Page 79 of The House of Cross

I won’t be helpless,she thought and yawned.I will act with purpose. I will take care of the only thing I can take care of: me.

With that, Bree forced herself to turn off the light. She groped her way to the bunk, pulled back the blanket, kicked off the slippers, and climbed in, telling herself that she had to sleep if she wanted to think clearly.

But her brain refused to slow down, refused to stop asking the same questions over and over:Where’s Alex? Does he even know we’re missing?

CHAPTER 58

MAHONEY AND I DRAGGEDourselves into a Best Western after a long, hard, frustrating day.

Ned threw his stuff on the bed, turned on the television, and flipped through the stations to CNN. We’d picked up sandwiches, potato chips, and beer on the way here, and I cracked a beer and ate a chicken breast on rye that wasn’t half bad, given that we’d bought it at a gas station called the Town Pump.

The cable news was mostly focused on the upcoming inauguration of President-Elect Sue Winter and her nominees for secretary of the treasury and secretary of commerce. None of it interested me in the slightest.

Bree and John had been missing for more than two days. And Ned and I believed that they might have been taken by Maestrobecause they’d learned that Ryan Malcomb’s twin had gone missing in the wilderness.

I’d read up on that case during the car ride in from Salmon. In almost all the stories about his disappearance, Ian Duncanson was described as a single, reclusive code writer and investor in his late forties who lived on fifty acres north of Boise.

He’d disappeared during a solo elk-hunting trip in early November in a vast roadless area between Boise and Sun Valley. The only picture they had of Duncanson was nearly ten years old, but if you took away the shaggy hair and the beard, he was a dead ringer for Ryan Malcomb.

CNN had been running a piece on the president-elect’s likely attire on Inauguration Day but now it cut back to the anchor.

“We’re sorry to interrupt that fascinating segment, but we have breaking news,” the anchor said. “CNN’s legal correspondent Imogene Lawrence has learned that fifty-two-year-old U.S. Supreme Court justice Margaret Blevins collapsed in her chambers around eight o’clock this evening and was rushed to the hospital. Imogene, what can you tell us?”

The screen jumped to the reporter on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Lawrence said, “Justice Blevins evidently lost consciousness in her offices where she was working with her clerks on a dissenting opinion to an upcoming ruling. She was treated on scene and rushed by ambulance to George Washington University Hospital. We have no official word on a cause, but aides close to Blevins said she appeared to have suffered some kind of seizure.

“News of Justice Blevins’s condition comes on the heels of public confirmation earlier today that her fellow justice AlbertMayweather has had a recurrence of his cancer,” the reporter went on. “Though it is too early to tell definitively—and we at CNN wish both justices a full and speedy recovery—President-Elect Winter may be in a position to alter the balance of power in the high court very early in her administration.”

Mahoney’s phone rang. He looked at the ID and lost color, then picked up and put the call on speaker. “Director Hamilton, I’m here with Dr. Cross. How are you?”

“Great,” she said. “Have you heard about Blevins and Mayweather?”

“Just saw it on CNN.”

“I want you to end your wild-goose chase out west and get back to Washington first thing tomorrow,” she said.

“Ma’am, with all due respect—”

“This is a direct order, Mahoney. The incoming attorney general wants you to brief him face to face and ASAP. I will be there as well. If Winter has to nominate a new justice, she has to know all about this Maestro group trying to influence the pick.”

He sighed. “I’ll try to book a flight right now.”

“Notify me when you have your itinerary.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He ended the call as my phone rang. It was Keith Karl Rawlins, the FBI cybercrimes consultant.

“KK,” I said. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“Bree’s cell lit up about an hour ago,” he said. “It was on for maybe four seconds. I got a rough location, but you’re not going to like it. I’m sending you the GPS coordinates now.”

I pumped my fist. “Thanks, KK. I owe you.”

Mahoney was on his laptop, trying to get a flight to DC through Salt Lake City, when I hung up and said, “Rawlins found Bree!”

“Where?”

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