Cross the Line (Alex Cross #24)(83)

Hobbes and Fender eluded the Coast Guard and escaped with a canister of VX, which had the country in a heightened state of alert. The men’s photographs were everywhere, and Ned Mahoney, who’d come through surgery with flying colors, was saying it was only a matter of time before they were located and captured.

George Potter, the DEA SAC, was now believed to be the source of the Regulators’ intelligence regarding the criminal supercartel targeted in the massacres.

The U.S. Naval Academy had taken two black eyes. Colonel Whitaker and U.S. Navy captain Cassandra “Cass” Pope were both graduates of Annapolis and on the faculty. Whitaker and Pope left vitriolic letters on their work computers declaring that slavers were destroying the country and that it was time for the slaves to arm themselves, rise up, and fight.

I shuddered to think what might have happened to Washington and to my family if they had managed to release a gallon of VX in the nation’s capital. But the important thing was that the Regulators or the vigilantes or whatever you wanted to call them were no longer operating. The road-rage killer was gone too. And no one had died from—

Someone started pounding on our front door.

Then she started to yell.





CHAPTER


105


“ALEX?” A WOMAN cried as she rang the doorbell. “Nana Mama? You in there?”

I got up and almost went for my gun before looking through the window and seeing Chung Sun Chung. She was in her down coat, despite the heat, and she was ringing our bell and knocking like someone playing a one-note xylophone and a bongo drum.

I limped down the hall and opened the door, expecting to find a traumatized woman or a woman in peril. Instead, Sun threw her head back and let loose with a real crazy cackle of a laugh.

“Sun, what’s wrong?”

“Wrong?” She chortled and then came to me and started beating her little fists lightly against my chest. “Nothing’s wrong.”

Sun stopped hitting me and cackled again. “Everything’s right. Where is your Nana Mama?”

“I’m right here, Sun,” my grandmother said, appearing in the hallway with the rest of the family. “God’s sake, the way you’re carrying on, you’d think I’d—”

There was a frozen moment when everyone was quiet. And then Sun howled, threw her arms over her head, and did a little jig.

“You didn’t see the drawing?” the convenience-store owner cried, pushing by me. “You won! You won the Powerball!”

My grandmother looked at Sun as if she had two heads. “I did not.”

“You did so!” Sun said, dancing toward her. “I’ve been selling you the same numbers for nine years. Seven, twelve, nine, six, one, eleven, and three in the Powerball. I saw the draw!”

Nana Mama scowled. “See there? You’re wrong, Sun. I always put a two in the Powerball, so I won something, but—”

“No, Nana,” I said, dumbstruck. “I changed half your tickets, added one to your last Powerball number. I asked Sun to put a three there.”

“Exactly!” Sun cried and started jigging again.

“Oh my God!” Jannie yelled.

My grandmother looked about ready to keel over. Bree saw it and came up to hold her steady.

“Well, I never,” Nana said, looking at all of us in total wonder and then at Sun again. “You’re sure?”

“I ran six blocks in a down coat in this heat,” Sun said. “I’m sure.”

“How much did I win?”

Sun told her. Jannie and Ali started whooping.

Nana Mama stood there a long moment, shaking her head, mouth slack with disbelief, and then she threw her chin sky-ward and cackled with joy.





“ALEX CROSS, I’m coming for you – even from the grave if I have to.”





Read on for an extract





A LATE WINTER storm bore down on Washington, DC, that March morning, and more folks than usual were waiting in the cafeteria of St. Anthony of Padua Catholic School on Monroe Avenue in the northeast quadrant.

“If you need a jolt before you eat, coffee’s in those urns over there,” I called to the cafeteria line.

From behind a serving counter, my partner, John Sampson, said, “You want pancakes or eggs and sausage, you come see me first. Dry cereal, oatmeal, and toast at the end. Fruit, too.”

It was early, a quarter to seven, and we’d already seen twenty-five people come through the kitchen, mostly moms and kids from the surrounding neighborhood. By my count, another forty were waiting in the hallway, with more coming in from outside where the first flakes were falling.

It was all my ninety-something grandmother’s idea. She’d hit the DC Lottery Powerball the year before, and wanted to make sure the unfortunate received some of her good fortune. She’d partnered with the church to see the hot-breakfast program started.

“Are there any doughnuts?” asked a little boy, who put me in mind of my younger son, Ali.

He was holding on to his mother, a devastatingly thin woman with rheumy eyes and a habit of scratching at her neck.

“No doughnuts today,” I said.

“What am I gonna eat?” he complained.

“Something that’s good for you for once,” his mom said. “Eggs, bacon, and toast. Not all that Cocoa Puffs sugar crap.”