Cross Fire (Alex Cross 17)

Bree’s jaw literally dropped. “What was that?” she said. “Why did you do that?”

“My line in the sand. It doesn’t do me any good to let him keep setting the rules.”

“Do you think he’ll call back?”

“Well, if he doesn’t, we’ll both get a little more sleep,” I said.

Something had changed in me. I wasn’t going to keep playing this game forever. I couldn’t.

And, in any case, my own cell phone rang a few seconds later.

“What?” I answered.

“Bree never answered my question,” Kyle said. “About how the wedding plans were coming along. I figured that was more her department than yours.”

“No,” I said. “You wanted to make yourself seem more threatening.”

He laughed almost congenially. “Did it work?”

“I’m hanging up, Kyle.”

“Wait!” he said. “There is something else. It’s important, or I wouldn’t be calling so early.”

I didn’t ask what it was. In fact, I was about to hang up anyway when he went on.

“I got you an engagement present,” he said. “Of sorts. Since I’m allowing you to get married and all. A little something to free up your schedule, so you can focus on that pretty little bride to be.”

Now my heart sank. I had to know. “Kyle? What have you done?”

“Well, if I told you, that would spoil the surprise, wouldn’t it?” he said. “Twenty-ninth and K, northeast corner. And you might want to hurry.”

Chapter 94

BY SUNRISE, we had a full tactical team in place at the corner of Twenty-ninth and K. There was very little I’d put past Kyle, and while it could be a mistake to show up when and where he specified, I couldn’t just ignore the phone call. So we took precautions, as much as we possibly could.

The location was at the edge of Rock Creek Park, with the Whitehurst Freeway running overhead. We put officers with MP5s on the overpass, and a barrier of armored SWAT vans hugging the corner to block as many sight lines as possible.

Our nerve center was a coffee shop on K, where the SWAT unit commander, Tom Ogilvy, could stay in radio contact with his team. Sampson and I listened in on headsets.

EMS was on standby, with patrol units barring the street a block away in each direction. All personnel were outfitted with Kevlar and helmets.

And maybe it was all for nothing. Was Kyle actually watching? Was he armed? Ready with something up his sleeve? Or maybe none of the above. I think that’s exactly what he wanted me to wrestle with now.

In any case, it didn’t take long for the entry team to find something. Less than five minutes after they’d snaked into the park from Twenty-ninth, their lead man radioed over.

“We’ve got a body here,” he said. “White male, middle-aged. Looks like it could be a homeless guy.”

“Proceed with caution,” Ogilvy radioed back. We’d already briefed everyone about the possibilities here. “I want a full visual check around that body before anyone touches it. B Team, I need you on high alert.”

Three more minutes of silence ticked by until the “all clear” came back — such as it was. When I reached for the coffee shop door, Sampson grabbed my arm.

“Let me do this one, Alex. If Kyle’s here, it could be you he’s waiting for.”

“No way,” I told him. “Besides, if Kyle ever comes for me, it’s going to be face-to-face, not from a distance.”

“Oh, because you know everything there is to know about that maniac?” he said.

“I know that much,” I said, and headed outside.