Page 17 of The House of Cross

Bree remained skeptical. “I still don’t get why he wouldn’t just use the helicopter to go back up in there again. He was a pilot. Oh, it snowed in the mountains—maybe the poor visibility made him take the van?”

“Makes sense. Was there anyone up there at the time he died?”

She shook her head. “There’s a winter caretaker, but he was in Denver with a sick mother.”

“Absentee owners?”

“A Brazilian cattle company, O Casado.” She perked up. “Which is familiar, isn’t it?”

“How’s that?”

“Remember that ranch in Colorado where the Alejandro cartel slaughtered all those Maestro operators?”

In the shower, I cocked my head. “That’s right. It was owned by some Brazilian cattle company, but it wasn’t O Casado.”

“Still, we’ve got two different ranches owned by Brazilians coming up in the same web of evidence that surrounds M.”

“That’s a pretty broad web, but it does seem an odd coincidence.”

A knock came at the door, and Ali called from the other side, “Nana Mama says dinner’s almost ready, and John and Willow just got here. Wait until you see all the loot she scored in Disney World!”

CHAPTER 12

Potomac, Maryland

MARGARET BLEVINS WOKE UPa minute before her alarm was set to go off.

Ordinarily, the justice came wide awake after a good sleep, ready for her morning run or her weight routine in the basement gym. But as she reached over to turn off the alarm on her phone, she felt kind of foggy-headed. Which was odd, because she hadn’t stayed up late or had any alcohol the evening before.

Yawning, she sat up and almost immediately felt dizzy. The sensation lasted a few seconds before clearing enough for her to stand and walk to the bathroom, thinking she needed a morning off from exercise.

Blevins sighed at her sleep-mussed hair in the mirror and turned on the shower. Her head and neck began to throb dully when she climbed in.

But she didn’t feel feverish. No body aches. And she hadn’t lost her sense of smell, so it probably wasn’t COVID.

Then she got dizzy again and sat on the shelf in the shower. Phillip, her tall, older husband, came in a few minutes later, scratching his belly.

He saw her there, looking dazed. “You okay, Maggie?”

“No, actually,” she said. “I feel kind of out of it, and I can’t afford to be today.”

“Final oral arguments of the year,” Phillip said.

“Why are you up?”

“I promised to get the kids off to school so you could go in early, remember?”

Blevins closed her eyes and nodded. Why hadn’t she remembered that? They’d talked about it last night before they turned off the lights.

“You look like you could use a double espresso,” Phillip said.

She opened her eyes. “A quad, and I don’t know why. I didn’t wake up once last night.”

“You didn’t have any wine either.”

“Exactly,” she said.

After dressing, applying her makeup, and checking the itinerary her senior law clerk had emailed late last night, Blevins felt a little better. She hurried downstairs to the kitchen and made herself a double–double espresso. After drinking a few sips, she noticed the fog beginning to lift.

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