Criss Cross (Alex Cross #27)(18)

“Sound advice,” my grandmother said, walking up behind me, turning on the light in the oven, and crouching to look through the glass.

The front doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it!” Ali said, and he darted off.

I decided to go back down to my office and finish writing a note on one of my clients, and I was about to ask Nana to send down a fresh brownie when they were done when I heard Ali say, “Hi, Captain Abrahamsen!”

“Isn’t he the nice man who brought Ali home?” Nana Mama said.

“One and the same,” I said, leaving the kitchen for the front hall. The captain was on the porch in his U.S. Army dress uniform. He was chatting with Ali through the screen, saw me, and straightened up.

“Mr. Cross,” he said, smiling.

“Captain,” I said, then I looked at Ali. “Aren’t you going to let him in?”

Ali opened the door.

Abrahamsen wore laminated badges that I recognized as Pentagon and U.S. Capitol passes. He held up a plastic shopping bag, then stepped inside and said, “I had to be up on the Hill for a meeting, and I thought Ali might be able to use these for his bike. They’re surplus.”

Ali took the bag and looked inside. “Whoa!”

He pulled out a knobby tire wrapped in rubber bands, a small bicycle pump, a tube for the tire, and a patch kit.

The captain grinned at Ali and then looked at me. “He really should have the patch kit with him if he’s off riding by himself.”

“Good point,” I said. “Do you know how to use it, Ali?”

My son shrugged. “Sort of. I watched someone do it on YouTube.”

Abrahamsen said, “I’ve got twenty minutes. Get your bike. I’ll show you.”

“You won’t get dirty?” Ali asked.

“Not if you do the work.”

Ali looked at me, and I bobbed my chin. He took the porch steps two at a time and disappeared around the corner.

“I wish I had his energy,” Abrahamsen said, then he laughed. “He reminds me of my stepbrother. Willis is ten too.”

He pulled out his wallet, thumbed through it, and came up with a picture of himself kneeling by a towheaded boy in a Little League uniform.

“Where’s he live?” I asked, seeing palm trees in the background.

“Southern Cal,” Abrahamsen said. “With my dad and his second wife. Love that kid.”

“What do you do for the army?”

“Now?” he said. “I brief folks up on the Hill. Liaison work, mostly.”

“And you bicycle.”

The captain grinned. “My orders do include training rides three times a week.”

“Lifer?” I asked as Ali came puffing up the porch stairs, bike over his shoulder.

“If the work stays challenging, I could put my twenty in.”

“Captain?” Ali said.

“Be right out,” he said. “Can I use your latrine?”

“Sure,” I said. “Right down the hall, through the kitchen, and on your left.”

“Thank you,” he said. He walked by me and almost bumped into Nana Mama, who had appeared with a plate of warm brownies.

“I figured you’d want some, Captain Abrahamsen,” she said.

Abrahamsen laughed. “You must be Nana Mama.”

“The one and only,” I said. “The captain needs to use our bathroom.”

“Through the kitchen and on the left. I’ll put these on the porch for you all.”

My cell phone rang. FBI special agent Mahoney. “Ned,” I said.

“Pack an overnight,” Mahoney said. “And get to Reagan National Airport.”





CHAPTER 22





FOUR HOURS LATER, MAHONEY AND I pulled into the driveway of a beautiful home in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

Diane Jenkins, a forty-two-year-old mother of two, had vanished thirty-seven hours before. Her husband, Melvin, owner of a string of home-nursing companies, said his wife had failed to pick up their daughters after school. The girls and their father had tried to reach Mrs. Jenkins for hours but their calls went straight to voice mail.

Jenkins went to the Shaker Heights police to file a missing-person report on his wife that same evening. The police said they had to wait to investigate until Mrs. Jenkins had been out of contact for a minimum of twenty-four hours.

Finally, Jenkins remembered his wife had an active OnStar membership for her Cadillac. Diane’s vehicle was located outside a low-income housing project fifteen miles from home, a place his wife had no reason to be. When Jenkins drove to North Royalton, Ohio, he found the car had been stripped.

Then Jenkins received a call from someone using a voice-distorting device. The caller demanded five million dollars in a cryptocurrency called Ethereum in exchange for the safe return of his wife. Jenkins had forty-eight hours to pay it.

Despite being warned not to by the kidnapper, Jenkins called the FBI. He’d managed to record the ransom conversation. A transcript of the recording had made its way to Mahoney’s desk, which was why we were knocking on the Jenkins’s front door.

A Cleveland-based FBI agent named Andrea Rowe let us in.

We found Melvin Jenkins, a wiry marathon runner in his late forties, looking emotionally exhausted. Mentally, however, the man was sharp, alert, and direct.