Kill Alex Cross

Chapter 1

It began with President Coyle’s Children, Ethan and Zoe, both high-profile personalities since they had arrived in Washington, and probably even before that.

Twelve-year-old Ethan Coyle thought he had gotten used to living under the microscope and in the public eye. So Ethan hardly noticed anymore the news cameramen perpetually camped outside the Branaff School gates, and he didn’t worry the way he used to if some kid he didn’t know tried to snap his picture in the hall, or the gymnasium, or even the boys’ bathroom.

Sometimes, Ethan even pretended he was invisible. It was kind of babyish, kind of b.s., but who cared. It helped. One of the more personable Secret Service guys had actually suggested it. He told Ethan that Chelsea Clinton used to do the same thing. Who knew if that was true?

But when Ethan saw Ryan Townsend headed his way that morning, he only wished he could disappear.

Ryan Townsend always had it in for him, and that wasn’t just Ethan’s paranoia talking. He had the purplish and yellowing bruises to prove it — the kind that a good hard punch or muscle squeeze can leave behind.

“Wuzzup, Coyle the Boil?” Townsend said, charging up on him in the hall with that look on his face. “The Boil havin’ a bad day already?”

Ethan knew better than to answer his tormenter and torturer. He cut a hard left toward the lockers instead — but that was his first mistake. Now there was nowhere to go, and he felt a sharp, nauseating jab to the side of his leg. He’d been kicked! Townsend barely even slowed down as he passed. He called these little incidents “drive-bys.”

The thing Ethan didn’t do was yell out, or stumble in pain. That was the deal he’d made with himself: don’t let anyone see what you’re feeling inside.

Instead, he dropped his books and knelt down to pick them back up again. It was a total wuss move, but at least he could take the weight off his leg for a second without letting the whole world know he was Ryan Townsend’s punching and kicking dummy.

Except this time, someone else did see — and it wasn’t the Secret Service.

Ethan was stuffing graph paper back into his math folder when he heard a familiar voice.

“Hey, Ryan? Wuzzup with you?”

He looked up just in time to see his fourteen-year-old sister, Zoe, stepping right into Townsend’s path.

“I saw that,” she said. “You thought I wouldn’t?”

Townsend cocked his head of blond curls to the side. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Why don’t you just mind your own—”

Out of nowhere, a heavy yellow textbook came up fast in both of Zoe’s hands.

She swung hard, and clocked Townsend with it, right across the middle of his face. The bully’s nose spurted red and he stumbled backward. It was great!

That was as far as things progressed before Secret Service got to them. Agent Findlay held Zoe back, and Agent Musgrove wedged himself between Ethan and Townsend. A crowd of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders had already stopped to watch, like this was some new reality TV show — The President’s Kids.

“You total losers!” Townsend shouted at Ethan and Zoe, even as blood dripped down over his Branaff tie and white button-down shirt. “What a couple of chumps. You need your loyal SS bodyguards to protect you!”

“Oh yeah? Tell that to my algebra book,” Zoe yelled back. “And stay away from my brother! You’re bigger and older than him, you jerk. You shithead!”

For his part, Ethan was still hovering by the lockers, half of his stuff scattered on the floor. And for a second or two there, he found himself pretending he was part of the crowd — just some kid nobody had ever heard of, standing there, watching all of this craziness happen to someone else.

Yeah, Ethan thought. Maybe in my next lifetime.

Chapter 2

Agent Findlay quickly and efficiently hustled Ethan and Zoe away from the gawkers, and worse, the kids with their iPhones raised: Hello, YouTube! In a matter of seconds, he’d disappeared with them into the otherwise empty grand lecture hall off the main foyer.

The Branaff School had once been the Branaff Estate, until ownership had transferred to a Quaker educational trust. It was said among the kids that the grounds were haunted, not by good people who had died here, but by the disgruntled Branaff descendants who’d been evicted to make room for the private school.

Ethan didn’t buy into any of that crap, but he’d always found the main lecture hall to be supercreepy — with its old-time oil portraits looking down disapprovingly on everybody who happened to pass through.

“You know, the president’s going to have to hear about this, Zoe. The fight, your language back there,” Agent Findlay said. “Not to mention Headmaster Skillings—”

“No doubt, so just do your job,” Zoe answered with a shrug and a frown. She put a hand on top of her brother’s head. “You okay, Eth?”

“I’m fine,” he said, pushing her off. “Physically, anyway.” His dignity was another question, but that was too complicated for him to think about right now.

“In that case, let’s keep this parade moving,” Findlay told them. “You guys have assembly in five.”

“Got it,” said Zoe with a dismissive wave. “Like we were going to forget assembly, right?”

The morning’s guest speaker was Isabelle Morris, a senior fellow with the DC International Policy Institute and also an alum of the Branaff School. Unlike most of the kids he knew, Ethan was actually looking forward to Ms. Morris’s talk about her experiences in the Middle East. Someday he hoped to work at the UN himself. Why not? He had pretty good connections, right?

“Can you give us a teeny-tiny second?” Zoe asked. “I want to talk to my brother — alone.”

“I said I’m fine. It’s cool,” Ethan insisted, but his sister cut him off with a glare.

“He tells me things he won’t say to you,” Zoe went on, answering Findlay’s skeptical look. “And private conversations aren’t exactly easy to come by around here, if you know what I mean. No offense meant.”

“None taken.” Findlay looked down at his watch. “Okay,” he said. “Two minutes is all I can give you.”

“Two minutes, it is. We’ll be right out, I promise,” Zoe said, and closed the heavy wooden door behind him as he left.

Without a word to Ethan, she cut between the rows of old desk seats and headed to the back of the room. She hopped up on the heating register under the windows.

Then Zoe reached inside her blue and gray uniform jacket and took out a small black lacquered case. Ethan recognized it right away. His sister had bought it in Beijing this past summer, on a trip to China with their parents.

“I’m all about a ciggie right now,” Zoe whispered. Then she grinned wickedly. “Come with?”

Ethan looked back at the door. “I actually don’t want to miss this assembly,” he said, but Zoe just rolled her eyes.

“Oh, please. Blah, blah, blah, Middle East, blah, blah. You can watch it on CNN any hour of the week,” she said. “But how often do you get a chance to ditch Secret Service? Come on!”

It was a totally no-win situation for him and Ethan knew it. He was either going to look like a wimp — again — or he was going to miss the assembly speech he’d been looking forward to all week.

“You shouldn’t smoke,” he said lamely.

“Yeah, well you shouldn’t weenie out so much,” Zoe answered. “Then maybe assholes like Ryan Townsend wouldn’t be all over you all the time.”

“That’s just because Dad’s the president,” Ethan said. “That’s all, right?”

“No. It’s because you’re a geek,” Zoe said. “You don’t see Spunk-Punk messing with me, do you?” She opened the window, effortlessly pulled herself through, and dropped to the ground outside. Zoe thought she was another Angelina Jolie. “If you’re not coming, at least give me a minute to get away. Okay, Grandma?”

The next second, Zoe was gone.

Ethan looked over his shoulder one more time. Then he did the only thing he could to maintain his last shreds of dignity. He followed his sister out the lecture hall window — and into trouble he couldn’t even begin to imagine.

No one could.

Chapter 3

As soon as the door to the lecture hall slammed shut behind Agent Clay Findlay, he checked the knob — still unlocked. Then he checked the sweep hand on his stainless-steel Breitling. “I’m giving them another forty-five seconds,” he said into the mike at his cuff. “After that, we’ve got T. Rex going to assembly and Twilight headed to the principal’s office.”

Word from the president and First Lady had been to allow Ethan and Zoe as normal a school experience as possible, including their own conflicts — within reason. That was easier said than done, of course. Zoe Coyle didn’t always operate within reason. In fact, she usually didn’t. Zoe wasn’t a bad kid. But she was a kid. Willful. And smart, and devoted to her younger brother.

“l’m probably going to get reamed for this,” Findlay radioed quietly. “Tell you what, though. That Ryan Townsend kid’s a little prick. Not that you heard it here.”

“Like father, like son,” Musgrove radioed back. “Kid got what he was asking for, and more. Zoe really clocked the little shithead.”

There was some low laughter on the line. Ryan Townsend’s daddy was the House minority whip and a rabid opponent of virtually every move President Coyle ever made or even thought about. Sometimes the Branaff School could feel like Little Washington. Which it kind of was.

Findlay checked his watch again. Two minutes exactly. End of recess for the Coyle kids. Now back to work for everybody.

“All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’re on the move,” he said into his mike. Then he knocked twice on the lecture hall door and pushed it open.

“Time’s up, guys. You ready to... goddamnit.”

The room was empty.

No. No. No. Not this. Goddamn those kids. Goddamn Zoe!

Findlay’s pulse spiked to a new high, at least for today. His eyes leapt to the multipaned windows along the back wall.

Even as he moved toward them, he was opening all channels on his transmitter to address the Joint Ops Center as well as his on-site team.

“Command, this is Apex One. Twilight and T. Rex are unaccounted for.” His voice was urgent but flat. There would be no panicking. “I repeat, both protectees are unaccounted for.”

When he reached the windows, they were all pulled down to the sill, but one of them had been left unlatched. A quick scan of the grounds outside showed nothing but plush green playing fields all the way to the south fence.

“Findlay? What’s going on?”

Musgrove was there now, standing in the doorway from the hall.

“They must have snuck outside,” Findlay said. “I’m going to kill her. I really am. Long overdue.” This thing had Zoe written all over it. It was probably her idea of a big game, or a joke on her keepers.

“Command, Apex One,” he radioed again. “Twilight and T. Rex are still unaccounted for. I need an immediate lockdown on all exits, inside and out—”

All at once, a commotion broke out on the line. Findlay heard shouting, and the grating sound of metal on metal. Then two gunshots.

“Command, this is Apex Five!” Another voice blared over the radio now. “We’ve got a gray panel van. Just evaded us at the east gate. It’s proceeding south on Wisconsin at high speed. Sixty, seventy miles an hour! Request immediate backup!”

