Cross Kill

Chapter 5

Hours passed like days as we waited outside the surgical unit. Bree showed up before noon.

“Anything?” she asked.

I shook my head.

“Billie,” Bree said, hugging her. “We’re going to find who did this to John. I promise you that.”

“You didn’t find Soneji?” I asked in disbelief. “How could he have gotten away if you’d cordoned off the area?”

My wife looked over at me, studied me. “Soneji’s dead, Alex. You all but killed him yourself.”

My mouth hung open, and I blinked several times. “You mean you didn’t send his picture out? You didn’t look for him?”

“We looked for someone who looked like Soneji,” Bree said defensively.

“No,” I said. “He was less than thirty feet from me, light shining down on his face. It was him.”

“Then explain how a man who all but disintegrated right before your eyes can surface more than a decade later,” Bree said.

“I can’t explain it,” I said. “I... maybe I need some coffee. Want some?”

They shook their heads, and I got up, heading toward the hospital cafeteria, seeing flashbacks from long ago.

I put Gary Soneji in prison after he went on a kidnapping and murder spree that threatened my family. Soneji escaped several years later, and turned to bomb building. He detonated several, killing multiple people before we spotted him in New York City. We chased Soneji into Grand Central Station, where we feared he’d explode another bomb. Instead he grabbed a baby.

At one point, Soneji held the baby up and screamed at me, “This doesn’t end here, Cross. I’m coming for you, even from the grave if I have to.”

Then he threw the infant at us. Someone caught her, but Soneji escaped into the vast abandoned tunnel system below Manhattan. We tracked him in there. Soneji attacked me in the darkness, and knocked me down and almost killed me before I was able to shoot him. The bullet shattered his jaw, ripped apart his tongue, and blew out the side of one cheek.

Soneji staggered away from me, was swallowed by the darkness. He must have pitched forward then and sprawled on the rocky tunnel floor. The impact set off a small bomb in his pocket. The tunnel exploded into white-hot flames.

When I got to him, Soneji was engulfed, curled up, and screaming. It lasted several seconds before he stopped. I stood there and watched Soneji burn. I saw him shrivel up and turn coal black.

But as sure as I was of that memory, I was also sure I’d seen Gary Soneji that morning, a split second before he tried to shoot me in the heart and blow Sampson’s head off.

I’m coming for you, even from the grave if I have to.

Soneji’s taunt echoed back to me after I’d gotten my coffee.

After several sips, I decided I had to assume Soneji was still dead. So I’d seen, what, a double? An impostor?

I supposed it was possible with plastic surgery, but the likeness had been so dead-on, from the thin reddish mustache to the wispy hair to the crazed, amused expression.

It was him, I thought. But how?

This doesn’t end here, Cross.

I saw Soneji so clearly then that I feared for my sanity.

This doesn’t end here, Cross.

I’m coming for you, even from the grave if I have to.