Criss Cross (Alex Cross #27)(73)

“He must have the furnace turned up to ninety,” Mahoney said. “Can’t make out any heat differentiations in there.”

“Maybe why he’s got the heat cranked up,” Sampson said from the driver’s seat.

Ned’s phone rang. He answered, listened, and said, “ETA?” Then he listened again and hung up.

“Judge is reading our support material,” he said, pulling out an iPad and calling up the Google Earth view of the house. “If we get his signature, they’ll bring the warrant to us. I’m going to have HRT start to filter into position.”

The FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. The best in the business. I should have been elated that HRT was coming to rescue my son, but the father in me wanted to be the one to lead the charge, knock Abrahamsen silly, and bring Ali home safe and sound.

“What was that?” Sampson said, pointing at Abrahamsen’s house. “I saw something move on the side of the house there.”

I threw up my binoculars and saw nothing in the shadows. Then I pointed the infrared sensor at the house again.

The house was still pulsing heat, especially through the windows and around the doors, which were depicted in red. But the walls were hot too, a deep, undulating orange.

I was about to flip the sensor off when out of the orange on the side of the house, a blob appeared and became the yellow silhouette of a man.

“Unidentified man outside,” I said. “Right there. He’s—”

The silhouette straddled something, then got into a sitting position and rolled out of the sensor’s range.

“He’s on a bike!” I said. “He’s going out the back.”

“Mount Vernon Trail,” Mahoney said, then he snatched up a handheld radio and triggered the mike. “We’ve got a runner.”





CHAPTER 93





SAMPSON STARTED THE ENGINE, threw the van in gear. Part of me wanted to jump out, go straight into Abrahamsen’s house, and find Ali.

But we had no cause yet, at least no warrant with a judge’s signature. And Abrahamsen or M or whoever he was—he was getting away.

The first gray light of morning showed when Sampson took a hard right onto Waynewood Road and accelerated toward the Mount Vernon Trail and the George Washington Parkway. He pulled up where the bike trail crossed the road.

He looked north and I looked south. We saw nothing, but you could not see far.

“He can’t have gotten by us this way so fast,” Mahoney said. “He has to be heading south.”

Sampson swung hard onto the GW Parkway and accelerated. I rolled the window down and peered out into the dawn light, finding the snippets of the ribbon of the bike trail through the still-leafless trees.

“Slow down,” I said. “We could miss him in there.”

“He’s right,” Mahoney said, looking at his iPad. “Satellite shows the path veers away from the parkway and goes through a big block of woods up ahead.”

“What’s the next crossing south?” Sampson asked.

Mahoney said, “Fort Hunt Road.”

“Call in a helicopter,” I said as Sampson hit the gas again.

Mahoney picked up his radio just as his phone rang.

I was still hanging out the window, looking for anything that suggested a bicyclist back there in the woods.

Where are you, M? Where are you going? And where’s my son?

“Fort Hunt Road coming up fast,” Sampson said, hitting his blinker.

You could clearly see the bike path where it ran through open ground north of the intersection. He wasn’t there yet.

“Stop alongside the path up ahead,” I said. “We’ll wait for him.”

Sampson pulled over on Fort Hunt beyond the bike path. I looked north, saw nothing, and then west, where I spotted a bike farther down the trail and crossing the street.

“There he is!” I cried.

Sampson threw the van in gear again and sped toward the crossing where the trail cut back to the east toward the parkway and the river.

“We’ve got the warrant!” Mahoney said. “They’re faxing it to HRT.”

“What’s ahead?” I said.

Mahoney looked at his iPad, said, “Take a hard left. He’s going to come out of the woods and go under the parkway. If he gets much beyond there, we won’t be able to stop him for a good four miles.”

“That’s not happening,” Sampson said. He downshifted, skidded into the hard left turn, and then accelerated again.

“There he is!” I said again, seeing Abrahamsen biking out of the woods and heading toward the parkway and the Potomac River. “Get under the overpass and ahead of him!”

Sampson sped by Abrahamsen, who didn’t give us a second glance. His head was down and he was pedaling furiously.

Mahoney’s radio crackled. “HRT is a go.”

“Go,” Mahoney said.

We went beneath the overpass and turned hard right toward an on-ramp to the parkway. Sampson pulled over and I jumped out, crossed the street, and ran across forty yards of grass.

Abrahamsen was coming so fast I barely had time to step in his way, crouch down, and aim my pistol at him.

“Stop or I will shoot you, Captain!”





CHAPTER 94