Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(46)

“On foot?”

“Correcto-mundo,” she said. She made her fingers into a pistol and set it to her head. “Peg here was not too bright. But to this day I don’t know why I noticed this, like, weird smooth black rock in the weeds near the building. I picked the rock up. It was maybe five inches long, thick, and kind of cylinder-shaped in the middle, too big to go in my pocket, but I thought my little brother would like it, so I decided to carry it home.”

A block and a half from the rave, as she was going by another factory, she was attacked from behind.

“He was quiet, never heard him. He came up behind me and got his arm around my neck,” she said. “Next thing I knew he was dragging me into an alley, and I could feel he was big because he kept lifting me off my feet, and I’m not exactly a lightweight.” She cackled again. “But anyway, I could feel this crazy kind of dark energy coming off the dude and I’m thinking, Peg, you have one chance to live here. Make it count.”

Halfway down the alley, her assailant slowed, brought out a strip of duct tape with his free hand, and covered her mouth with it. She whined, stiffened, and then intentionally went limp, as if she’d lost consciousness.

He relaxed his hold and she sagged to the ground and went over onto her side.

“I was looking up at him sideways then, my eyes barely open,” she said. “And the light in the alley was weird, but I believe he wore a ski mask and had a big zip tie in his mouth. I swear, he had the darkest, deadest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

“And then?” Sampson said.

“I waited until he crouched over me and reached for my arm, then I swung that rock sticking out the bottom of my fist like it was my daddy’s ball-peen hammer. I can’t tell you where I hit him, only that I did. Hard. I mean, that sucker went back on his heels, tripped, and sprawled on the ground, and this gal was up and moving.” Dixon said she ran screaming down the alley, got to a road, and ran the full fourteen blocks home. Scared, wired, she called the attack in and a police officer came and took her report.

“He was more concerned about the drugs I’d been on.”

Sampson said, “Anything you might have remembered about him later? I mean, after you made that report?”

She thought about that. “You know, yes. I had terrible nightmares after the attack. For almost a year. And really the only thing that kept coming up in those nightmares was his smell.”

“What did he smell like?”

“Like this men’s cologne I’d smelled before. And I didn’t know what it was until just a few weeks ago when I smelled it in a bar and almost had this, like, freak-out, but I kept cool enough to ask the guy wearing it what it was.”

“What’d he say?”

“Versace Eros for Men,” she said and cackled. “Isn’t that, like, ironic and dark in a twisted kind of way? A rapist and killer who wants to smell like Versace Eros?”





CHAPTER 51





TWO HOURS LATER, BREE STONE stared at a spot a few inches over the police commissioner’s head as Dennison ranted.

“Your goddamn husband told the vice president of the United States that I leaked Kay Willingham’s stay in a loony bin?”

Bree lowered her gaze and glared at Dennison, who was behind his desk in his office with Chief Michaels to one side. “Are you denying it, Commissioner?”

“Denying it? Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I am goddamn Alex Cross’s wife,” Bree shot back. “And his confidante and his colleague. You took information that you were warned was sensitive and you decided to give it to that reporter for your own reasons. Whatever the hell they were.”

Dennison looked ready to blow his stack. “Well, then, I guess you have to decide whether your allegiance is to Alex Cross or Metro PD.”

“You’re making this too easy, Commissioner,” she said. She took out her badge and slammed it on his desk, then followed it with her weapon. “I don’t know what your angle is or what you are trying to be, but I am no longer part of it. I have better ways to spend my life, and I intend to pursue them.”

She turned to Chief Michaels. “It’s been an honor to serve with you, sir, but some things just aren’t worth it. I’ll have my letter of resignation on your desk and my office cleaned out by tomorrow noon.”

“You can’t just walk out!” Dennison shouted.

“Watch me,” Bree said, heading for the door.

“Chief Stone, stop, and that is a direct order!”

“What is it about the term letter of resignation that you don’t understand, you self-serving ass?” she said, opening the office door. “I don’t work for you anymore.”

Bree slammed the door behind her because it made her feel good. So did making a face at Dennison’s personal assistant and heading for the elevator without the weight of her job and whether she was good enough at it hanging around her neck. She’d quit barely a minute before and already the stress of it was gone.

I can do anything, she thought giddily. Anything I want!

Bree returned to her office thinking about travel and exotic beach vacations and graduate school. But seeing the mementos of a long career in law enforcement all around her dampened her enthusiasm.

Part of her wanted to take it all right then and there and clear out. But she didn’t have her car with her, and she wanted to have boxes and packing material to do it right.