Chapter 4

MPD patrol sergeant Bobby Hatfield had just spotted a gray van, doing at least sixty through downtown Georgetown, when the emergency call came from dispatch. “All units, patrol area two-oh-six. Possible armed kidnap in progress. Two kids. That’s two! We have a gray panel van, traveling at high speed, south on Wisconsin, Northwest. Secret Service is in pursuit. Requesting backup! Please turn to channel twenty-three.”

Hatfield fired up his siren and pulled a fast three-point turn just as a telltale black Yukon went racing by. As soon as he got onto the dedicated channel, he could hear Secret Service broadcasting the chase.

“We are proceeding south. Plates are DC, tag number DMS eight-two-three—”

“Secret Service, this is MPD unit two-oh-six,” Hatfield cut in. “I’m coming right up on your back.”

“Copy that, MPD.”

Hatfield accelerated as the Yukon fell back and let him take the lead. Already, the speedometer was pushing toward seventy, and his adrenaline was going off the charts. There was a whole lot more that could go wrong here than right.

At M Street, the van careened left, almost looked like it might tip.

It took the corner too wide and sideswiped two parked cars without stopping. Hatfield coasted into the turn — slow in, fast out, was the drill — and punched it as soon as he was pointed in the right direction. It gained him some ground on the van, but not enough.

“Suspect headed east on M,” he called in. “This guy’s flying. Where’s the damn backup? C’mon people!”

When they came to Pennsylvania Avenue just before Rock Creek, the van peeled off to the right. It was a wider street now, and whoever was doing the driving picked up even more speed, weaving dangerously across the bridge.

Hatfield blinked hard to keep his vision from tunneling. There were cars and pedestrians everywhere. The whole scene couldn’t possibly be more confusing.

This thing is not going to end well. He could feel it everywhere in his body.

At Twenty-eighth Street, a second marked unit finally fell in behind. Hatfield recognized James Walsh’s voice as he took over radio communication. Walsh was a pal of his on the force, but also a tormenter.

“How you doing, Robert?”

“Fuck you, how am I doing?”

“Continuing southeast on Pennsylvania,” Walsh went on. “Suspect’s driving is extremely erratic... seems to be a single occupant, but it’s hard to tell. We’re going to hit Washington Circle any second now and — oh, shit! Bobby, look out! Look out!”

As the van came into the rotary, it cut left instead of right, straight into oncoming traffic. Cars and cabs swerved to get out of the way.

It was like the parting of the Red Sea from where Hatfield was sitting — and there, on the other side of the gap, was a city bus, too big to avoid. The bus driver cut hard to the right, but it was no good.

All he did was give the van a solid wall to run into!

Hatfield slammed his brakes and sent his own car into a hard skid. Even then, his eyes never came off the van.

It crashed, head-on at full speed, right into the Neiman Marcus ad on the side of the bus. The front end crumpled like an accordion. Glass flew everywhere and the van’s back wheels lifted a good foot off the ground before the whole mess finally came to a sliding stop.

Hatfield was out of his car right away, with Walsh running up behind him. Miraculously, it looked like the bus had been out of service — nobody but the driver on board. But Washington Circle was a tangle of stopped cars and rear-end collisions.

Within seconds, another half-dozen marked units had converged on the spot.

Uniformed officers were suddenly everywhere, but Hatfield was the first to reach the back door of the van. Its gray metal panels were buckled inward and the chrome handle was smashed to shit.

His heart was still thudding from the chase and he could feel the blood pounding in his ears. This wasn’t over yet. What the hell were they about to find on the other side of that door? Armed gunmen? Dead men?

Even worse — dead kids?

Chapter 5

At the time of the first incident in the chain of events, I didn’t know it was the president’s son and daughter who were missing. All I’d heard on my radio was “possible kidnap.” That’s all any of us knew at that point.

I’d been driving east on K Street at the time and I was off duty. The location given put me less than two blocks from the crash site and I got over to Washington Circle even before the EMTs. I had to help if I could.

I was there in less than sixty seconds. A uniformed cop scurried behind me, unspooling a roll of yellow tape as I headed toward the smashed-up van.

The first thing I noticed was the wide-open back door. Second, that there was no sign of any kidnap victim here at all.

And third — Secret Service were everywhere! Some of them in the usual dark suits, others in preppy blazers, knit ties, dress shirts, and khakis. They looked like schoolteachers, but the corkscrew wires behind their ears told another story.

I badged my way over to the van to see inside for myself. The driver was pinned to his seat where the engine block had come all the way through in the crash. He was covered in blood below some obvious trauma around his midsection. His right arm was sticking up and out in a way that arms weren’t meant to go.

The guy looked to be midthirties, curly black hair, a sketchy beard with soul patch that was as slight and pathetic as he was.

But where was the victim? Had this whole thing been a hoax? An intentional diversion? Already, I was starting to think so, and the possibility sent a rush of adrenaline through me. A diversion from what? What else had happened at that school?

“Is he cogent?” I asked the tweed-clad agent next to me.

“Hard to say,” he answered. “He’s out of it. Maybe shock. We don’t even know if he speaks English.”

“And no sign of the missing kid?” I said.

The agent just shook his head, then held up two fingers. “Two missing kids.”

This was turning into déjà vu for me — the worst kind. Some years back, I’d worked with Secret Service on another double kidnapping, perpetrated by a monster named Gary Soneji. Only one of the two children had survived. In fact, I’d barely made it myself. John Sampson had saved my life.

I flashed my badge some more, then leaned in through the shattered driver’s-side window.

“Police. Where are the kids?” I asked the guy, straight up. By default, I had to assume he knew something. This was no time to equivocate.

He was panting in quick shallow breaths, and his face was blank — like his body knew how much pain he was in, but his brain didn’t exactly get it.

His pupils were huge, too. He had some of the signs of PCP, but this guy had just navigated a high-speed chase through the city. I’d never seen anyone on angel dust who could do that.

When he didn’t answer — not a word or a nod or a grunt — I tried again.

“You hearing me?” I shouted. “Tell me where the two kids are! If you want us to help you out of there.”

The ambulance was here now and two EMTs were at my shoulder, trying to push me out of the way. I wasn’t moving anywhere.

I heard a hydraulic motor fire up somewhere behind me, too. That was for the spreader tool — the Jaws of Life — and this guy was definitely going to need it. But not until I got my answer.

“What do you know?” I said. “Are you working for someone? Just tell me where the kids are!”

Something in the driver’s face changed then. His breath was still shallow, but the corners of his mouth turned up and his eyes crinkled, like someone had told him a joke no one else could hear or maybe understand. When he finally spit out an answer, a spray of blood came with it, all over the mangled steering wheel and column.

“What kids, man?” he said.

Chapter 6

The Rescue Team used a hurst tool to cut the posts flanking the van’s windshield and door, then a halogen bar to peel the roof back like a can of sardines. It’s amazing to watch, but usually you’re rooting for the person trapped inside. Not so much this time. Actually, not at all.

While they lowered in a chain to pull back the engine and get our empty-eyed friend out of there, I tried to get a quick lowdown from the Secret Service agent I’d been speaking with, Clay Findlay.

“So, who are these missing kids?” I asked him, but he just shook his head. He wasn’t going to tell me, was he? What was that about? “Listen,” I said. “I’ve had experience on this kind of thing—”

“I know who you are,” he said, cutting me off again. “You’re Alex Cross. You’re MPD.”

My reputation precedes me more and more these days, but that can cut both ways. It didn’t seem to be helping right now.

“We’ve already got all MPD units on alert,” Findlay said, “so why don’t you go check in with your lieutenant. See where he could use you? Obviously, I’ve got my hands full here. I’ve had some experience in these quarters, too, Detective.”

I didn’t like the brush-off. It was a mistake for somebody who claimed to have experience. Every passing minute meant those kids were a little farther out of our reach. Findlay should have known that. Even worse, maybe he did.

“You see that guy?” I said. I pointed over at the driver. They had a protective collar around his neck and were finally making some headway getting him out. “That’s an MPD arrest. You understand me? I’m going to talk to him as soon as I can, with or without your involvement. If you want to wait your turn, fine, but just so you know — once they get him to the ER, he’s going to be sedated and tubed up for God knows how long. So it might be a while before you get your interview.”

Findlay stared hard at me. I watched his jaw work back and forth, heard a cracking noise. He knew I had jurisdiction here, that I had him if I wanted to go that way.

“It’s Zoe and Ethan Coyle,” he said finally. “You’ll hear about it soon enough. They disappeared from the Branaff School about twenty minutes ago.”

I was stunned into silence. Knocked back on my heels. The enormity of this — the implications — started to fall on me at once. “What else is happening on your end?” I asked in a lowered voice.

“The school’s locked down,” Findlay said. “Every available Secret Service agent is either there or on the way.”

“Could they still turn up over there?” I asked.

He shook his head. “We’d have found them by now. No way they’re still on the campus.”

“Any idea how someone could have gotten them out of there?”

Again, he paused. I got the impression he was editing himself as he went forward. The other thing I didn’t know yet was that Findlay was lead agent on Ethan and Zoe’s protective detail. This was all on his head. The president’s children.

“Not really. It just happened,” he answered. “There’s an underground passage. Used to connect the main house with some of the service buildings. Way back when it was the Branaff Estate. We keep it all closed off now, but kids still break in there sometimes. Smoke a cigarette, grope each other. Believe me, if Ethan and Zoe were in that tunnel before, they aren’t anymore.”

The van driver was out on a gurney now, hooked up to a nasogastric tube and IV. As they wheeled him to the back of the ambulance and loaded him up, Findlay and I fell in behind the procession.

My badge was out again. So were his creds.

“Hey!” one of the medics yelled at us as we climbed in. “You can’t—”

“We’re coming with him,” I said, and closed the ambulance doors. No further discussion. “Let’s go.”

Chapter 7

My mind was working even faster now, probably too fast. So was my pulse. And I couldn’t catch my breath either.

The president’s kids.

George Washington University Hospital was only a few blocks from the crash site so this was going to have to be quick. While the EMTs worked over our suspect and radioed in his vitals, I leaned in as close as I could to get his attention.

“What’s your name?” I said.

I had to ask a couple of times before he finally responded.

“Ray?” He said it like a question.

“Okay, Ray. I’m Alex. You with me here?”

