The next morning, February 2, around seven, Damon and Jannie were ferrying plates of steaming scrambled eggs, maple-smoked bacon, and hash-brown potatoes with hot sauce, a Cross family favorite breakfast, to the table.
“You’re sure you won’t have coffee?” Nana Mama asked Bree, who had walked in the door only twenty minutes before.
“I’m going to sleep once Damon and Song leave,” she said, and she yawned.
“Orange juice, then?”
Bree smiled. “That sounds wonderful, Nana.”
As we dished breakfast onto our plates, I said, “We’re proud of you, by the way. All of us, Bree.”
Ali and Song started clapping and whistling, and we all joined in.
“Stop!” Bree said, holding up her hands in mild protest but smiling softly. “I was just doing my job.”
“Just doing your job?” Song said in disbelief. “You caught Senator Walker’s killer less than twenty-four hours after she was shot. You did it before the FBI was even on the scene, and all four hostages survived!” SWAT team members had entered the Sheridans’ bungalow, found Mr. Sheridan wounded but alive, and rushed him, his wife, and their daughters to the hospital.
I wanted to say that Bree had also handled the pressure from Chief Michaels admirably, but I kept that to myself. She’d called me the night before shortly after talking to Michaels, who’d been forced to eat crow, and said that he was recommending her for citations.
“I got lucky,” Bree told Song. “And, for the record, I think Damon did too.”
Song grinned, glanced shyly my older son’s way, then gazed at each of us in turn. “Thank you. All of you. You’ve been so kind, and I want to say how very much I appreciate it.”
“You’re more than welcome here,” Nana said. “Anytime.”
We ate our fill. Bree’s eyes were fluttering shut before she agreed to my offer to help her to bed. She sleepily said her good-byes, and we disappeared upstairs. I tucked her in with a promise to wake her at three so she could participate in the FBI interrogation of Romero’s female accomplice.
Downstairs, I found Damon and Song already in their coats and carrying their small travel bags.
“Sure you don’t want me to drive you to the airport?”
“I have a per diem from school, Dad,” Damon said. “It will cover the Uber.”
“Okay, then,” I said, and I gave him a big hug. “You did great last night.”
“Thanks,” he said.
“The first of many more great games,” I said.
“Definitely,” Song said, and she hugged me. “Again, Dr. Cross, it was an honor to meet you and Chief Stone. My father will be most, most pleased.”
“Give your dad my best,” I said. “All our best.”
Song and Damon hugged Nana and Jannie. Song and Ali said their good-byes in Chinese, which delighted them both. And then my oldest and his girlfriend waved and went out to the Uber car to return to their lives too many miles away.
I felt sad for myself and excited for them all in the same moment.
“C’mon, Ali,” Jannie said. “Or we’ll be late for school.”
“And don’t forget you’ve got an early patient, Alex,” my grandmother said.
I glanced at my watch. It was twelve minutes to eight.
“Thanks for the reminder,” I said, and I gave Nana a kiss and my kids high-fives and then went back through the kitchen.
Taking the stairs down to my basement office, I realized once again how lucky I was and how grateful I was to have good kids and a wife who was damn near a superhero. I laughed at that and at the fact that she’d be embarrassed to hear me say anything remotely like—
At the bottom of the staircase, I saw an envelope had been pushed through the mail slot. I went over and picked it up off the carpet. My name was printed in block letters on the front. No address. No return address.
Tearing the envelope open, I walked to my office, then I pulled out a folded sheet of unlined paper. Spelled out in letters cut from magazines, the note read:
Alex Cross, stop me, please!