Triple Cross

“I can’t wait to meet her and thank her. I’m glad you’re okay.”

“So am I,” she said and yawned. “I just want to get stitched up and out of here.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet.”

“I can go online and get you a hotel room.”

“I’ll do it,” she said. “I have my phone and nothing else to do.”

“So it was some kind of Russian mob thing, huh? The hits at Paula Watkins’s home and then finishing off the job with Duchaine?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“But why?”

“I’m thinking it has something to do with Watkins and Duchaine elbowing in on the high-end-prostitution racket.”

A doctor appeared and looked at her phone. “No cells in here.”

“Sorry, doc’s here and I got to go,” Bree said. “Love you.”

“Love you too,” Alex said and hung up.

It wasn’t until after Bree’s arm had been stitched up and she’d been released with prescriptions for antibiotics and painkillers that she realized she still had no place to stay for the night. She figured she’d sit down with her phone somewhere and try to find something.

But when she reached the lobby, she found Phillip Henry Luster waiting.

“I was told they’d brought you here,” he said. “I’ve got a car, and a stiff drink and a warm bed await you at my house.”

“Thank you, Phillip. You’re a lifesaver.”

“From what I hear, it’s the other way around.”

CHAPTER 93

Alexandria, Virginia

AT THREE ON MONDAY afternoon, Sampson and I walked into the federal holding facility in Alexandria and met Lindy York, Thomas Tull’s defense attorney, who looked more sour than usual.

Seeing a copy of that morning’s Wall Street Journal sticking out of her leather bag, I said, “Does Tull know yet?”

“No. He’s being held in isolation for his own safety. There was an attack on him last evening. Seems there are a lot of family men incarcerated here.”

After we’d gone through security, we went to a room set aside for attorneys to meet with clients. Twenty minutes later, led by two corrections officers, Tull shuffled in. The writer’s jaw was swollen. His right hand was in a cast.

York was horrified. She shouted at the guards, “This is outrageous! My client needs medical attention!”

“He’s had it,” one of the guards shot back, sitting Tull down. “All night.”

“I’m aw wight,” Tull said thickly. “Been through worse, and they got me on oxy.”

His attorney rolled her eyes. “Not exactly the way you want to be talking to law enforcement, Thomas.”

“No choice,” he said. “What’s happened? Why are you here?”

York and I exchanged glances. “After you, Counselor.”

The attorney gave me an unhappy nod and retrieved the Wall Street Journal from her bag. She unfolded it and slid it across the table.

The writer looked at it, puzzled at first. Then his stare hardened on the headline.

PUBLISHER DROPS BESTSELLING AUTHOR INDICTED FOR MURDERS

“I’ll sue,” he growled when he looked up. “I want to talk to my agent. Now!”

“You’re not exactly in a position to be making demands,” Sampson said.

“They can’t do this! I’ve done nothing wrong!”

York said, “Your new publishers say they can, Thomas. There was a morality clause in the deal memo governing your next book. They’re exercising it, and they say you now owe them the four-million-dollar signing bonus they gave you.”

“Not a chance! I will sue. I didn’t do this! I am not the Family Man, Lindy!” he shouted. He winced and glanced at me. “Volkov. Find Volkov, Cross, and you’ll know I was framed.”

“We did find him,” I said. “Or NYPD did. He was one of three shooters who gunned down Frances Duchaine and her two bodyguards last night. Officers on the scene returned fire, killing two and wounding the third.”

“Volkov?” he said.

“Shot multiple times.”

“Tell me he’s alive.”

Sampson said, “Your alibi’s in a medically induced coma, hanging on by a thread.”

The writer gaped at us for several moments as if suddenly overwhelmed by this newest twist in his predicament.

He shook his head, said, “I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.”

CHAPTER 94

Manhattan

ON MONDAY AFTERNOON, BREE climbed out of a taxi in front of NYU Medical Center. She’d slept fitfully at Phillip Henry Luster’s place but had felt well enough that morning to go to Salazar’s precinct and make a detailed statement about the previous evening’s events to the detectives there, including Rosella’s partner, Simon Thompson.

Thompson, who’d been cold to her before, had taken her aside and thanked her for saving Salazar’s life. Bree was still feeling good about that when she exited the elevator on the maternity ward and asked the nurses where she could find Rosella.

Room 302, she was told. “She’s having a party in there,” the nurse said.

Bree went to room 302 and found Salazar in bed, an IV in her arm and a newborn in a pink blanket on her lap. She was surrounded by family: her four-year-old daughter, her husband, her sister, her mother, and two men who turned out to be the detective’s brothers.

They were all bantering in Spanish when Bree knocked on the open door.