I, Alex Cross

by James Patterson

  Was he Zeus? According to Hannah Willis he was. And I believed her.

  Cormorant followed a step behind, with three other members of the spousal detail just ahead and on either side of the First Gentleman. An agent at the door pushed it open and stepped out first, then held it for Vance to come through.

  The next happened in a blink. One of those instants that comes and goes but is photographed in the mind, then never, ever forgotten.

  Cormorant was mostly obscured behind Vance, and I just saw the back of his jacket flip up.

  My Glock came out an instant later, but already it was too late.

  The .357 rose in Cormorant’s hand, and he fired into the back of Theodore Vance’s head. Vance flew forward and landed hard on the cement outside.

  Chaos followed. Incomprehension. Terror. Disbelief. Almost immediately, Cormorant took some number of simultaneous shots from the agents around him. Within seconds, he was down too and the place had erupted into sheer madness.

  Hundreds of people were screaming and trying to run for the exits. Right away, the foyer drapes started to close, cutting off the scene of the shootings.

  As they did, I spotted a tight cluster of Secret Service agents, running with what I assumed was the president toward whatever nearest hard room they had set up. I wondered if she knew her husband had been shot.

  Riordan was shouting into her radio, trying to be heard over the other noise. “Shots fired! Montana is down; I repeat, Montana is down! We need an advanced life support team to the River Terrace. North side. Now!”

  Teddy Vance’s detail had formed two circles around him, one close on the ground and the other facing out, weapons drawn. Mahoney and I spread out as part of a wider perimeter.

  Already, the press corps was pushing in at the edges, frantic to get their stories, to get anything. Cops were everywhere, sirens were blaring in the street, and there was deafening shouting coming from all sides, all at once.

  It was too early for official theories, but I thought I knew what we’d just witnessed. Cormorant was a veteran agent, a patriot, at least in his own mind. He’d waited for Teddy Vance to clear the building, then fired one lethal bullet, knowing he’d take kill shots in return. It was a suicide as much as an assassination—the last act in a bloody cover-up and, in Agent Cormorant’s own way, the last piece of damage control he could offer his president.

  Chapter 113

  SHAKEN AND EXHAUSTED, I got home around four thirty that morning, maybe the last of my vampire hours for a while. If Bree wasn’t already up, I was going to wake her and tell her what had happened—

  But she wasn’t even there. Bree wasn’t anywhere in the house.

  I realized this as soon as I saw Aunt Tia’s big knitting bag on the floor by the kitchen table. Tia had come to stay with the kids, and Saint Bree had gone to cover my overnight at the hospital. Of course she had. She wouldn’t have wanted Nana to be alone any more than I did.

  I almost got back in the car, but it made more sense to spell Bree first thing in the morning and let Tia go home then. We were stretched thin as it was.

  So I went upstairs and lay on top of the covers, wide awake and buzzing with everything that had happened, not just tonight but in the past few weeks. The scope of it all was going to reverberate for months, even years, I was sure. We still didn’t know how many others like Caroline there had been, and maybe never would. Nor did we know the extent of the cover-up for Zeus, or who had been doing the covering. Theodore Vance had been a successful and very rich businessman on his own. He’d had the resources to do whatever he wished or fantasized about. Apparently that’s exactly what he had done.

  Later in the day, I’d have to call my sister-in-law, Michelle. I’d also have to decide how much of her daughter’s story I was going to tell her. Some of the details had no place in a mother’s memory. Sometimes I wonder about the place they have in mine.

  It hadn’t been half an hour since I’d gotten home, if that, when the phone rang out in the hall.

  I jumped up to catch it before a third ring. Considering the events of the past twenty-four hours, it might have been any number of people looking for me.

  “Alex Cross,” I answered in a whisper.

  And just like that, life changed again.

  “Alex, it’s Zadie Mitchell calling from the hospital. How soon can you get over here?”

  Chapter 114

  I RAN.

  I ran out to the car in the driveway.