He was flat on his back and staring at the ceiling. I ran a finger back and forth in front of his eyes to get him to look at me.

“What are you on, Ray? You know what you took?”

His expression was as distant as ever. “Just a drink of water,” he said finally.

“Don’t give him anything!” one of the medics barked at me.

“I’m not,” I said. “‘Drink of water’ is PCP. That’s what he thinks he took.”

“Thinks?” Agent Findlay asked.

“Something heavily anesthetic, anyway. Probably some kind of nose cocktail.” And I was guessing he didn’t mix it himself.

“Who got you the van, Ray?” I said. “Who put you up to this? There’s somebody else, right?”

“Anyone, anyone,” he said. “Five hundred bucks and a little drink of water.”

“Five hundred bucks?” Findlay looked like he was ready to tear the guy’s face off. “Do you have any idea what kind of shit storm you just landed in — for five hundred dollars?”

Ray wasn’t listening to the Secret Service agent, though. He was looking around now, like he’d just figured out where he was. When he got down to his own midsection, and the blood soaking through the heavy gauze dressing, he just grinned. “This is some good shit,” he said.

“Ray?” I tried again. “Ray? You said something about ‘anyone.’ What did you mean by that?”

“No,” he said, twitching away. “Anyone, anyone.” The fingers on his left hand started moving rapidly; it looked like he was playing scales on a piano.

Findlay and I looked at each other. Whoever had put Ray up to this knew what they were doing. Now, while the trail to the kids was warmest, the one person we had in custody was virtually useless. We were wasting precious time on this guy. That was exactly what the kidnapper wanted, wasn’t it?

“We’re here!” the ambulance driver yelled back. “Interview’s over.” The other two stood up and started getting Ray ready to go.

“Who’s anyone?” I tried one more time. “What do you mean by that, Ray?”

“An-y-one. An-y-one,” he said again, tapping a different finger on each syllable — and I realized it wasn’t like he was playing a piano. It was like he was hitting keys on a keyboard. Then I had another idea.

N-E-1-N-E-1.

“Is that a screen name?” I asked. “Did somebody find you online, Ray?”

“Watch out, guys!”

The back of the ambulance opened from the outside. Findlay and I had to jump out first to get out of the way.

An emergency medical team was already waiting, along with an incongruous crowd of gray suits off to one side.

It wasn’t just any crowd, either. Findlay stopped short on the pavement, and I almost knocked into him.

“Sir?” he said to one of the suits.

Right there in front of us was the secretary of Homeland Security himself, Phil Ribillini.

“Detective Cross,” Ribillini said with a curt nod. We’d met once before, back when I was with the FBI and he was with Defense. There were no pleasantries today. “We’ll need a statement from you right away,” he said. “But my people will take it from there. Has to be that way.”

In other words, I wasn’t going any farther with the prisoner. All I could do was watch as they wheeled Ray inside through the automatic sliders and out of sight.

But that wasn’t the bad part. The clock kept ticking on those two missing kids.

Chapter 8

Dr. Hala Al Dossari was twenty-nine years old, slender and attractive, humorous when it was useful, very bright, with a photographic memory. Her husband, Tariq, was thirty-nine, pudgy everywhere, and hopelessly in love with his wife. They looked like they had everything to live for, but in reality, the Al Dossaris were prepared to die at any time. Probably sooner rather than later. That was their mission.

Hala snuck a sideways glance at her watch. They had been warned repeatedly about the dangers of Dulles Airport. The International Arrivals area was one of the most scrutinized in the world. Besides the armed security and usual customs agents, the terminal was staffed with a well-trained team of behavior detection officers — BDOs. The purpose of these police devils was to scan the incoming crowds for anything considered beyond the norm.

Too much sweat on the brow could get you pulled out of line here.

So could rapid eye movement.

Or a nervous gait.

Or a cranky BDO.

“Almost through,” Hala said, giving her husband’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “Not much longer. Give me a smile. Americans love a nice smile.”

“Inshallah,” he answered.

“Tariq, please — a smile. Just show your teeth for the surveillance cameras.”

Finally, he did as he was told. It was a stiff-jawed attempt — but a smile, anyway. So far, so good. Another minute or so and they would be perfectly safe.

Passport control had gone by without incident. Baggage claim, other than feeling like a cattle yard, had been fine. Now they were down to luggage screening, one final queue to wait in before they could truly say they’d arrived safely in Washington.

But everything had suddenly slowed to a crawl. This was a nightmare.

In fact, Hala realized, the line had completely stopped.

A couple of uniformed TSA agents were unhooking the stanchion belt up ahead, motioning for two people to step out of line. It was another couple — also Saudi, also in Western dress.

“Sir? Ma’am? Could you come with us, please?”

“What for?” the other man asked, immediately on the defensive. “We haven’t done anything wrong. Why should we lose our rightful place in the queue?”

His accent was Najdi, Hala noticed. The same as theirs.

But who were these people? Could this just be a coincidence? One look at Tariq’s worried face and she knew he was wrestling with the same questions. Was their American mission about to be compromised before it had even begun?

More American security personnel hurried over now. A husky black female officer took the Saudi woman firmly by the arm.

“Farouk!” the woman screamed for her husband. Then she yelled at the security police. “Leave us alone! Take your dirty hands off me!”

As Hala watched the husband, her heart skipped. He was reaching for something in his pocket. One of the guards tried to pull his arm away. But the man pushed back hard. The guard went down on his ass.

Two more officers rushed forward. There was a violent scuffle. The police threw the Saudi man to the floor. Jumped on his back. But he fought and got one hand free. The next moment, he’d stuffed something into his mouth.

And that’s when Hala knew — this was no coincidence. She had a potassium cyanide capsule in her pocket as well. So did Tariq.

Whatever this couple had done to tip off the authorities, there was nothing the Al Dossaris could do for them now. Their only obligation at this point was to avoid detection. Above all, they mustn’t be captured, too.

And they wouldn’t be. Not if they kept their heads, Hala knew. Service to the cause was everything. Their mission could change the world. But first, they had to make it out of here alive. The Family was depending on them. Their mission here meant everything.

Tariq grasped her hand tighter. His own hand was wet with sweat. “I love you, Hala,” he whispered. “I love you so much!”

Chapter 9

“This guy just ate some thing!” one of the TSA officers shouted to his partners. He held down the struggling, writhing husband while another guard tried to force the man’s mouth open.

Hala saw the stream of blood run down over his chin. That meant he’d bitten through the capsule’s rubber coating, into the glass bead inside. Her heart was thundering now. As a doctor, she knew all too well about the effects of potassium cyanide on the body. It was going to be horrible, absolutely awful to witness. Especially with a capsule right there in her own pocket.

Almost immediately, the man began to convulse. His torso bucked slowly, his legs kicking back and forth. It was an instinctive but ultimately useless response. While the oxygen built up to dangerous levels in his blood, less and less of it would reach his vital organs, including the lungs. The panic alone would be excruciating. The terrible burning inside.

The man’s young wife collapsed at his feet next. A trickle of blood ran down her chin, too. Then more blood, from her nose.

“Something’s wrong!” the female guard yelled. “Call emergency services! We need a doctor right now!”

Border Protection was doing its best to maintain order, but panic had begun to take over the arrivals hall. People started bottlenecking toward the screening stations. Frantic voices echoed against the high ceiling. Two-way radios crackled everywhere.

“Tariq?” Hala said. He was standing perfectly still, even as other travelers pushed past them. “Tariq? We have to go. Right now.”

His eyes seemed to be locked on the other couple, dying there on the terminal floor.

“That could have been us,” he whispered.

“But it wasn’t,” Hala said. “Move. Now! Keep the pill in your hand, just in case. And speak nothing but English until we are out of here.”

Tariq nodded. His wife was also his superior. Slowly, he tore his eyes away from the two suffering martyrs. Hala hooked her arm firmly into his and turned to go. Then she pulled him forward like a stubborn animal.

A moment later, the Al Dossaris had allowed themselves to be swallowed up in the crowd. People around them were crying. A young girl vomited right there on the floor. Then they were clamoring for the exits, just like anyone else. Only after they were clear of the security guards did they put away the cyanide pills.

They had made it to America.

Chapter 10

After I gave my statement at the hospital, I headed back to the Branaff School. I called Bree and told her what had happened and that I’d miss dinner. She got it, which is the nice thing about being married to another cop.

A solid double line of MPD cruisers was parked up and down Wisconsin Avenue when I got there. This was as bad a crime scene as I’d ever witnessed.

The press had already been cordoned off behind a row of blue police barriers, and I saw a group of what looked like very concerned parents and a few nanny or housekeeper types waiting closer in toward the main gate. Some students were crying.

There wouldn’t be any official statements for several hours, if at all, but that wasn’t going to stop people from figuring out what had happened. The whole scene was barely contained chaos. Something terrible had obviously gone down here and none of us knew the full extent of it yet.

“Catch me up,” I said to one of the uniforms lined across the sidewalk. “What’s going on? Anything in the last hour?”

“All I know is what you can see right here,” he told me. “MPD’s on street security. But FBI’s got the whole school locked down tight.”

“Who’s the lead agent on campus?” I said, but the cop just shook his head.

“Nobody’s going in, Detective, and the only ones coming out are kids and parents. They’re literally clearing them one by one. They’re even detaining the teachers. I wouldn’t hold my breath for intel.”

I left the officer alone to do his job, and I got on the phone instead. For several months now, I’d been the police department’s liaison to the FBI’s Field Intelligence Group. I figured that had to be worth some kind of ticket inside.

But I figured wrong. Every line I tried at the Directorate of Intelligence went straight to voice mail.

Same deal with Ned Mahoney, who was a good friend at the Bureau. They were all probably on the other side of that damn school fence right now. Maybe even Ned was there. It was crazy-making.

The worst of it was worrying about Ethan and Zoe Coyle and what they might be going through while I was out here spinning my wheels. The first twenty-four hours after a kidnapping are absolutely crucial and I didn’t think the Secret Service would make all the right decisions.

So I did what I could. I started walking. Maybe I wouldn’t get onto campus, but I could get a feel for the school perimeter, including any possible exit points the kidnapper — or kidnappers — might have used.

