Criss Cross (Alex Cross) - James Patterson Page 0,51
mind once again returned to that last sentence: M is for …
Moriarty.
That just popped into my head, an idea left over from the talk with Rivers earlier in the afternoon. And then, even though I knew it was impossible, I couldn’t help but think …
Mastermind.
M is for Mastermind. Kyle Craig’s alias.
Driving onto I-295 north, I dismissed the idea that Craig was somehow still alive, still playing some long and deadly game with me. But someone was playing a long and deadly game with me. Or was this all like a cat with a live mouse, the feline batting at the rodent with his paw every now and then, entertaining himself before the kill?
A horn blared behind me, startling me from my thoughts. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the delivery truck in the lane next to me veer off toward the East Capitol Street exit, revealing a black BMW SUV behind it.
It could have been another black SUV, a sheer coincidence, but my instincts screamed that I was being followed by someone.
I decided to test my instincts, and I stomped on the gas as I entered a curve.
When I came out of it, I scanned the highway ahead, saw it was nearly empty, then glued my attention to my rearview mirror.
The BMW roared out of the curve before I thought it would, in my lane now, right behind me, a total abandonment of the sophisticated tail job.
Whoever was driving no longer cared about being spotted.
He was coming after me.
And he was coming fast.
CHAPTER 55
I SPED UP AS I snatched my pistol from my shoulder holster and set it on my lap.
The BMW kept coming, headlights on high.
My left hand went to the side-view mirror control; I flipped it to the right and eased off on the gas pedal. The SUV closed the gap as we passed the Minnesota Avenue Metro stop.
He tried to come right up on my bumper, his high beams filling my car. But then I twitched the control on the passenger-side mirror.
Two years before, my older son, Damon, had been backing up in a crowded parking lot and grazed a telephone pole with that mirror. The accident bent the mirror mount slightly, which, we discovered, had a strange usefulness: if someone came up behind you with his headlights blazing, you could tilt the mirror up and in, and the other car’s right headlight beam would be reflected back at the driver.
Which is exactly what happened. When the BMW was about fifteen feet off my bumper, its right high beam reflected off the mirror and shone dead in the driver’s eyes.
He threw a hand up and hit the brakes as I goosed the Mercedes’s accelerator. I opened a gap of sixty yards passing Eastland Gardens.
But I was so shocked at what I’d just seen, I barely noticed.
In the split second before the driver threw up his arm and hit the brakes, I’d gotten a look at him: a man in a dark suit and tie, black gloves, mid-forties, tinted glasses, sandy-blond hair, and the unmistakable nose, cheekbones, and prominent chin of disgraced and deceased former FBI special agent Kyle Craig.
The mental images of Craig throwing up his arm to block the glare were so vivid they almost blinded me to a panel van coming off the ramp from Maryland State Highway 50.
I hit the brakes, and the van swerved, horn honking, just in front of me. We barely missed colliding.
When I was sure we were not going to hit, I looked frantically in the rearview and side-view mirrors, trying to see the BMW. But it wasn’t back there.
Indeed, there were no headlights anywhere close behind me. Impossible.
I clawed at the passenger-side mirror control and this time aimed it wide to the right. I caught flashes of the BMW running dark under the highway lights and coming up alongside me so fast, I got rattled.
I knew I should pull an evasive maneuver, hit the brakes, and let him pass. Instead, I rolled down the passenger-side window and kept glancing over, trying to see Craig through the tinted windows even as I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the man was dead and gone.
The panel van hit the brakes in front of me. I had no choice but to do the same. The BMW shot forward and passed into my headlight glare.
The driver-side window rolled down. I couldn’t see his face, but I sure heard his voice. It seemed to boom back at me.