Roses Are Red

of spices and condiments.
    I opened a second door:
back stairs leading to the second floor.
    A third door:
stairs leading down to the cellar.
    The cellar had to be checked out. I flicked on the light switch. No light came on.
Damnit.
    “Police,” I called out. No answer.
    I took a deep breath. I didn’t see any immediate danger to myself, but I feared what I might find down there. I hesitated a second or two, then I stepped on creaking wooden stairs. I hate cellars, always have.
    “Police,” I repeated. Still no answer from down there. Checking out dark places in a house isn’t fun. Not even when you have a gun and know how to use it pretty well. I flicked on my Maglite flashlight.
Okay, here we go.
    My heart was beating wildly as I hurried down the flight of stairs. My gun was at the ready. I lowered my head and took a good look around. Jesus!
    I saw them as soon as I cleared the wooden overhang. I felt the adrenaline spike.
    “I’m Detective Cross. I’m the police!”
    The wife and the baby girl were there. The mother was bound and gagged with black tape over different-colored cloths. Her eyes were wide and as bright as searchlights. The baby had black tape over her mouth. The infant’s chest was heaving with silent sobs.
    They were alive, though. No one had been hurt either here or at the bank.
    Why was that?
    The pattern had changed!
    “What’s going on down there? You all right, Alex?” I heard Kyle Craig call. I flashed the light up and saw Kyle and Agent Cavalierre standing at the top of the stairs.
    “They’re here. They’re safe. Everyone’s alive.”
    What in hell was going on?

Chapter 28
    THE MASTERMIND
— what a quaint, totally absurd name. It was almost perverse. He liked it for just that reason.
    He actually watched the scene at the bank manager’s house, and he felt as if he were standing outside of his own body. He remembered an old TV show from his youth:
You Are There.
He was, wasn’t he?
    He found it quite thrilling to see the FBI technicians enter the house with their magic black boxes. He knew all about them, the VCU, or Violent Crime Unit.
    He closely observed the somber, serious-faced agents come and go.
    Then the Rosslyn police arrived en masse. Half a dozen squad cars with their turret lights blazing. Sort of pretty.
    Finally, he saw Detective Alex Cross leave the house. Cross was tall and well built. He was in his early forties, resembled the fighter Muhammad Ali at his best. Cross’s face wasn’t flat, though. His brown eyes sparkled constantly. He was better looking, actually, than Ali had ever been.
    Cross was one of his prime opponents, and this was a fight to the death, wasn’t it? It was an intensive battle of wits, but even more than that, a battle of wills.
    The Mastermind was confident that he would win against Cross. If anything, this was a mismatch. The Mastermind always won, didn’t he? And yet, he felt a little unsure. Cross exuded confidence, too, and that made him angry.
How dare he? Who did the detective think he was?
    He watched the house for a while longer, and knew it was perfectly safe for him to be there.
    Perfectly
safe.
    On a numerical scale of 9.9999 out of 10.
    He had a crazy thought then, and he knew where it came from. When he was just a boy, he absolutely loved cowboy-and-Indian movies and TV shows. He always rooted for the Indians. And he particularly loved one extraordinary trick that they had — they would sneak into an enemy’s camp and simply touch the enemy while he slept. It was called, he believed,
counting coup.
    The Mastermind wanted to count coup on Alex Cross.

Chapter 29
    AS SOON AS WE KNEW that everyone in the house was safe, I called St. Anthony’s Hospital to check on Jannie. Guilt, paranoia, and duty were all pulling hard at me. The furies had me in a terrible vise. The bank manager’s family was safe. What about my own?
    I was put in contact with the nurses’ station on Jannie’s floor. I spoke to an RN, Julietta Newton, who sometimes stopped by Jannie’s room when I came to visit. Julietta reminded me of an old friend, a nurse who had died the year before, Nina Childs.
    “This is Alex Cross. I’m sorry to bother you, Julietta, but I’m trying to reach my grandmother. Or my daughter, Jannie.”
    “Nana isn’t on the floor at the moment,” the nurse told me. “Jannie just went down for an MRI. A spot opened up and Dr. Petito wanted her to take it. Your grandmother accompanied her downstairs.”
    “I’m on