Kill Alex Cross

Chapter 41

The kidnapper understood everything there was to understand about the case, and definitely more than the Washington police, the plodding Secret Service, and the painstakingly ineffective FBI. He watched them as they continued to search for any hint of a clue or evidence misplaced on the campus of the Branaff School. They weren’t going to find anything, though. He was certain of that.

Record.

“I have been thinking, obsessing over these desperate measures for over two years, and actually planning it for fourteen months. I believe that I’ve covered my tracks, and the more I go over the details, the more confident I am that this will go down as one of the great unsolved cases in history.”

A school bell rang just then — lunch!

He slid the tape recorder into a trouser pocket and decided to stroll out onto the school campus, to parade among the still-nervous students and teachers, but also the cops who were there performing their tireless yet pointless interviews. Talk to me, just me, he couldn’t help thinking.

As he strolled along, he noticed a tall MPD detective, a striking figure, an obviously confident man. He knew this one, had read about his becoming part of the investigation. This detective had a success record that was some cause for concern.

The kidnapper didn’t turn the tape recorder back on now, though his finger played over its shape. Still, he was recording inside his head.

Record.

“One of the MPD detectives on the case solved a major kidnapping years ago. If I am as thorough as I believe I am, I have to admit that he’s a danger to everything I’ve done, to all that I have accomplished, to the entire plan and its rewards. I feel this everywhere in my body. He’s different from the others, just as I am different from my fellow man and woman. I think I know what I should do now, but can I do it? Can I kill Alex Cross? It’s the right thing to do.”

Chapter 42

Just off the Northwest corner of Sixth and P streets, a plain white van sat stationed at the curb. The aluminum ladder and PVC pipe on the roof rack masked an air vent, which in turn masked a six-millimeter lens taking live footage of the mosque across the street.

FBI Agent Cheryl Kravetz was on periscope. She shifted the joystick control in her right hand, bringing the double front doors of Masjid Al-Qasim into focus, just as the early morning service began to let out.

The sidewalk filled up quickly. There were more men than women by far, in everything from thobes and skullcaps to Abercrombie T-shirts and patent leather high-tops. But there were families, too, and a good number of couples. Kravetz was particularly interested in the couples.

“Is it just me,” she asked, “or does this whole thing seem kind of—”

“Open-ended?”

Her partner, Howard Green, kept his eyes on the console in front of him, where a bank of five small screens and two large ones showed various surveillance images. One of the big screens had a shot of the intersection, patched in from a Department of Transportation camera on the stoplight just outside the van. The other showed what Kravetz was seeing.

“I was going to say ‘racist,’” she went on.

“Here we go again.”

“I mean, seriously. We have no idea what we’re looking for here. ‘Suspicious Muslims?’” Kravetz took her hand off the controls to air-quote the last part. “I don’t even know which of these people are Saudi, or if that even matters.”

“Nobody said ‘suspicious Muslims,’” Green countered.

“They didn’t have to,” Kravetz said. “We all know what they want us to do. Scan the brown faces for a while, see what we see. Make sure everyone feels like we’re on the job.”

“We are on the job,” Green said. “How do you think this works? You prefer to sit around and wait for more Americans to die? ’Cause you can bet your ass these bad guys aren’t going to sit on their heels.”

“All right. Cool your jets. I’m just saying—”

“Yeah, I got it the first couple times.”

“— ACLU’s going to have their hands full before this thing is over. That’s all.”

Agent Green reached down and took the last bacon, egg, and cheese biscuit from the greasy McDonald’s bag at his feet. He knew he was better off not going there with Kravetz, especially this early in the day. The Bureau was spread thin, and their relief wouldn’t be coming for another ten hours. Maybe more.

Then, as Green looked up again, something caught his attention. It was a well-dressed couple, coming out of the mosque at the back of the crowd. Nothing strange there — except they were both loaded down with luggage.

“What’s with the suitcases?” he said. Kravetz took her eye off the periscope to see what Green meant. He put a finger up to the screen. “That couple, right there.”

The woman had stopped to lower her hijab. The man, clean shaven with a Ravens cap on his head, took up the larger bag she’d just set down and handed her a briefcase to carry instead.

“Maybe they came in on a red-eye,” Kravetz offered. “Went straight to services from the airport.”

“Maybe,” Green said. “Stay with them.”

He watched as Kravetz put the couple in the center of her frame. She pressed a thumb control on the joystick and zoomed in close enough to snap a still image of their faces just before they continued up the sidewalk.

“Nice work,” Green said.

Kravetz was still watching the young Middle Eastern couple walk away.

“Nice ass,” Green went on. “She’s kind of smoking hot, isn’t she?”

“I’m sending this in,” Kravetz said dryly. But yes, the woman was definitely hot.

With a few keystrokes, the image was on its way to IDENT. Both faces would be electronically logged and then scanned against an international database of known terrorists and persons of interest. Secret Service’s facial recognition system would pick it up, too.

“See, this is exactly what I’m talking about,” Kravetz said. “Do you know how many random, innocent people are pouring into the system right now?”

“There must be some kind of compelling intel on that mosque,” Green said. “They’ve got us on this corner for a reason.”

“Yeah, us and a hundred other JTTF teams on a hundred other corners. This is a needle in a haystack. On a good day.”

Agent Green took a bite of his sandwich and tried not to think about it. They had a long shift ahead, and they were already talking in circles. Even if Kravetz was right — and she probably was — there was no sense in admitting it now. He’d never hear the end of it.

