“Hey, Siegel!” I shouted this time, and then I started inside. “Don’t touch anything in there!”

Chapter 25

WHEN ALEX CAME INTO THE ROOM, Kyle stood up and looked right into his eyes. Dead man walking, Kyle thought, and smiled as he extended a hand.

“Max Siegel, Washington field office. How’re you doing? Not so good, I imagine.”

Cross shook Kyle’s hand begrudgingly, but it was still an electric moment, like the tip-off of an NBA game. Here we go, here we go, here we go, now!

“What are you doing in here?” Cross wanted to know.

“I’m just hitting the ground on this one,” Kyle told him.

“No shit. I mean, what specifically do you need on this body?”

It was magnificent — Cross had no idea who he was looking at! The face was flawless, of course. If there was any danger here, it was with Alex’s ears, not his eyes. This was where the weeks of audio surveillance on Max Siegel in Miami would really start to pay off.

But first he did exactly what Cross wouldn’t expect. He turned his back on him and knelt down to look at the entry wound again.

A blue-and-black residue covered the skin around the opening. Some of the man’s hair had been sucked inside with the bullet as it broke through the skull. So efficient. So impersonal. He was beginning to like this killer.

“Ballistics,” he said finally, and stood up again. “My money’s on 7.62 by 51 NATO match grade, but not jacketed. And some kind of military training on this shooter.”

“You’ve read the file,” Alex said, not offering any compliment, just noticing. “Yeah, we could definitely use some ballistics support from the Bureau to confirm, but let’s get the ME in here before anything else. In the meantime, I need you to step out.”

Cross couldn’t have been easier to read. Right now, he was hoping a little bluster would tamp down this aggressive new FBI agent, who was no doubt just another overreaching Bureau asshole with an inflated sense of entitlement — kind of like Alex himself had been when he was an agent.

“Listen,” said Kyle, “I’m not going to stress about who gets credit for what on this one. I mean, the U.S. attorney’s going to step in and get all front and center no matter who brings it home, am I right?”

“Siegel, I don’t have time for this right now. I —”

“But make no mistake.” Kyle let the last of Siegel’s buddy-buddy smile fade away. “We’ve got two incidents and three homicides, all inside the District. That’s a federal crime. So you can work with us if you like, or you can get the fuck out of the way.”