“What was that?” Sampson said, pointing at Abrahamsen’s house. “I saw something move on the side of the house there.”
I threw up my binoculars and saw nothing in the shadows. Then I pointed the infrared sensor at the house again.
The house was still pulsing heat, especially through the windows and around the doors, which were depicted in red. But the walls were hot too, a deep, undulating orange.
I was about to flip the sensor off when out of the orange on the side of the house, a blob appeared and became the yellow silhouette of a man.
“Unidentified man outside,” I said. “Right there. He’s—”
The silhouette straddled something, then got into a sitting position and rolled out of the sensor’s range.
“He’s on a bike!” I said. “He’s going out the back.”
“Mount Vernon Trail,” Mahoney said, then he snatched up a handheld radio and triggered the mike. “We’ve got a runner.”
Chapter 93
Sampson started the engine, threw the van in gear. Part of me wanted to jump out, go straight into Abrahamsen’s house, and find Ali.
But we had no cause yet, at least no warrant with a judge’s signature. And Abrahamsen or M or whoever he was — he was getting away.
The first gray light of morning showed when Sampson took a hard right onto Waynewood Road and accelerated toward the Mount Vernon Trail and the George Washington Parkway. He pulled up where the bike trail crossed the road.
He looked north and I looked south. We saw nothing, but you could not see far.
“He can’t have gotten by us this way so fast,” Mahoney said. “He has to be heading south.”
Sampson swung hard onto the GW Parkway and accelerated. I rolled the window down and peered out into the dawn light, finding the snippets of the ribbon of the bike trail through the still-leafless trees.
“Slow down,” I said. “We could miss him in there.”
“He’s right,” Mahoney said, looking at his iPad. “Satellite shows the path veers away from the parkway and goes through a big block of woods up ahead.”
“What’s the next crossing south?” Sampson asked.
Mahoney said, “Fort Hunt Road.”
“Call in a helicopter,” I said as Sampson hit the gas again.
Mahoney picked up his radio just as his phone rang.
I was still hanging out the window, looking for anything that suggested a bicyclist back there in the woods.
Where are you, M? Where are you going? And where’s my son?
“Fort Hunt Road coming up fast,” Sampson said, hitting his blinker.
You could clearly see the bike path where it ran through open ground north of the intersection. He wasn’t there yet.
“Stop alongside the path up ahead,” I said. “We’ll wait for him.”
Sampson pulled over on Fort Hunt beyond the bike path. I looked north, saw nothing, and then west, where I spotted a bike farther down the trail and crossing the street.
“There he is!” I cried.
Sampson threw the van in gear again and sped toward the crossing where the trail cut back to the east toward the parkway and the river.
“We’ve got the warrant!” Mahoney said. “They’re faxing it to HRT.”
“What’s ahead?” I said.
Mahoney looked at his iPad, said, “Take a hard left. He’s going to come out of the woods and go under the parkway. If he gets much beyond there, we won’t be able to stop him for a good four miles.”
“That’s not happening,” Sampson said. He downshifted, skidded into the hard left turn, and then accelerated again.
“There he is!” I said again, seeing Abrahamsen biking out of the woods and heading toward the parkway and the Potomac River. “Get under the overpass and ahead of him!”
Sampson sped by Abrahamsen, who didn’t give us a second glance. His head was down and he was pedaling furiously.
Mahoney’s radio crackled. “HRT is a go.”
“Go,” Mahoney said.
We went beneath the overpass and turned hard right toward an on-ramp to the parkway. Sampson pulled over and I jumped out, crossed the street, and ran across forty yards of grass.
Abrahamsen was coming so fast I barely had time to step in his way, crouch down, and aim my pistol at him.
“Stop or I will shoot you, Captain!”
Chapter 94
Abrahamsen hit his brakes so hard, he skidded; he hit gravel, the bike went out from under him, and he crashed into the grass. On the ground, he grabbed his shoulder and yelled out in pain.
“Oh God! That broke ribs, and there goes the shoulder again. Oh God.”
“Keep praying, and keep your hands where I can see them,” I said, grabbing him by the back of his bike shirt and wrenching his upper body my way. “You’re going to need all the help you can get.”
Abrahamsen screamed. “Don’t move me! What the hell are you doing?”
“Placing you under arrest,” Mahoney said, running up with his FBI badge out.
“What?” he said, panting. “What are you talking about?”
“Murder and kidnapping,” I said. “Where’s my son?”
“Arthur Abrahamsen, you have the right to remain silent,” Mahoney began.
“Ali?” he cried. “I have no idea where he is. I haven’t seen him since before I—”
“We know you have him,” I said, pushing hard on his right shoulder, ramming his busted left side into the ground.
The captain screamed again. “My God, Dr. Cross. Believe me!”
“We have the texts,” I said. “Now where is he?”
“Texts?” he said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I texted him once, the day before yesterday, to tell him I was back.”
“Before you drowned your phone and texted him repeatedly with a burner,” I said. “Invited him for a bike ride. Where is he, M?”
Abrahamsen groaned. “Who’s M? I did no such thing. You’ve got the wrong man.”
“I don’t think so,” I said as Mahoney unclipped Abrahamsen’s shoes from the bike pedals. “We’re searching your house.”
“Good,” he said. “You won’t find him there. You won’t find much of anything in there. You’ve got it all wrong.”
Ned’s radio crackled with the voice of the HRT commander. “SAC Mahoney.”
Mahoney raised the handheld to his lips. “Come back.”
“No one here. Place is virtually empty. Looks like they just applied some kind of textured plaster to the walls and the heat’s jacked up like a sauna.”
“To dry the plaster,” Abrahamsen said, grimacing as he looked at me. “Dr. Cross, I adore your son. I think he’s one of the more remarkable boys I’ve ever met. I will swear on a stack of Bibles, I don’t have Ali. I haven’t seen him in more than ten days.”
My cell phone dinged in my pocket, and I reached for it with my gut sinking again. I looked at the Wickr message, then back at Abrahamsen, wanting to sit down and cry.
“I believe you, Captain,” I said. “I apologize. I should have suspected M would try to use you to get to me.”
Chapter 95
Someone shook my shoulder, and I came groggily awake into a splitting headache. I opened my eyes, and saw I was in my attic office chair, head down on the Edgerton files, an empty pint bottle of Jack Daniel’s beside me.
Bree was crouched next to me, looking concerned.
“Why didn’t you use the bed?”
I gazed at her stupidly and then remembered. “I thought I’d find something up here, and then I realized I couldn’t control this. M. Any of it. So I put my forehead on my fists, and I prayed for him. I must have fallen asleep.”