I also kept working the phones while I walked. I put in a call to MPD’s Command Information Center. I finally got through to somebody. “CIC, this is Sergeant O’Mara.”

“Bud, it’s Alex Cross. I need to get a couple of disks burned, ASAP. I’m looking for everything we’ve got in a two-block radius around the Branaff School. From five to eleven this morning.”

Washington’s metro surveillance isn’t state of the art, like London’s, but we are ahead of the curve, nationally speaking. We’ve got cameras at intersections all over the city; maybe one of them had picked something up.

“You want me to have someone drop these off at headquarters when they’re ready?” O’Mara asked.

“No, I’ll swing by and get them myself,” I said. “Thanks, Bud.”

I turned off my phone when I hung up. I didn’t want anyone calling and telling me where to be today. If I played it right, I could pick up the disks, spend some time going over them at home, and not show my face at the office until the next morning. I’d learned a long time ago that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission.

Maybe I was just flattering myself — or even lying to myself. Maybe there was nothing I could do on this that the Bureau or Secret Service wasn’t already covering. But I’d worry about that after the first twenty-four hours.

Finally though, around six, I gave up and went on home. Obviously nobody needed my help here. I didn’t like it, but what I thought didn’t matter. The president’s kids were missing.

Chapter 11

If I’d had any idea about the string of horrifying things that were about to happen in Washington, I wouldn’t have gone to help out Sampson that night.

My best friend, John Sampson, and his wife, Billie, were on the steering committee for a much-needed charter school they were trying to get going in our neighborhood in Southeast DC. Tonight’s event was supposed to be an informational meeting, but people around the neighborhood had already started lining up on either side of the issue.

So I brought reinforcements with me — my “ninety-something” grandmother, Nana Mama; and my wife, Bree, who works as a detective with the MPD’s Violent Crimes Branch and was also just crazy enough to marry me a few months earlier.

The three of us showed up early at the community center to help set up. I was trying to keep Ethan and Zoe Coyle off my mind.

“Thanks for doing this, sugar. I owe you,” Sampson said. He was running sound cable while I pulled folding chairs off a big rack. “It’s probably going to get a little ugly in here tonight.”

“Can’t be helped, John. You were just born that way,” I said, and he started for me. Sampson and I bring out the smart-ass kid in each other — ever since we were smartass kids growing up in this same neighborhood.

“And we’re focusing.” Billie came whizzing by with a handful of flyers for us to give out at the door. She was excited, but also nervous, I could tell. A lot of misinformation had been spread around the neighborhood, and the opposition to the charter school was mounting.

I thought the rain might keep people away, but by seven o’clock the room was completely full. John and Billie got things started, talking about a small-community approach, double periods of math and reading, parental involvement — everything that had them jazzed. Just listening to them, I was getting excited myself. My youngest, Ali, might go to this school one day.

But this is Washington, where nobody lets a good idea stand in the way of the status quo, and things started to go downhill in a hurry.

“We’ve heard all this before,” a woman in a housedress and sneakers without laces said from the mike in the aisle. I recognized her from church. “The last thing we need is another charter around here drawing down our public school budget.”

There was a mix of half applause, half boos, and some unpleasant shouting around the room.

“That’s right!”

“Come on, get real!”

“What’s the point?”

“The point,” Billie cut in, “is that not nearly enough kids from our neighborhood go on to college. If we can get them started on the right foot from day one—”

“Yeah, that and a dollar won’t even get you a cup of coffee anymore,” Housedress Lady said. “We should be getting some of our closed schools reopened, not trying to start up new ones.”

“I hear that!”

“Sit down!”

“You sit down.”

The whole thing was kind of depressing, really. Made my head hurt. I’d already taken two turns at the mike and gotten nowhere in a hurry. Sampson looked like he wanted to hit somebody. Billie looked like she wanted to cry.

Then I got a hard nudge in the ribs. It was from Nana. “Help me up, Alex. I’ve got something to say.”

Chapter 12

“Well, doesn’t this feel familiar?” Nana stood at her seat and launched in. “Or is it just me?” She already had everyone’s attention, and apparently she didn’t even need a microphone. Just about everybody here knew her.

“Last I checked, this wasn’t the House of Representatives, and it wasn’t the floor of the Senate,” she said. “This was a neighborhood meeting, where we can speak with more than two voices, have different ideas, listen occasionally, and who knows, maybe even get something accomplished every once in a while.”

The woman had a forty-year teaching career in the day, and it wasn’t hard for me to imagine her lecturing a roomful of disobedient students. A few people around me were nodding their heads. A few looked like they didn’t know what to think about this fierce old lady yet.

“I suppose some of this is understandable,” she went on, tapping her cane as she spoke. “We all know how cheap a promise can be in Washington, and as you said, ma’am, you’ve heard it all before. So if some of you are feeling a little frustrated, or burned out, or what have you, let me be the first to say I understand. I feel the same way most days.”

“But,” I whispered in Bree’s ear.

“But,” Nana said, poking a finger in the air, “with all due respect, we’re not here to talk about you.”

Bree squeezed my arm like the Wizards had just sunk a winning bucket.

“We’re here to talk about the eighty-eight percent of eighth graders in this city who aren’t proficient in math, much less the ninety-three percent in reading. Ninety-three percent! I call that an emergency worth doing something about. I call that a disgrace.”

“That’s right, Regina,” someone said, and “Mmm-hmm,” from another corner. I love when Nana “goes to church,” as we call it at home, and she wasn’t done yet.

“So if you’re here for an actual conversation, I say let’s have one,” Nana went on. “And if not — if you came for politics, and side-taking, and business as usual, I say we’ve got a whole big city out there for you to play in.” She paused just long enough that I could tell she was secretly loving this. “And there’s the door!”

About half the room broke into laughter and applause and cheering. Maybe even a little more than half. In DC, that’s what you call progress.

After the meeting, Sampson came over and gave Nana a big hug, then a kiss on the cheek. He even picked Nana up for a few seconds.

“I’m not sure I changed any minds,” she said, taking me by the arm to leave. “But I spoke my own, anyway.”

“Well, I’m glad you did,” Sampson said. “And just for the record, Nana? You haven’t lost a step.”

“Lost a step?” She reached up and swatted him on his huge shoulder. “Who said anything about that? I’ve gained a step on you, big man.”

And of course, she got no argument from any of us on that point, either.

Chapter 13

The husband-and-wife team of Hala and Tariq Al Dossari hid inside their dingy room at the Wayfarer Hotel, waiting for instructions and watching the insipid, repetitious news coverage about the kidnapping of the president’s children while they did. They wondered whether the abduction had something to do with The Family, and thought that it might. Whatever was happening now, it was meant to have historic implications.

“There’s a good likelihood our people took those two spoiled brats,” Hala said. An image of the Coyle children’s smiling faces from some happier time played across the television screen, but all she felt was contempt. No one in this country was innocent. No one was exempt from retribution for America’s so-called foreign policy.

“I’m sure The Family’s plan is the correct one,” said Tariq, who was a good man, but not a complicated one.

“President Coyle’s thinking will be clouded. That’s good for us,” Hala said. “We should eat something. It wouldn’t hurt to get some air, so our thinking doesn’t get clouded.”

When she rose from the bed, Tariq stood up to follow. Hala was in charge in America.

Back home, marriages were still arranged in some families — including their own — and Tariq knew exactly how well he’d done for himself. Hala was a medical doctor, while he was merely an accountant. She was beautiful, especially by Western standards. He was plain and fat, by just about any standard one used. His wife had even come to love him, in time, and had given him two beautiful children, Fahd and Aamina.

Will we ever see our children again? Tariq wondered. It wasn’t a question he allowed himself too often, but all this waiting around was driving him crazy. It felt good to get up and leave their stuffy hotel room for a little while.

Outside, the streets were almost empty. On Twelfth Street they had trouble finding anything acceptable to eat. They passed McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Dunkin’ Donuts, and then Taco Bell, whatever it was they sold there. What would bells taste like?

“Junk food and nothing else,” Hala said with derision. “Welcome to America.”

They were standing beneath an overhang to an office building, when a man suddenly stepped out from the shadows. He had a pistol in his hand and waved it at them. “Give me the pocketbook. Wallet. Loose change, watches,” he growled.

Hala put her arms across her chest and spoke in a high-pitched voice. “Please, don’t hurt us. We’ll give you our money — of course. No problem there. Just don’t hurt us!”

“Shoot you both dead, motherfuckers!” said the thief.

In their country, there were few men as desperate as this, Hala thought. A criminal like him would have his hand cut off if he were caught.

“No problem, no problem,” she answered, nodding. She offered up her knockoff Coach handbag with one hand, and then with the other — pepper spray! She doused the young fiend’s eyes with it.

He screeched and raised both hands to his face, trying to scrub away the burning poison. But his pain was only just starting. Hala dropped the spray and easily grabbed his gun.

She was so angry now. She sent a sharp kick to the boy’s kneecap, buckling it in the wrong direction. He went down screaming, and she kicked at his chest, fracturing a few ribs while she was at it.

Hala’s movements were fast and instinctual and athletic. She never seemed to be more than a foot or two away from the boy. He moaned on the ground — until her foot snapped into his throat. She kicked him in the forehead. The jaw. She broke bone there, too.

“Don’t kill him!” Tariq said, placing a hand on her arm.

“I’m not going to,” she said, and she stepped back. “A dead body would raise too many questions. We mustn’t draw attention. Not yet.” She leaned down to speak directly to the boy on the ground. “But I could have killed you — easily! Remember that the next time you put a gun in somebody’s face.”

They left the moaning boy in the shadows and crossed the street, then hurried back to the Wayfarer. There was nothing decent to eat out there anyway. This country was like the desert — just an arid wasteland that ought to be destroyed.

Without a doubt, it would be soon.

Chapter 14

The FBI’s strategic information operations center was overflowing with somber, stressed-out police personnel that Sunday afternoon. This was a full-court press if there ever was one. The main briefing theater on the fifth floor of the Hoover Building was standing room only.

Ned Mahoney rocked back on the heels of his black boots and tried to take the situation in. He could feel exhaustion taking over his body, but his mind was running full tilt. Odds were good that everyone in the room felt the same way. Ethan and Zoe Coyle had been missing for fifty-two hours and twenty-nine minutes, according to the red-digit count clock on the wall.

