I ducked under the one closest to me and felt a strong cold breeze hit me in the face as I stumbled and went to my knees outside in the melting snow and mud.
I coughed and swooned but then scooped up a handful of snow and cold mud and splashed it in my face. I had to go back. I had to get them out.
I crawled back and saw Pratt lying motionless on top of his gas mask. Taking a big breath, I scrambled to him, rolled him over, and put the mask on.
After opening the door I’d come through, and the window, and feeling the air moving, I found the ropes attached to the cables holding the women and cut them all down.
One by one, I grabbed them and, still crawling, dragged them out into the snow. They were all outside and breathing when I heard the chug of a helicopter, looked back toward the bluff, and saw a Life Flight chopper coming in for a landing.
CHAPTER
111
SHORTLY AFTER FOUR that afternoon, Eliza Lindel broke down sobbing in Bree’s arms. I leaned over on my crutches and rubbed her back.
“Please,” she cried softly to me when she drew away from Bree. “You’ll have to come with me to tell Alden.”
I glanced at Bree, who nodded.
“Of course,” I said.
Gretchen Lindel’s mother wiped at her tears, then reached up and kissed my face. “I want you to know that you’re a good man, Dr. Cross.”
My eyes started to water. “Thank you.”
Bree held her hand. I followed them through the door at the far end of the kitchen into Alden Lindel’s small world. The shriveled man in the bed took his eyes off the latest Game of Thrones episode.
Eliza Lindel came around me and shut it off. “Dr. Cross has news, Alden.”
His eyes went to the tablet. The synthetic voice said, “Gretch?”
I smiled. “She’s safe, Mr. Lindel. They’re all safe. She’s on her way here. We tried to convince her to stay in the hospital, but she wouldn’t hear of it.”
Lindel shut his eyes tight, and then he looked to his tablet. “Thank God,” his mechanical voice said. “Thank God.”
Tinker, the Jack Russell terrier, started barking and yipping with excitement in the kitchen.
“Mom? Dad?” Gretchen cried weakly.
An EMT was pushing her in a wheelchair. She’d been washed clean of pig’s blood and wore a pair of hospital scrubs. An IV in her arm was connected to a bag mounted on a pole attached to the chair.
Her mother ran to her and hugged her, and they sobbed with joy, the little dog dancing on her hind legs and barking madly. They all went to Alden’s side. The dog jumped on his bed. Gretchen got up on wobbly legs, threw her arms around her dad, and kissed him.
“I never gave up, Dad,” she said, weeping. “They tried to reach inside and destroy me, but they couldn’t. Because of you, and what you taught me, they couldn’t.”
He broke down, made choking sounds of love, which Bree and I took as our cue to slip out, our job done. Outside, we smiled like happy idiots. It was a crisp late-fall afternoon, and I felt damn lucky to be alive.
“That Find My iPhone app is something, isn’t it?” I said, putting the crutches in the backseat and then hopping to the front, grimacing as I gingerly drew my splinted lower leg inside. “It can track the phone even if the phone’s not signed in.”
“Definitely helped find you faster,” Bree said, starting the engine. “That and Batra and the Life Flight pilot hearing your radio call.”
We drove toward GW Medical Center, where Ned Mahoney was in surgery. While Bree called Chief Michaels and filled him in, I prayed for Ned, and for Delilah Franks, Cathy Dupris, Ginny Krauss, Alison Dane, and Patsy Mansfield, hoping to God that they’d come to find peace with what had happened to them. Somehow, I knew Gretchen Lindel was going to be all right.
I thought about the four mannequins the HRT team had found in the shed, all lying on electric heating pads that made them look like real people on the infrared scopes. I thought about the FBI agent who’d been closest to the first thaa-wumph! in the basement of Edgars’s house, which he’d said held computers and large editing screens.
He said a fireball had gone off in there, fueled by an accelerant, and that, together with the explosion upstairs, had burned the mansion to the ground. Edgars had thought of almost everything; it was as if he’d been certain we’d find him at some point and had planned for it.