Chapter 43

After our early morning meeting at CIA headquarters, Ned Mahoney and I were both detailed straight over to the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, also in Langley. It’s housed in a secure building called Liberty Crossing, or LX1 for short.

The command center was a cavernous space with the soft lighting of a movie theater. But the volume was more like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and the tension was sky high.

Thousands of personnel had been dispatched to locations all over the city, and reps from every major agency had been assigned to this room, like me. Each area was marked with quickly made signs taped to the front of the desks — HOSTAGE AND RESCUE, MPD, CIA, MOBILE CTOC COMMUNICATIONS, and on it went.

Beyond the rail yard incident itself, we had a whole new element to deal with this morning. As of five a.m., Homeland Security had raised the terror threat level for Washington’s mass transit system from orange to red. All subway service, bus routes, and commuter trains were suspended until further notice.

This was only the second time any sector had gone red since they established the alert system after 9/11. There was no soft-selling it to the locals anymore.

Reports were steadily coming in that people were starting to flee the city in noticeable numbers.

The story had gone fully national, too. CNN was up on several screens around the room, covering the shootings and transit shutdown to the exclusion of everything else. They had a live helicopter shot of the rail yard, crawling with TV crews.

You could see officers from the Explosive Ordnance Division in their bulky suits, climbing in and out of the subway cars, like something right out of The Hurt Locker. It was the kind of imagery news directors love, and law enforcement hates.

I took my seat next to Javier Crist, an MPD sergeant who worked at LX1 full-time. He had the computer-assisted 911 dispatch up on one of the screens in front of him, monitoring the distress and emergency calls that were pouring in from everywhere. Our job was to gather information from the field, report it to the room, and send back a constant stream of leads for MPD to run down.

“Welcome to Camp Hell” was all Crist got out before he had to take another call.

That was the extent of my orientation. My own phone was already ringing.

I slapped on a headset and got straight to work. This wasn’t what I had been hoping for, but at least it was something. I was on the inside now.

Chapter 44

Bree cross was reading in bed at two o’clock that afternoon when the doorbell started ringing. Not just once, but over and over and over.

Something was wrong.

And if it wasn’t, someone was going to get a piece of her mind once she got to the front door.

She jumped up and dropped her book on the bed. The title was You and Your Stepkids. She was supposed to be getting some sleep before the night shift, but this was a chance to sneak in a few chapters while no one was looking, especially Alex, who would be sweet enough about the book but would be unable to stop at least one snorting laugh.

“I’m coming!” Bree yelled from the stairs. The bell was still going. She could see two shadows on the other side of the front door’s frosted glass, one of them a good head taller than the other. Now what?

When she flipped the dead bolt and threw open the door, Nana was standing there. Next to her was a man Bree had never seen before. The man had his arm around Nana’s middle, and she was holding a red-stained handkerchief up to her forehead. Her left knee was dripping with blood as well.

“Oh my God! What happened?”

“My key was in my purse,” Nana said — and her purse was nowhere in sight.

“Some punk knocked her down,” the man said. He had bloodstains on the sleeve of his khaki jacket. “I didn’t get there in time to see anything. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you so much,” Nana said as he handed her off to Bree’s care. “A real gentleman. And you will absolutely be sending the cleaning bill to this address!”

As soon as the man had gone, though, her face fell into a grimace. Bree eased her down onto the old caned chair in the hall for a better look. The cut on her forehead wasn’t deep, but the knee was badly abraded.

“Goddamnit! Who would do something like this?” Bree said.

“There’s no need for language. I’ll be fine,” Nana told her. “I’ll live.”

“Sorry. Just... stay right there.”

Bree raced to the bathroom for a first-aid kit and a couple of washcloths. She was silently fuming the whole time. Her head felt like it was burning up, and her chest, too.

I’m going to kill someone. I swear to God, I’m going to commit murder today.

Back out in the hall again, she put on a calm face. Then she knelt down and gently pushed Nana’s hair away to clean the wound.

“What happened, Regina? Tell me.”

“Well...” Nana took a deep breath. “I was walking back from the pharmacy up on Pennsylvania. It was across from United Methodist, right there in the middle of Seward Square. Maybe I should have gone around the long way, I don’t know—”

Bree stopped with the washcloth in midair. “Don’t you dare blame yourself for this! Since when is Seward Square dangerous in the middle of the day?”

“Since about fifteen minutes ago,” Nana said, half joking, but also on the verge of tears. She looked down at the bloodstained handkerchief in her hand. “Seventy years in this city, and I’ve never been mugged. Good Lord, I’m getting old.”

It made Bree want to cry herself. This damn neighborhood, this city, what was it doing to people? She quietly finished up the first aid and walked Nana over to the living room couch to rest.

Then just as quietly, she slipped back upstairs and took the Glock 19 out of the lockbox in her closet.

When she came down, Nana was sitting and staring out the front window toward Fifth Street. An issue of O, the Oprah Magazine sat unopened on her lap.

“I’m going to run out for a minute,” Bree told her. “You need anything right now?”

Nana eyed her suspiciously. “Why? Where are you going?”

“Just up the street. Now tell me what this asshole — excuse me, this mugger — looked like.”

Chapter 45

The temperature was high for September. In more ways than one. Sweat started dripping down Bree’s back before she’d gone a block. It was shades of running the 440 at UVA all over again — not quite a run, not quite a sprint. She wasn’t sure how much ground she’d have to cover.

