Kill Alex Cross

“— kicking my ass, and I don’t need to tell you —”

“Ned,” I said. “It’s me.”

“Alex?”

“Sorry about this.”

“Jesus, you’re killing me here.”

“Then it’s mutual,” I said. “Just tell me I’m in the dark on the Coyle case for a good reason. I’ll trust your word. But I’m lost here, and there are plenty of other places I could be today.”

“Yeah, like someone else’s house,” he said.

“Ned, Washington is in the middle of an emergency. My kids are home from school. It’s scary as hell. They got to the water supply. Maybe to the president’s kids.”

At first he didn’t answer. Then it was just “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Not exactly what I was looking for,” I said. “I need you to tell me something, Ned.”

“Alex, what do you want me to say? They’re compartmentalizing the shit out of this thing,” he said. “I doubt I’ve got much more intel than you do at this point.”

Ned and I have known each other a long time. We’ve been through some impossible situations, and done some off-the-record favors for each other, too. So it was strange, and kind of hurtful, trying to gain his trust now. I told him as much.

There was a pause. I heard Ned take a deep breath on the other end. This whole thing was making me feel bad. Talking to him this way. Coming out to his house. Using Amy.

“Listen, I’ve got to go,” he said. “I have a conference call waiting.”

“Ned!”

“Just hang in there.”

“Don’t hang up!” I said, but he already had. If it had been my own phone in my hand, it probably would have gone sailing.

When I turned around, Amy was staring, looking like she might start to cry. “You looked like you wanted to reach right through the phone and strangle him,” she said.

“No,” I said. “Don’t mind me. I just …” Why was I ready to punch a hole in my friend’s wall? What was it that I wanted to do here?

“I just want those kids to be found,” I said. “That’s all I care about, Amy.”

HE WAS DEFINITELY going to write a big, fat book on this someday, when it was all far, far behind him. And not the way everyone and his brother-in-law says they’re going to write a book “someday.” He was really going to do it.

Record.

“It wasn’t that Zoe and Ethan did anything wrong, themselves. They just happened to be born into the wrong family, at the wrong time. None of this was their fault, any more than it’s your fault, or mine. Maybe it goes without saying, but someone has to play the sacrificial lamb. History tells us that much. Every tragedy has repercussions.”

Stop.

That actually sounded half-decent to him. Important. Had a ring of truth. He was getting the hang of this now. Maybe there was even a title in there. Sacrificial Lambs? Possibly, although he still kind of liked Suffer the Little Children, as in, “those who come unto me.”

But that wasn’t a decision he had to make today. The book wasn’t even written yet. Hell, the story wasn’t even told yet, wasn’t finished. There was still plenty of time for the peripheral details to work themselves out. So far, he had the beginning — and he had the end.

Record.

“The juice boxes come in a three-pack for a dollar ninety-nine at the Safeway, two blocks from my house. The Rohypnol’s a little harder to come by, of course, but not impossible if you know where to look. Two milligrams every twelve hours seems to do the trick beautifully. They’re so out of it, I’m not even sure they know what’s going on.”

Stop.

Maybe nobody would care about the Safeway part, but whatever. Tape was cheap as dirt. He’d just keep throwing everything down and sift through it later. The blank cassettes could live in the glove compartment of his vehicle. The used ones, he kept where no one would ever find them. Just like Ethan and Zoe.

Meanwhile, the light was getting long outside. He needed to start moving — if he wanted to be back to the car by dark, which he definitely did.

From the seat next to him, he pocketed two of the juice boxes, the ones with Scotch tape covering the tiny hole the syringe had left. The third box he’d drink on the way. It was an hour through the woods, and an hour back to his house, if he kept up a good strong pace, which he would. He was in excellent physical shape.

He got out and took the recurve bow from the trunk, along with a leather quiver of arrows. Deer season was still six weeks off, but rabbits and squirrels were always fair game. More than that, the hunting thing was a good excuse for being all the way out here in the first place. Not that anyone came around these woods much, but it didn’t cost anything extra to be careful.