Triple Cross

Sampson said, “State-of-the-art jamming equipment stolen from the U.S. military and repackaged like this.”

“Funny thing about these jammers,” I said. “They eat a lot of power and they like to be kept cold. The colder the better, especially if you’re trying to jam the entire area around one of your kill sites. Or keep your home in a total blackout.”

Tull said nothing although his lips were moving, as if he were mouthing words, trying to put them in the correct order.

“Why did you have to kill whole families?” I said.

The writer did not reply.

“I know why. It’s because no one cares about yet another series of people dying in some gruesome manner anymore. Every book has to be bigger, more lurid, more sensational or it won’t make the bestseller list. Isn’t that true, Thomas?”

Tull finally focused on me. He snorted. “Of course it’s true, Dr. Cross. That’s the way publishing works these days.”

CHAPTER 106

ON THE AMTRAK TRAIN bound for Washington, DC, Bree drifted in and out of sleep. In that buzzy state between consciousness and dreaming, she relived Volkov’s destruction of Tull’s alibi and his earlier insistence that M and Maestro were behind the assassinations of Frances Duchaine and the others involved in the sex-trafficking ring.

In the odd way of dreams, those memories were soon replaced by others. She relived two evenings before when she and Phillip Henry Luster had been in his kitchen, hovering over his phone, listening to Nellie Ray, Duchaine’s former marketing director:

“Ryan Malcomb’s supposed to be the big genius, spotter of trends, right?”

“You’ve met him?” Bree heard herself say.

“Five or six times. He, uh, em, uh … well, I think he uses the whole muscular dystrophy thing to his advantage.”

Bree woke up then, her conscious mind straining to know why that was interesting enough to bubble up from her subconscious. Then, as the train approached Baltimore, she understood. She grabbed her phone and listened once again to the recording she’d made of Theresa May Alcott in the library when the billionaire got the call from Paladin.

“This is Terri … Give me a minute, will you, Emma, dear? I’m with someone and I’ll need to pick up in another room … I am sorry, Chief Stone. This won’t take long, but it can’t wait.”

Bree began to breathe faster. She rewound it and listened again, and this time she heard it slightly differently.

Was that right?

She played it a third time and heard it the same way. Then she searched her phone for Nellie Ray’s number and called it.

She got the woman’s voice mail and was starting to leave a message when her phone buzzed. Ray was calling her back. “Hi, this is Bree Stone.”

“I saw you called. How are you?”

“Good, Nellie. Listen, when we were on the phone the other night, you were saying that you thought Ryan Malcomb played up his muscular dystrophy.”

“Well, I’d be canceled if I said that on social media,” Ray said. “But yes, I think he takes advantage of it.”

“Okay. On another note, does he have a nickname, by any chance?”

“A nickname? Uh, yeah, I guess. Why?”

CHAPTER 107

AT SEVEN THIRTY THAT evening I stood in the grand hall of Union Station watching travelers exit the tunnel from the Acela tracks. I spotted Bree, her arm in a sling.

We hadn’t seen each other in four days, and I grinned until I realized she wasn’t smiling back at me. My poor wife looked dazed and confused.

“Are you all right?” I said, giving her a hug. I took her bag.

“I don’t know, Alex,” she said in a quiet voice. “I just …”

“Just what?” I said, growing concerned. This was not like Bree at all.

“Nothing physical. It’s complicated. Hard to explain. And I don’t know if I’m right.”

“Give it a try.”

We started walking to the Massachusetts Avenue exit. When we got outside, dusk was falling and the air was thicker, the first hint of the summer heat and humidity to come.

“Get an Uber?”

“Let’s walk,” Bree said, still pensive. “Remember Volkov said M hired him to kill Frances Duchaine?”

“How could I forget?” I said as we crossed Massachusetts and began to climb toward the Senate side of Capitol Hill.

“Stop a sec. I want you to listen to something I recorded at Theresa May Alcott’s the other day.”

Bree played the section of the recording she’d made in the billionaire’s library: “This is Terri … Give me a minute, will you, Emma, dear?”

“Who’s Emma?”

“She’s not saying ‘Emma,’” Bree said. “Listen again. She’s saying ‘em, uh.’”

She played it once more.

“I hear it now,” I said. “But I don’t get the significance.”

“She’s on the phone with Paladin,” Bree said. “She’s talking to Ryan Malcomb.”

“Malcomb? Are you sure?”

“Positive,” Bree said. “Theresa May Alcott’s his aunt, and she was guardian to him and his twin brother after their parents’ death.”

“Still,” I said. “I’m not getting where this is—”

My wife cut me off, insistent. “Malcomb has a nickname, Alex. People close to him call him M.”

I stared at her in the gloaming. “Is that true?”