Or whose butt she was going to have to kick.

At the south side of Seward Square, she stopped to catch a breath and look around. This was most likely a wild goose chase, but she was too pissed to just sit home and file a police report like somebody else might do. Somebody sane.

And then —

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

There was the mugger, squatting in the shade of an old cherry tree in the middle of the square. Didn’t even have the sense to make herself scarce.

This had to be her. Nana had been pretty specific — red Hollister hoodie, brown denim shorts to the knees, dirty white ball cap, and a pair of ridiculous-looking white plastic shades that were too big to be anything but stolen.

Way to blend in, girlie.

She looked all kinds of stupid, but the girl did know enough to leap up and bolt as soon as she saw Bree, who was clearly on a mission. She sprang away on a pair of long skinny legs, going straight up Pennsylvania in the direction of the Hill.

She was quick, too. But she had probably never ran NCAA track, had she?

Once Bree had her on a straightaway, it took less than half a block to close the gap to an arm’s reach. She nabbed the girl by the hood and practically yanked her off her feet as they came to a stop and near collision.

The little thief didn’t weigh anything inside those baggy clothes. And her height was deceptive. Up close, she looked even younger than Jannie. She was maybe twelve years old, could be thirteen.

“Get off me!” she screamed, scrambling to get away. “Help! Somebody call the damn po-lice!”

Bree’s badge was already out and in the girl’s face. The Glock, she left in its holster.

“I am the damn police, little girl. Now turn around! You knocked down the wrong grandmother.”

She put the girl up against the wall of a corner Exxon and gave her the full treatment. There was nothing down her sides, nothing in the hoodie’s pouch when she squeezed it. But then she felt something in the front right pocket of the shorts.

“Is that a credit card?”

“Yeah,” the girl said over her shoulder. “My mama’s card, okay? We done here?”

Bree stepped back, but not more than arm’s length. “Show me,” she said.

“Bite me,” the girl snapped. “I don’t gotta.”

“You know what? Screw it.”

She grabbed the young suspect by the arm and reached into the pocket herself. So much for the Fourth Amendment. It was too hot for this nonsense.

Sure enough, she pulled out a sweaty wad of three twenties and a familiar-looking Visa card. The name embossed across the front was Regina Cross.

“Your mama’s, huh?”

“All right, all right!” The girl didn’t miss a beat. “Some kid down the street gave it to me. I swear to Jesus Our Lord and Saviour! Right over there!” She pointed back toward the square.

Bree didn’t take the bait. “Let’s go,” she said, and started walking.

The mouthy little con artist didn’t have any choice but to move her feet and keep up. “What’re you doing? Where we going?” she said. “You can’t arrest me, I’m just a damn kid!”

“I’m not arresting you,” Bree said. “You’re going to show me where you dropped that purse. Then you’re coming down the street to apologize for what you did. And I suggest you watch your mouth when you do.”

Chapter 46

Nana got up off the couch as Bree came in with their mugger in tow. She seemed to want to make a point of meeting them in the front hall on her own two feet.

“Oh now, see that?” she said, looking the girl up and down. “I’m a little embarrassed. I told my granddaughter-in-law here that you were something scary.” She pointed a crooked finger at the dusty ball cap on the girl’s head. “And you need to take that off inside the house. It’s only polite.”

The girl squinted back. “You joking, right?” she said, but Bree snatched the hat off for her.

The hair underneath looked like baby dreds at first, but it wasn’t quite that. It was regular braids that had been chopped off at some point. Maybe to look more like a boy out on the streets, Bree thought. In the close quarters of the front hall, it was obvious this one hadn’t known a shower in a long time either.

“What’s your name?” Nana asked.

The girl thrust the tan leather purse out at her. “I’m sorry, okay?” she said, not sounding very sorry at all.

Nana let the bag hang there between them. “I didn’t ask if you were sorry. I asked what your name was.”

“Ava,” she grunted out. Then she set the purse on the newel post and looked at Bree. “I said I was sorry, didn’t I? Can I go now?”

But Nana wasn’t done. She still had the floor. “Tell me something, Ava, and that’s a beautiful name, by the way. What was the first thing you were going to buy with my money?”

“Huh?”

“Huh is not a word. What I want you to tell me is why you needed to take my purse. I got knocked down for it. I think I deserve to know why.”

Bree was almost starting to feel sorry for the girl now. Ava’s face was like a stone mask, but one tear had escaped down each cheek. She scrubbed them off with her sleeve right away.

“I dunno,” she finally said.

“Well, if you don’t know, then you can’t go,” Nana told her.

The girl’s jaw dropped open. “Say what?”

“That’s what I used to tell my students,” Nana said. “I was a teacher, see, about a hundred years ago, maybe more than that. It seems to me you need some time to come up with a better answer.”

The tears were coming faster now. “I never done anything like this before!” Ava blurted. “I swear!”

“That much I can believe. She was just hanging out in the square when I found her,” Bree said.

Nana turned away from both of them and headed toward the kitchen.

“Come on, Ava. I’m going to make some tea with milk. And from the look of you, I don’t suppose you’d mind a sandwich.”

Ava didn’t move, but Bree noticed she wasn’t angling for the front door anymore, either.

“I don’t drink tea,” she said sullenly.

“You do if I make it!” Nana said, and she disappeared on the other side of the swinging kitchen door.

