Criss Cross (Alex Cross #27)(4)

She laughed. “Okay, except when they’re sleeping.”

“I’ll admit, you know your stuff. If you see your brother trying to multitask, please tell him about the male brain and stop him. Okay?”

“You think he’ll listen?”

“Probably not,” I said. I leaned over to hug her. “I missed you, baby.”

“Missed you too, Dad,” she said, and she yawned. “I don’t know why I feel so tired.”

“Get to sleep early tonight.”

She nodded but seemed concerned about something.

As I was leaving the room, she called after me, “My first out-door meet’s Tuesday afternoon.”

“Already in the calendar of absolutely must-dos,” I said, heading into the kitchen.

My ninety-something grandmother, an avid foodie, was stirring something in a deep pan on the kitchen stove.

“I don’t know what it is, but it smells awful good in here.”

“New chicken recipe,” she said, tapping the spoon on the side of the pan.

“Dad!” Ali called from the room beyond the kitchen. “Check this out.”

Nana said, “He’s been dying to show you some mountain-bike video, and you won’t eat until he does.”

I held up both hands in understanding. My youngest child, Ali, was ten, smart as a whip, and always into something new. And when he got into something new, he was like a terrier—he wouldn’t let go.

Ali’s latest interest was mountain biking. It had actually begun last year when a friend had lent him one, and he’d asked for a bike for Christmas.

We made sure he got one because, unlike his older sister, Ali had never been known to exert himself physically if he didn’t have to. But something about the bike had captured his imagination, and he rode it all the time now, even in the cold and snow.

Ali was on the floor, stretched out in front of his laptop, when I walked in.

“You’re late,” he said, sounding put out.

I held up my hands. “Beyond my control. You ride today?”

He nodded. “The usual way by the Tidal Basin.”

Bree and I often ran that route. It was safe and well traveled. I’d okayed him to use it if he wanted to go out for a ride on his own as long as he got permission first and it wasn’t too early or too late. “You wanted to show me something?”

He hit a key on his laptop. The screen came to life, showing the helmet-camera feed of a mountain biker poised high above a sprawling city.

“Where is this?” I asked.

“Lima, Peru,” he said. “You won’t believe it.”

The guy riding the bike took off and immediately went down an impossibly steep, covered staircase. Then he shot out into sunlight and he was on a wall about two feet wide with a big drop on either side.

Crowds of people watched the rider skim along the wall to the end and launch into the air. He dropped a good twenty feet and landed on a dirt path on a hill so steep, I thought he was going to go over the handlebars and tumble to his death. But he punched the landing, cut left, crossed a narrow wooden bridge, hit another bump, soared again, and landed on another staircase. The insanity went on for a good four minutes before the rider pulled over and started laughing. The video stopped.

“Wasn’t that amazing?” Ali asked.

“What was that?”

“Urban-downhill mountain biking!”

“Wow,” I said. “A new sport every day.”

“I’m going to do that someday,” he vowed.

“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Nana said from the kitchen. “Alex, your dinner’s ready.”





CHAPTER 5





INSTEAD OF FOCUSING ON EDGERTON’S execution, the strangulation of Mrs. Nixon, or the latest message from M, I savored Nana’s fantastic pesto and chicken on black-bean pasta, a dish that I told her had to be a multiple repeat.

Ali wandered through, his laptop under his arm.

“Bed?” I asked.

He yawned and nodded. “Dad, do you have Wickr?”

“Uhh, I don’t think so.”

“It’s this cool messaging app for, like, spies.”

“Okay?”

“It has military-grade encryption,” he said earnestly. “We could text each other and no one would know because it has this self-destruct feature.”

“The phone self-destructs?”

“No,” he said, his nose wrinkling. “The message. Or telegram, they call it. They vanish after a couple of minutes. Real good for spying, right?”

“If you’re on your phone when you’re spying, I would think so.”

“You want me to put it on your phone? It’s easy, and we could, you know—”

“Talk like spies?”

He grinned and nodded.

“Let me think about it,” I said, and I kissed him good night.

“Dad? If urban-downhill became an Olympic sport, I think I’d be good at it.”

I smiled at the way his mind swung from one obsession to the next. “I think you’ll be good at whatever you love to do.”

After Nana went to bed, I cleaned up and went into the front room. Jannie was long gone. I tried to watch a basketball game. When I went upstairs, it was almost midnight.