Double Cross

first thing I did was forward the message to Anjali Patel with a request for a fast turnaround, which she said wouldn’t be a problem, despite the hour. She was working on nothing but DCAK.
    Then I called Bree and read her the note twice.
    “So, do you buy it?” she asked after I finished. “The payback thing?”
    “No, not really. You?”
    “Why should we? Everything else he’s done is a lie. And what about the way he signed it?”
    That kept coming up, the way we didn’t really know which parts of DCAK were Tyler Bell and which parts were some kind of theater.
Who was Tyler Bell? Specifically, who had he been before all this started, or at least before we got into the loop
?
    “I’d sure like to see that cabin of his,” I said, my mind latching on to the idea as I said the words out loud. “Snoop around.”
    “I was thinking the same thing, but there’s no way, is there? We’ve got this case slamming right now. But I agree with you—I’d like to look around that cabin.”
    “We could leave Friday,” I said. “Be back by Sunday.”
    Bree didn’t answer. I think she felt I might be joking at first. Then she laughed. “Are you going to tell me this is how we get a weekend away together?”

Chapter 103

    KYLE CRAIG WAS FINALLY BACK in Washington.
Was this great, or what
? He was all rested and ready to go too. Everything was on a collision course, and he couldn’t wait for the final crash to happen. Or, rather, the
crashes
.
    What would the Vegas odds have been against him when he was put away in that Colorado hellhole?
Well, he’d beaten all the odds, all the predictions; he’d been doing it his entire life.
    He had bought a used car in Maryland before he got to DC. The Buick was a surprisingly quick little whip too. Plus, it had the advantage of not sticking out in a crowd. DC’s car thieves wouldn’t particularly covet it, which was worth something.
    For a couple of hours in the early morning, four to six to be exact, he drove around the capital, played the sightseer, the tourist, remembered being an agent in this town. He went down First Street, past the Supreme Court Building, the House and Senate, the Capitol Building, even giving a salute to the
Statue of Freedom
on its dome.
Glorious city
! Still one of his favorites, though not quite up to the standards of Paris. At least, not in his opinion. He had always admired the French and their justifiable disdain for Americans, for everything about us.
    Finally Kyle drove over to Pennsylvania Avenue and went right past the Hoover Building—FBI headquarters. Here was the scene of so many of his triumphs when he was an agent, then a director in charge—chasing down dastardly murderers, with an emphasis on pattern killers. Ironically, no one had a better closure record than him, not even Alex Cross.
    And here he was again, ready to do some damage, feeling the old venom coursing through his body, ready to rip up the town again. Just like in the old days.
    He had a small Sony VAIO computer, and he could get on the Internet right from his car. A lot of interesting things had happened in the tech world while he’d been wasting away in ADX Florence. He’d missed out on it, thanks to Cross and a few others from the Bureau who had helped betray him.
    Kyle booted up the Sony.
    Then he typed,
I’m in town. Kind of emotional for me. If you don’t have a prior commitment, remember our meeting on Saturday night. I do believe we can be great together
. X
marks the spot
.
    He didn’t bother to add,
It’s you versus me now
. Kyle thought that should be obvious to DCAK.
    “We’ll have to see, though. We’ll just have to see.”

Chapter 104

    THE WORST IS YET TO COME!
Kyle remembered the catchphrase from a long time ago, from before he was captured by Alex Cross. He had just murdered a most disrespectful crime reporter from the
Washington Post
and the arrogant fucker’s wife as well. He had planned to outdo the great minds of his time—Gary Soneji; Geoffrey Shafer; Casanova, whom he had worked with as a coauthor, so to speak. Most of all, most important to him, Kyle planned to top himself—to grow, to evolve, to achieve greatness in his field, to follow his dream.
    Suddenly, he remembered something else, something very painful from the time of his arrest. Alex Cross had knocked out his two front teeth! That’s how he had
looked
when he was finally captured. In photographs that appeared in newspapers and magazines all over the world. On every