Violets Are Blue

but not this wrong. We have to stop that sonofabitch. I don’t care how smart he’s supposed to be.”
    She told me where to look for a service entrance and then a fire escape that would take me to her floor. I hurried around in the shadows. I didn’t think that Kyle had seen me. I hoped not. But after all — he was the Mastermind.
    He was smart, as clever as anyone I’d ever worked against.
    He knew about surveillance, probably a lot more than I did.
    He didn’t make mistakes, at least not until now.
    I found the back entrance of her building easily, and I hurried up the stairs. I tried not to make noise. I had no way of knowing where Kyle was right now.
    When I got to her apartment the door was open. My stomach dropped, and I felt sick. “Jamilla?”
    She immediately peeked out through the doorway. “Come inside. I’m fine, Alex. We’ve got him now, not the other way around.”
    I hurried inside the apartment, and we kept all the lights off. I could still see most of the living room and kitchen, the doorway to a small terrace. A bay window with bench seating. Her home. The place where he wanted to violate her. I snuck a look outside — I didn’t see Kyle on the street. He was on the move.
    Jamilla didn’t look frightened, just perplexed and angry. She had her service revolver out. She was ready for whatever might happen.
    I don’t think that I had fully taken in what had just happened outside. Everything felt unreal; my vision was tunneled. My nerves felt shredded and raw. Kyle Craig had been my friend. We had worked half a dozen cases together.
    “
Why
is he outside, Alex?” Jamilla finally asked. “Why is he coming after me? I don’t understand that asshole. What did I do to him?”
    I stared into her eyes, hesitated a second or two, then finally spoke. “He’s not really here to get you; at least I don’t think so. It’s about me — it’s about Kyle and me. I’ve become part of his fantasy, the story he tells himself every day. He’s proving how much better than me he is. He has to prove that he really is the Mastermind.”

Chapter 98

    THE MASTERMIND had already made his next move, though he knew it was only a half step in the greater scheme of things. He had pulled back. He was six blocks away from Jamilla Hughes’s apartment, standing on a hill past the Jackson Playground. It allowed him to watch her building, the bay window, the small terrace on one side.
    He enjoyed this — the intractable imposition of his will, his ego on the world. It had been this way for more than a dozen years. No one had come close to capturing him, or even suspecting who he really was.
    Cross was inside now, and that made everything either very hard or perhaps easier. There was another decision to be made soon. Should he risk everything at this point? Change everything? For years he had been living a complicated double life. He’d done whatever he wanted, wherever, whenever. He had enjoyed his freedom, and how many others had even tasted that forbidden fruit? He had been the cop and the criminal. But maybe it was time for a change. Maybe his life had become too safe, too predictable. Kyle loved the hunt — and in that way he was like Casanova and the Gentleman Caller, two very talented killers he had known well, one working in North Carolina, the other in southern California. He found that he agreed with Casanova that men needed to be hunters by nature. And so he hunted — men and women — and he enjoyed killing both sexes; but he went an important step further.
    He hunted their killers as well.
He eliminated his competition. He beat them at their own games.
    He had known Casanova years before the meticulous and very nasty killer was caught by himself and Dr. Cross. He had played murder games with Casanova and with the Gentleman Caller.
Kiss the girls and make them cry
. Kyle had even fallen in love with one of the victims — young Kate McTiernan. He still had a soft spot for dear, sweet Kate. He had been so many things to so many people, played so many roles, and he had only just begun.
    He had been the
Mastermind
— but he also helped capture the man believed to be the Mastermind. How could you beat that for puzzle making and puzzle solving?
    He’d been an elusive killer in Baltimore; in Cincinnati; in Roanoke, Virginia; in Philadelphia, until he had tired of those cities and the minor roles he played in them. He was husband to Louise, father to Bradley and Virginia. He was on the fast track