“So what?” Hardaway snapped, red-faced. He got to his feet. “You should have counteroffered it.”
“There were no counteroffers heard, Bill,” she said. “His terms. Make the best offer by five, that’s it, winner takes all. I tried to tell you that this morning and—”
“What was your best offer?”
“Ten.”
“Ten?” he shouted and then shot her a disgusted look. “Were you trying to insult him? Drive him out? The man who made your career and this house? The man you still have—”
“No, I don’t,” Liu shouted back, cutting him off. “And we made him, Bill. Not the other way around. I thought ten million was insanely generous. I thought—”
“You thought wrong,” Hardaway roared. “You lost the golden goose on the worst day of my life, Suzanne! For that, you’re fired!”
“Fired?” she said, shocked into a whisper. “Bill, you can’t—”
“I just did,” he said coldly. “Get your things and clear out. I need new blood in here before everything around me dies.”
TRIPLE CROSS
CHAPTER 1
A WALL OF RHODODENDRON bushes prevented anyone in the neighborhood from seeing the interior of the compound: a rambling white Cape with dark green shutters and a four-bay carriage house set on three landscaped acres.
Though it was dark now, the killer the media had recently dubbed “the Family Man” knew everything beyond the rhododendrons was picture-perfect. The lawns were lush and cut so precisely, they looked like green jigsaw-puzzle pieces set amid flower gardens ablaze with spring glory and color.
The sprinkler system goes on at four, Family Man thought, glancing at the phone. Two a.m. More than enough time.
With latex-gloved hands, the killer started the book-size Ozonics ozone machine attached to a belt, tugged up the hood of the black hazmat suit, and donned a respirator mask and night-vision goggles. Family Man padded across one piece of jigsaw lawn to a walkway and the junction box of the alarm system.
It was disabled in six minutes.
Around the back, by the pool, the killer went to a bulkhead. It opened on well-oiled hinges.
The Schlage dead bolt on the basement door was no match for the technician’s skills. It turned in under a minute.
After two careful steps, then three, Family Man halted inside and listened a moment before peering around the basement. The floor was bare. The wall cubbies and shelves, however, were filled with artifacts of a suburban family, stacked and organized like a Martha Stewart dream.
The killer started up the stairs, knowing that on the other side of the door lay a short hall and the kitchen. And a dog, an aging Labrador retriever named Mike.
At the door, Family Man reached through a Velcro slit in the hazmat suit, took out a baggie containing a cheese-and-anchovy ball, opened the door, tossed in the bait, and closed the door with a loud click.
The killer stood there, taking slow breaths with long pauses and listening to the sound of dog nails clicking on hardwood floors. The ozone machine purred, destroying all human odor.
Mike snuffled at the door, clicked over, and slurped down the treat.
Fifteen minutes later, Family Man eased open the door and stepped into the main house, hearing the loud ticking of the grandfather clock in the front hall and the snoring of the dog lying just a few feet away. Swinging the night-vision goggles around, the killer took in the particulars of the kitchen.
Huge stainless-steel Coldspot fridge and freezer. Six-burner Aga stove. Double sink on the prep island. Copper pots hanging from the ceiling. Italian espresso machine.
These details counted, didn’t they? Of course they did. They were the essence of it all.
Satisfied that things were going according to plan, Family Man shrugged off a small pack, retrieved a pistol, and began the evening’s real work.
CHAPTER 2
THE PISTOL, A GLOCK, was chambered in .40 caliber and fitted with a sound suppressor. Family Man liked the balance it gave the weapon.
The master suite, which lay beyond the kitchen and the great room, was so neat it looked like a crew of maids had just finished cleaning. The leather furniture was showroom new. The rows of books on the shelves appeared unread.
It could be a stage set, the killer thought, easing open another door to reveal an anteroom and a huge walk-in closet.
To the right of the anteroom lay the bathroom. Beyond a pocket door to the left, Family Man knew, Roger and Sue Carpenter were deep asleep, aided by the hissing of a white-noise app.
The couple didn’t hear the pocket door sliding back or the Family Man slipping across the carpet to the right side of a four-poster bed. Mr. Carpenter, an attorney with boyish good looks, lay on his back with his forearm across his eyes, which made things easier.
Once, long ago, the killer had heard a Navy SEAL commander describe the perfect up-close execution with the word canoe. It meant shooting someone high in the head so that the bullet left the shape of a canoe bottom as it passed through the top of the skull.
Family Man canoed Carpenter through the forehead. His wife stirred at the thud of the silenced shot.
By the time the killer got around the bed to a WASPish-looking blonde in her thirties, she was half awake, her eyes open but puzzled.
“Roger?” she asked sleepily.
“Shhh,” Family Man said and shot her from two feet away.
She died instantly, but blood splashed off the headboard and spattered the upper chest and arms of the killer’s hazmat suit. A few drops hit the night-vision goggles.
Family Man plucked a tissue from the box beside the dead housewife and dabbed at the goggles until the view was clear again. The tissue fell on the bloody pillow next to Mrs. Carpenter.
The killer slid the pocket door back into place, walked through the great room and kitchen, stepped over the snoring Mike, and found the door to the mother-in-law apartment.
Pearl Naylor, Mrs. Carpenter’s mother, was a light sleeper and spry for seventy-eight. She rolled in bed and almost got her bony finger on the light switch, which would have sent blinding light through the goggles and might have changed the course of the night.
But before the old woman could flip the switch, Family Man shot her through the upper left side of her skull. She sagged off the bed, her legs caught in the sheets and blankets.
A few moments later, the killer exited Mrs. Naylor’s apartment and paused a moment before climbing the stairs.
Despite the Family Man’s training and experience, children were always the hardest.
CHAPTER 3
MY NAME IS ALEX CROSS. I am an investigative consultant for the Washington, DC, Metro Police, where I was a homicide detective for many years, and for the FBI, where I was once a member of the Bureau’s Behavioral Science Unit, the team that hunts serial killers and other bringers of doom and mayhem.
I felt like I was tracking one of those dark beings when I got out of my car in a swank neighborhood in Chevy Chase, Maryland, not far from the nation’s capital. Blue lights flashed on two state police cruisers blocking the road.
John Sampson pulled in behind me in an unmarked squad car. A first-rate detective in Metro PD homicide, Sampson was also my oldest friend.
“I thought this was over,” he said.
“Dreams dashed,” I replied.
An FBI forensics van arrived before we even got to the yellow tape and the cruisers. A hundred yards ahead, two more cruisers were parked, lights flashing, cutting off traffic from that direction. Beyond them, the first satellite-news van was pulling in.