The credenza behind Alcott’s desk was crowded with photographs of large family gatherings, many taken with the Grand Tetons towering behind them. In each, you could see the family growing, evolving, the older generation gradually disappearing and the new gaining ground.

  The most recent of those pictures showed the family and Alcott without her husband for the first time. Bree thought the widow looked stoic.

  She turned and glanced at the messy desktop. One of the buttons on the multiline phone was still lit.

  Caller ID was on as well, slowly streaming across the screen:

  Paladin…Paladin…Paladin…

  Chapter

  67

  Washington, DC

  “Paladin,” a woman answered before the phone could ring a second time. “How may I direct your call?”

  “Ryan Malcomb, please,” I said. “Tell him Dr. Alex Cross needs a favor.”

  “I will, Dr. Cross. How are you?”

  I flashed on the woman who worked at the company’s front desk. “Riggs?”

  “In the flesh,” Riggs said, sounding pleased. “Hold on, Doc.”

  The line fell into a soft buzz. Several moments later, Riggs came back. “Dr. Cross, I’m afraid Mr. Malcomb’s in the middle of a call he can’t break. Can Steve Vance help you?”

  “That works,” I said.

  There was a click and Vance came on. “Dr. Cross? How are you?”

  “Fine,” I said. “How was the Italy trip?”

  “Too short. And I’m still a bit jet-lagged.”

  “I’m calling about something Ryan found in that first big data dump we gave him.”

  “Okay.”

  I described how Malcomb and his analysts had determined that cellular and data service had stopped for a brief period in the areas around each of the Family Man’s crime scenes.

  “We’ve had another incident and I’d like to see if there was a similar blackout around the Potomac address, which I can e-mail or text you.”

  “Text works. And since we’ve already received authorization for the Family Man case from the FBI director’s office, I’m sure we can get right on it. Anything else?”

  “Same thing around a Georgetown address. Seems like cell and data services were shut down in that area around the same time as the Potomac address.” I also asked Paladin to see if there were similar black holes around Tull’s rental home at the times of the other Family Man killings.

  “Since we’ve already got the data loaded for those cases, this should go quickly,” Vance said. “We’ll get back to you ASAP.”

  “I appreciate it, Steve.”

  “Anything for law enforcement. And again, sorry I missed you last week.”

  “Next time.”

  “I look forward to it, sir,” Vance said, and the line went dead.

  I pocketed the phone and donned latex gloves, blue booties, and a hairnet before returning to the Kane crime scene. Bodies were being removed in black bags. Dozens of cameras were recording it. Reporters were yelling questions at me, all of which I ignored.

  The fact of the matter was that we had no real suspect other than Tull. And I certainly was not going to mention his name to the media. Not without serious corroborating evidence, which, at the moment, we did not have.

  Inside the house, the black bags containing the children were brought down the stairs amid a hushed silence. Anger appeared in the faces of every agent, detective, and forensics expert on hand, including me.

  Who shoots children like that? Executes them? With no emotion? And why? Goddamn it, why?

  I couldn’t answer any of those questions and that made me even more frustrated.

  “I feel like there’s something we’re missing,” I told Sampson and Mahoney after the bodies of the Kane children had been taken outside. Before they could respond, Lara Mendelson, the FBI crime scene supervisor, came down the stairs. She held a small plastic evidence bag.

  “We found these light brown hairs in the nap of the carpet on the landing,” she said. “The Kanes all had black hair.”

  Sampson said, “Could belong to a friend? Their maid? Mrs. Kane’s mother?”

  “She has gray hair,” Mahoney said. He returned his attention to the crime scene tech. “Thanks, Lara, let’s get these out to Quantico for DNA analysis ASAP.”

  Mendelson nodded and went outside.

  “What’s the chance he’s finally made a mistake?” I said, watching her go.

  “Been sterile up to now,” Sampson said. “But there’s bound to be something at some point that will go in our favor.”