  I ran my siren all the way to St. Anthony’s, and I ran up four flights of stairs to Nana’s room.

  When I came in, Bree was there with tears streaming down her face. And next to her, in the bed, with eyes like slits—but open—was Nana Mama.

  Regina Hope Cross, the toughest person I’ve ever known in my life, wasn’t done with us yet.

  Her voice was just a crackle, static almost, but it nearly bowled me over. “What took you so long?” she said. “I’m back.”

  “Yes, you are.” I was beaming when I knelt down to kiss her as gently as I could. She still had two IVs and the A-V line to her heart, but the vent and feeding tubes were off, and it was like seeing someone I hadn’t laid eyes on for weeks and weeks.

  “What did I miss?” she asked.

  “Nothing much. Hardly a thing. The world stopped spinning without you.”

  “Very funny,” she said, although I was kind of serious. Everything else could wait.

  Zadie and one of the cardiologists, Dr. Steig, were in the room monitoring Nana’s condition. “Regina’s going to need what we call an LVAD,” the doctor said. “A left ventricular assist device. It’s the next best thing to a transplant, and it’ll help get her home sooner rather than later.” He put a hand on Nana’s shoulder and spoke up a little. “Looking forward to anything in particular, Regina?”

  She nodded groggily. “To not being dead yet,” she said, and I laughed with everyone else.

  Her eyes fluttered closed again.

  “She’ll be in and out for at least a few days,” Steig said. “Nothing to worry about.”

  He took a few more minutes to go over the care plan with Bree and me, and then gave us some time alone in the room.

  As we sat together by the bed, Bree told me she’d seen the overnight news. All the major channels were broadcasting live from the Kennedy Center, the White House, and the Vances’ home in Philadelphia. Already, a kind of awkward mourning had begun and was spreading around the country.

  “So, is that really it?” Bree asked. “Is it over?”

  “Yeah,” I said, thinking more about Nana than about Teddy Vance. “As much as anything ever is. Zeus is dead. That much we know for sure.”

  Epilogue

  PHOENIX RISING

  Chapter 115

  THE HOLIDAY SEASON flew by this year, and I’m not kidding. Damon came home for Christmas break, and by New Year’s Eve, Nana was mobile enough to do a whole crown roast for the family, with a little help from her friends. It was a perfect way to say good-bye to the year, just the six of us—even if Ali and Nana didn’t quite make it to midnight.

  New Year’s Day started quietly too. I listened to a few chapters of Ha Jin’s A Free Life with Nana in her room, made brunch for the kids, and then asked Bree if she’d take a drive with me in the afternoon.

  “A drive in the country would be perfect,” she said. “Good idea. I’m in.”

  It was just below freezing out, but perfectly climate controlled inside the car. I put on some John Legend, pointed north, and watched the world sail by for an hour or so.

  Bree didn’t even notice where we were headed until I got off 270 in Maryland.

  “Oh, goody.”

  “Oh, goody?”

  “You heard me. Oh, goody. Goody, goody gumdrops. I love this place!”

  Catoctin Mountain Park is something of a sentimental favorite for us. It was the first place Bree and I ever went away together, and we’d gone camping there a few times since, with the kids and just the two of us. It�
�s beautiful year round—and closed on New Year’s Day, as it turned out.

  “No big deal, Alex,” Bree said. “It’s a beautiful drive here, anyway.”

  I pulled over at the big stone gate outside the main entrance and turned off the car’s engine.

  “Let’s go for our walk. What are they going to do, arrest us?”

  Chapter 116

  A FEW MINUTES later, Bree and I had the Cunningham Falls trail all to ourselves, as alone as we were going to get in the course of an afternoon. The snow was fresh; the sky was bright blue—one of nature’s perfect days.

  “Got any resolutions?” I asked her.

  “Sure,” she said. “Work too much, stop going to the gym, and eat until I’m fat. How about you?”

  “I’m going to stop recycling.”

  “Good plan.”

