Cross the Line (Alex Cross #24)(33)

“That what you’re here about?” Condon asked. “Paula and all?”

Even with the limp, he’d come up behind us so quietly we both startled.

When I turned, the sniper popped his Bud can, looked at us coldly.

“We’d heard about her. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Condon softened slightly, said, “Thank you.”

“What’s it been? Four years?”

“Four years, six months, three days, nine hours, three minutes. Was this what you came all the way from DC to talk about?”

In the car, Sampson and I had hashed out how best to approach him. Trying to bull or bluff a guy like Condon wasn’t going to work, so I opted to come at him from the side.

“We need your help,” I said. “Do you keep up with the news?”

“I try not to,” Condon said.

“There was a mass murder in a methamphetamine factory in Washington, DC,” I said. “Twenty-two people died. The assault seemed professional, as in highly trained. Probably ex-military.”

As if he were seeing an enemy in the distance, the sniper’s eyes hardened.

“I know where this is going,” he said. “I’ll save you some time. I had nothing to do with that. Now, unless you have a warrant, Detective Cross, I’m going to have to ask you to get out of my house and off my land.”

“Mr. Condon—”

“Now. Before I get all loony and PTSD, start thinking you’re the Taliban.”





Part Three


MERCURY RISING





CHAPTER


36


MERCURY RARELY RODE his motorcycle in broad daylight.

He generally took the bike out only at night and on patrol. But heading south on Interstate 97, he felt like nothing could shake him today, as if more balance were coming into the world, and into his life. He had been the avenger now in more ways than one, and he rather liked the role.

Hell, he loved everything about what he’d been doing these past few weeks—taking charge and acting when no one else would. Certainly not the police. Certainly not the FBI or NCIS. Do-nothings, one and— Mercury noticed a beige Ford Taurus weaving in the slow lane just south of the Maryland Route 32 interchange. He hung one car back and one car over.

The Taurus drifted, and the Porsche SUV in front of Mercury honked at it. The Taurus wandered back into its lane.

The Porsche accelerated. Mercury sped up as if to pass the Taurus too and got just far enough to see what was really going on.

“Stupid bitch,” he muttered, anger beginning to build, boiling away all that good feeling. “Don’t you read? Don’t you listen?”

He backed off, telling himself that this wasn’t the time or the place.

But as he entered a long, slow, easterly curve in the four-lane highway, Mercury realized that, except for the Taurus, the southbound lanes were clear in front and behind him.

He made a split-second decision and zipped open his jacket. With his right hand he twisted the throttle, and with his left, he drew the pistol.

The motorcycle sped up until it was right beside the Taurus. The stupid bitch driving didn’t look at him, and she wasn’t looking at the road ahead.

She was texting on an iPhone while driving sixty-two miles an hour.

Years of practice had made Mercury an ambidextrous shot. He was about to pull the trigger when Ms. Textaholic actually took her eyes off the goddamned screen.

She looked over. She saw the gun.

She dropped the iPhone and twisted as he shot.

The tail end of the Taurus swung violently into his lane, almost knocking over the motorcycle, and then it veered back the other way, did a 360-degree spin, ran up an embankment, and flipped over onto its roof.

He put away the pistol and drove on at a steady sixty-three, two miles below the speed limit.

No need to draw any attention now that the traffic laws were being obeyed and a sense of balance, a sense of order, had been restored.





CHAPTER


37


THAT AFTERNOON AFTER we talked to Condon, we went to Bree’s office and gave her our report.

“So Condon threatened two law enforcement officers?” she asked, looking as stressed and tired as I’ve ever seen her.

“Oh yeah,” Sampson said.

“In a manner of speaking, anyway,” I said. “He’s highly intelligent. Knew what we were up to the second we mentioned the massacre.”

“You ask him where he was on the night in question?”

“He wouldn’t answer,” Sampson said. “Said he’d learned the hard way never to talk with an investigator of any kind without an attorney present.”

“But you put him on notice that he’s a suspect,” Bree said. “That can be a good thing.”

“It can,” I said. “But we can’t exactly put him under surveillance from here, and we don’t have evidence to support a search warrant.”

“Find me one thing that links Condon to that factory, and I’ll call in some favors with the state police in Maryland. Have them put him under surveillance.”

“I find one thing that links Condon to that factory and I think Mahoney will take over and call in the FBI cavalry, and it will be out of our hands.”