Bree ended her call with the chief.
“Michaels says, ‘Well done,’ and you’re on paid leave pending an investigation again.”
“Is it possible to be double-suspended?”
“You’re going to be cleared, Alex. Pratt was going to kill Gretchen Lindel. There are multiple witnesses. You had to shoot him. And Edgars effectively shot himself.”
“I know.”
“Then why the long face?”
I hesitated, wondering if I was still suffering from the effects of the gas, but then I said, “I’ve decided not to go back even if I am cleared.”
She was quiet for a while. “What would you do? Just counseling?”
“No, I’ve got some big ideas. And the best part about them? They all include you.”
When I glanced over at her, she was smiling. “That makes me happy.”
I reached over and squeezed her hand. “Me too.”
CHAPTER
112
TEN DAYS AFTER we reunited his daughter with her family, Alden Lindel passed away in his sleep, a happy man.
I heard the news from his wife on a chill, windy Saturday afternoon as I crutched after my family on the east side of Capitol Hill. Mrs. Lindel was grief-stricken, of course, but also relieved. With Gretchen at his side constantly since she’d returned home, Lindel had found grace, and he’d passed holding his daughter’s hand and his wife’s. I promised Eliza that I would be at the funeral, and I pocketed my phone.
Ali was dancing around. “C’mon, Dad. I’m going to be late.”
“Go on in, then,” Nana Mama said, shooing him toward the door of Elephants and Donkeys, a relatively new pub with a poster in the window advertising the District Open Darts Championship.
Ali yanked open the door like he owned the place and went in.
Bree started laughing.
“What’s so funny, young lady?” my grandmother demanded.
Bree waved a hand. “I just never thought I’d see the day when you’d be attending a darts tournament in a bar, Nana.”
“I’m not done growing yet, dear,” she said good-naturedly and winked.
We followed her inside and found Sampson, Billie, and Krazy Kat Rawlins having drafts at the bar. I helped Ali sort through the release forms and got a number to pin on the back of his shirt.
“They have a practice board,” he said. “I’ll be there.”
“You’ve been practicing every night for two hours.”
He frowned, said, “Repetition is the mother of skill, Dad.”
“Yeah, okay, I’ve heard that too,” I said, surrendering. “Go on.”
I smiled as he walked toward the knot of older darts competitors gathered at the rear of the pub, thinking that I had never been that fearless at his age.
Sampson handed me a beer, offered me his stool.
I took it and kissed Billie on the cheek. “You guys didn’t have to come.”
“What else were we going to do on a cold day off?”
Nana Mama sat up on a bar stool beside Jannie watching a college football game, eating buffalo wings, and drinking a Sprite.
“I know we’re technically on leave pending investigation,” Sampson said to Bree. “But is Lourdes Rodriguez still spilling her guts?”
Bree hesitated.
Rawlins said, “I’ve talked to her. The woman won’t shut up.”
“It’s true,” Bree said with a sigh.
Between the two of them, we got a thumbnail sketch of Rodriguez’s involvement with Nash Edgars. They’d met at a coding conference she’d attended because she’d heard coders made better money tha
n satellite-dish installers.
Edgars seemed to have anything he wanted whenever he wanted it. Better, he could get her anything she wanted whenever she wanted it. Rodriguez wasn’t going to inherit a dime from any uncle ever, and here was this genius computer guy offering her the world.
“Through the dark web,” Rawlins said. “She claimed he was worth forty to fifty million in Bitcoin alone.”
“But it wasn’t until he started acting on his hatred of blond women that the real money started coming in,” Bree said, disgusted.
“Hundreds of thousands of subscribers,” Rawlins said, shaking his Mohawk, which was a startling violet that day. “All of them paying to see those women terrified and abused.”
Rodriguez told Bree that Edgars’s hatred of blondes stemmed from years of dealing with a drunken blond mother and more years of fair-haired girls harassing him when he was grossly obese and growing up in Southern California. Because he was an avowed computer nerd, the abuse continued even after he’d dropped the weight.
