Deadly Cross (Alex Cross #28)(93)

“Not once,” she said through the wires that held her jaw shut.

We all thought that was a beautiful place to start.

Peters had lured Dee out of her house after he’d seen her on the street earlier in the day and told her he might have found evidence on the Maya Parker case that he wanted to show her. Dee said she felt comfortable doing it because she’d been around the man for years and he’d always been the same nice, homely guy.

The Christopher twins were lured into his van after the nighttime canvass with a promise of a quick ride home. Like Dee, they had known Peters for years. When the bodega owner got the girls inside the van, he’d sprayed them in the face with a chemical that knocked them cold.

Elaine Paulson was released the morning after we found her daughters. She and Gina Nathaniel were still thanking us for not giving up on their girls. And Analisa Hernandez had written me a touching note from Guatemala saying that through our work and in her heart, she was finally at peace with her daughter’s death.

All of which made me feel pretty great as we climbed that trail in the Shenandoah. Still, I couldn’t help feeling a little sadness for Kay and Randall Christopher. Not to mention all of the young women from Southeast.

Sampson got to the top of the trail first. The big man stepped out of the forest and onto the cliff; the national park was spread out below us on a bluebird day. Some of the swamp maples were already showing color.

“Beautiful,” Sampson said. “Where are they going to do this?”

I pointed at the cliff edge. “Get on your belly.”

The three of us got down and shimmied forward until we could see sixty feet to the bottom, where climbing instructor Tom Mury adjusted Willow’s harness and then showed her how to rig the rope through her climbing jumar.

“Are you sure about this, Alex?” Sampson said. “I can’t see Billie being happy about her little girl climbing a six-story cliff. Can’t say I am either.”

“The first time I watched Ali and Jannie do it, I almost threw up,” I said. “But with the harnesses, you are safe. I mean, I got up this thing. Once.”

“Don’t count on seeing me doing it ever,” Sampson said. “Someone built like a Clydesdale has no business climbing a cliff.”

“I’m glad there was a trail up because I have no interest in it either, John,” Bree said. “Oh, here she goes.”

“On rope,” Willow said, sounding uncertain.

“Say it like you mean it!” Mury said.

“On rope!” Willow shouted.

Her first three moves up the rock face, however, were tentative and stiff. Mury called up to her from below, “Relax, Willow, I’ve got you on the belay rope, so it’s impossible to fall. Just relax and climb it as if you were the itsy-bitsy spider.”

Willow laughed and from there Sampson’s daughter moved more freely, gaining confidence with every hand-and foothold. We started cheering when she was ten feet below us. Her helmet and then her head and chest reached the lip of the cliff. John reached over and hauled her up by the harness and into his arms.

“I did it!” she said. “I did it, Dad!”

“You sure did,” Sampson said, grinning and kissing her cheek. “You sure did.”

Ali came next, followed by Jannie and then Mury, who basically sprint-climbed the cliff. We took pictures of everyone up there in a group with the lower flanks of the Blue Ridge Mountains behind us.

“It’s so pretty,” I heard Willow say to Sampson. “Mom would have loved it here.”

Sampson squeezed her hand and looked off into the distance. “You’re right. This was your mom’s kind of place, the kind of place to feel heart coherence.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

John put his big hand on her chest and her small hand on his. “Breathe deep and slow and look out at the forest.”

They did that for several minutes. “Feel that?” Sampson said finally.

Willow grinned. “I do.”

“That’s heart coherence. What we share.”

After the kids had had a snack and a drink, they prepared to go back down.

Ali rappelled first, yelling, “Screamer!” He descended the face in seven big leaps. Jannie did it in ten.

“Ready, Willow?” Sampson asked as Mury double-checked her rappelling rig.

Willow didn’t say anything, but her lower lip trembled when Mury patted her on the shoulder and told her she was ready for liftoff.

“Scared?” Sampson said.

Willow shrugged and then looked at her father with teary eyes. “I just wish Mom could be here. To see me do this.”

John got down on his knees next to her. He put one hand on his daughter’s chest and the other on his own. “Willow, I promise you that your mom is here because she would not miss it. She’s in your heart and in mine. She’ll always be here, giving us strength and love and heart. You feel her?”

Willow smiled through her tears and nodded. She held tight to her rappelling rack and backed up to the cliff edge.

“Okay, Mom,” she said. “Here we go!”

Willow grinned at us, kicked off the edge, and dropped away, screaming happily.





Have you read them all?


ALONG CAME A SPIDER


Alex Cross is working on the high-profile disappearance of two rich kids. But is he facing someone much more dangerous than a callous kidnapper?