The Bureau director himself, Ron Burns, had insisted it go up and stay up, front and center, until they got the kids back. One way or the other.

There were live camera feeds from the Branaff School playing on several of the big screens, and area maps of a fifty-mile radius of Washington. Some of those had blinking red flags on them, though Mahoney wasn’t sure what they meant. The Bureau was operating like the well-oiled octopus it could be, with everyone on a strictly need-to-know basis.

The briefing came to order as soon as Director Burns arrived, trailing half a dozen harried-looking ADs and addressing the room even as he came in the side door at the front of the theater.

“Okay, I want a rundown from section heads right now,” he said. “Have we got Counterterrorism here yet? Ops Two?”

“Over here, sir.” Terry Marshall, the deputy section chief from that branch, held up her hand and hurried to the front. When she pointed a small remote at the wall of screens, Mahoney was surprised to see two grisly morgue photos come up. They were from the double suicide at Dulles.

“Farouk and Rahma Al Zahrani,” Marshall said. “Both Saudi citizens, educated at UCLA. He taught in the physics department at King Saud University; she worked for a small import-export house in Riyadh. No criminal records, no known criminal or terrorist associations, no known aliases.

“We’ve double-checked all threat lists, repeat, all, and they’re not on any of them. Same goes for every other passenger on their flight.”

“Yes, and?” Burns said. Thirty seconds in the room, and already he was impatient and demanding of his staff. Burns was infamous around the Bureau for the line “If you don’t come in on Saturday, don’t bother to come in on Sunday.”

“On paper, these are still separate incidents,” Marshall reported. “But the timing is suspect, to say the least. The Al Zahranis flew in Thursday afternoon, approximately eighteen hours before Zoe and Ethan disappeared. Given that nobody’s claimed responsibility for the abduction, or for the Al Zahranis, for that matter, we can’t afford to rule out a connection between the two.”

The room went quiet for several seconds. This was exactly the problem — since the twenty-four-hour mark had come and gone, the silence was killing them.

“Okay, what else?” Burns demanded. “Where are we with the driver of that van?”

Matt Salvorsen from the DC field office took Marshall’s place at the front of the room.

“So far, his story checks out,” Salvorsen said. He brought up an image of a Maryland driver’s license. The name on it was Ray Pinkney. The picture was of the driver.

“We’ve been over his home computer, and he did in fact receive a private IM from this ‘NE1NE1’ character. Contact was made four days before the abduction.”

“Which my ten-year-old granddaughter could have faked,” Burns said.

“Yes, sir,” Salvorsen answered. “Even so, we don’t believe that Pinkney had the means to pull off the larger operation. He’s kind of...”

“Thick?”

“Something like that, sir. In any case, we’re sitting on him twenty-four/seven at the hospital. He knows he’s up a creek now, and we’re fairly confident he’s giving us everything he’s got.”

“Who else talked to him?” Burns said. “Besides EMTs and hospital staff.”

“Secret Service Agent Findlay,” Salvorsen said. “He’s been temporarily decommissioned. And then Detective Cross, from MPD’s Major Case Squad. He managed to interview Pinkney before the Bureau took jurisdiction.”

Mahoney looked up from his notes when he heard Cross’s name. He was surprised to find Director Burns looking right back at him.

“Ned, you know Alex Cross pretty well?”

“Sure,” Mahoney said.

“Get him in on this, but light duty. We don’t need any more chiefs. Just close enough to keep an eye on him. Don’t tell him anything you don’t need to. I don’t want MPD in our way. Understood?”

Mahoney nodded several times, trying not to say what he was thinking — that Alex deserved better than this. “Sir, Cross was instrumental in the Soneji case—”

“Not looking for your opinion right now. I respect Cross. Just get it done, please. We don’t want MPD involved in this, and Cross is MPD!” Burns said briskly.

Mahoney gave the only answer there was to give at that point. “Yes, sir. Will do.”

Freeze out Alex.

Chapter 15

Already, the high-energy director was onto something else on his busy agenda. A crew-cut assistant, female, had just come into the briefing theater, and she whispered in Burns’s ear. Didn’t seem like good news. What was happening now?

At the same time, two Secret Service agents entered from the back, strode up the center aisle, and took a position at the front.

Two more agents appeared in each of the rear corners. Something was definitely up. What?

“On your feet!” Burns said, and everyone rose — just as the president and First Lady entered the room.

President Coyle looked exhausted but somehow had pulled himself together in a dark blue suit and gray tie. Mrs. Coyle, likewise, was camera ready, but anyone could see the stress and pain in her red, puffy eyes, and the sharp lines on her face.

Good God, Mahoney thought, to live this unfolding tragedy in front of the whole world. Your kids missing. No word from whoever took them.

“Sit, please,” the president said, and waited for everyone to settle down. Finally, he spoke again. “Regina and I just wanted to come and thank you all for everything you’re doing,” he went on. “Obviously, we’re not speaking with the press, but if there are any questions while we’re here, we can answer them. Feel free to ask anything. Please. You can be candid, and you can be honest.”

“Mr. President,” Burns cut in from the side. “We can meet privately with section heads, and then get you both out of here as fast as possible. They’ll have questions.”

“Fine,” the president said. “Then just one other thing.”

He walked over to one of the freestanding whiteboards in the room, picked up a green dry-erase marker, and wrote down ten digits. Then he reached into his pocket and held up a small blue phone.

Mahoney felt a ripple of surprise, even shock, run through the room. The two agents at the front exchanged a look as well. This was clearly news to them, alarming news. A breach of not only protocol, but security.

“My detail probably won’t let me keep this phone now, but at a minimum, the nearest active-duty agent to me will have it at all times,” Coyle said. “If anyone on this team has a time-sensitive question that Regina or I could answer, or any exigent reason at all for reaching us with information about our children, that’s the number to use.”

It was an extraordinary gesture, unlike anything Mahoney had ever seen a president do before. Of course, it was also wildly off protocol. He wondered if — or when — his security brass would put the kibosh on it, and whether they’d actually tell the president when they did.

For the meantime, Director Burns seemed to take it at face value. “Memorize it,” he told the room. “This is the first and last time that number appears in print.”

Then he gestured to the president and First Lady, and everyone was back on their feet as the entourage left through a glass door at the front, headed for the smaller conference center in the rear.

The Coyles’ drop-by had lasted a couple of minutes, if that. Already Mahoney was turning the appearance over in his head, looking at it from different angles.

There was always another angle, wasn’t there? The pretense of rallying the troops played out pretty well, but it seemed thin under the circumstances. This was a man who brought the world to his doorstep, literally, every day. And to say the least, this was no ordinary day. Security had to be at an all-time high. So why bring the president over here unnecessarily? Why now?

Part of the explanation — the easy half, anyway — was obvious. Someone at the top wasn’t reporting everything they knew to the larger group. That was a given. But what was it? What had changed? What did they know? Did they already know who was behind the kidnapping?

Agent Mahoney had never aspired to be at the pinnacle of any FBI organizational charts, but that didn’t stop his mind from running all the time, or curiosity from burning a hole in his brain whenever he was on the outside looking in.

So what the hell was the director telling the president and First Lady in that conference room right now?

Chapter 16

“Sir. Ma’am. Please. if you could have a seat,” Director Burns said as he motioned the president and First Lady to the long conference table in the center of the room. Executive AD Peter Lindley was closing all the vertical blinds on the windows and doors. A single Secret Service agent took his post inside, while the rest of the traveling entourage waited in the corridor.

“What’s going on, Ron?” Edward Coyle asked. At the same time, he laid his hand over his wife’s shaking fingers. “Obviously something’s happened. You’d better tell us right now. I’m serious. No politics, no games. Not this time.”

Burns stayed on his feet. “First, let me emphasize that we can’t fully trust anything we receive from an unknown source. For all we know, this could be a deliberate attempt to distract or mislead our investigators.”

“All right, all right. Enough with the prelude,” the president ordered. “Let’s hear it. Please.”

The director nodded to Lindley, who set a briefcase on the table. He opened it and took out two sealed plastic evidence bags.

As soon as Mrs. Coyle saw the little black lacquered case in the first envelope, her hand flew up to take it from Lindley.

“That’s Zoe’s!” she said. “She bought it in Beijing this summer.”

In the other bag was an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven-inch sheet of paper. It was laid out flat now, but several creases showed where it had been folded.

“These came into a suburban Washington field office by regular mail this morning,” Burns said. “I can tell you that Zoe’s fingerprints are the only ones on that black case.”

Mrs. Coyle stared at the little box, running her finger slowly across its contours through the plastic. It was heartbreaking to watch.

“This note was folded up inside,” Burns pressed on. “It’s totally clean of prints as well. We’ve already taken a sample of the ink. We could get something there. I want to assure you we’re putting every resource onto this.”

“What do they want, Ron?”

Unlike his wife, the president was stone-faced. During the campaign, he’d been equally praised and criticized for his stoicism — or robotic quality, depending on whose story you were reading. He had been a law professor at one time and it showed. Burns admired the man’s strength, in any case. He knew he couldn’t have held up nearly as well under similar circumstances. His two daughters, and his wife, were his life, at least his life away from work.

“This is going to come as a shock,” he told the First Couple. “But again, let me stress that we can’t assume anything about this, true or false.”

Even now, Burns realized, he was stalling the president of the United States. Finally, there was nothing left to do but lay the note flat on the table in front of them. It was only a few sentences, and they were brutally succinct.

“There is no ransom. There will be no demands. The price, Mr. President, is knowing that you will never see your children again.”

Chapter 17

Hala Al Dossari popped open her eyes and looked with alarm around the room. For the fourth straight morning, it took a moment, maybe five seconds, to remember exactly where she was.

Wayfarer Hotel.

Washington.

America.

It was strange, waking to silence, in such an uncomfortable, foreign environment. At home, they woke to the adhan every morning, ringing out from two dozen mosques in the neighborhood. Back in their coral house. With their two beloved children.

That all seemed like somebody else’s life now — finishing up her residency, worrying about what to make for dinner, eating alone with Fahd and Aamina most nights while Tariq worked late at his accounting firm.

