Double Cross

years, my life had nothing “official” to do with law enforcement. I was out of the loop.

Well, almost, anyway. I did have a certain senior homicide detective in my life: Brianna Stone, also known as the Rock, if you asked some of the detectives who worked with her. I’d met Bree at a retirement party for a cop we both knew. We spent the first half hour that night talking about the Job and the next few hours talking about ourselves-kind of crazy things like her “race-hand release” as a paddler on the Dragon Boat Racing Team. By the end of the night, I barely had to ask her out. In fact, as I think about it now, she might have asked me. But then one thing led to another, and another, and I went home with Bree that night and we never looked back. And yes, I think Bree asked me to come home with her that night too.

Bree was fully in control of herself-intense, in all the good ways and none of the bad. And it didn’t hurt that she seemed to have a natural chemistry with the kids. They dug her. She was, in fact, right now chasing Ali at Olympic speed through the first floor of the house on Fifth Street, roaring like the child-eating alien she had apparently become, while Ali used a Star Wars lightsaber to keep her at bay. “That sword can’t hurt me!” she shouted. “Prepare to eat carpet!”

Bree and I didn’t stick around on Fifth Street too long on that particular morning, though. To be honest, if we had stayed there, I probably would have been forced to sneak her upstairs to show her my nonexistent etchings, or maybe my lightsaber.

For the first time since we’d been going out, we had managed to synchronize our schedules for a few days away. I went out the front door loudly singing the end of Stevie Wonder’s very first hit, “Fingertips Part 2”: “Good-bye, good-bye. Good-bye, good-bye. Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye.” I knew the words by heart, one of my gifts.

I winked at Bree and pecked her cheek. “Always leave them laughing,” I said.

“Or at least confused,” she said, and winked back.

Our destination, Catoctin Mountain Park in Maryland, was on the eastern rampart of the Appalachian Mountains, not too far from Washington -and not too close either. The mountains were perhaps best known as the site of Camp David, but Bree knew about a campground open to mere mortals like us. I couldn’t wait to get there and be alone with her.

I could almost feel the thrum of DC move out of my head as we headed north. The windows of my R350 were down, and as always I was loving the ride of this marvelous vehicle. Best buy I’d made in a long time. The late, great Jimmy Cliff wailed on the stereo. Life was pretty good right at the moment. Hard to beat.

As we zipped along, Bree had a question: “Why the Mercedes?”

“It’s comfortable, yes?”

“Very comfortable.”

I touched the gas. “Responsive, quick.”

“Okay, I get the point.”

“But most important, it’s safe. I’ve had enough danger in my life. I don’t need it on the road.”

At the park entrance, as we were paying for the site, Bree leaned across me to speak to the ranger on duty. “Thanks a lot. We’ll be respectful to your park.”

“What was that about?” I asked Bree as we pulled away.

“What can I say, I’m an environmentalist.”

The campsite was definitely spectacular, and worthy of our respect. It sat on its own little point of land, with shimmering blue water on three sides and nothing but dense forest greenness looming behind. In the far distance, I could see something called Chimney Rock, which we planned on hiking the next day. What I couldn’t see was a single other person.

Just the one that mattered, Bree, who happened to be the sexiest woman I’d ever known. Just the sight of her got me going, especially out here on our own.

She took hold of me around the waist. “What could be more perfect than this?”

I couldn’t think of anything that would spoil our weekend up here in the woods.

Chapter 4

THE STORY, THE THRILLER, CONTINUED. Forty-eight hours after his rehearsal, his flawless walk-through, Yousef Qasim returned to the Riverwalk apartment building, with its wealthy and careless American tenants.

This wasn’t practice, though; it was the real thing, and his stomach was queasy. This was a truly big day for him, and for his cause.

Sure enough, at 4:34 p.m. the door to the service entryway opened and the same tall black porter lethargically lugged his garbage bags to the street. Old Black Joe, Qasim thought. Still in chains. Nothing really changes in America, does it? Not in hundreds of years.

Less than five minutes later, Qasim was upstairs on the twelfth floor, standing outside the apartment of a woman named Tess Olsen.

This time he rang the bell. Twice. He had been waiting for this moment for such a long time-months, maybe all his life, if he was honest with himself.

“Yes?” Tess Olsen’s eye flickered behind the peephole of 12F. “Who is it?”

Yousef Qasim made sure she saw his coveralls and the cap that said MO. No doubt he would look like any other brown-skinned maintenance worker to this woman-someone who was supposed to notice details in her profession. She was a well-known crime writer after all, and that was important for the story. A crucial detail.

“Mrs. Olsen? There is gas leak in your apartment. Someone call you from office?”

“What? Say again.”

His accent was impossibly thick, and English seemed to be torture for him. He spoke slowly, like some kind of idiot. “Gas leak. Please, missus? I can fix leak? Someone call? Tell you I come?”

“I just got home. No one called,” she said. “I don’t know anything about it. I don’t think there was a message. I suppose I can check.”

“You like me come back later? Fix gas leak then? You smelling gas?”

The woman sighed with the unconcealed exasperation of a person with too many trivial duties and not enough hired help. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said. “Come in, then. Hurry it up. Your timing is just exquisite. I have to finish getting dressed and be out of here in twenty minutes.”

At the click of the dead bolt, Yousef Qasim readied himself. The moment the woman cracked the door and he saw both her eyes, he charged forward.

Extreme force was unnecessary in this case, physically speaking, but it had great utility. Tess Olsen fell back several steps and then thumped down hard on her behind. She came right out of her high-heeled pumps, exposing bright-red toenails and long, bony feet.

Before her shock and surprise gave way to a scream, Qasim was on top of her, pressing against her chest with his full body weight. The rectangle of silver duct tape he’d stuck to his pants leg was transferred quickly to the woman’s mouth. He put the tape on hard, to show that he meant business and that she would be foolish to resist.

“I mean you no harm,” he said, the first of many lies.

Then he flipped her onto her stomach and pulled a red dog leash from his pocket, securing it around her neck. The leash was a key part of the plan. It was inexpensive nylon mesh but more than strong enough.

The leash was a clue, and just the first that he would leave here for the police and for whoever else became interested.

The woman was maybe forty, hair dyed blond, not physically strong, in spite of the fact that she seemed to work out to keep herself thin.

He showed her something now-a box cutter! Very nasty-looking tool. Convincing.

Her eyes widened.