back.

At the top, the stairs doubled around to an open hallway that overlooked the first floor. A door was closed on the left, with an open one, closer to me, showing off an empty bathroom. It looked empty from this angle, anyway.

Still no people, though, dead or alive.

I could hear more police arriving downstairs, quite the crowd on hand already. Nervous whispers and radio chatter. The high-pitched voice of Officer DiLallo—somebody called him Richard, as in Richard, calm down.

Bree reappeared in the hallway below me. She gave an all-clear sign, and I motioned for her to come up.

“You lonely?” she asked.

“For you . . . always.”

When she joined me upstairs, I pointed to the bedroom door. “Only one that’s closed,” I said.

I steeled myself for what we might find, then burst in through the door. I trained my Glock on the far corner, swept left, swept right.

I didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved. There was nothing in the room. Nothing there that shouldn’t be. A platform bed was neatly made in one corner. The open closet held women’s clothes.

What the hell were we missing? We were at Nineteenth and Independence, right?

Just then, we both heard the first faint chop of a helicopter, approaching fast. A moment later, it was hovering right over the house.

Other sounds filtered in from the street. One loud shout cut through. It reached us at the top of the stairs.

“It’s on the roof!”

I looked up, and that’s when I realized the domed skylight was also a hatch.

Chapter 85

“WE NEED A LADDER UP HERE!” Bree yelled to the cops below. “We need it in a hurry.”

I could see black scrape marks on the wall where there normally was a ladder of some kind for roof access. Not anymore, though. Somebody had taken it away.