That was before he started coming home from the mosque talking about American devils, and the inevitable war — any number of things Hala knew in her heart to be true. He rambled nightly about how the United States was a cancer, one that would spread and infect the entire globe if it was left unchecked.

And now here they were. The Wayfarer Hotel. Washington. The previous night she had nearly killed a man on the street. A petty thief.

The clock on the nightstand said four fifty. Hala slipped out from under the cheap hotel comforter and took the television remote to the foot of the bed. She sat there in her nightgown, flipping channels with the sound off so as not to wake Tariq.

It was the same story everywhere — CNN, Fox News, MSNBC. The Coyle kidnapping had become a national obsession, while the suicides at Dulles had already disappeared into the background. It seemed so incredibly apt to her. Systematic. What were two dead Arabs worth here, as compared to two white, wealthy American children? Everything had a price in this country. Everything. And these self-obsessed fools wondered why the rest of the world hated them?

As to whether any of these recent events had something to do with the lack of communication from The Family since they’d arrived, Hala could only guess. It had been four days of convenience store food and lying low in this dank hotel room, this cave, waiting for word that she’d begun to suspect might not be coming.

“Hala?” Behind her on the bed, Tariq stirred. “Ha-laa. Turn it off. It only upsets you.”

“It’s always the same,” she said. “Every single channel. The same babble, the same video.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s why you should turn it off. Leave it off, my darling.”

She reached up to do it, but then stopped short when the light from the screen caught something on the floor. It was a glossy piece of paper, or a brochure of some kind.

Someone had slipped a note under the door in the night.

Even before she knew what it was, Hala’s pulse began to race faster.

“What is it?” Tariq asked. “When did it come? Who delivered it?”

“It’s from the Smithsonian,” she said, bringing it for a better look under the bedside lamp. “The Museum of Natural History. I’m sure it wasn’t there before.”

They unfolded it on the bed.

Inside, the brochure showed a map of the museum’s galleries and current exhibits, but it was nothing more than any ordinary tourist might pick up. There were no instructions or additional markings of any kind. And yet, wasn’t that exactly what she and Tariq were meant to be here — just any tourists?

“It says they open at ten,” she read off the page.

For Hala, the implication was clear. First contact had finally been made.

Chapter 18

This was it, then. Their mission had begun. Something involving the president’s missing children? That could very well be.

It was odd that they would be as much in the dark as everyone else in Washington. Odd, but also brilliant, wasn’t it? The Family gave them only as much information as they would need to fulfill their obligations — no more, no less.

At nine thirty, the Al Dossaris left their hotel and walked the glass and concrete canyon of Twelfth Street all the way down to the National Mall. They passed through the high-columned entrance of the Museum of Natural History just minutes after it opened, blending easily into the crowd of international tourists and school groups already clogging the galleries.

This was it.

But it wasn’t.

For the next two hours, they wandered in a perpetual state of anxiety and frustration. Hala passed by glass cases of preserved sea creatures, and fossilized remains, and African artifacts, never quite seeing any of it. She focused on the faces of the people instead, scanning for anything that might tell them why they were here. The waiting, the suspense, was becoming excruciating, almost impossible to bear.

It wasn’t until their fifth or sixth pass through the museum’s central rotunda that something finally happened.

A dark-eyed young woman with an ornate neck tattoo caught Hala’s gaze from across the room. She held it for several seconds and then looked away, ostensibly taking in the enormous bull elephant that dominated the space between them.

Hala stopped to regard the display, then looked back. Again, the girl was staring. Was she from The Family? Or was this just Hala’s imagination working too hard?

“Tariq?” she said.

“I see her,” he said. “Go. I think she wants to talk.”

He kept his position while his wife worked her way slowly around the room, never losing sight of the stranger. She was Saudi, presumably, but dressed like an American college student. Ripped jeans, a peasant blouse, scuffed clogs. On her shoulder she carried a brightly colored Guatemalan bag. It appeared to be full. With books? Or maybe a bomb? For here? For now?

As Hala reached the back of the gallery, the girl came over and spoke to her.

“Excuse me,” she said. “Do you know where the reptile hall is?”

Her perfect American accent was a surprise. Had this one been recruited stateside? Or, Hala suddenly wondered, was this maybe not what she’d thought? Was this girl with the police?

“I’m sorry,” she answered. “I don’t know. I’m not from here.”

“Maybe I could take a look at your map?”

When the girl pointed at the brochure Hala had carried from the hotel, any last doubts left her. “Of course,” she said, and handed it over.

The girl unfolded it on top of her bag and studied it for several seconds while a stream of waist-high children in school uniforms ran past, squealing out ridiculous laughter having something to do with the elephant’s tusks.

“Here it is,” she said finally. “Reptiles. This is what I want to know more about.”

When she refolded the map and handed it back, something flat and hard was inside that hadn’t been there before. Hala looked down to see the silver edge of a disk tucked into the folds of laminated paper. It sent a quickening sensation up her spine.

“Thanksalot,” the girl said in a familiar American singsong style. She smiled vacantly, then turned and walked away without once looking back.

“No,” Hala said, too quietly to be heard by anyone but herself. “Thank you. And thank Allah.”

Chapter 19

Police work isn’t usually about surprises. It’s more about routines. This was completely different. Something incredibly strange was going on, not all bad, necessarily, but strange. It was like no case I had ever worked before, or come across.

One of the special agents in Ned Mahoney’s unit at the Bureau called me on Monday morning and said he wanted to send over some files.

“Files?” I said. “Like, just any files?”

“Some reinterviews from the Coyle investigation we’d like to get your take on,” he said.

After days of being totally shut out, this request felt random, even disorganized on the part of the Bureau.

I tried calling Ned Mahoney several more times that morning, but all I got was his voice mail. It didn’t make sense. Why would he pull me in and avoid me at the same time? Or was I just being paranoid?

When the courier came, I expected at least one of those files to be about Ray Pinkney, the van driver I’d already interviewed. Instead, what I got was a thick stack of second-and third-tier leads, which I guess made me the Bureau’s newest second-or third-tier gofer. What the hell was that all about?

“They just want to keep an eye on you, sugar,” Sampson said in the car on the way to the first interview. “This is the Bureau’s version of a short leash. You’re officially on it now. I guess I am too.”

He was probably right. John’s always good for a dose of perspective, and common sense, which is why I wanted him along. I hadn’t asked anyone’s permission to bring a partner, but as we say in the business, Fuck that.

“I’ve seen this woman on TV,” Sampson said. He was looking over the files on his lap while I drove. “Don’t think it was BET.”

“Probably not,” I said. “More likely MSNBC, or maybe Meet the Press.”

Isabelle Morris had been the scheduled speaker at the Branaff School on the morning of the kidnapping. Her field was U.S. — Middle East policy, and she was a regular fixture on the Sunday-morning talk circuit. Obviously, some part of that equation was enough for the Bureau to keep her on their radar. And now she was on mine.

When we pulled up to her red stone town house on Calvert Street, a Grand Marquis was parked out front with a suit behind the wheel and a big Starbucks cup on the dash.

I didn’t recognize the agent, but he gave us a nod as we started up the front steps. “Good luck,” he called out.

“Why? Am I going to need it?” I asked, but he just grinned, shook his head, and went back to slurping his coffee.

Chapter 20

“Do you believe that fricking guy drinking fricking lattes down there? I mean, twenty-four hours a day he’s parked in front of my house — him or one of his moron cronies. Really? Really? All the criminal possibilities in the world. This is how you people want to spend your resources. Is that supposed to impress me somehow? Or maybe just keep me from slipping out of the country?”

Those were Isabelle Morris’s first words to us, delivered rapid-fire, starting more or less the second she’d opened the door. She was shorter than I expected, maybe five one, or less. On TV, she was always just a talking head — which I guess was still the case here.

“Ms. Morris, I’m Detective Cross. We spoke briefly on the phone,” I said. “This is Detective Sampson. Can we talk inside? Out of the glare of the FBI? I think that might be better. Please?”

She stared at me a little but then stepped back to let us in. We followed her through the house to a kitchen and family room at the back, with a glass-walled breakfast nook looking out to a brambly garden. A teenaged boy on the couch was playing Mortal something or other with headphones on, and he never even looked over at us.

Ms. Morris went straight to the stove, turned down the flame under a steaming double boiler, and then started chopping a pile of red peppers on the butcher-block counter. When I realized she was playing ball’s-in-your-court with me, I jumped in.

“Ms. Morris—”

“Isabelle,” she said.

“I know you don’t want us here right now, can’t blame you, but you can at least understand why the Bureau and the police might be interested in you?”

She stopped chopping and looked up at the ceiling.

“Hmm, let’s see here. Because I’m on MSNBC more than Fox? Because I worked for the Fulani campaign in the nineties? Or maybe because I dared to criticize the Coyle administration for egregious mistakes they themselves have admitted making in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Is that the kind of thing you mean?”

“Yes, actually,” I said. “All of which is irrelevant to why I’m here. I need to get a statement from you about the night before, morning of, and afternoon following Zoe and Ethan’s disappearance.”

“So you can look for inconsistencies,” she said.

“Not me,” I said. “But someone, yes. That’s the general idea.”

“Unbelievable,” she said. “The FBI and the DC police have no clue where those poor kids are, so they keep up the witch-hunt with people like me, just to be able to say they’re doing something. And you’re comfortable with this?”

“I didn’t say that,” I told her. “I think you satisfy certain criteria as a person of interest, and I think that’s as far as anybody’s gone in an analysis of you. The Bureau has an amazing machine over there, but emphasis is definitely on the ‘machine.’ Sometimes, anyway. Meanwhile, two kids are missing. Can we please focus on that?”

She was squinting at me now, almost like I’d gone out of focus. I don’t think she expected any of that to come out of a cop’s mouth.

“Haven’t I seen you on the news before?” she said then. “I think I have.”

“Probably,” Sampson told her. “He’s about half famous.”

Isabelle Morris smiled, sort of. “Just like me,” she said, then went back to chopping vegetables.

