Jack & Jill (Alex Cross 3)

“Oh, but we do, Alex. We haven’t brought him in for an interview, because we don’t have anything concrete on him. Just nasty, nasty suspicions. That and a need to catch somebody. Let’s not forget about that. Now you’re suspicious, too.”

“That’s all I have at this point,” I reminded her. “Suspicions.”

“Sometimes that’s enough, and you know it. Sometimes it has to be.”

We arrived at the small private garage underneath the CIA complex at Langley. The space was filled mostly with family vehicles like Taurus station wagons, but there were a few high-testosterone sports cars as well. Mustangs, Bimmers, Vipers. The cars matched up fairly well with the personnel I had seen upstairs.

“I guess we should take both our cars,” Jeanne suggested, and it made sense to me. “I’ll drive back here when we’re through. You can go on into D.C. Hawkins is staying with his sister in Silver Spring. He’s at the house now. It’s about half an hour on the beltway, if that.”

“You’re going to take him in now?” I asked her. It sounded like it to me.

“I think we should, don’t you? Just to have a little chat, you know.” I went to my car. She walked to her station wagon. “This man we’re going to see, he’s a professional killer,” I called to her across the garage floor.

She called back, her voice echoing against concrete and steel. “From what I gather, he’s one of our very best. Isn’t that a fun thought?”

“Does he have an alibi for any of the Jack and Jill murder dates?”

“Not that we know of. We’ll have to ask him more about it—in detail.”

We got into our respective cars and started up the engines. I was beginning to notice that the CIA inspector general wasn’t a bureauc

rat; she certainly wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty. Mine, either. We were going to meet another “ghost.” Was he Jack? Could it be that easy? Stranger things had happened.

It took the full thirty minutes to get over to Hawkins’s sister’s house in Silver Spring, Maryland. The houses there were somewhat overpriced, but it was still considered a middle-class area. Not my middle class. Somebody else’s.

Jeanne pulled her Volvo wagon up alongside a black Lincoln parked three-quarters of a block from the sister’s house. She powered down the passenger-side window and talked to two agents inside the parked car. One of her surveillance teams, I guessed. Either that or she was asking directions to the assassin’s hideout, which struck me as humorous. One of the few laughs I’d had recently.

Suddenly, I saw a man come out of the sister’s Cape Cod–style house.

I recognized Kevin Hawkins from his file pictures. No doubt about it.

He threw a quick glance down the street, and he must have seen us. He started to run. Then he hopped on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle parked in the driveway.

I shouted, “Jeanne,” out my open window and gunned my engine at the same time.

I began to chase… Jack?

CHAPTER

69

THE FIRST THING Kevin Hawkins did on the motorcycle was to cut sharply sideways over the sliver of frost-covered lawn separating two split-level ranch houses. He raced past a few more houses, one of them with an aboveground pool covered by a baby-blue tarp for the winter.

I aimed my old Porsche along the same inland route that Hawkins was taking. Fortunately, the past few days had been cold, and the ground was mostly solid. I wondered if anybody from the houses had spotted the motorcycle and car crazily zigzagging through their backyards.

The motorcycle took a sharp right onto the development road past the last row of houses. I followed close behind. My car was bouncing high. Then it scraped bottom loudly against the high curb. It thudded hard onto the road pavement, and my head struck the rooftop.

As we approached an intersecting street, the Volvo station wagon and the Lincoln joined the race. A few neighborhood kids who were playing flag football in spite of the miserable weather stopped to gawk wide-eyed at the real-life police chase roaring up the suburban street.

I had my Glock out and the window rolled down. I wasn’t going to fire unless he did. Kevin Hawkins wasn’t wanted for any specific crime yet. No warrants had been served. Why was he running? He sure was acting guilty about something.

Hawkins leaned the Harley into a steep curve as he downshifted into fourth. I remembered another life and time spent on a fast motorcycle. I recalled its amazing maneuverability. The rawness of the speed. The feeling when your skin begins to tighten against your skull. I remembered Jezzie Flanagan, and her motorcycle.

Hawkins’s bike made a deep, guttural roar as it climbed the hilly road like a ground rocket.

I tried to keep up, and was doing a pretty decent job. Amazingly, so were the Volvo wagon and the sedan. The chase scene was complete madness, though—suburbia suddenly racing out of control.

Was Jack up ahead?