Criss Cross (Alex Cross #27)(42)

My stomach dropped because I knew deep down he was right. “I’m sorry, John.”

“I know. Just give me a little time to process, okay?”

The best friend I’ve ever had shot me a sad smile, then turned and lumbered away.

I watched him until he disappeared around a corner. I decided to walk home, mull things over, empty my head before a visit from yet another college track coach trying to recruit Jannie.

As I walked, I did my best to take my mind off Sampson, thinking that if Rivers was right, if M had slipped spyware into my phone, he was probably tracking me right now. Or he would have been if I hadn’t turned the phone off.

Feeling somewhat invisible for the moment, I started asking myself how it was possible for M to have gotten into my phone. According to the Wickr website, all anyone had to do to contact me on the app was call my phone. As long as I had the app, the message would appear.

I supposed there were any number of ways he could have gotten my number, but it didn’t explain how he’d figured out a way to track me and maybe listen in when I talked. Had M gotten close enough to me to clone my phone when I was using it? But when? And where?

It was maddening to think that M was staying three steps ahead of me. Or was he three behind, following me?

A wave of paranoia pulsed through me, and I couldn’t help but look around to see if I was being tailed. There were people on the sidewalk behind me and on the other side of the street. But none were obviously watching me or acting suspiciously.

I took a few short detours to make sure no one was following me, and by the time I reached the National Mall, I was sure I was alone. As I cut southeast toward Fifth, I decided I’d better call Rawlins and have him come to my house. I just wouldn’t say anything that would indicate our suspicions.

I turned my phone on, called him, and left a message asking him to call me on my landline at home. My regular messaging app showed two texts, one from Jannie reminding me to be home early to meet the coach and one from Nana Mama asking me to pick up a quart of milk.

I wondered if M could be monitoring my texts and was about to turn the phone off again when it dinged. A Wickr message appeared on the screen.

Stewing in a nasty kettle of fish these days, aren’t you? Or should I say, a kettle of fish heads? Get it? Fish heads. Fish heads. Eat ’em up, yum!

Enough fun. Now things get interesting, Cross. This will all make perfect sense soon.

M is for …

Before the message could disappear, I did what Mahoney had told me to do: pressed the sleep button and the home button at the same time.

The screen flashed just before the message vanished.





CHAPTER 52





THE SCREENSHOT WAS STILL THERE in my photo album when Keith Karl Rawlins came to my house to get my phone. I met him on the porch and handed it to him when he knocked on our front door around six thirty that evening.

“Think you can find out how he’s tracking me?” I said.

“No doubt,” Rawlins said after looking at the screenshot. He powered the phone down and put it in a lead-lined bag. “The trick is to do it in a way he won’t notice.”

“Can you do that?”

He shot me a condescending look and said, “Blindfolded.”

“Rivers said I should put it in DFU mode, but I have no idea what that means.”

“Stands for ‘device firmware update,’ ” he said, nodding. “It will get the bug out, but I want to take a look at the little nasty before I do that.”

Rawlins left. Ali rode up on his mountain bike, soaked with sweat and grinning.

“Good ride?” I asked.

“You can’t believe what some of these kids can do.”

“Not Captain Abrahamsen?”

“He wasn’t there. He had a long ride with his team.”

“Go take a shower. The coach is coming to see Jannie after dinner.”

“Do they have mountain-bike scholarships at Texas?”

“I have no idea. Shower.”

We were just finishing the dinner dishes and Jannie had gone upstairs to send in her homework when the doorbell rang. I answered to find a tall, lean woman in her late thirties wearing a blue pantsuit and carrying a briefcase.

She smiled, stuck out her hand, and said, “I hope I’m not too early.”

“Not at all, Coach Wilson. We’re honored. Please come in.”

Coach Rebecca Wilson ran the prestigious women’s track team at the University of Texas at Austin.

“I appreciate you making time for me, Dr. Cross,” Coach Wilson said.

“Anyone interested in Jannie gets our time,” I said as I showed her inside.

Wilson had competed in the heptathlon in college. She’d twice been the NCAA Division I heptathlon champion, which was what had brought her to our attention.

To date, Jannie’s biggest accomplishments had all been on the track, but a private coach who’d taken an early interest in my daughter had long argued that her broader athletic abilities suggested she could go farthest in the heptathlon, the most demanding of women’s track-and-field events. Coach Wilson, we hoped, might be able to give Jannie an alternative to pure running in college.

“Smells good in here,” the coach said while I hung up her jacket.

“My grandmother made apple pie for you.”