“So where should I start? You want to hear about what I had for dinner Thursday night? What book I’m reading? A Life of Montaigne, okay? Because I’m sure that’ll bring those kids home faster.”

Chapter 21

There wasn’t a single note about Isabelle Morris’s earlier interviews in the thin unclassified file I had gotten from the Bureau, so I couldn’t compare her stories with what I was hearing now. She told us she’d been home the evening before the kidnapping, left the house around seven thirty the next morning for the Branaff campus, and then went right back home again after she’d been released. None of it ruled out a connection to the case, but I thought we were probably wasting our time with her as much as she did.

On the way back in, Sampson and I stopped at an empanada place he likes on Sixteenth. We ate our turnovers in the car with a couple of Yoo-hoos. God save our digestive systems. Mine anyway. Sampson eats like he’s part goat. It’s been that way since we were ten years old.

“So what are you thinking?” Sampson said. “Those kids still alive? Any chance at all?”

I stared over at him. “If no one’s made any demands yet, that’s a terrible sign. On the other hand, the FBI or Secret Service could be sitting on something. Let’s face it, Ethan and Zoe Coyle are two of the highest-value targets in the world.”

John demolished half an empanada in a single bite. “You thinking this could be international?” Sampson said. “Terrorism?”

I shrugged. “For the moment, I’m throwing darts, John. But I’ll tell you one thing. I keep coming back to the Gary Soneji case.” Prior to this, the Soneji mess had been the biggest kidnap investigation — and in some ways, the biggest debacle — I’d ever been attached to.

“Soneji worked at the school he took those kids from,” Sampson said. “I remember they had to drag you kicking and screaming onto that case. And now here you are, kicking and screaming to get onto this one.”

“Yeah.” I looked down at the pile of busywork files on the seat between us. “I just hope those kids are alive. John, I still remember the day we found Michael Goldberg in that grave. I don’t want to relive it. I don’t want to find another dead child.”

Chapter 22

“Be ready to die at any time. Be ready to sacrifice everything. Your life, your family.” That had never been more true than right now.

At eight o’clock Monday night, the Al Dossaris arrived at the Harmony Suites Business Hotel on Twenty-second Street. Neither of them carried anything with them — no weapons, no ID.

They took the rear stairs to the third floor where they knocked twice at the door of Room 345. It was all exactly as specified on the disk they’d received at the Natural History Museum.

A smiling, round-bellied Saudi promptly answered the door. He was clean shaven, with a Washington Nationals ball cap perched on his head. A Family member. Finally.

“Come in, come in,” he said, smiling as he closed the door. “Everything is ready for you. Welcome, brother. Sister.”

He nodded deferentially as he shook Hala’s hand, even as his small eyes lingered over her breasts.

“Please take off that silly hat,” she said to him. He immediately did as he was told.

The man’s much younger wife was inside, spreading clear plastic sheets over both of the queen-size beds. She smiled, too, but didn’t speak, not even to offer any sort of refreshment. Hala noticed that she had very large breasts. Augmented? she wondered. Disgraceful if that was the case. A ridiculous Western custom, dangerous as well.

In the corner, several unmarked cardboard boxes were stacked against the wall. This was the poison, wasn’t it? A great deal of it. Two large empty canvas duffels and a plain black briefcase sat on the dresser. Once the perfunctory greetings had been made, they got to work on the death hit. Tariq and the other man began unpacking cartons while the young woman went to the briefcase and flipped it open for Hala to inspect.

“Weapons,” the young wife said shyly, nervously.

“Yes, weapons. We’re at war with America. Oh, hadn’t you heard?”

Nested in the case’s foam liner were a bowie knife in a leather sheath, a tightly coiled garrote with small wooden handles, a Taser, a Sig Sauer combat model pistol. The kit also included six fifteen-round magazines and a suppressor.

Hala picked up the Sig, keeping her eyes raised, as she’d been trained to do. Her hand found one of the magazines, slapped it into place, then twisted the suppressor onto the threaded muzzle.

Tariq caught her eye and smiled. He liked her with a gun. Liked the ease with which she fondled the weapons. She was the soldier, not him. She was the trained assassin as well.

“This will do,” Hala said, mostly for his benefit, and set the Sig back down.

“Here.” Tariq handed each of the women a pair of latex gloves and a blue filtration mask. “We should get started on the rest of our task.”

“Be careful. Very careful,” Hala warned the other couple. “Do not touch your skin or eyes once we begin. I’m serious about that.”

For the next several hours, they were all extremely careful. The two women cut dozens of squares from a roll of fine-mesh cloth and laid them out in rows on the bed. Tariq instructed the male, as the two of them painstakingly measured out white crystalline powder from large plastic canisters, mounding the substance in the center of each cloth square. The cloth was then tied at the corners into tight bundles and secured to one of several lengths of clear nylon line.

Every string of ten bundles was placed into its own plastic bag.

The bags were then tucked into duffels.

They finished their task at just past midnight. Tariq opened a window and lifted his mask to indicate it was safe for the others.

Their host was grinning as he took off his own mask. He clapped a hand onto Tariq’s shoulder.

“Brother, I know I’m not supposed to ask where you’re taking these, but I can’t wait to find out. We’re all very excited about this.”

Tariq only stared at the man’s hand until he took it away.

Hala answered for them. She picked up the loaded Sig from the dresser and pointed it at their hosts.

“Sit down, both of you,” she said. “We’re not quite done here. I said, Sit down.”

Chapter 23

“I said, sit.”

“What do you think you’re doing?” the fat man asked, even as he sat obediently on the bed. Hala kept her gun trained between his eyes, the same ones that had been undressing her all night.

“We watched two of our own die at the airport last week,” she said. “I thought they had done something stupid to get themselves pulled out of line, but apparently not. Someone’s talking to the Americans. There’s been a leak. The Family is sure of it.”

“And they think it’s us?” the man asked incredulously. “That isn’t possible. It’s ridiculous.”

“It’s all been spelled out,” Hala told them, referring to the disk they’d been given. “Not just our instructions, but everything you two have been doing since you came here.”

“Sister, I swear — we’re with you!” the wife blurted. “We are Family, too.”

“No,” Hala said, waving her pistol at the woman’s ridiculous chest. “You’re whores to the American cause. Traitors.”

“It’s not true,” the man insisted. “No... no.”

The two were so intent on their denials, they didn’t even seem to notice what else was happening in the room.

Tariq had taken a plastic canister to the sink and begun mixing a small amount of the white powder into two glasses of water. Now he was using someone’s pink toothbrush to stir each one into a cloudy mixture.

He carried the glasses over to the couple on the bed.

“Don’t make a fuss,” he said. “Just drink this down. Have some dignity.”

There was fear, but also anger in the fat man’s eyes. “Or what? You’ll shoot us?”

Hala said, “It’s preferable that you do this quietly, but if you need encouragement, I’m supposed to remind you of your family back home.”

“But this is a horrible mistake!” the wife babbled on. “We haven’t done what you said. We are loyal to the cause.”

“That’s very touching,” Hala said. “But it doesn’t matter to me or to The Family. Not anymore. Now I’m going to count to five.”

“Please—”

“One.”

“I’m begging you! Sister?”

“Two.”

The man snatched both glasses from Tariq. He pressed one into his wife’s hand. “We have no choice, Sanaa. Think of Gabir. Think of Siti.”

“Think of three,” Hala said as she continued the countdown. She had no pity for these people. They were disloyal, and they were weak. This mission was too important to risk a mistake. “Four.”

The man tilted his head back and shot the mixture down like whiskey. Then his hands were on his wife’s, helping her to do the same.

The woman gagged, sobbing as she drank the milky liquid, but it went down. Enough of it, anyway. Right away, her lips went pink. Her breath started coming in sharp rasps. “I’m dying,” she whispered. “Why? Why must I die?”

The husband looked up at Hala with hatred in his eyes. “Assassin,” he said.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Hala told him, and gestured at the empty glass in his hand. “You’re no murder victim, you fool. You’re a suicide statistic.”

Tariq took the two duffels and carried them to the door. Hala stayed where she was. There was pleasure in watching these people die, but it was also her job to see it through.

The wife was the first to spasm, violently, bucking and kicking until she collapsed to the floor. The husband, maybe twice her size, hung in longer. He watched Hala with huge bug eyes — as she calmly watched him. His sense of taste and smell would be gone by now, no doubt. The eyesight would fade next. Then the hearing, just at the very end —

“Hala!” Tariq raised his voice. “It’s done. Let’s go. Please, let’s go!”

She picked up the weapons case and slowly backed toward the door, observing all the way. With one last spasm, the fat man lurched forward. He landed facedown on the carpet and was still beside his wife.

“Now it’s done,” Hala said, and turned to leave. “I thought that went rather well. We’re getting better at this, don’t you think?”

Chapter 24

I woke up in a bad mood that morning. Grumpy, cranky, in need of caffeine. Unusual for me, but there it was.

Most days, Nana and I spend breakfast talking about the day ahead, or debating some foolishness from the headlines. But it was the headlines that were making me angry now.

I hid behind my Post and steamed, reading about how the “authorities” weren’t getting anywhere with the four-day-old Coyle kidnapping.

Somewhere around my second cup of coffee, I heard a little tap on the other side of the paper.

“You learning anything new in there?” Nana said. “Or just stewing?”

“I’m stewing. I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.

“Talk about what?” said Jannie, coming in from the hall. I could hear her brother Ali bringing up the rear, thunk-thunking that backpack of his down the stairs. The kid had barely started elementary school. How much stuff did he need? Sounded like about fifty pounds of books.

“Ali, pick that thing up! Don’t scratch up my stairs!” I called out. “Please and thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he called back and kept thunk-thunking anyway.

My oldest, Damon, was away at boarding school — and I still hadn’t gotten used to having him gone. These mornings always felt just a little bit empty without all of our family.

“Talk about what?” Jannie asked again. She gave me a kiss good morning and pointed at a news photo of Ethan and Zoe. “That kidnapping?”

“Excuse me, but which part of ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ didn’t you understand?” I said. “And by the way, let’s make this a quick breakfast. The Alex bus leaves in fifteen minutes — sharp.”

Jannie made a face she probably thought I didn’t catch, then went to pour some juice for herself. I retreated back into my paper while Nana dished up cheddar eggs with whole wheat toast and cocoa for the kids.

