CHAPTER 106

“DAMN IT!” MAHONEY CURSED and pounded on the dash. “No one’s picking up!”

“We’re almost there,” I said. I was driving Mahoney’s vehicle while he tried to raise anyone at the Blevins household in northwest Potomac.

“What about her security detail?” Bree asked from the back seat.

“They’re on their way. They weren’t supposed to come on until six because of all the parties last night and because Blevins was set to work out in her basement gym,” Mahoney said, the tension rising in his voice. “I’m calling in locals until we get there.”

“We’ll be there before them,” I said, speeding up as we passed the Falls Road Golf Course heading north.

“I’m calling anyway,” Mahoney said, punching 911 into his cell.

I turned left onto Glen Road as he explained the threat to a Montgomery County dispatcher. She promised to send multiple sheriff’s patrol cars to seal off the area around Blevins’s house as we took a right onto Gregerscroft Road, an upscale suburban street just east of Wayside Elementary School.

The justice lived at the end of a cul-de-sac abutting Watts Branch Park in a large Colonial home shielded from the road by a hedge and big pines. I pulled into their long drive.

Mahoney ran to the front door and began pounding on it and ringing the doorbell. Lights began to go on upstairs and we could hear voices.

A minute later, as sirens were approaching, a bleary-eyed Phillip Blevins answered the door in a maroon Georgetown hoodie and matching pants. His teenage children were in their pajamas on the staircase behind him.

“What is this?”

“FBI, Mr. Blevins,” Mahoney said, breathless. “We believe your wife is in danger.”

The justice’s husband’s demeanor changed in an instant. “What danger? From whom?”

I said, “From the same woman who killed three potential Supreme Court nominees.”

“And Justice Mayweather just an hour ago,” Bree said. “Is your wife here?”

“Mayweather?” he said, panic in his voice now. “I think Maggie’s in the basement working out.”

“No, Dad,” one of his teenage daughters said from the stairs behind him. “I heard her go out.”

Her brother said, “She must have broken the rules again and gone out for a run.”

I said, “In the dark like this?”

Blevins’s other daughter said, “She wears a headlamp and runs the same route all the time.”

Her brother said, “Through the park and the woods, mostly, so no one sees her.”

“Show us the route,” Mahoney said to their father as Montgomery County patrol cars started up the drive, sirens wailing, lights flashing. “Now!”