Double Cross

eyes always ready for the next little adventure in his life.
    “Not this time, pup. I’ll be back soon.”
    “You always say that.”
    “I do. And I always come back.”
Eventually I do, anyway
.
    I drove over to the school, the same one Damon and Jannie had gone to, and Ali would be attending before I knew it.
    Day and Sampson were playing one-on-one, pounding the school’s cracked pavement court. Damon still had on the khakis and nice blue dress shirt he’d probably worn for the meeting with the prep-school coach. A red-and-black necktie hung out of his back pocket. He scored easily on Sampson as I approached the court.
    I laced my fingers into the chain-link fence. “Pretty nice move,” I said. “Of course, you only had to beat an old man to get to the hoop.”
    Damon played it cool—cold, really—and didn’t even look my way.
    Sampson bent and leaned on his knees, sweat dripping off his face, and not just because it was eighty degrees out. Damon was good, getting better too. Bigger and better, and a whole lot quicker than he ever was before. It struck me that I hadn’t seen him play ball in a long time.
    “I’m up next,” I called to Sampson.
    He held up an index finger that clearly said,
I’m out
.
    “That’s okay. Game’s over,” Damon said. He came out through the gate near my car, and I caught his arm. I needed him to look at me, which he did. Daggers. Sharp ones that cut deep.
    “Damon, I’m sorry about what happened today. Couldn’t be helped.”
    “If you guys are all good, I’m going to take off,” Sampson said.
    He clapped Damon on the back as he went. The Big Man knows when to hang in and when to head out.
    “Let’s sit.” I motioned to the stone school steps. Damon reluctantly sat down with me. I could tell he was pissed, but maybe he was confused too. We almost never got this angry, let it get this bad. Damon was a good kid—a great kid, actually—and I was proud of him most of the time.
    “You want to start?” I asked.
    “Okay. Where the hell were you?”
    “Uh-uh,” I said. I knocked the ball out of his hand and stilled it against the step. “You don’t talk to me like that, no matter what, Day. We’re going to have a conversation, but it’s going to be respectful.”
    I put on a tough face; Day would never know how much what he’d said had hurt me. Probably, he’d needed to get even. I understood. But still.
    “Sorry,” he mumbled, and made it sound half sincere.
    “Damon, I was literally all over the map with this case. Last night and this morning. I haven’t slept at all—and someone else died out there. That’s not for you to worry about, but it’s what happened. People are dying around Washington, and it’s my job to try to stop it. I’m sorry, but I guess that’s a problem for both of us to deal with.”
    “This was important to me. Just like your work’s important to you,” Damon said.
    “I know that. And I’m going to do whatever it takes to make this up to you. If we have to drive up for a meeting at Cushing, then that’s what we’ll do. Okay?”
    There was so much I wanted him to know, starting with the fact that nothing was more important to me than his happiness, despite how it might seem to him sometimes. But I put a lid on it. Kept things simple. Damon stared at the ground, palming the ball.
    Finally he looked up. “Okay. That’d be good.”
    We stood up together and walked back to the car. As he was getting in, I said the last thing I had to say. “Damon? About running off the way you did, not checking in despite our house rule, worrying your grandmother . . .”
    “Yeah, I’m sorry about that.”
    “Well, me too. ’Cause you’re grounded.”
    “I know it,” said Damon, and he got into the car with me.
    Before we got back home, I said, “Forget about being grounded. Just tell your grandmother you’re sorry.”

Chapter 75

    HERE WAS A
CLUE
that the cops really needed to have, a little bit of homespun reality that they would never find out about.
And if they did, what the hell, he would already be dead, wouldn’t he
?
    DCAK used a pay phone way out in Virginia to make the same call he made just about every Sunday. Now that he was a full-fledged, successful outlaw, there was no sense taking needless risks with his cell phone, especially not to this particular number, which some smart, or lucky, cop might eventually track down, though that was doubtful.
Was there such a thing as a smart cop
?
    He heard a familiar