Page 50 of The House of Cross

He was quiet for much of the rest of the flight. Bree tried to work on the corporate-fraud case but fell asleep. When she woke up, he was busy writing in a notebook. He finished up and put the notebook away.

“Took your advice,” he said.

“How’s that?”

“You know, being creative with Rebecca. I wrote her a little love letter. I’ll get an envelope and a stamp and mail it in the morning.”

“Good for you,” Bree said and giggled. “A love letter? From John Sampson? My, how times have changed.”

He laughed. “Happens to the best of us. Especially when we get good advice.”

It was snowing in Denver when they landed. Their flight to Reno was delayed by five hours.

She finally got Alex on the phone around eleven o’clock his time. “You picked up!” she said.

“Crazy day,” Alex said, shouting to be heard over the sound of a jet engine. “I’m sorry. We just landed in Athens, Georgia.”

“Athens?”

He told her about the recently murdered Professor Nathan Carver being on a list of possible Supreme Court nominees along with Judge Franklin and Judge Pak.

“Guess who’s a part of the panel that came up with the list?” he said.

“You got me.”

“Theresa May Alcott.”

Bree shook her head. “Really? Is that a coincidence?”

“Ned seems to think so,” Alex said. “He said it would be stranger if someone with that kind of financial and political cloutweren’ton the panel.”

“I’m not buying that.”

“Neither am I. It feels off. Like we’re working two sides of the same story.”

“No proof of that yet, even if Alcott’s on that panel,” Bree said. “Have they alerted the other people on the list that they might be in danger?”

“Mahoney made it his first priority,” Alex said, his cell phone crackling. “Before we caught our flight south, he assigned agents to protect everyone on the list and investigators to look at everyone who had access to it.”

Sampson was gesturing to her. “We’re finally boarding for Reno,” she said.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

“In the evening,” she said. “Love you.”

“Love you too. Tell John good hunting.”

CHAPTER 36

BREE AND SAMPSON WEREup before sunrise and left Reno, Sampson driving, heading east on I-80 in a white Jeep Cherokee they’d rented at the airport. Several hours later, they switched, and Sampson drank gas-station coffee while Bree drove into a glary winter sun.

“I should have bought a protein bar or something back there,” she said.

“I have one, I think,” Sampson said, reaching into his pack. He rummaged around in it. “What’s this doing here?”

Bree glanced at something in his hand. “What?”

“Willow’s little Jiobit, the GPS beacon I used to keep track of her in Disney World.”

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