Page 62 of The House of Cross

We explained that the circumstances of Malcomb’s death were suspicious and we were open about Bree and Sampson looking into it.

Mahoney said, “Alive or dead, with or without Malcomb, Maestro has to be our total focus now.”

Hamilton said, “I have a hard time believing that the NSA can’t track this group down.”

I said, “That’s the problem. To do that kind of massive data search, the NSA uses a contractor—Paladin, Malcomb’s company.”

Mahoney nodded. “If we request the search, we tip our hand.”

“That has to change.”

“Using Paladin. Yes, ma’am. I agree.”

“There’s no one else, no other company, that can do this kind of thing?”

“Not like Paladin,” I said. “They have proprietary algorithms.”

She thought again. “Okay, Mahoney. Where next?”

“First thing, we’re going to double the protection on everyone on that advisory board’s list,” Ned said. “And then we’re going to talk to the only person on the list linked to Ryan Malcomb.”

“Who’s that?”

“Theresa May Alcott, the soap-company billionaire.”

Hamilton visibly lost color. “Theresa May Alcott? I know her. From Cleveland. You can’t possibly think she’d be involved in this brutal vigilantism. She’s a huge philanthropist and a big donor to Winter.”

Mahoney said, “We know that, and I did not say she was involved in the murders. I just said she’s the only person on that advisory board we can link to the guy we suspect ran Maestro, Ryan Malcomb. Her nephew.”

“Who is dead.”

“Correct.”

Hamilton fell silent, then said, “You’ve put me in a difficult situation, gentlemen.”

“How so, ma’am?” I asked.

“I am the acting FBI director. I would like to be the actual FBI director for the next ten years, and you’re asking me to focus an investigation on one of the biggest supporters of the president-elect. A woman I have dealt with extensively on various civic boards over the years.”

Mahoney said, “Yes, ma’am. At the very least, we want to talk with her as soon as possible.”

“Well, I think she’d be in Jackson Hole this time of year. She loves to ski.”

“Permission to use the jet again to go there?”

She smiled sadly. “Permission denied, Mahoney. I’m about to use it to fly to Houston. You’ll have to go commercial.”

CHAPTER 45

BREE AND SAMPSON LEFTCherise Malcomb with her go-cup and Fifi and headed north at her suggestion. Cherise said she was no friend to her, but she knew her late husband’s ex-girlfriend, Lucille Wallace, now Lucille Danvers. She and her husband ran a country store about twenty miles north on U.S. 93.

Cherise also said she knew about the twins being given up for adoption when Billy and Lucille were teenagers and that there had been under-the-table money involved. But she claimed that had all happened long before she met Billy Malcomb, when that money was barely a memory.

Cell service was horrible in the narrow canyon, and the snow was dumping at two inches an hour as dusk fell and they approached tiny North Fork, Idaho, where the two main channels of the Salmon River met and took a hard turn north. TheDanvers Country Store was at the south end of town, a log-faced two-story building with a neon Rainier Beer sign in the window.

They parked and hurried through the snow to the porch. They kicked the snow off their boots and went inside.

A woodstove blazed in the corner to the right. To the left, a woman in her sixties wearing a blue fleece pullover sat at the counter behind the cash register, alternately staring at her phone and scribbling something on a pad of paper.

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