Fear No Evil(Alex Cross #29)(36)

After a moment, Bree rose to peek through the windows of the Peugeot that shielded them. “Call the police, Valentina! I can’t find my phone.”

Valentina was hysterical, screeching with fear. The machine gun opened up again, raking the car Abelmar was crouched behind. The second the shooting stopped, the billionaire started to rise.

“Philippe!” Valentina shouted. “No! Don’t!”

Abelmar took off toward them in a low charge. Bree rose up and fired twice more at the rooftop to cover him but the shots did not stop the automatic weapon from ripping the night in a sustained burst that caught the tycoon, riddled him with bullets, and cut him down. He crashed to the sidewalk.

Valentina ran to her fallen boss.

“Valentina!” Bree shouted. She emptied her pistol at the rooftop. When the action jammed open, she ducked down and sprinted to Valentina, who was draped across Abelmar, weeping and moaning. From one look, Bree could tell that Abelmar was dead.

Bree grabbed his personal assistant by the arm and dragged her away a split second before the machine gun opened fire yet again. Bullets pinged off the cars and chewed up the concrete sidewalk as the long, raking burst swept at them from behind.





Chapter





40




I arrived at the Paris gate a sweaty mess. Officer Finch had alerted the United representative at the counter, who told me they had a seat in business class available. It cost me a small fortune, even with the miles I threw at it from my frequent-flier account, but I was glad I’d done it when I settled into my window seat and got ready for takeoff.

There was a delay in departure due to a sensor malfunctioning, which allowed me to continue to dial Bree’s number in Paris. After three more strikeouts, I called the Washington office of Bluestone Group and got Elena Martin on the phone.

When I told her what had happened on my call with Bree, Martin said she knew nothing about a firefight in Paris but she’d find out immediately and get back to me either by phone before we took off or by text if we’d left the ground. I hung up and confirmed with the flight attendant that the plane had Wi-Fi.

“Something to drink?” he asked.

“How long’s the flight?”

“Eleven and a half hours.”

I told him I’d take a beer, and I started trying Bree again. Nothing. Ten minutes later, the pilot came on and told us the sensor issue had been resolved and we’d been cleared to button up the doors and leave for Paris.

I was about to put my phone on airplane mode until takeoff when it rang. Elena Martin.

“I can confirm a firefight in Paris in the seventeenth arrondissement,” she said. “The entire area has been cordoned off and is under the control of French anti-terror police. As of now, they are not telling us anything more.”

“Do we know if Bree’s in there? If she’s alive?”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Cross, I cannot confirm anything else. But I have Marianne Le Tour, chief of our Paris office, en route to the scene. We should know more soon.”

Over the loudspeaker, the flight attendant told us to turn our phones off before we pulled back from the gate.

“Text me the second you hear anything,” I said.

“Absolutely. And our thoughts and prayers are with you and Bree, Dr. Cross.”

I thanked her, hung up, and switched the phone to airplane mode. The flight attendant who came to take my empty beer glass said the Wi-Fi for texting and internet would come on above thirty thousand feet.

We took off and my mind started to play tricks on me. It shifted to the oldest part of the brain, the limbic system, the reptilian place where fear and worry and terrible images and impossible questions dwell and fester.

Bree’s dead, the lizard brain said. You have to prepare yourself for it, Alex. You’ve been down this road before. Your first wife was taken from you without warning or mercy, a beautiful mommy out for a stroll with your young children, cut down in a senseless drive-by shooting. You don’t think that kind of thing happens in Paris?

I kept trying to counter the argument as we climbed steeply northeast away from Denver. Bree was one of the most competent and well-trained law enforcement officers I’d ever known. For a year before becoming a detective and meeting me, she’d been on the city SWAT team and knew how to handle herself in dangerous scenarios involving weapons.

But we’re talking automatic weapons. What did Bree say she had with her? A small nine-millimeter? You heard several bursts of machine-gun fire, at least one of them sustained. Those shots that sounded closer could have been Bree firing back. But a machine gun versus a pistol? The odds aren’t good.

This battle in my head couldn’t be won, so I abandoned my mind to it, closed my eyes, and went to my heart and my faith, praying for Bree’s safety, reminding the Almighty what a good and decent person she was, how human and connected she was, even in her past role as chief of detectives, where she’d had to deal with all sorts of personalities, politics, and pressures. Bree was more than my wife, my partner, my best friend, and my equal in every sense—she was my love, my greatest gift from God.

Don’t take a second one from me, Lord, I prayed. Please don’t let Bree—

A loud ding interrupted my prayer. I opened my eyes as the loudspeaker crackled. I anticipated the flight attendant again, but the pilot’s voice came on.