“Do we know if Bree’s in there? If she’s alive?”
“I’m sorry, Dr. Cross, I cannot confirm anything else. But I have Marianne Le Tour, chief of our Paris office, en route to the scene. We should know more soon.”
Over the loudspeaker, the flight attendant told us to turn our phones off before we pulled back from the gate.
“Text me the second you hear anything,” I said.
“Absolutely. And our thoughts and prayers are with you and Bree, Dr. Cross.”
I thanked her, hung up, and switched the phone to airplane mode. The flight attendant who came to take my empty beer glass said the Wi-Fi for texting and internet would come on above thirty thousand feet.
We took off and my mind started to play tricks on me. It shifted to the oldest part of the brain, the limbic system, the reptilian place where fear and worry and terrible images and impossible questions dwell and fester.
Bree’s dead, the lizard brain said. You have to prepare yourself for it, Alex. You’ve been down this road before. Your first wife was taken from you without warning or mercy, a beautiful mommy out for a stroll with your young children, cut down in a senseless drive-by shooting. You don’t think that kind of thing happens in Paris?
I kept trying to counter the argument as we climbed steeply northeast away from Denver. Bree was one of the most competent and well-trained law enforcement officers I’d ever known. For a year before becoming a detective and meeting me, she’d been on the city SWAT team and knew how to handle herself in dangerous scenarios involving weapons.
But we’re talking automatic weapons. What did Bree say she had with her? A small nine-millimeter? You heard several bursts of machine-gun fire, at least one of them sustained. Those shots that sounded closer could have been Bree firing back. But a machine gun versus a pistol? The odds aren’t good.
This battle in my head couldn’t be won, so I abandoned my mind to it, closed my eyes, and went to my heart and my faith, praying for Bree’s safety, reminding the Almighty what a good and decent person she was, how human and connected she was, even in her past role as chief of detectives, where she’d had to deal with all sorts of personalities, politics, and pressures. Bree was more than my wife, my partner, my best friend, and my equal in every sense—she was my love, my greatest gift from God.
Don’t take a second one from me, Lord, I prayed. Please don’t let Bree—
A loud ding interrupted my prayer. I opened my eyes as the loudspeaker crackled. I anticipated the flight attendant again, but the pilot’s voice came on.
“Well, folks, I’ve got some good news from the cockpit, some not-so-good news, and some bad news. Bad news: that sensor-light issue we had on the ground is back.”
People began to groan all around me.
“But the good news is we are still on our way to Paris. The sensor has nothing to do with the way we fly. It’s linked to our Wi-Fi system. So while we are still expecting to touch down at de Gaulle on schedule, I’m afraid you’ll have to spend your time on this flight the old-fashioned way, without text or internet.”
Chapter
41
Clichy, France
With the sounds of sirens still wailing in the distance, Matthew Butler shifted in the front passenger seat of an old gray Mercedes work van with decals on the side advertising a twenty-four-hour emergency plumbing service that did not exist. The van was crossing a bridge over the Seine, heading northwest away from Paris.
“ETA seven minutes,” Butler said over his shoulder to Big DD, Cortland, and Alison Purdy, all of whom sat in the rear wearing coveralls with embroidered logos featuring the same nonexistent plumbing firm. “Let’s be smooth, now. It was ugly, but we did what we came to do, so let’s slip out easy, head back to the ranch.”
Vincente, who was driving, said, “Make like we were never here.”
Big DD grumbled, “Oh, we were definitely here.”
“Don’t start,” Cortland said.
“It was supposed to be surgical,” Purdy sniffed. “Instead, we got civilian casualties, Cort, which means they’ll be hunting for us twice as hard.”
“I got the job done,” Cortland said. “Mission accomplished.”
Butler said, “We’ll discuss the ad lib later, Cort. After we get clear.”
Vincente turned north on the other side of the bridge and drove them to a light industrial area in the town of Gennevilliers. Butler got out at the gate and used a combination to unlock it. He locked it behind them after Vincente drove through.