  Mahoney said, “Who knows? Maybe he had an itchy scalp and pulled back his hood to scratch it before he coldly executed a young family of four.”

  “Stranger things have put people behind bars,” I said.

  Chapter

  68

  Hunting Valley, Ohio

  Bree returned to her seat in Theresa May Alcott’s office when the light on the phone went out and the caller ID streaming on the screen ended.

  Paladin. Is that someone’s name? Or is it that data-mining company Alex has working on the Family Man cases?

  The door opened and Alcott rushed in. “I’m sorry, Chief Stone, but I am informed that I have much to attend to in the next couple of hours. Have I answered all your questions? Do you understand why I wanted to keep Olivia’s name out of it if I could?”

  Bree wanted to ask a few more questions but she got to her feet and tried to be gracious. “Of course I understand. If there are other examples that can be used, why sully Olivia’s reputation unnecessarily?”

  The billionaire beamed with gratitude. “Bless you and thank you, Chief Stone. Where did you park your car?”

  “Uh, on the road behind your house.”

  “On the lane beyond the back hedge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, dear. I hope it’s there when you return. The local constable is quite zealous about towing away cars that are parked there.”

  “I’ll be going, then.”

  Alcott stood aside.

  Bree smiled and walked back down the short hall and through the kitchen, where Marie was listening to music and rinsing dishes. Before exiting, she glanced over her shoulder, saw Alcott standing at her office window, and waved. The billionaire smiled impatiently and returned the gesture.

  It had started to drizzle. Bree hurried down the hill and past the garden, noticing Arthur standing in the door to the greenhouse, watching her go. Crossing the lawn toward the hedge, she fought the urge to look back and study the windows of the house to see if Theresa May Alcott was still watching her. But then it began to rain in earnest, and she ran to the hedge and found a way through onto the road. To her relief, her rental car was still there on the opposite shoulder, undisturbed.

  After getting inside, starting the car, and cranking up the heat, Bree got out her phone, checked the forty-two-minute-long recording, and found much of it audible thanks to the little microphone necklace. Then she checked the time of the next flight to DC. Three hours.

  After confirming a seat, she got out a notebook and started scribbling down her impressions, details she wanted to remember about her visit to the Alcott estate, certain things the billionaire had said to her, and questions she wanted answered. She would check it all against the recording later.

  TMA is smooth, Bree wrote. Polished. Pleasant, but hard to read. How old is she?

  Why did it feel a little creepy when I left? Like I was being watched?

  Who is Arthur?

  If the Paladin on her phone is the company Alex is dealing with, what is TMA’s connection? Seems so random. Is it important?

  Who was she talking to at the company? Who is Emma? Or do I have it wrong? Was she talking to Emma Paladin?

  Sitting there as the rain beat down on the car roof, Bree did a series of internet searches on her phone based on the notes and questions she’d just written down. Within fifteen minutes, she found articles and filings that changed her view of Theresa May Alcott and her decision to hire Bree to investigate Frances Duchaine.

  She put the rental car in gear and headed toward the Cleveland Airport, thinking, Paladin may matter in this. But who is Emma?

  Chapter

  69

  Potomac, Maryland

  We spent seven hours in total at the Kane family crime scene, watching as FBI forensic techs swarmed through the house, finding the four deadly slugs embedded in the floors and identifying where and how the killer had hacked the security system using override wires that were still in place.

  We also helped canvass the neighborhood, which did us little good. The Kanes’ house sat on seven wooded acres. So did the other nine houses in the area.

  It was the kind of neighborhood where people valued isolation. Several of the neighbors had not yet met the Kanes, who’d moved in two years before.

  Mahoney went to the Kanes’ business to interview employees. Sampson and I took another course, trying to make some connection between the Kanes and the four other families executed in cold blood since the attacks began.