  “Maybe spend a little less time with the kids.”

  “Definitely that. Great idea.”

  “And I want to see if I can’t get the woman I love to marry me.”

  Bree stopped short—I would have hoped for no less. I took advantage of the moment and pulled the ring out of my pocket.

  “It was Nana’s,” I said. “She’d like you to have it too.”

  “Oh, my God.” Bree was smiling and shaking her head; I couldn’t quite read the expression. “Alex, so much has just gone down in your life. Are you sure this is the right time for you?”

  If this were some other woman, I might have thought it was code for letting me down easy. But this was Bree, and she doesn’t do code.

  “Bree, do you remember the night of my birthday?” I asked her.

  “Sure,” she said, a little confused. “When everything started. All the gunk. That’s the night you first heard about Caroline.”

  “And up until that phone call from Davies, it was supposed to be the night I asked you to marry me. So if we can’t have that back, I’d say right now is just about perfect. Will you marry me, Bree? I love you so much I can’t stand it.”

  The wind kicked up, and she reached inside my coat to put her arms around me. Then we kissed for a long time. “I love you too,” Bree whispered.

  “Then yes, Alex,” she finally said. “I do love you so much. Yes to you. Yes to your amazing family—”

  “Our amazing family,” I said, and kissed her again.

  She nodded, close in against me, shutting out the cold. “Yes to all of it.”

  Chapter 117

  WE CELEBRATED AGAIN that night, Szechuan takeout this time, and then a bottle of champagne with Sampson and Billie over at the house to hear the big news. No one could have been more excited than I was, but Sampson and Billie came pretty close. I didn’t hear a single crack about how crazy Bree was for marrying me.

  Much later, we were lying in bed—just Bree and me, that is—and already talking about a summer wedding, when my cell phone rang in the nightstand.

  “No, no, no.” I pulled a pillow over my head. “This is my New Year’s resolution. No more phones. Maybe ever.”

  We were both due back at work the next morning—but that wasn’t for another eight hours.

  “Sweetie”—Bree climbed over me to take the phone out of the drawer—“I’m marrying a cop. Cops answer their calls. Get over it.” She handed it to me with another kiss and rolled off again.

  “Alex Cross,” I said.

  “I wanted to be among the first to congratulate you, Alex. You and Bree. What a happy ending this is.”

  I sat up. The voice wasn’t just familiar. It was a stone-cold live nightmare.

  Most of the world knew Kyle Craig as the Mastermind. I knew him as an old friend who was now my worst enemy.

  “Kyle, why are you really calling me?”

  “I’m bored, Alex. Nobody plays with me the way you do. Nobody knows me like you do. Might be a good time for some more fun. Just the two of us.”

  “I don’t think we define that word in the same way,” I said.

  He laughed softly. “I’m sure you’re right. Besides, even I can see you need a little break after Zeus. Consider it my wedding present to you. Just don’t get too comfortable, my friend. Nothing lasts forever. But then, you already knew that, didn’t you? All my best wishes to Bree, to Nana, and of course the kids. And Alex—here’s to fun.”

  Alex Cross gets married—and Kyle Craig is back.

  For an excerpt from the next Alex Cross novel,

  turn the page.

  THE LEAD STORY in my life these days was Bree—Brianna Stone, known as the Rock at Metro Police. And, yes, she was all of that—solid, profound, lovely. She’d become a part of my life to the point where I couldn’t imagine it without her anymore. Things hadn’t been this sane and balanced for me in years.

  Of course, it didn’t hurt that Homicide at Metro was so quiet lately. As a cop, you can’t help but wonder when that next ton of bricks is going to fall, but in the meantime, Bree and I had an unheard-of two-hour lunch that Thursday afternoon. Usually the only way we see each other during the day is if we’re working the same murder case.

  We sat in the back at Ben’s Chili Bowl, under all the signed celeb photos. Ben’s isn’t exactly the world capital of romance, but it is an institution in Washington. The half-smokes alone are worth the trip.