Chapter 47

If Bree hadn’t called to give me the lowdown, I would have been caught completely off guard. Apparently, Nana had taken in a stray that afternoon, and the girl was still there when I got home after a long day of bureaucratic nonsense.

I could hear everyone talking — and laughing — as I came onto the back porch, but they all went still when I stepped into the kitchen. It was like something out of an old Wild West movie.

Jannie and Ali were at the table with the other girl, whose name was Ava. The kids all had plates of lasagna in front of them, but Ava was the only one eating right now. In the silence, I could hear the dryer running downstairs, and I recognized the old Bob Marley T-shirt she was wearing. It was something Damon had left behind when he went away to boarding school.

“Alex, this is Ava,” Nana told me. Despite the bandages, my grandmother didn’t look too much the worse for wear and tear. In fact, she looked a little smug.

“Hi, Ava,” I said.

“Hello.”

Ava didn’t look up and kept eating with her elbows jutted out on either side, like she expected someone to take her plate away at any second.

Jannie and Ali both sat up tall like a couple of meerkats, watching to see what I’d do next. I wasn’t quite sure myself.

“Nana, could I speak with you in the living room?” I finally said.

“I’m an old woman, Alex.”

“Now, please?”

I held the door for her and we walked to the far end of the house before either of us spoke. Then she jumped in first.

“The girl’s got nowhere to go,” she said. “She just needs a place to sleep where she doesn’t have to keep one eye open all the time.”

I ran my hand over my head, trying to gather some patience at the end of this very long day. “That’s what Child and Family Services is for,” I said.

“Why? So they can put her in the warehouse?” Nana said, and pointed up at me. “That’s right, I know what they call it down at the police department, so don’t even try that on me, mister.”

I couldn’t argue that point. The temporary holding facility where Ava would probably land was, in fact, pretty bleak, and it was called “the warehouse.”

“The poor thing’s been on the street for a month,” Nana added.

“So she says.”

“Look at her! She’s no bigger than my little finger. I don’t need a polygraph to tell me no one’s been looking after that child. Do you?”

Bree had wandered out behind us. She’d been playing Switzerland so far, but she spoke up now.

“For what it’s worth, Alex, her story checks out. The mother’s name she gave us is Olivia Williams. There was an Olivia Williams who died of a heroin overdose, DOA, at Washington Hospital on August tenth. Also, Kramer Middle School had an Ava Williams enrolled last year, but she hasn’t shown up for seventh grade.”

Nana gave me a told-you-so kind of glare. I could feel myself losing ground already.

“What about the father?” I said. “Other family? You check any of that?”

“Nothing on the school records. I think she really is alone,” Bree said.

“Damon’s room is just sitting empty up there. Besides, I already put clean sheets on the bed,” Nana said. Like that settled everything. The fact that I owned this house didn’t seem to count for much right now. Not enough, anyway.

“All right,” I said. “One night. But first thing tomorrow, Bree’s taking her over to CFS.”

“We’ll see,” Nana said.

“And I’m putting a lock on Damon’s door.”

“You most certainly are not!” she told me. “You can sleep out in the hall if you like. Now if you’ll excuse me, we’ve got a guest in the kitchen.”

I looked at Bree again, but her expression said it all: If you can’t budge Nana, how do you expect me to?

“One night,” I said again.

“We’ll see,” Nana said.

Chapter 48

Bree took a little nap after dinner before she went to her shift at work. I snuggled with her until she was asleep, then I went up in the attic to work some myself.

I must have fallen asleep at my desk and when I woke up Bree was gone and everyone else was sleeping. I checked on Ava and she was out for the count. Then I went to bed — alone.

I hated leaving everything so undone the next morning, but it wasn’t exactly a call-in-sick kind of day. I got up at four thirty and made it out to Langley by six.

The morning was a beauty, a burst of burnt orange on the horizon, but I wasn’t going to see much more of it, was I?

The truth was, I didn’t want to be anchored at LX1. Cops are creatures of the field. It’s where we do our best work. I wanted to be out there chasing leads and working the case at street level. That’s where I might actually do some good.

Then about halfway through the day, I got my wish. Kind of.

It was just after one o’clock. Peter Lindley came out of his makeshift office at the command center and waved to get my attention. Half a dozen agents and supervisors were coming out behind him, and he motioned me over. I was next.

Mahoney caught my eye as I crossed the floor. I shrugged back. I had no idea what this was about. He gave me the old pinkie and thumb to his ear — call me later — and I nodded that I would. Ned will never admit it, but he hates to be left out of anything. He’s also a lot more ambitious than people might think.

“Come in,” Lindley told me. “And close the door behind you, please.”

The space was normally a conference room, but most of the chairs had been taken out. Lindley’s desk was just an eight-foot folding table in the middle of the room. He had a triple monitor set up, just like everyone else, and half a dozen phones. One of those was in his hand right now. He was also holding a small yellow Post-it note.

“As soon as I have you, I’m supposed to call Nina Friedman at the White House,” he said, wagging the Post-it. “Do you know who that is?”

“No idea,” I said. “Should I?”

“Regina Coyle’s deputy chief of staff,” Lindley said. “What’s going on, Alex? Why is the First Lady’s office looking for you? Is there something I need to know about?”

I couldn’t tell if Lindley was pissed off, overcaffeinated, or just trying to be thorough. Maybe he didn’t like feeling left out, the same as Ned Mahoney.

