The People vs. Alex Cross (Alex Cross #25)(38)

“I know,” I said, but there was little conviction in it.

Nana Mama motioned me into her arms. It was still a miracle to me how such a tiny old woman could radiate so much positive energy.

“Don’t let them get you down,” she said, rubbing my back. “When they hear your side of what happened, old Lester Dolt and Chuck Fraud will be singing a different song.”

I laughed and looked down at her. “Lester Dolt and Chuck Fraud?”

“That’s what I call him and the political reporter guy.”

“But Lester Holt is not a dolt.”

“And Chuck Todd’s not a fraud,” Nana Mama said. “But calling them that when all the news is depressing gives me a reason to smile.”

I gazed into my grandmother’s eyes and saw both confidence and fear.

“You are one complicated old lady,” I said, touching her cheek.

“I should hope so,” she said, pulling away. “Dinner in fifteen minutes?”

“What’s cooking?”

“Chicken roasted in Nana’s special herb rub. Go on, wash up. Bree texted she’ll be home any minute.”

I was about to head up the stairs when Bree came through the front door. There was strain everywhere about her, and she dropped her gaze and hesitated before coming into my arms.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Bree said. “It must have been awful.”

“Sobering,” I said. “Thirty-one times. I had no idea.”

Bree lifted her head to look me in the eyes with cold curiosity. “And the nine dead and the eight wounded?”

“I remember each and every one of them,” I said. “You can’t forget things like that. Ever. Even when they were righteous shoots.”

She studied me, her eyes welling with tears, then hugged me tight.

“Jesus,” she said hoarsely. “They want to tear you apart.”

“They better pull hard,” I said, and I kissed her head.





CHAPTER


50


GRETCHEN LINDEL LAY curled up on her filthy mattress, scratching her head, staring at the plywood walls that imprisoned her, and wondering if her torture would ever end.

Coated in grime, her nightgown in tatters, Gretchen reeked, and her feet were cut and swollen. Her hair was tangled with burrs, leaves, and twigs. She couldn’t pick them out, no matter how hard she tried, and she hadn’t tried in days, at least since the last time they’d come for her.

How long had that been? Five days ago? Six?

She couldn’t tell, and in the end it didn’t matter.

I’m here until I’m not, Gretchen thought. It’s like I’m not even me already.

How bad can the last step be?

The big man in black, the one wearing the tinted paintball visor and carrying the knife, had come for her four times since her kidnapping. Each time it had been dusk when he’d untied her blindfold and she’d found herself in the woods.

There were two or three others there, all dressed similarly, all laughing at her when the big one said, “Run, now. Give yourself a chance, and give the boys a show.”

Gretchen played competitive volleyball, and she ran hard the first time, took off, not caring about the stones and sticks that jabbed her bare feet. She’d gotten ahead of them and thought she’d lost them.

Before it turned dark.

Then they were all suddenly around her, yelling in the woods, taunting and calling, “Where are you, blondie? Where are you, uptown girl?”

They had to have been wearing night-vision goggles or something like that, because they’d caught her every time, and every time they’d taken her right to the point where she believed with every cell that they were going to kill her, slit her throat and watch her bleed out, all on-camera, all to their delight.

The first three times they’d hunted her, Gretchen had survived by focusing on her friends and her parents and on how desperately she wanted to see them all again, especially her dad. She shared a special relationship with him, a real friendship as well as respect and love.

It would kill him, she’d thought when she’d wanted to give up and ask them to end it. It would kill him, and I can’t do that to him. To either of them.

The fourth time they’d hunted Gretchen, the last time they’d hunted her, had been different. They’d barely let her run before catching her. They’d dragged her to a building in the woods. The big one had torn off her panties while the others held her down. They’d—

She’d gone to a far-off place in her mind then, where there was no hurt, no feelings at all, as if she’d already found death. That feeling of passing, of being already gone from her body, had stayed with her even after they were done, even after they’d thrown her back in her plywood box, even after days without eating.

Someone threw the door’s dead bolts.

Gretchen cringed and tried to keep staring at the plywood wall.

“You don’t eat, you don’t deserve to play the game,” the strange electronic voice said. “You don’t eat, drink, keep your strength up, you don’t deserve to live.”

“I don’t want to live like this.”

“We kind of thought that.”

She looked at the big guy in black wearing the GoPro camera and the paintball visor and saw something that cut through her feelings of nothingness, made her retreat.