Cross the Line (Alex Cross #24)(62)

“I can do that,” Dolores said, and she hung up.

I heard Bree come in the front door. It was past seven. She looked worse than I felt.

“Don’t ask,” she said.

“Deal,” I said. “Beer?”

“Red wine,” she said. “Pinot noir. And what smells so good?”

“Nana Mama’s on a roll,” I said and retrieved a bottle of her favorite wine.

I poured just about the time my grandmother finished the thin-sliced pork chops and set them on the table along with her mystery sauce. Jannie crutched her way in. We said grace with everyone holding hands.

Nana Mama’s new dish was a hit. Every bite gave you about six different flavors, but it wasn’t so spicy you screamed Fire! Bree and I cleared the dishes. At bedtime, Ali and I talked about respecting elders.

“Would you disrespect Neil deGrasse Tyson?”

“No,” he said. “But Nana Mama’s not—”

“Don’t go there,” I said, wagging a finger. “That argument won’t work. In this house, in this universe, Nana Mama is Neil deGrasse Tyson and more.”

He struggled with that, but then nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted,” I said, leaning over and kissing his head.

I went into our bedroom and found Bree already under the covers, knees up and reading her new book. I crawled into bed minutes later, and my world seemed a whole lot better than it had when I got home; I felt good and drowsy enough for sleep.





CHAPTER


74


DRESSED IN BLACK from his Wolverine boots to his leather jacket and Bell helmet, John Brown accelerated his motorcycle down a moonless rural road. Cass rode behind him.

“I still say we could have used a car,” she grumbled through a tiny earbud Brown wore.

“There’s no car on earth that can stay with this bike,” Brown said. “We may need that speed to get out of here alive.”

The headlight beam caught parked cars ahead by the side of the road and then the lights of the high-walled compound.

“Hobbes?” Brown said.

“Here,” Hobbes replied.

“Troll in to five hundred meters. Fender too.”

“Roger that.”

“Coming to it now,” Brown said, and he downshifted and slowed as he passed the two guards flanking the open gate.

The motorcycle rumbled when Brown pulled a U-turn and then backed into a spot between a Mercedes-Benz and a Cadillac Escalade, the bike’s front tire facing the compound.

“Confidence, now,” he said, shutting off the motorcycle.

“All the confidence in the world, darling,” Cass said, getting down.

Brown dismounted and drew off his helmet slowly, all too aware of the guards but careful not to tug too hard on the fake beard glued to his skin. He hung the helmet on the throttle and glanced at Cass. She wore a fringed red leather jacket, a platinum-blond wig, and an Atlanta Braves cap. She held a black leather briefcase. It was handcuffed to her wrist.

“Three hundred meters,” Brown murmured into the sensitive jawbone microphone affixed to the skin beneath his beard.

“Three hundred,” Fender said.

Brown put his head up as if he owned the goddamned world and walked across the road toward the gate and the guards, Cass trailing just behind his left shoulder.

“Nice bike,” the guard on the left said in Russian.

“The best,” Brown replied in Russian with a perfect St. Petersburg accent.

“How fast?” the guard on the right asked.

“Three hundred and five kilometers an hour,” Brown replied, smiling and looking each man in the eye. “The acceleration is breathtaking. Am I late?”

“We were close to shutting access off, but no,” the guard on the left said. “Invitation, please.”

Brown smiled, cocked his head, and said in English with a thick accent, “Where is the invitation, Leanne?”

“I put it in here for safekeeping, sugar,” Cass said in a deep Southern twang. She came around in front of Brown, her back to the guards, and held out the briefcase. “You’ll have to unlock me, boss.”

Feigning exasperation, Brown dug in his pocket, came up with the key, looked at the guards, and said in Russian, “She is not a rocket scientist, this one. But in bed, my God, boys, she’s a racehorse.”

The guards cracked up. Cass looked at him as if she had no idea what he’d just said. Brown unlocked the handcuff and set the combination locks on the hasps.

Then he thumbed them both open, pushed up the lid, and grabbed the two sound-suppressed Glock pistols inside. He swung them out and around the sides of the briefcase and Cass and head-shot both guards at near point-blank range.

They both rocked back and crumpled.

Cass threw aside the briefcase. Brown lobbed her one of the pistols. She caught it and they went to work. They grabbed the dead men by their collars, dragged them inside the gates and out of sight, then closed the gate, barred, and locked it. After taking two-way radios from the dead men, they stepped into the shadows to pull black hoods down over their faces.

“We’re in,” Brown said into his mike, and they trotted down the driveway toward a cluster of buildings overlooking the bay.

Brown could hear music playing—jazz—and the clinking of cocktail glasses and the laughter of thieves and slave owners. When they were in sight of a big antebellum-style mansion that dominated the compound, Brown said, “Ready.”