For a minute or two, it was conspicuously quiet in the kitchen. I could feel them all staring at me through the paper, though.

Then Jannie piped up again. “Hey, Dad?”

“Yes?” I said, trying my best to be calm.

“The Seven Dwarfs called. They want their Grumpy back.”

What could I say? Ali roared with laughter and high-fived his sister across the table. I heard Nana snickering over by the sink. The FBI obviously had no respect for me, and now neither did my family. Damn it, though, I had a right to be out of sorts.

“Lord, let this man catch a bad guy today,” Nana said. “We could all use it.”

“No comment,” I said, and gave a little growl for good measure.

Then just as the mood was lightening up a little, Bree came charging down the stairs. Mussed hair, rumpled T, bare feet. Something was wrong.

“Alex! Turn on the news! Turn on the news right now!”

She never moves that fast before her first cup of coffee, so I knew this couldn’t be good. I hustled out to the living room, where she was standing in front of the TV. Channel 4 had a live report going.

“What is it?” I said.

“I don’t know,” Bree said. “Something bad happened at the McMillan Reservoir. There’s some kind of problem with the water supply.”

Chapter 25

District officials closed the DC schools. Bree stayed home with Ali and Jannie while I rushed to work. All the info I got from making a few phone calls on the way was that hospitals were overwhelmed with emergency admissions. Hundreds of people had been showing up with bouts of vomiting, blurred vision, trouble breathing, loss of consciousness, even a few heart attacks.

It wasn’t hard to go right to the worst-case scenario. Washington was under attack. But who was behind it?

Did it have anything to do with the Coyle kidnapping? Was that nightmare a real possibility?

It sure looked like it at MPD headquarters, the Daly Building. Police trucks and buses were double-parked out front, ready to go; cruisers were leaving the garage in a solid stream. I felt like I was going the wrong way down a one-way street.

Inside, officers and detectives were literally running up and down the halls. It was as close to an all-out mobilization as I’d ever seen.

I went straight to the Joint Operations Conference Center. More chaos on a very large scale. Phones ringing everywhere, briefings happening on a rolling basis. I found two guys from my squad, Jerry Winthrop and Aaron Goetz, standing off to the side, waiting for orders.

“Fatalities?” I said to Jerry. “You heard?”

He shook his head. “Don’t know, Alex. Everything’s nuts. As you can see. We’re waiting to hear where to go. Fucking water supply.”

At the front of the large room, Ramon Davies, the superintendent of detectives, was on his phone. Standing next to him were Jocelyn Kilbourn from MPD’s internal Homeland Security branch and Hector Nunez from Special Operations, plus a few other unfamiliar faces.

“Who are the suits up front?” I said.

“EPA on the left,” Jerry said. “Interior by the door. And don’t ask who’s in charge, because I don’t think anybody knows yet.”

As soon as Davies was off the phone, he waved his arms to get the room’s attention. “Listen up. We just got word from the Bryant Street Pumping Station over by McMillan Reservoir. They’ve found signs of tampering on one of their lines. Whatever happened over there, it was no accident!”

“What kind of tampering?” someone called out. It was the question I had.

Davies took a breath, then answered. “This does not leave this room. Handmade dispersal devices, presumably to leech whatever poison this was into the system. It seems to be contained in the second high-water district. That’s between Eastern Avenue and Rock Creek. The other districts are clear so far. We’ve got emergency testing going everywhere. Expanded security at all processing facilities.”

Davies handed it over to Assistant Chief Kilbourn. She pulled up a quick PowerPoint and ran everybody through a list of contingencies. Some were immediate and practical. Others were theoretical — from citywide water shutdowns to looting and riot control, even municipal evacuation plans and declarations of martial law. This sure looked like the “big one” that everybody was always worried about.

“No one’s saying any of these emergency protocols are going to become necessary,” Kilbourn told us. “We don’t even know if this is terror-related. But it’s essential that everyone knows what to do if, or when, things go south.”

In other words, we were on the verge of uncharted territory. On paper, we were ready for anything. All kinds of emergency preparedness systems had been put into place in the years since 9/11, with every work group, simulation, and special training the department could throw at it. But the thing no one ever wanted to talk about was that there were some emergency situations you couldn’t possibly prepare for.

Because you just couldn’t imagine them happening.

Chapter 26

I left the room feeling like I was still basically unassigned — and also at a real crossroads on the Coyle case. I needed to know if I could accomplish something — and also, whether the kidnapping of the president’s kids could possibly be connected to the water supply emergency. The possibility had been raised by the FBI and the CIA. It was one of the first things I’d thought of when I heard about the reservoir problem.

I walked out to a stairwell for some quiet. Then I dialed Ned Mahoney’s number. When he didn’t pick up, I kept going down to the parking garage.

I got in my car and drove to Ned’s little Cape house in Falls Church, Virginia. If he was going to play hard to get, I was going to have to become more irresistible.

I’d been out to Ned’s for the occasional barbeque, but when Amy Mahoney saw me standing on her front porch, her eyes opened wide.

“Alex? What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said right away, which wasn’t exactly the truth. “I’m just trying to track Ned down. I need to talk with him, Amy.”

She looked relieved. Ned heads up the Hostage Rescue Team out of Quantico, and it’s not just him who lives with the stress of that job.

“Come on in,” Amy said. She pecked me on the cheek as I stepped past the screen door. “I’ll call him right now.”

I stood in their foyer, feeling a little awkward, a little embarrassed. This wasn’t exactly an aboveboard maneuver, but it had to be done. A minute later, Amy had Ned on the phone.

“Hey, hon, it’s me. I’ve got Alex Cross here. He’s looking for you. You have a second?”

I’m not sure what Ned said next, but I could hear the tone of it. It was Amy who looked embarrassed now. I held out my hand for the phone, and Ned was still railing when I took it.

“— kicking my ass, and I don’t need to tell you—”

“Ned,” I said. “It’s me.”

“Alex?”

“Sorry about this.”

“Jesus, you’re killing me here.”

“Then it’s mutual,” I said. “Just tell me I’m in the dark on the Coyle case for a good reason. I’ll trust your word. But I’m lost here, and there are plenty of other places I could be today.”

“Yeah, like someone else’s house,” he said.

“Ned, Washington is in the middle of an emergency. My kids are home from school. It’s scary as hell. They got to the water supply. Maybe to the president’s kids.”

At first he didn’t answer. Then it was just “I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Not exactly what I was looking for,” I said. “I need you to tell me something, Ned.”

“Alex, what do you want me to say? They’re compartmentalizing the shit out of this thing,” he said. “I doubt I’ve got much more intel than you do at this point.”

Ned and I have known each other a long time. We’ve been through some impossible situations, and done some off-the-record favors for each other, too. So it was strange, and kind of hurtful, trying to gain his trust now. I told him as much.

There was a pause. I heard Ned take a deep breath on the other end. This whole thing was making me feel bad. Talking to him this way. Coming out to his house. Using Amy.

“Listen, I’ve got to go,” he said. “I have a conference call waiting.”

“Ned!”

“Just hang in there.”

“Don’t hang up!” I said, but he already had. If it had been my own phone in my hand, it probably would have gone sailing.

When I turned around, Amy was staring, looking like she might start to cry. “You looked like you wanted to reach right through the phone and strangle him,” she said.

“No,” I said. “Don’t mind me. I just...” Why was I ready to punch a hole in my friend’s wall? What was it that I wanted to do here?

“I just want those kids to be found,” I said. “That’s all I care about, Amy.”

Chapter 27

He was definitely going to write a big, fat book on this someday, when it was all far, far behind him. And not the way everyone and his brother-in-law says they’re going to write a book “someday.” He was really going to do it.

Record.

“It wasn’t that Zoe and Ethan did anything wrong, themselves. They just happened to be born into the wrong family, at the wrong time. None of this was their fault, any more than it’s your fault, or mine. Maybe it goes without saying, but someone has to play the sacrificial lamb. History tells us that much. Every tragedy has repercussions.”

Stop.

That actually sounded half-decent to him. Important. Had a ring of truth. He was getting the hang of this now. Maybe there was even a title in there. Sacrificial Lambs? Possibly, although he still kind of liked Suffer the Little Children, as in, “those who come unto me.”

But that wasn’t a decision he had to make today. The book wasn’t even written yet. Hell, the story wasn’t even told yet, wasn’t finished. There was still plenty of time for the peripheral details to work themselves out. So far, he had the beginning — and he had the end.

Record.

“The juice boxes come in a three-pack for a dollar ninety-nine at the Safeway, two blocks from my house. The Rohypnol’s a little harder to come by, of course, but not impossible if you know where to look. Two milligrams every twelve hours seems to do the trick beautifully. They’re so out of it, I’m not even sure they know what’s going on.”

Stop.

Maybe nobody would care about the Safeway part, but whatever. Tape was cheap as dirt. He’d just keep throwing everything down and sift through it later. The blank cassettes could live in the glove compartment of his vehicle. The used ones, he kept where no one would ever find them. Just like Ethan and Zoe.

Meanwhile, the light was getting long outside. He needed to start moving — if he wanted to be back to the car by dark, which he definitely did.

From the seat next to him, he pocketed two of the juice boxes, the ones with Scotch tape covering the tiny hole the syringe had left. The third box he’d drink on the way. It was an hour through the woods, and an hour back to his house, if he kept up a good strong pace, which he would. He was in excellent physical shape.

He got out and took the recurve bow from the trunk, along with a leather quiver of arrows. Deer season was still six weeks off, but rabbits and squirrels were always fair game. More than that, the hunting thing was a good excuse for being all the way out here in the first place. Not that anyone came around these woods much, but it didn’t cost anything extra to be careful.

Record.

“That’s another thing. The FBI hasn’t said word one about my little note. So just in case it’s not already clear, none of this has ever been about money. Not taking the kids, and not the book, either. I mean, it’s not like I’m going to be able to collect royalties when this thing is done. I’ll just have to buy it at the Barnes and Noble or Walmart like everybody else.”

Stop.

Record.

“It’s going to be one hell of a story. It really is. Just you wait and see.”

Stop.