Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(23)

We put the phone between us as we struggled into our clothes, listening to Sampson tell us that Billie had actually been feeling stronger the day before. She’d walked two miles in the morning and done some yoga in the late afternoon.

“We got up at five this morning, just like she wanted, and she didn’t complain about anything. She took her pills, and we went out for our walk,” Sampson said. “We were about a mile out, ready to turn around, and she’d been saying how grateful she was that she’d been given a second chance at … life. And I was holding her hand, thinking that we’d finally gotten beyond the Lyme disease, when she said she felt dizzy. I held her up. She looked at me, kind of scared, and she said she loved me and Willow, and Andrew and Kari, and the whole Cross family, and then she just collapsed in my arms.”

He kept crying. “She knew, and all she wanted was to give us love before she left us.”

Bree and I both had tears streaming down our faces as he described calling 911 and starting CPR on Billie. There was a fire station not far from where they were. The ambulance and EMTs were with her in minutes.

“They worked on her, and she opened her eyes, but they wouldn’t focus,” he said.

Billie made it to the ER but coded almost immediately.

“Her heart just gave out,” he said again. “The Lyme disease did too much damage. The docs at the ER said there was nothing they could do.”

Sampson sobbed harder. “How do I do this, Alex?”

“With help,” I said, tying my shoes. “I will be there in fifteen minutes.”





CHAPTER 25





AS I DROVE TO Prince George’s Hospital, I had to fight off waves of grief that crashed over me. Billie Houston had been John Sampson’s salvation, the one who set him free, the one who unlocked his heart.

John and I had been friends since the fifth grade. He was the first kid I met on the playground after Nana Mama brought me and my brothers north after my mother died.

Within weeks John was closer to me than my own brothers. We just seemed to understand and support each other reflexively.

But even after we’d known each other for almost three decades, there had been a big part of himself he kept closed off. He’d had a few girlfriends over the years, but the relationships had always ended badly.

He’d declared himself a confirmed bachelor shortly before we started investigating the deaths of several men who’d fought in Vietnam. One of them was the late husband of Billie Houston.

Before Sampson met Billie Houston, there was Sampson the stoic, Sampson the warrior, Sampson the best friend and partner. But with Billie, it was like John grew in new dimensions, became a whole man, and he was the better for it, happy, confident, and hopelessly in love. I adored Billie for the changes I saw in him.

Which is why I had to keep wiping at my tears on the way to the hospital. If there’d ever been a fine and selfless person on this earth, it was Billie Houston Sampson. She’d been a U.S. Army nurse, then an ER trauma nurse. She’d been part of a helicopter medevac team, too, responding again and again to crises.

It did not seem right for her to die like this. It did not seem right at all.

I pulled into the hospital parking lot, and as I headed toward the ER, I kept thinking, How do I comfort him? How do I give him the right support?

A nurse, Juan Castro, waited for me outside the trauma room. He had tears in his eyes. “Billie took shifts here all the time. We loved her too, Dr. Cross, but we’ve got two gunshots on the way in. John has to leave her now, and I can’t bear to tell him.”

“I’ll do it, Juan,” I said. “And thanks for your kindness.”

I went in and found Sampson sitting by the side of the bed, holding Billie’s lifeless hand, his head bowed, crushed by the weight of his loss.

“John,” I said.

He slowly raised his head, then turned to look at me. I saw ruin in his bloodshot eyes and knew his heart was shattered. I went over, put my arm on his shoulder, and looked at Billie’s body. “You have to let her go for now, John. There are gunshot victims on the way, and they need the room.”

Sampson sniffed hard and nodded. He rubbed her hand, so tiny in his big paw, then kissed the back of it and laid it over her heart. He got up, nodded to Billie, and let me put my hand under his elbow when he faltered as he walked toward the door.

Castro and two other nurses were standing outside.

“We’ll take care of her, John,” Castro said.

“Thank you, Juan, thanks to all of you,” Sampson said, and he didn’t look back as we walked away. “I need to be with Willow now. And call Andrew and Kari.”

“I’ll take you straight home,” I said.

Outside, leaden clouds hung low above us, and it was already hotter than it should have been. Sampson kept it together until we reached my car. Then he collapsed over the roof and sobbed while I kept a hand on his back to let him know I was there.

Sampson stayed quiet for the first part of the drive. Finally he said, “I keep seeing her. You know, like, when I saw her the first time?”

“Tell me again,” I said.

“I drove out to the Jersey shore on the Ellis Cooper case,”

he said. “Just wanted to talk to her about her late husband. It was two years after he’d been executed for a crime she said he didn’t commit, and she was house-sitting this big place on the beach.”