Triple Cross (Alex Cross #30)(3)

“I’m sorry, Bill,” she said. “But I need some guidance here. He wants—”

“I trust you,” he said. “Make your best call and keep him in the fold.”

He hung up.





THREE


AT SIX THAT EVENING, Liu kicked off her heels and began pacing again.

She’d been doing it off and on since sending Tull Alabaster’s formal offer, which she’d made without Hardaway’s final approval because she hadn’t heard from the publisher since that morning.

Even her texts had gone unanswered.

It’s a good offer, the editor thought, ignoring the beautiful sunset over the Hudson. No, it’s a great offer for world rights. And we made him. I made him. Rescued him when there were no other offers. He’ll take that into account, won’t he?

An hour passed. It was dark. She could hear other employees calling it a day and leaving.

Liu looked at Tull’s framed book covers once again: Electric, Noon in Berlin, Doctor’s Orders.

Every one of them had sold millions of copies, even Electric, which he’d written while an older undergraduate student at Harvard after a stint as a military police investigator with the Marines and NCIS.

“I was the only one who saw your talent back then,” Liu whispered to Tull’s most recent author photo. “You owe me, Thomas. You owe me big-time. And it’s a great offer. No one will be more generous than me. You know that. I’ve given you everything, haven’t I? You know I—”

Her cell phone buzzed. She walked over, saw a message from Tull.

“You’re mine, Thomas,” she said, opening the text.

Liu’s stomach began to drop even before he’d stated it plainly.

“No,” she whispered. “That’s not right.”

Anger surged up through her and she punched in Tull’s number. The call went straight to voice mail. “Call me,” she said. “You’ve got to allow me some time to counter. I can’t—”

The line went dead. The editor stared at her phone, her anger turning to the kind of rage only a scorned woman knows.

“No, no, no,” she said, punching in the number again. The line disconnected after one ring.

Liu grabbed her coat and shoes. “This is not happening! You are not ghosting me, Thomas Tull! You owe me!”

The editor charged out her door and down the hall, muttering, “He’s at the Ritz. Thomas always stays at the Ritz. He’ll be at the bar and—”

Glass shattered. A voice roared in pain from the office on the opposite corner of the building, near the elevators.

Liu stopped and stared; she heard choking noises coming through the open door. She hurried over and saw Hardaway sitting at his desk, hunched over and sobbing.

“Bill?” she said, the bad feeling in the pit of her stomach growing. “What’s happened?”

The publisher looked up at her, ruin in his face and rheumy eyes. “They’re gone,” he said hoarsely. “Both stillborn.”

“No,” she moaned, stepping into his office. “You must be crushed. Cynthia?”

“In shock,” he said. “We’re both in shock. It was our last chance to have kids and … she’s sedated. I want to be.”

Liu swallowed. “Bill, I know this isn’t the time to talk about the offer I made.”

Hardaway stared at her blankly. “How much?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Liu said. “He didn’t take it.”

He blinked. “Tell me that’s not true.”

“He took a higher offer. One book. Eleven point two million for world rights.”

“Eleven point two?” the publisher said, sounding stunned. “Well, that’s … why didn’t you offer twelve?”

“Twelve million?” she said angrily. “We’d have to sell almost a million and a half copies in hardcover to make that—”

“So what?” Hardaway snapped, red-faced. He got to his feet. “You should have counteroffered it.”

“There were no counteroffers heard, Bill,” she said. “His terms. Make the best offer by five, that’s it, winner takes all. I tried to tell you that this morning and—”

“What was your best offer?”

“Ten.”

“Ten?” he shouted and then shot her a disgusted look. “Were you trying to insult him? Drive him out? The man who made your career and this house? The man you still have—”

“No, I don’t,” Liu shouted back, cutting him off. “And we made him, Bill. Not the other way around. I thought ten million was insanely generous. I thought—”

“You thought wrong,” Hardaway roared. “You lost the golden goose on the worst day of my life, Suzanne! For that, you’re fired!”

“Fired?” she said, shocked into a whisper. “Bill, you can’t—”

“I just did,” he said coldly. “Get your things and clear out. I need new blood in here before everything around me dies.”





TRIPLE CROSS





CHAPTER 1


A WALL OF RHODODENDRON bushes prevented anyone in the neighborhood from seeing the interior of the compound: a rambling white Cape with dark green shutters and a four-bay carriage house set on three landscaped acres.