Criss Cross (Alex Cross #27)(81)

Mahoney and Sampson climbed. Bree and I descended.

“Ali!” we shouted. “Ali Cross, can you hear us?”

We opened doors and went into every level of the maze, calling and looking in the kitchen, the armory, the security hub, the battery operation, and the water-filtration room. The workshop, where the head was found, was still sealed tight off the main staircase. I broke the seal and we went inside.

The first thing I noticed was that the heavy steel door at the opposite end of the space was on the floor in the hallway beyond. That door had been locked and sealed. The rest of the workshop looked much as I remembered it except there weren’t any bloody tools or equipment; the FBI had seized those as evidence.

Then I noticed an empty plastic water jug by one of the lockers and empty tins of food strewn in the corners.

“Smell that?” Bree said.

I did, faintly. “Human waste.”

It didn’t take long to locate the smells. The floor drain stank of stale urine, and in a closed locker, we found zip-lock bags filled with feces and used toilet paper.

Mahoney and Sampson came in. “Anything?”

“He played me again,” I said, shaking my head in helpless anger.

“Someone was confined in here,” Bree said.

“I have a forensics team on its way from Quantico,” Mahoney said. “Let’s back out, let them do their jobs, figure out for sure if it was Ali being held here.”

“I know he was,” I said, and I gestured at dust by one of the lockers, where a single finger had doodled a design. “Ali draws those in his notebooks all the time.”

Bree nodded, said, “And there are small footprints over by that door.”

I went over and saw multiple shoe prints on top of each other, including several that looked Ali’s size. I shone a light into the hall and spotted an acetylene blowtorch and tank by the ladder and a discarded hacksaw blade.

Bree said, “M must have come down this interior ladder and blowtorched and cut his way in. With the seal and lock still on the main staircase door, he’d know no one was coming in here. Perfect place to keep a kidnap victim.”

That made me furious.

“Ali!” I shouted up the ladder. “Ali, can you hear me?”

“Alex?” Mahoney said. “He’s not here anymore. We need to back out. Be sure.”

“I’m staying,” I said.

“No, you’re not,” Bree said. “You’re coming home with me. I need you. So do Nana and Jannie. We’ll go back to talk to M in the morning.”

I stared at her, feeling overwhelmed at the idea that Ali had been right here sometime in the past few days, and now he was gone again.

But I nodded and left the workshop, unable to fight off the thought that I might never see my little boy again. My eyes welled up with emotion when I thanked Dwight Rivers for his help.

“You’ll find him,” Rivers said. “And I figured out how they were getting in and out. Someone’s been using the roof winch. The cable line’s hanging on the side.”

“We left that,” Sampson said.

“What?”

“It’s a long story, sir, and it’s late,” I said, and I set off toward the helicopter.

Bree came alongside me and took my hand. My mind kept up a flashing slideshow of Ali moments: His birth. The first time he walked. The first time he talked.

Riding a bike. Playing in the ocean out in front of Ned’s place on the shore.

The memories kept coming for me as we buckled ourselves into the helicopter seats: Ali obsessed with zombies. Obsessed with darts. Obsessed with mountain bikes. Obsessed with everything and, more often than not, grinning from ear to ear.

As the helicopter lifted off, Bree broke down sobbing and fell against me. I wrapped my arms around her, feeling her shudder as tears poured down my face in the darkened cabin. I imagined Ali alive so vividly, I could have sworn I heard his voice on the wind.





CHAPTER 105





BOTH OUR PHONES STARTED BUZZING and ringing at four thirty a.m.

I took a look at the text from Mahoney and cursed. “That’s impossible!”

“Goddamn it!” Bree yelled.

We dressed in seconds and pounded down the stairs.

“What’s happening?” Nana Mama cried after us.

“Go back to bed.”

“You’ve barely been to bed!”

We didn’t answer, just ran out to the car. I threw a bubble on the roof and we took off, me driving, Bree on her radio, barking orders. Sirens wailed all around us as we sped through the deserted city. Six minutes later, we pulled up in front of George Washington University Hospital.

“Go out ten blocks with the perimeter,” Bree said into her radio. “No one in or out. All vehicles searched.”

Sampson was already in the hall outside the ICU. “He’s armed and dressed as a uniformed Metro police officer.”

“What?” I said as Bree broadcast the news. “How?”

“Take a look.”

We walked to the open door of the room where M had been. Ivan Marky, the same young officer who’d been on guard when we left the evening before, was in the bed. He was naked. His throat had been cut.

Sampson said, “M put his clothes on, went to the nurses’ station, put the officer’s gun in the faces of the two on duty, and ordered them to give him all the narcotics and antibiotics they had. Then he took their cell phones, locked them in a closet, and left.”