Kill Alex Cross

“Just like our van driver, Mr. Pinkney,” I said.

“Our first van driver,” Lindley said. “It seems now that maybe there were two.”

I started flipping through the file. Watkins had a mile-long record of misdemeanors and a few felonies, including some jail time for armed robbery when he was sixteen. He’d also done a couple of court-ordered stints in rehab.

“The girlfriend says Watkins was instructed to pick up a vehicle on the morning of the kidnapping, then back it up to the groundskeeping shed at Branaff and wait for some kind of package to be delivered. After that, she says, he drove it out to Reagan National, long-term parking, and walked away. The back of the van was locked from both sides, and he never got a look at what he was transporting.”

“Or who put this ‘package’ into the van,” I said.

“That’s right.”

“Smart. Jesus.”

It was starting to add up … to how Rodney Glass could have gotten Ethan and Zoe off campus and still be around for the aftermath. Then all he’d have to do was drive out to the airport, maybe stop to sedate the kids again, and continue on to wherever he wanted to take them. If anything had gone wrong in the meantime, Glass had a fire wall of anonymity for himself. Pinkney and Watkins couldn’t finger him if they wanted to. They had no idea who he was. None at all.

“Where’s Watkins now?” I asked.

I saw a few smirks around the table. “That’s what the girlfriend wants to know,” one of the case agents told me.

“Apparently, Watkins skipped town two nights ago — along with this woman’s younger sister. Sounds like she ran out of reasons for protecting him. She came in with a lawyer this morning and struck up a pretty quick deal.”

“We’ve got his name out on WALES, and every field office in the country’s looking for him,” Lindley said. “But quite honestly, Deshawn Watkins is not our number one concern right now.”

I looked up from the file. Lindley was just picking up a steel briefcase from the floor.

He set it down in front of him with his hands on the double combination lock. Then he nodded to the half-dozen other staff around the table.

“Excuse me, everyone. Could we have the room, please?”

AS SOON AS we were alone, Lindley opened the case. The Toughbook inside powered up automatically, and he entered a long string of characters to access whatever it was he wanted to show me in private.

“What you’re about to see is a video that came into the Richmond field office this morning. A copy, anyway. The drive it came on is at the lab, but the First Lady asked personally for you to see this.”

That might have explained why I was the only non-FBI personnel here. Mrs. Coyle trusted me, for better or worse. So far, I felt like I was letting her down.

Lindley turned the case around so the screen was facing me, then hit the space bar to start the video.

At first, it didn’t look like anything was happening. Then I noticed some kind of vague movement, like someone was carrying a camera through a dark room.

My pulse ticked up a notch, anticipating what I was about to see.

A light of some kind came on, wobbly, like a handheld flashlight.

I saw the folds of a dark blue blanket. The camera kept moving, and a hand came into the frame.

Then Zoe’s face.

She seemed to be sleeping. Probably under heavy sedation, I thought, given what Molly Johnson had told me. The shot was too close up to show Zoe’s surroundings — but could this be the basement Molly had described? The one that smelled like dirt? Where the hell was it?

“The date stamp on the video file is for two days ago,” Lindley said. “Not that you can’t fake something like that, but it’s the best sign we’ve had so far that they’re alive.”

In fact it was the only sign we’d had, but I didn’t say anything.

The camera stayed on Zoe for another ten seconds or so. Then there was a blur of movement, and Ethan was there. His face was just as filthy as Zoe’s, and just as gaunt. At least there was no blood or scars, nothing to suggest they’d been beaten.

“The son of a bitch is starving them,” I said. My eyes welled up. I couldn’t help it.

Finally, I had to look away from the video.

Lindley cleared his throat. “There’s twenty-three seconds in all,” he said. “And then … this.”

The screen went dark. This time, it looked like the camera had been turned off.

When it came on again, we were looking at a plain white piece of paper with something printed there, in a small, plain font.

As the image slowly zoomed in, the words on the page became clear.

“Believe what you want, Mr. President.”