Criss Cross by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: None
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2019-11-24T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter

54

I grabbed a hooded jacket and went out on the front porch. It was in the low sixties, as beautiful a March evening as I’d ever seen, with air that smelled like flowers.

But my heart felt more than a little heavy when I sat in Nana’s porch swing.

Bree came out and sat beside me.

“We never know, do we?” she said.

“What’s that?”

“What twist or turn will be thrown our way.”

“Jannie?”

“Yes. She’s still digesting. You okay?”

“I’m fine with it.”

“You don’t look fine.”

“Sampson,” I said, and I told her all about it.

When I finished, Bree said, “He was right. And he was right to tell you.”

“I know, and I feel lousy now…but in the heat of the moment, I did what I thought was right.”

She leaned over and put her arm around my shoulders. “You took action to move toward danger. That’s more than ninety-nine percent of the population would have done.”

“It was worse than just moving in the wrong direction, Bree.”

“No, it wasn’t. Unless you intentionally dragged Sampson into a situation that could have cost him his job?”

“No.”

“There, then,” Bree said, and she hugged me tight. “Briefly lost at sea. No shipwreck. A little navigation issue. That is all.”

I smiled. “My life as a voyage?”

She laughed and kissed me on the cheek. “Something like that.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I kissed her back.

“For what?”

“Believing in me.”

“Always and forever, Alex Cross.”

I felt a whole lot better about me and Bree, but me and Sampson were still off. That conflict must have shown on my face because Bree said, “You need to see John.”

“You are a perceptive thing, aren’t you?”

“It rubbed off from someone I know.”

“I’m going to drive over and knock on his door. Make this right.”

Bree patted me on the chest and said, “If it will help you sleep.”

“It will.”

“Go on, then,” she said. “I’ll still be up.”

I got in the car, flipped on the headlights of our old Mercedes, and pulled out onto Fifth.

A headlight beam slashed across my rearview mirror. I glanced back and noticed that a small black SUV had pulled out half a block behind me.

I drove to Sampson’s home, a route I could do blindfolded, or at least without consciously thinking about it, which was good because my mind was on other things that night.

I had the screenshot of M’s last message on an old phone in my pocket, but I didn’t need to pull it out to remember it. The first three or four lines, the taunting tone, and the fish-head stuff were designed to get me anxious, to remind me that M was bizarre and unpredictable and actively plotting against me. He was trying to keep me under pressure, but I could avoid it by simply not dwelling on those parts of his message.

Those last few sentences were harder to shake.

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

M is for…

I decided he was playing a game based on dwindling time, attempting to get me to burn mental energy as I tried to anticipate his next move.

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