Cross Fire

place called Cross Country Liquors. Of course. Why hadn’t I come back to that fact until now?
    It all added up — another ton of bricks dropped onto my shoulders. Kyle was circling me and closing in as he did it, wreaking as much havoc as possible in the process. This wasn’t just blind savagery either. It was much more specific than that and, unless I was mistaken, much more personal.
    It was all part of my punishment for catching him the first time.

Chapter 70

    IN ONE PHONE CALL, I re-upped with Rakeem Powell for additional twenty-four-hour security coverage at the house. I’d take out a loan if I had to; cost was not my concern right now. I couldn’t be sure what Kyle’s endgame was, but I wasn’t going to wait for him to come at me again.
    I spent most of the day at the Hoover Building. With Anjali’s sudden death, it was like a wake over there, except in the SIOC, which was buzzing like an air traffic control tower.
    The Bureau director himself, Ron Burns, made his designated operations room available to us, and the manhunt for Kyle Craig was back on full steam. This wasn’t personal for just me. Craig was already the biggest inside scandal in the Bureau’s hundred-year history. And now he’d killed another agent, maybe to get back at the FBI, too.
    Every seat in the operation center’s double horseshoe of desks was filled. The five main screens at the head of the room showed alternating pictures and old video of Kyle, plus national and world maps with electronic markers for his known victims and associations, and past movements.
    We were on the line all day with Denver, New York, Chicago, Paris — everywhere Kyle had been known to live since his escape from ADX Florence. And every field office in the country was put on high alert.
    Even so, with all this flurry of activity, we had to accept the fact that nobody had any idea where Kyle was.
    “I don’t know what to tell you, Alex,” Burns said, pacing. We’d just hung up after a marathon conference call. “We’ve got nothing useful here, no physical proof that Kyle killed Tambour or Patel, or even that he’s been in Washington. And nothing on that Beretta you pulled out of evidence either, by the way.”
    The Beretta he was referring to was the one Bronson James had used in the armed-robbery attempt. My original idea had been that Pop-Pop had gotten it from a gang member off the street, but Kyle Craig could have just as easily put that gun in his hand. I knew that Kyle favored Berettas, and he knew that I knew.
    “
I’m
the proof,” I said. “He’s called me on the phone. He’s made threats. The man is obsessed with me, Ron. In his mind, I’m the only one who’s ever beaten him, and Kyle Craig is nothing if not highly competitive.”
    “What about these disciples of his? Just for the sake of argument.” Burns was talking to me but also to a dozen other agents who took notes and banged away on laptops as he spoke. “The man’s got followers, some of them apparently ready to die on his command. It’s happened before. How do we know he didn’t commission one of them for these hits?”
    “Because the hits were directed at me,” I said slowly. “This is the part Kyle would want to do himself.”
    “Even so” — Burns stopped pacing and sat down — “we’re getting off point here. Whether Craig made these kills or he didn’t, our hand is pretty much the same. We keep scouring the crime scenes. We make sure that our radar’s up and that our people are as ready as they can be the next time he strikes.”
    “That’s not good enough. Goddamnit!” I said, and swiped my notes off the desk, taking with them a few other people’s papers, too. Right away, I regretted it. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Sorry.”
    Burns bent to where I was picking up the papers and put out a hand. He pulled me to my feet. “Take a breather. Go get some dinner. There’s nothing else to do right now.”
    Like it or not, he was right. I was exhausted and a little embarrassed, and I definitely needed to go home for a while. Once I’d gathered up my stuff, I headed out.
    Waiting at the elevator, I felt my phone vibrate for the umpteenth time that day. It had been a steady stream of calls from MPD, Sampson, Bree, Nana —
    But this time, when I looked at the ID, it just said, “A. Friend.”
    “Alex Cross,” I answered, and I was already heading back to the operations center.
    “Hello, Alex,” Kyle Craig said. “Really in the thick of things