  “So you know what they’re calling us around the office these days?” Bree said, halfway through a coffee milk shake. “Breelex.”

  “Breelex? Like Brad and Angelina? That’s awful.”

  She laughed; she couldn’t even keep a straight face at that. “I’m telling you, cops have no imagination.”

  “Hmm.” I put a hand lightly on her leg under the table. “With exceptions, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Any more than that would have to wait, and not just because the bathrooms at Ben’s Chili Bowl were definitely not an option. We did in fact have somewhere important we had to be that day.

  After lunch, we strolled hand in hand up U Street to Sharita Williams’s jewelry store. Sharita was an old friend from high school, and she also happened to do outstanding work on antique pieces.

  A dozen tiny bells tinkled over our heads as we breezed in the door.

  “Well, don’t you two look in love.” Sharita smiled from behind the counter.

  “That’s ’cause we are, Sharita,” I said. “And I highly recommend it.”

  “Just find me a good man, Alex. I’m in.”

  She knew why we were there, and she removed a small black velvet box from under the case. “It came out beautifully,” she said. “I love this piece.”

  The ring used to belong to my grandmother, Nana Mama, she of the impossibly small hands. We’d had it resized for Bree. It was a platinum deco setting with three diamonds across, which struck me as perfect—one for each of the kids. Maybe it’s corny, but it was like that ring represented everything Bree and I were committing to. This was a package deal after all, and I felt like the luckiest man in the world.

  “Comfortable?” Sharita asked when Bree slipped it on. Neither one could take her eyes off the ring, and I couldn’t take my eyes off Bree.

  “Yeah, it’s comfortable,” she said, squeezing my hand. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  I PUT IN A late-afternoon appearance at the Daly Building. This was as good a time as any to catch up on the flood of paperwork that never seemed to stop flowing across my desk.

  But when I got to the Major Case Squad room, Chief Perkins was just coming out into the hall with somebody I didn’t recognize.

  “Alex,” he said. “Good. You’ll save me another trip. Walk with us?”

  Something was obviously up, and it wasn’t good. When the chief wants a meeting, you go to him, not the other way around. I did a one-eighty, and we headed back over to the elevators.

  “Alex, meet Jim Heekin. Jim’s the new AD at the Directorate of Intelligence over at the Bureau.”

  We shook hands. Heekin said, “I’ve heard a lot about you, Detective Cross. The FBI’s loss
was MPD’s gain when you came back over here.”

  “Uh-oh,” I said. “Flattery’s never a good sign.”

  We all laughed, but it was also true. A lot of new managers at the Bureau like to shake things up when they start, just to let people know they’re there. The question was, what did Heekin’s new job have to do with me?

  Once we were settled in Perkins’s big office, Heekin got a lot more specific.

  “Can I assume you’re familiar with our FIGs?” he asked me.

  “Field Intelligence Groups,” I said. “I’ve never worked with them directly, but sure.” The FIGs had been created to develop and share intelligence “products” with the law enforcement communities in their respective jurisdictions. On paper, it seemed like a good idea, but some critics saw it as part of the Bureau’s general passing of the buck on domestic criminal investigation after 9/11.

  Heekin went on, “As you probably know, the DC group interfaces with all police departments in our area, including MPD. Also NSA, ATF, Secret Service—you name it. We’ve got monthly conference calls and then face time on an as-needed basis, depending on where the action is.”

  It was starting to seem like a sales pitch, and I already felt pretty sure I knew what he was selling.

  “Generally, police chiefs represent their departments with the FIGs,” he continued with his steady, well-paced speech, “but we’d like you to take over that position for MPD.”

  I looked at Perkins, and he shrugged. “What can I say, Alex? I’m just too damn busy.”

  “Don’t let him fool you,” Heekin said. “I spoke with the chief here, and with Director Burns at the Bureau before that. Your name was the only one that came up in either meeting.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “That’s very nice, but I’m good where I am.”