Roses Are Red

"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 Twenty-Si

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 All 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.

– -r

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 Twenty-Seven

As soon as we knew that everyone in the house was safe, I called St. Anthony's Hospital to check on Ja

I was put in contact with the nurses' station on Ja

"This is Alex Cross. I'm sorry to bother you, Julietta, but I'm trying to reach my grandmother. Or my daughter, Ja

"Nana isn't on the floor at the moment," the nurse told me. "Ja

"I'm on my way. Is Ja

The nurse hesitated, then she spoke. "She had another seizure, Detective. She's stabilized, though."

I rushed back to the hospital from Rosslyn and got there in about fifteen minutes. I hurried down to B-l and found an area marked DIAGNOSTIC TESTING. It was late, almost ten o'clock. No one was at the front desk, so I walked right past and down a light blue corridor that looked eerie and foreboding at that time of night.

As I approached a room with COMPUTERIZED TOMOGRAPHY and MRI lettered on the door, a technician appeared from a doorway across the hall. He startled me I was walking in a fog. Thinking, worrying about Ja

"Can I help you? Are you supposed to be down here, sir?"

"I'm Ja

The man nodded. "She's down here. I'll show you the way. I believe she's about halfway through the test. Our last patient for the night."

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The hospital tech showed me into the MRI room where Nana was sitting vigil. She was trying to keep up a calm exterior, trying to maintain her usual self-control. For once, it wasn't working. I saw the fear lighting up her eyes, or maybe I was projecting my own feelings.

I looked over at the MRI machine and it was state-of-the-art. It was more open and less restraining than others I'd seen. I'd had two MRIs, so I knew the drill. Ja

"Can she hear us?" I asked.

Nana cupped her hands to her ears. "She's listening to music in there. But you can hold her hand, Alex. She knows your touch."

I reached out and took one of Ja

"What happened while I was gone?" I asked Nana.

"We were lucky, so lucky," she said. "Dr. Petito stopped by on his rounds. He was talking to Ja

I sat down because I needed to. It had been a long and stressful day and it wasn't over yet. My heart was still racing, so was my head. The rest of my body was struggling to catch up.