“So, what, he decided to get his revenge and help others live out their anti-blonde fantasies?” Sampson said.
“It was more twisted and diabolical than that,” Bree said. “She said he planned on putting the clips together into a horror documentary film called All Blondes Must Die.”
“That’s something we’ll never be seeing, thank God,” Sampson said. “What about that kid Timmy Walker?”
“Lourdes said if anyone killed that poor kid, it was Pratt,” Bree said. “She said there wasn’t a good bone in his body, that Alex did the world a service.”
Billie said, “How’s Ned?”
“Better,” I said, brightening. “I saw him this morning. Like you said the day he was shot, the liver’s a remarkable thing. It’s already starting to regenerate. The docs are saying he’ll make a full—”
Nana Mama appeared, said, “Enough of that. C’mon, your son’s about to throw or toss or whatever they do with darts.”
CHAPTER
113
I WISH I could say that Ali slayed it, threw darts with consistent, dazzling accuracy, but that didn’t happen. He did toss three bull’s-eyes and an almost, but he was wild otherwise and lost in the first round to a nice guy from Texas named Mel Davis who owned a barbecue joint downtown.
Ali was crushed until Davis offered him and his friends free barbecue brisket the next time he was in. My youngest was back to his old self walking home, gabbing nonstop with Jannie and Nana Mama about his plans to make a comeback in the tournament next year. We lagged behind.
After a few moments, Bree said, “What did Ned think about your big idea?”
“He likes it. A lot.”
“Michaels?”
“We haven’t had that talk yet.”
“You’re sure you’ll be happy?”
“Extremely. I’ll have the best of both worlds.”
Ali, Nana, and Jannie went into Chung’s convenience store to pick up milk and ice cream. Bree and I kept walking.
Night had fallen when we reached our steps. The house and porch were dark. We climbed onto the porch together, hand in hand, and but for a few unresolved issues, I felt as solid as I had in—
“Hands up, or I’ll shoot you both right now.”
We startled and looked to our right, saw the silhouette of someone crouched by the railing and aiming a revolver at us. We raised our hands.
“Hello, Dr. Cross,” he said, straightening. “Chief Stone.”
Dylan Winslow, Gary Soneji’s son, swung the gun back and forth between us, and even in the low light I could see a demented smile on his face. It was a smile I’d seen before, months ago, when I’d caught him torturing pigeons in his mother’s barn in rural Delaware.
“What do you think you’re doing, Dylan?” I said.
“Giving you what you deserve for killing my mom.”
“He was framed,” Bree said. “Drugged. The jury agreed.”
“I saw him do it with my own two eyes,” he snarled.
“So you were in the factory that night,” I said. “I’ve thought about that possibility quite a bit since the trial.”
“Who cares? Winning and seeing you gone is what’s important.”
“You took the holographic film off everyone’s hands, didn’t you?”
He snorted. “That’s bullshit. That whole excuse was cooked up by your brat of a kid and his gay buddy. Where is he, anyway? Your brat of a kid?”
“Far away,” I said, my eyes flickering to the street and the sidewalk.
“I’ll find him later, after I’m done here.”
“No, you won’t.”
Dylan shook the pistol at me. “Don’t tell me what I will or won’t do, Cross! Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I’m the guy who notices things, Dylan. Even after seeing the film of me shooting your mother over and over in court, I couldn’t figure out what about it was driving me crazy.”
“Shut up. Get on your knees. Both of you.”
I stood my ground. So did Bree.
I said, “Your mother stumbled when she came into view. Did you push your mother, Dylan? Did she know what you meant to have happen?”
“Lying again.” He sneered. “Making shit up. It’s what you do, Cross. But not this time. This time, you’re gonna die. Like you should have before.”
I heard the click of the revolver’s hammer cocking.
“Don’t do it,” Bree said. “Killing cops never ends well.”