“Peter, I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “I’m guessing this must have something to do with the kidnapping. Why don’t you give that number a call and we’ll both find out?”

He glared at me over the top of his half-frames like I was being coy or something. But he went ahead and dialed the number.

As soon as I took the phone from him, a woman’s voice was there.

“Detective Cross?”

“Speaking,” I said. “How can I help, Ms. Friedman?”

“I’m calling from the Office of the First Lady, here in the East Wing,” she said, unnecessarily. There was a rote kind of formality to her voice. “Are you available for a meeting with Mrs. Coyle?”

Even the question was a formality. Was I available for a meeting with the First Lady of the United States?

“Of course,” I said. “I could be there in about forty-five minutes.”

“Very good. I’ll have your name at the East Appointment Gate,” she said crisply. “I can meet you at the top of the drive, under the porte cochere.”

And out of sight of the press, if I was reading her correctly. This meeting wasn’t a secret, but discretion seemed to be the m.o.

When I hung up, Lindley was still staring at me. Two of his other phones were ringing, but he ignored them, waiting for an explanation.

“Well?” he said.

I shrugged. “I’m going to need some coverage on the desk.”

I didn’t really care if he thought I was tap-dancing or not. I had a meeting to get to.

Chapter 49

At the White House, there was all the expected, overt security — ID check and magnetometer at the East Gate; stepped-up Secret Service presence; Capitol Police everywhere. And then there was everything I couldn’t see. I wondered how many surveillance cameras and maybe even rifle sites were on me as I walked up the curved drive to the East Wing’s main entrance.

My only regret was that Sampson wasn’t here with me to see this. And Bree. And maybe Nana and the kids. A quick photo op with everybody?

Nina Friedman was waiting on the front steps as promised. She was just as efficient in person, juggling her BlackBerry to shake my hand even as we turned to head inside.

“Thank you for coming. Won’t you please follow me?” she said. That was it. There was no briefing, no explanation.

Once I cleared the security desk and another magnetometer in the entry hall, I expected to be taken to a conference room, or maybe up to the First Lady’s offices on the second floor.

But it quickly became clear that wasn’t going to happen. Ms. Friedman walked me straight through the East Wing lobby and out the other side.

I kept my mouth shut as we passed from one building to the next, down the long East Colonnade with its view of the Kennedy Garden, and into the ground floor of the White House itself.

It made sense, now that I thought about it. Secret Service was probably restricting Mrs. Coyle’s movement as much as possible. Her office time would have been kept to a minimum, at best.

They stopped us for another ID check at the base of the main stairs. Then again on the first-floor landing before we could continue up to the residence. By the time we got to the stair landing on the second floor, the agents seemed to be expecting us. They only nodded at Ms. Friedman as we passed.

The museum quality of the lower levels had given way to something more like a home up here. There was plush blue and gold carpeting, a baby grand piano, several built-in bookcases, with hardbacks that looked like someone had actually read them.

I’m not so jaded that I wasn’t tripping out a little on where I was, either. It was impossible to be there and not think about all the presidents and First Ladies who had walked through these very rooms for the last two hundred years — all the way back to John Adams.

I guess the word for what I felt is humbled.

The hall narrowed and then narrowed again through a deep arch that opened to a sunny sitting room on the other side.

Mrs. Coyle was there with two female aides. To my right was the Lincoln Bedroom. This was just shy of surreal. I was definitely in the loop now.

The First Lady’s deputy chief of staff started the introductions.

“Mrs. Coyle, this is—”

“Detective Cross. Yes, of course.”

As Regina Coyle came over to shake my hand, I could see her eyes were still red from whenever she’d last cried. Probably not long ago.

“Thank you so much for being here,” she said. “I’m hoping you can be of some help to me.”

Chapter 50

“Mrs. Coyle, I’m so sorry about every thing that’s happened,” I said. “I’ll do whatever I can.”

She gestured me inside while the others quietly left the way I’d just come. A few seconds later, the First Lady and I were as alone as we were going to get in that building, even upstairs in the private quarters.

She sat on a long couch with a view of the Treasury Department building behind her. I took one of the yellow upholstered chairs, the same color as the walls and curtains, while she poured coffee from a service of White House china.

“You have some relevant experience with kidnap investigations, isn’t that right?” she started in. “The Gary Soneji case and others?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Three major cases since Soneji. It’s not my primary expertise—”

“But you’re good at it,” she said. It wasn’t a question, but she waited for an answer anyway.

“Experience is probably the best teacher,” I said. “So yes, I’m pretty good.”

Mrs. Coyle nodded, then looked down. She seemed to be building up to something.

She was a quiet First Lady, as they went. More Laura Bush than Hillary Clinton. Both she and her husband were originally from Minnesota farm stock, and I don’t think she ever relished the high-profile aspects of this job.

When she looked up again, her gaze was steady. More focused than before. I realized she was as strong as her husband.

“I know that most of the people looking for Ethan and Zoe right now probably don’t expect to find them alive,” she said all at once. There was no outward emotion to it. Just a fact. “I’m not blind to the statistics on this kind of thing.”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “But I hope you also know that you’ve got some of the best people in the world on this. You have since day one.”

“Of course,” she said, and fell back into another silence. There was obviously something else. I did what comes naturally to me and waited quietly for her to go on.

Then she said, “Your son was held hostage for several months, wasn’t he? Around the time he was born?”

