Page 127 of The House of Cross

The justice was soon downstairs, dressed for the chill weather. She wore her winter trail runners, a Christmas gift from Phillip, with tiny sharp studs in the soles that prevented her from slipping. She fitted her AirPods into her ears and linked them to her phone. Blevins put on music by a woman named Deva Premal that she always found calming, stuck her phone in the pocket of her reflective vest, and pulled on a wool cap, a headlamp, and thin wool gloves.

She checked her watch. Ten past five.

The house phone began to ring, which was odd. No one used it anymore.

The justice went out the door thinking that if she timed her run right, she’d be entering that beautiful birch grove at dawn.

CHAPTER 106

“DAMN IT!” MAHONEY CURSEDand pounded on the dash. “No one’s picking up!”

“We’re almost there,” I said. I was driving Mahoney’s vehicle while he tried to raise anyone at the Blevins household in northwest Potomac.

“What about her security detail?” Bree asked from the back seat.

“They’re on their way. They weren’t supposed to come on until six because of all the parties last night and because Blevins was set to work out in her basement gym,” Mahoney said, the tension rising in his voice. “I’m calling in locals until we get there.”

“We’ll be there before them,” I said, speeding up as we passed the Falls Road Golf Course heading north.

“I’m calling anyway,” Mahoney said, punching 911 into his cell.

I turned left onto Glen Road as he explained the threat to a Montgomery County dispatcher. She promised to send multiple sheriff’s patrol cars to seal off the area around Blevins’s house as we took a right onto Gregerscroft Road, an upscale suburban street just east of Wayside Elementary School.

The justice lived at the end of a cul-de-sac abutting Watts Branch Park in a large Colonial home shielded from the road by a hedge and big pines. I pulled into their long drive.

Mahoney ran to the front door and began pounding on it and ringing the doorbell. Lights began to go on upstairs and we could hear voices.

A minute later, as sirens were approaching, a bleary-eyed Phillip Blevins answered the door in a maroon Georgetown hoodie and matching pants. His teenage children were in their pajamas on the staircase behind him.

“What is this?”

“FBI, Mr. Blevins,” Mahoney said, breathless. “We believe your wife is in danger.”

The justice’s husband’s demeanor changed in an instant. “What danger? From whom?”

I said, “From the same woman who killed three potential Supreme Court nominees.”

“And Justice Mayweather just an hour ago,” Bree said. “Is your wife here?”

“Mayweather?” he said, panic in his voice now. “I think Maggie’s in the basement working out.”

“No, Dad,” one of his teenage daughters said from the stairs behind him. “I heard her go out.”

Her brother said, “She must have broken the rules again and gone out for a run.”

I said, “In the dark like this?”

Blevins’s other daughter said, “She wears a headlamp and runs the same route all the time.”

Her brother said, “Through the park and the woods, mostly, so no one sees her.”

“Show us the route,” Mahoney said to their father as Montgomery County patrol cars started up the drive, sirens wailing, lights flashing. “Now!”

CHAPTER 107

KATRINA WHITE AVOIDED LAWenforcement efforts to hem her in near the medical center by going through the woods, crossing Rock Creek Parkway, and calling an Uber to pick her up near Rose Park in Georgetown. The driver, a woman, took her up Wisconsin Avenue and dropped her at an all-night Whole Foods Market off Fortieth Street before the second and third series of checkpoints were erected in the city.

The Sparrow had walked out of the Whole Foods and immediately hailed a second Uber. It brought her out the River Road to Potomac and then northwest to a memorized address off the heavily wooded Lloyd Road.

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