“I don’t care,” Dylan said. “This is where I end too. Once I see you both—”
I caught a flicker of movement behind and to his right a split second before Soneji’s son screamed and spun around, firing. The shot hit the porch ceiling.
Plaster dust and splinters hit me in the face as I charged, smashed my shoulder into his rib cage, and drove him hard against the railing. I heard ribs crack and saw all the wind go out of him before I dragged him to the porch floor and pinned him.
Bree kicked away his gun, backed up, and turned on the porch light.
Dylan Winslow lay under me, gasping for air, one hand groping for the vanes and shaft of the competition dart buried deep in the left side of his neck.
“Who’s the brat now, jackass?” Ali cried, leaping onto the porch, pumping his fist, and then pointing a finger triumphantly at Soneji’s kid. “I smoked you with a ten-ringer from thirty-five feet!”
CHAPTER
114
LATE THE FOLLOWING April, Ali and I drove out to Assateague State Park on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. It was a glorious spring day, unnaturally warm, and it felt good in my bones when I climbed from the car after parking beside a familiar Jeep Wagoneer.
“Why would Mr. Aaliyah want to teach me to fish?” Ali said, coming around the back. “He doesn’t even know me.”
“He’s heard of you. Besides, he likes to teach kids to fish.”
“Why?”
“Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.”
Ali gave me a funny face. “Who said that?”
“Someone smarter than me,” I said as a Volvo pulled into the lot.
A woman in her thirties with ash-blond hair climbed out and looked over at us uncertainly. “The beach isn’t far, is it?”
“Just over the dunes,” I said and motioned to Ali to kick off his sneakers.
Barefoot, we walked the sand path through the dunes. My ankle didn’t feel too bad at all, and there was a nice breeze blowing that smelled like spring.
“What’s going to happen to him, Dad?” Ali said. “Dylan Winslow?”
“That’s out of my hands. He’ll get his day in court.”
“I heard Bree say they think something’s wrong with his brain.”
That was sadly true and, if the doctors’ suspicions proved correct, unsurprising. Dylan had been born on the wrong end of a DNA chain, one where psychopathic tendencies were passed on by a criminally insane father and first expressed through a deli
ght in torturing defenseless animals. Abetting the murder of his mother and then attempting to murder us were natural progressions for him, in some ways as predictable as diseases.
“Doctors are looking at that possibility,” I said. “If so, Dylan will go to an institution for people like that.”
We emerged on the beach. The sky was ridiculously blue. The sea heaved and rolled in a deeper azure. Early-season sunbathers and a smattering of fishermen dotted the pristine sand.
“That guy’s got a big fish!” Ali said, pointing to a man pulling one ashore.
“Nice one.”
“I like this place, Dad. I want to learn to fish.”
“Thought you might.”
We walked south a hundred yards and found Bernie Aaliyah and his daughter, Tess, waiting for us.
“Heard a lot about you, kid,” Bernie said, shaking Ali’s hand. “Remind me not to get between you and a dartboard.”
Ali grinned, and I knew they were going to be buds. Bernie started to show Ali how the tackle worked. I went to Tess, said, “Long time, no see.”
She put her hands in her back pockets, said, “I’m doing better. Most days.”
“Take a stroll?”
“Why not?”
We walked back the way I’d come.
“I’ve heard rumors of you leaving Metro,” Tess said. “On to bigger and better things.”
“It’s true,” I said, and I explained the deal I’d forged.
Similar to Rawlins, I was now an independent contractor for the FBI, working as a consultant on the most sensitive and high-profile cases. The same was true with Metro.
“I was getting restless,” I said. “I needed a new challenge, and I’ll get it. And because I’ll be called to work only the most demanding cases, I’ll have time to dedicate to my counseling practice, where I find a lot of personal fulfillment.”
“Sounds perfect.”
“I think so.”
I saw the ash-blond woman from the parking lot walking our way. She’d put on big sunglasses and a tennis visor and held the hand of a pretty young girl in pigtails who wore pink culottes and carried a little bucket and shovel.