That one, I didn’t see coming at all. Mrs. Coyle had done her homework and then some. It was true. Ali’s mother, Christine, had been kidnapped while she was still pregnant with him. The memory of it cut right through me. Christine and I had never recovered from the incident and its trauma.

I nodded. “It was the worst year of my life,” I said. “Ali’s mother’s as well.”

“And how is your son today?” she asked.

“He’s great, actually,” I said. “A little bigger every day. I’m very proud of him.”

“So you understand,” she said. The look on her face was as close to a smile as anything I’d seen. Just a softening around her eyes, really.

And of course, I did understand now. If it was possible for me to get my beautiful son back, then it was possible for her, too. For Ethan and Zoe to be returned to her somehow.

As Mrs. Coyle went on, she seemed to choose her words very carefully. “Detective Cross, I would never presume to tell you how to do your job,” she said. “But if you were to call your supervisor after this meeting and express an interest in getting more involved with Ethan and Zoe’s case, I can guarantee you that the answer would be yes. Whatever assignment you wanted, however you wanted to do your work. With a pretty free rein.”

This was the Regina Coyle I didn’t know — the politician’s wife. I don’t mean that in a bad way. What I really saw was a mother living through her own worst nightmare and doing whatever she could to save her children.

I set down my cup and took out a pen and a small pad from my jacket pocket.

“May I?” I asked.

“Of course,” she told me.

It was time to start from square one with the president’s wife.

“Tell me about Ethan and Zoe. What are your children like?”

Chapter 51

Their hands were on the neck of the devil. Now it was time to tighten their grip.

Hala sat cross-legged with the laptop on the bed. She dragged several of the files she’d been compiling to an encrypted disk image on her desktop and reviewed its contents one more time.

Once the disk was finished, only the intended recipient would be able to open it. Every Family member assigned to Washington had his or her own unique sixteen-digit alpha-numeric string. Hala’s code had been what allowed her to access the disks she and Tariq had received up to this point.

While she worked, she kept the local news playing on the television. There was a constant stream these days: frightened faces, traffic warnings, and of course endless speculation about what might be coming next.

It was electrifying, for Hala, to be the one with the answer to that question. Uncle had entrusted her and Tariq with several key targets. Now it was up to them to decide where to strike first; pair the operatives with their assignments; and send out the orders.

Any single one of those targets could change history — much less a fast, violent run through them all. That was exactly what Hala hoped to pull off. Every American life they could take was one more step in the proper direction. There was no such thing as too much punishment for the people of America.

Or as they liked to say in this country of excess and greed: more is more.

“Hala!”

Tariq appeared suddenly in the bathroom door, dripping wet. His chubby body was drifted with mounds of soap bubbles and nothing else.

“You look ridiculous,” she said, but with a laugh. It was good to see him so at ease. He was obviously drunk on their good fortune.

“Ha-laa!” he sang out, and began a little dance for her while he was at it. “Come join me! The hot water is endless.”

“Not while I’m working, darling. And it’s Julia, remember?” she said.

“Ah, yes.” He grinned broadly. “I forgot that I’m in love with another woman.”

They were Julia and Daniel Aziz from Philadelphia now, and they had American passports to prove it. They’d arrived at the Four Seasons just the day before. Uncle called it hiding in plain sight.

The pace of all these changes was absolutely breathtaking. Only two days earlier, they’d been waiting in the dark to find out what would happen next — and now this.

After Tariq had sloshed back into the tub, Hala returned to her work. Let him enjoy this ridiculous American palace a while longer, she thought. The less he worried, the better it was for everyone. As far as Tariq was concerned, everything had changed for them.

But it hadn’t, of course. The elders were still watching. It was more important than ever that she and Tariq make a good impression, and soon. If they weren’t careful, they could become expendable to the Family just as quickly as they had risen to this position.

Be prepared to die at any time.

That, above all, remained true. Because it wasn’t just an opportunity they’d been given, Hala knew. It was also a test.

This war was now in their hands.

Chapter 52

I can’t say I was surprised to find out that Nana Mama had forbidden Bree from bringing Ava over to Child and Family Services the next day. Never mind that I’d insisted on the trip to Family Services. Bree told me on the phone that afternoon than Nana was digging in her heels.

So I came home determined to get the situation taken care of myself.

Nana was waiting for me when I got there. I found her alone, reading Little Bee at the kitchen table, like a security guard.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

“I’m not going to fight about this, Nana. We can’t help every kid on the streets of DC,” I said, and kept moving.

“Who said anything about that?” she called after me, but I was already halfway to the stairs.

I hated being cast as the bad guy. It wasn’t like I thought Nana was crazy for feeling the way she did, but I truly believed I was doing the right thing here. For everyone involved, even the girl.

At least up until what happened next.

When I got upstairs to Damon’s room, Ava was sitting on the bed reading one of his old X-Men comics.

“Ava, it’s time to go,” I said. “I’m going to bring you down to the intake center and get you settled over there, okay? Just like we talked about last night.”

She wouldn’t even look at me. She lifted and lowered one very cold shoulder and swung her feet onto the floor. Maybe she’d been getting pointers from Nana.

Then, as she got up to shuffle over to the door, I noticed something on the floor behind her. Something under the bed.

“What’s that?” I said, pointing.

“Nothin’.”

She didn’t even glance back. The girl was a terrible liar.

“Hang on a second.”

I walked over and knelt down on the rug to have a look. There, between the bed and the nightstand, was a small pile of food. I saw half a loaf of bread, some bananas, a sleeve of crackers, and a jar of peanut butter.

