Cross Kill

Chapter 24

In the video clip, Gary Soneji was just as I remembered him: out on one of Grand Central Station’s train platforms, holding the infant, and taunting me.

I’d never seen the video. Never knew it existed, but it was definitely legitimate. After viewing the clip six or seven times, I could see my own shadow stretched in the space between me and Gary Soneji. The camera operator all those years ago had to have been right off my left shoulder.

Was the cameraman a fluke? A random passerby? Or someone working with Soneji?

The clip started again. It appeared on endless loop.

“Dad, this is giving me the creeps,” Jannie said. “Turn it off.”

“Gimme the remote and the computer, Ali,” I said.

“I’ve got homework on this computer,” he said.

“I’ll transfer your homework to the one in the kitchen,” I said, and gave him a gimme motion.

He groaned and handed it to me.

Bree came in the front door. I hit the Power button on the remote, but the screen did not turn off. Instead, it broke from that endless loop to Kelly green.

I tried to turn the screen off again, but it jumped to black, slashed diagonally with a golden beam of light. The camera zoomed closer to that light and you could see a silhouette of a person there.

Closer, it was a man.

Closer still, and it was Soneji.

He was giving the lens the same quarter profile we’d seen in the still image that Gary’s Girl posted on the website forum, the one where his eye and the corner of his mouth conspired to leer right at me.

But this time Soneji spoke.

In that cracking, hoarse voice I’d heard earlier that day in the pine barrens, Soneji said, “You’re not safe in the trees, Cross. You’re not safe in your own home. The Soneji are everywhere!”

Then he threw his head back, and barked and brayed his laughter before the screen froze. A title appeared below: www.thesoneji.net.

“What’s that, Dad?” Ali asked, upset.

I stormed to the screen, followed the cord to its power source, and tore it violently out of the wall.

“Alex?” Bree said. “What’s going on?”

I looked at Ali. “Was that Walking Dead episode streaming from Netflix?”

“Yes.”

Yanking out my cell phone, I looked to Bree and said, “Soneji hacked into our internet feed.”

“I’ll shut the router down,” Bree said.

“No, don’t,” I said. I scrolled through my recent calls and hit Call. “I have a feeling it will be better if the link’s still active.”

The phone picked up. “Yes?”

“This is Alex Cross,” I said. “How fast can you get to my house?”

Forty minutes later, as we were finishing up Nana Mama’s roast chicken masterpiece, and fighting over who was going to get the last wing and who the last sweet potato fries, there was a sharp knock at our side door.

“I’ll get it,” I said, put my napkin down, and went out into the great room and unlocked the door that led to the side yard and the alley behind our place.

I did not turn on the light, just opened it quickly and let our visitors inside. The first was Ned Mahoney, my former partner at the FBI. The second was Special Agent Henna Batra of the Bureau’s cybercrime unit.

“Who’s making sure you’re safe in your own home?” Mahoney asked once I’d closed the door.

“Metro in unmarked cars, both ends of the block,” I said.

“Soneji’s still the type to try.”

“I know,” I said. “But I think we’re good.”

“I’m still unclear why you wanted me here, Dr. Cross,” Agent Batra said.

“I think Soneji or The Soneji may have made a mistake,” I said. “If I’m right, they left a digital trail inside my house, or on our network, anyway.”