  Using John’s computer in the squad room at DC Metro PD, we tried common-word searches among the files, including schools attended, employment records, current and prior residences, ethnicities, religions, socioeconomic standards, even extended family trees. Then we mapped the killings, looking for overlapping travel routes the killer might have taken to and from the attacks.

  But other than proximity to the Beltway—the band of freeways that loop the nation’s capital—the attack sites appeared unrelated. Try as we might, we could not find the pattern, the motive, or the logic behind the killings. If there was a commonality among the victims, we weren’t seeing it, and neither were our computers.

  “Maybe that’s the point,” I said around six that evening.

  “What is?”

  “The randomness of the targets, the cold-bloodedness of the executions, the meticulousness of the killer,” I said.

  “Designed to throw us,” Sampson said. “So we’ll focus on his behavior instead?”

  “That’s right, though I’m too burned out at the moment to see how, and I have to get to National. Bree texted that she’s coming in at seven.”

  “Then I’m on my way home too,” Sampson said. “Willow and I are getting fried clams and French fries for dinner.”

  “Still running in the morning?”

  “Every day.” Sampson laughed and rubbed his lean belly. He headed outside to grab an Uber. I went to the garage and got the Jeep.

  My cell phone rang as I exited the parking garage. I hit Answer on the Cherokee’s navigation screen, turned into traffic, and said, “This is Alex Cross.”

  “Dr. Cross, it’s Ryan Malcomb. How are you?”

  “Stuck in traffic. You?”

  “In possession of interesting ore, fresh from the mines.”

  “Already?”

  “Frankly, you were lucky, Dr. Cross. As Steve may have told you, we had that first data loaded already. Your new request was merely a matter of changing filters.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “Your instincts were correct. There was a cellular and data blackout around Thomas Tull’s Georgetown address at roughly the same time another occurred in the Kanes’ neighborhood.”

  “What about during the other family killings? Was Tull’s place blacked out then?”

  “No.”

  “No?” I said, disappointed because I was sure this blackout stuff was big, though I could not put my finger on why.

  “Negative, correct,” Malcomb said.

  Traffic started to move, and I was soon crossing the Fourteenth Street Bridge toward Virginia and the airport. “How about his phone’s GPS or his car’s? Did you find data that put him in the vicinity of any of the killings?”

  He sighed. “Afraid not. At the time of the first two attacks, he was in New York. The third time he was in Maine. The last two he was in DC, but his phone and car were nowhere near the victims at the time of their murders.”

  “Huh,” I said. “What about a car we don’t know about and a burner phone?”

  “That’s a different story,” Malcomb said. “But we search for what we can’t identify, if that makes any sense.”

  “It would help you to know more about the car or the burner going in.”

  “Exactly. Uh, sorry, Dr. Cross, but I have another call coming in. My…girlfriend.”

  “I make it a rule not to get between a man and his girlfriend. Thank you, Ryan, and have a nice evening.”

  Malcomb was chuckling. “You as well, and your wife and the entire family.”

  During the twelve minutes it took to reach the exit for Reagan National Airport, I kept thinking about the digital blackouts that had been engineered around every crime scene and, once, around Tull’s house.

  But why wasn’t Tull blacked out every time? I had no answer, so I flipped the question. Why was Tull’s place blacked out just this one time?

  Immediately, I thought: Because Tull sensed we were surveilling him. Then he covered himself in a cloak of cellular and data invisibility so we wouldn’t know he’d left his home in the middle of the night.

  Maybe. But that didn’t feel entirely right either.

  Rain started to fall as I drove to passenger pickup and spotted Bree waving. She climbed in. We kissed and I pulled out.

  “Productive trip?” I asked.

  “Uh, yes,” she said. “Absolutely.”

  When I glanced over at her, I could see her features were tight and she was studying the dash like it held mystic secrets.

  “Why do I sense a but coming?”

  Bree looked over. “I know things that I didn’t this morning, but I haven’t got them all straight in my mind yet. How they fit, I mean.”

