Page 19 of The House of Cross

I took another sip of coffee and raised my cup. “What coffee is this? It’s amazing.”

John Sampson walked into the kitchen. Before Bree could answer my question, he said, “I’ll bet it’s Blue Mountain coffee. I got it from a friend who just came back from Jamaica and I gave some to Nana last night.”

“Phenomenal taste,” I said. “So smooth.”

“The way life should be,” Sampson said, and looked at Bree. “Already at it on Malcomb?”

She nodded but did not look up.

“Anything?”

“A little.”

“Show me.”

John, my oldest friend, had become obsessed with identifying M even earlier than Bree because the alleged head of Maestro had taunted him in the wake of his wife’s sudden and tragic death, saying that Billie hadn’t died of complications of Lyme disease, as John had been told, that she had been murdered.

Sampson was forced to exhume Billie’s body to be sure. It was one of the crueler things M had done and he’d made Sampson a hardened enemy even before his men tried to hunt us down in Montana.

The evening before, as we were eating Nana Mama’s braised short ribs, we’d heard all about Sampson and Willow’s trip to Disney World, which included a “chance meeting” with a woman named Rebecca Cantrell.

“She’s nice,” Willow said. “I like her. A lot.”

We all grinned because John and Rebecca, who was the U.S. attorney for Northern Virginia, had been seeing each other quietly. The Disney trip had been set up so Willow could meet and get comfortable with Rebecca before she was told about the relationship. Willow had been very close to her mother, and they thought neutral ground would be a better place for Sampson’s daughter to get to know her father’s new love interest without the wordsgirlfriendandboyfriendbeing thrown around.

After dinner Willow went into the other room with Ali and Jannie, and Bree told John about the death of Ryan Malcomb. Shocked, he pumped her for details and agreed there was something off about the entire thing.

“Why would he drive a handicap van with no snow tires up a canyon like that?”

“Exactly one of my points,” Bree said. “Here, look at this.”

She turned her laptop toward him and showed him the Google Earth image of the area: a large block of alpine terrain with snow high on the peaks. “This is the Double T Ranch, the one Malcomb was interested in buying.”

“Lot of trees, lot of grassy areas,” I said. “Beautiful terrain.”

“What’s the name of the Brazilian company that owns it again?” Sampson asked.

“O Casado Cattle Company,” Bree said, “based in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.”

“Google that,” I said.

She searched for the company but got only results regarding the ranch in Nevada. Sampson suggested translating the wordscattle companyinto Portuguese and searching for that.

O Casado popped up with a Belo Horizonte street address and little else.

“No website?” I said.

“Not according to Google,” Bree said.

My cell phone buzzed with a text from Ned Mahoney:I’m picking you up in five. Big break in the Judge Franklin case!

“Gotta go,” I told Bree and Sampson.

I took my coat from the front closet as my wife called to me, “What’s the name of the Brazilian company that owned the Circle M Ranch in Colorado?”

“Haven’t looked yet!” I bellowed back, taking my service weapon from the lockbox.

“It’s okay, Alex,” Sampson called. “I know it.”

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