Honestly, I wasn’t so surprised. It’s not unusual for a kid from the streets to hoard food, given the chance. And I wasn’t even remotely mad about it, either. Ava had done this by instinct, as likely as anything. Survival instinct.

Maybe that’s why it broke my heart. Why should a thirteen-year-old kid have to think about where her next meal might be coming from?

Why should Ava? Or anyone?

Just like that, something shifted inside me. It happened the way these things do sometimes, when you least expect it — or even want it.

But that was also the moment that Ava made a break for the stairs. When I turned around, she was gone.

“Ava, wait!”

By the time I got out to the hall, she was already down by the front door, trying to get out. Our dead bolt’s a little complicated, a little tricky, and it was slowing her down.

“Ava!” I called out again.

As I came closer, she gave up and ran for the back of the house instead. She crashed right through the kitchen door and just kept going. I heard the sound of breaking glass.

Then Nana’s voice. “What in heaven’s name—?”

When I rushed into the room, Ava was still there. One of the panes in the back door was shattered, and her hand was bleeding. She stood staring at it, frozen in her tracks like a trapped animal.

I put my hands out in front of me. “It’s okay,” I said. “Really. Everything’s okay.”

Nana grabbed a dish towel to wrap the cut. She put her arm around Ava and made her sit down.

“Nothing to worry about,” she said in a soothing voice. “Just a little cut, but you go ahead and cry if you need to, sweetheart.”

“I’m sorry,” Ava said, more to Nana than to me. “I didn’t mean to...”

“Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “It doesn’t matter about the food. The window, either. None of it matters. We’ll work it all out.”

Still, Ava tried to squirm away toward the door. She stood up again, and Nana pulled her back down with that surprising strength of hers.

“You sit down, right now!” she commanded. “You’re not going anywhere, young lady.”

I stayed where I was, giving her a little space. “You know what, Ava?” I said. “Nana’s right. We don’t have to make any decisions about this tonight.”

But in fact, that wasn’t entirely true. I’d already decided something.

Nana was right. Maybe we couldn’t save every kid on the streets of DC, but there was no reason — no good enough reason — why we couldn’t help this one. Right here, right now. Even if it was only for a little while.

I’d call whoever I needed to in the morning. Get an expedited home check. Pull a few strings, if I had to. Make things right for this young girl.

“Just... stay,” I said. “Please.”

Chapter 53

The next morning, Bree took over at home, and I was back at work. Whatever influence the First Lady had exerted on my behalf, I had no trouble getting onto the Branaff School campus — inside the gates this time.

I got there early so I could get a better feel for the place before the school day started. I wanted to retrace, as much as I possibly could, Ethan and Zoe’s footsteps on the morning they had disappeared.

As I came up the front drive toward Branaff House, the school’s Georgian-style mansion of a main building, I couldn’t help thinking about the modest charter John and Billie Sampson were trying to start up just a few miles from here. It was a world apart, that’s for sure. Branaff House was the crown jewel of an eighty-acre campus, with the kind of restored beauty that persuaded parents to part with forty-five thousand dollars a year for middle school.

It was also where the Coyle kids had last been seen. What had happened to them?

I started in the main foyer. According to the reports I’d read, this was where a fight had broken out that morning, between Zoe and Ryan Townsend.

It hadn’t lasted long, and Secret Service Agent Findlay immediately pulled both of the Coyles away from the scene and into an adjacent lecture hall.

At 8:22 a.m., Findlay had radioed his team that he was giving the kids two minutes alone to speak privately.

At 8:24, he opened the door again and found the lecture hall empty.

About ninety seconds after that, the van driven by Ray Pinkney had gone tearing off campus through the east gate — without Ethan and Zoe on board, as it turned out.

What that left was a three-and-a-half-minute window, from the last time Findlay saw the kids, until that van left the school grounds.

Somewhere in there, a kidnapping had taken place.

So what happened in those three and a half minutes?

I let myself into the lecture hall and closed the door behind me.

The room was high-ceilinged, with several austere portraits looking down from the walls. It was a little creepy, actually, but definitely imposing. It made even a big man like me feel small.

Whatever had gone down in that room, Zoe and Ethan couldn’t have been there for long. The clock was ticking on those three and a half minutes, whether they knew it or not.

There were two doors at the front, both covered by the same security camera in the hall outside. The only other possible exits were the five windows at the back.

Agent Findlay had reportedly found the center one unlatched, and I went to it now.

I hopped up on the heat register, slid open the window, and ducked outside.

It was an easy drop to the ground, landing me behind a thick tangle of lilac bushes.

Footprints found in the dirt that day confirmed that two people Ethan and Zoe’s size had come this way.

But where did they go from here? Were they still alone at this point? When exactly did things turn horribly wrong?

We had just a few facts. The rest of the scenario was mostly supposition.

But there was one other known piece of the puzzle, and I needed someone here at the school to show it to me.

Chapter 54

George O’Shea was the head of maintenance at Branaff. He was a big, redheaded fireplug of a guy, with arms that bulged against the sleeves of his uniform the same way his gut strained at the buttons in front. I found him in his basement office under the main building.

“Nice to meet’cha,” he said, half crushing my hand. “I’m guessing you came down to see the tunnel? Headmaster’s office called ahead.”

“If you have a minute,” I said.

“Come on with me. I’ll give you the nickel tour, five cents off today.”