  “I’m feeling kind of the same way,” I said. “I’m sensing things in the Family Man case, but I’ve got nothing solid to back them up yet.”

  “Yet. That’s the word we have to hold on to. Yet.”

  I got us heading toward DC. “Did you talk to the attorney and the rich woman who hired you and Bluestone?”

  “Both of them,” Bree said. “But first, tell me about that data-mining company you’ve been working with.”

  “Paladin?”

  She nodded. “Theresa May Alcott and her husband were some of the original investors in that company. They did it quietly, but I found the SEC filings online.”

  “She must know Ryan Malcomb, then. He’s one of the founders. The brain behind the algorithms. An interesting, creative guy.”

  “Alcott is Malcomb’s maternal aunt. She adopted him and his twin brother, Sean, after their mother—Alcott’s sister—and father were murdered in a home invasion. The boys were nine. The killers were never caught.”

  “Jesus. I didn’t know that. He’s had a tough life, then. Did I tell you he was stricken with muscular dystrophy as a teenager?”

  “No,” Bree said. “But it makes sense. In her office, there are pictures of her and her husband with Jerry Lewis.”

  Chapter

  70

  We pulled up in front of our house, still talking about the coincidence of Ryan Malcomb, the founder of Paladin, being Theresa May Alcott’s nephew.

  “What are you thinking?” I asked, climbing out.

  “God, I don’t know,” Bree said, following me. “I just think it’s odd that our two cases intersect with the presence of Paladin.”

  “It is odd,” I said as we climbed the stairs to the porch. “I’ll bring it up the next time I talk to Malcomb.”

  Our house was filled with wonderful aromas, all wafting from the kitchen. Ali and Jannie were watching a basketball game in the front room.

  “Hey, guys,” I said.

  Ali twisted in his seat. “It’s Atlanta versus Houston in the semifinals.”

  “Good game?”

  Jannie nodded, taking her eyes off the screen. “Tied starting the second half.”

  “That’s fun.”

  Bree said, “I’m starving.”

  “I am too,” I said.

  Jannie moaned. “It’s so good. I don’t know where Nana comes up with these dishes, but it’s one of her best lately.”

  Ali said, “Chicken slow-cooked with onions, sweet potatoes, green olives, and some sauce she just invented!”

  “On my way,” Bree said and hustled toward the kitchen with me in tow.

  My grandmother was in the great room beyond the kitchen, reading a book with oversize print.

  “We’ve heard dinner is another original masterpiece, Nana Mama,” I said, going straight to the lidded yellow ceramic casserole dish.

  “Not all original,” she said, putting her book down and struggling to get up. “I modified something I saw in one of my magazines the other day. There’s rice in there too. And more hot sauce in the fridge if you want it.”

  Nana held her hip and limped toward us, looking frailer and more tired than I’d seen her in a long time.

  Bree picked up on it as well. “Are you feeling okay, Nana?”

  My grandmother said, “Just getting old. My sciatica’s acting up.”

  “Well, sit down,” I said. “We can get the food for ourselves.”

  “Sitting down is half the problem, my doctor says,” Nana replied with a laugh and a flip of her hand. “I’ll just go have Jannie help me stretch again while you eat.”

  The way she was moving had me concerned enough that I made sure she did go out and have Jannie help her with her stretches before I started eating.

  The dish was a masterpiece. The chicken practically fell off the bone. The green olives had become part of the sauce, which tasted a little sweet at first before the hint of fire crossed the lips and lit up the tongue.

  Nana Mama came back into the kitchen after her stretches, moving much better. Bree moaned. “How did you get that sweet and hot taste in the sauce? It was so good!”

  “Blackstrap molasses and cayenne pepper,” Nana said, pleased. “Glad you liked it. Now that my back’s feeling a bit better, I’m going up to my room to read a little more before I turn in. Can I leave the dishes for you?”