“Much obliged. Thank you.”

There had been a lot of speculation in the press about the underground passage at Branaff, and a lot of assumptions that it figured into the kidnapping somehow. What wasn’t public knowledge was that Ethan and Zoe’s electronic locators had both been found down here, smashed to pieces at the far end of the tunnel. Whether someone had deliberately put them there to throw us off the scent or dropped them on their way through was still a question mark.

I followed O’Shea through the basement, to an old black steel door at the back. It looked original to the building, except for the brand-new hasp and padlock that had been bolted on.

The custodian used a key from his retractable ring to open it for me and then flipped a light switch just inside.

“Whole thing’s like a T,” he said, leading the way. “Straight on, it’s just a sealed-up hatch where the old coal barn used to be. But if we take a right turn up there, it comes out in the groundskeeping shed down by the playing fields.”

It was supposedly true that Noah Branaff had used this tunnel as part of the Underground Railroad, back in the nineteenth century. It had clearly been refitted since then, with riveted I-beams, a poured concrete floor, and tile on the domed ceiling. Mostly it was used for storage now.

There were mesh lockers with cleaning supplies near the entrance and gardening tools and sports equipment as we got closer to the far end. Very orderly, surprisingly clean.

O’Shea did most of the talking as we walked. He’d been with the school “since Clinton,” he told me, and had seen a lot of “big” families come through, although none bigger and more important than the Coyles.

“What’s your impression of Ethan and Zoe?” I asked. “What kind of kids are they?”

“Ethan’s a good enough egg,” he said. “Scary-smart, too. A lot of the other kids think he’s kind of weird. He got picked on some. Make that a lot.”

“What about Zoe?”

At first, he didn’t answer. He raked his fingers through his hair and seemed a little nervous about the question. “I suppose you want the truth, huh?”

“Don’t worry, Mr. O’Shea. I’m not writing any of this down,” I told him.

“All right, well... truthfully? Zoe Coyle’s a little troublemaker. Anyone who tells you she didn’t try to take advantage twenty-four/seven is either lying or kissing up. And believe me, this school is full of kiss-ups.”

“I can believe that,” I said honestly.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I’ve been praying for those kids every night. But that girl’s all about seeing what she can get away with. I chased her and her little smoking friends out of here more than once. And she would give me lip.” He stopped as we came to the end of the passage. “Anyway, here we are.”

In front of us, there was a half flight of concrete steps up to another door. This was where the locators had been found, although the crime scene had been cleared days ago. There wasn’t much to see now, but I needed to walk through here at least once.

We kept going and emerged through the groundskeeping “shed,” which was about the size of my house. That put us on the school lawn next to a couple of practice fields and the south gate.

Up the hill, past a line of old bur oaks, I could see the main building we’d just left behind. Very pretty landscaping. Not the kind of scenery you associated with tragedies.

“That’s where the kids came out, supposedly,” O’Shea said, pointing up at the lecture hall windows. “I suppose that they did come out there.”

I turned in a full circle, taking it all in. Did they come this way? Were they conscious? Drugged?

“Kind of a straight line from up there, isn’t it?” the custodian said. “Right through this spot and out that gate. You suppose that’s where they took them?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not. People don’t always travel in straight lines. In fact, the ones who have something to hide usually don’t.”

He nodded, a little like he was playing cop with me.

“Well,” he said, “you ought to know.”

Chapter 55

I spent the rest of the day talking to as many people at the Branaff School as I could. The students were strictly off-limits until I could get parental consent, so I focused on the faculty and staff for the time being.

Dale Skillings was the headmaster. He seemed pretty tightly wound to begin with, but he’d also been through the wringer in the press, and no doubt with the parents as well. Everyone wanted to know how this could possibly happen at Branaff. Inevitably, some of the blame had already landed on the headmaster’s desk. If he was terse, or defensive with me, I could understand why.

“Enemies?” he said when I asked. “They’re two of the most famous children in the world. It’s not possible to avoid some amount of animosity. But if what you’re really asking about is Zoe’s fight with Ryan Townsend, I can’t discuss that with you. You’ll have to take it up with Congressman and Mrs. Townsend.”

In fact, I already had a few calls in on that one. Skillings wasn’t going to budge on the rules where the kids were concerned, but he did make his staff fully available to me, which I appreciated.

One of the sixth-grade math teachers, Eleanor Ruff, told me about how Zoe had barely scraped by in her class and about how Ethan was testing off the charts, no surprise. She was a twenty-year veteran at the school, but her feelings were as close to the surface as anyone’s I interviewed.

“You don’t even like to imagine something like this happening,” she said. She fluttered around her classroom, watering the plants while we talked. Meanwhile, I sat uncomfortably in a student chair that was much too small for me, or even half of me. “Then one day, everything changes. I’m just glad they were taken together. At least they have each other—”

The second she said it, her hand flew up to her mouth and she burst into tears. “Oh, my God! That’s not at all what I meant. I’m so sorry!”

I handed her a tissue from the box on her desk and told her not to be too hard on herself. Every adult at the school had been questioned extensively, multiple times by MPD, the FBI, and Secret Service. The strain was starting to show. That’s also when people tend to say things they might not the first several times around.

The school nurse, a guy named Rodney Glass, held it together better. He’d been in the Peace Corps in Uganda before this, he told me, and it seemed like he’d seen a lot of suffering in Africa. I’d been there and understood what he was talking about.

“Ethan? Yeah, he’s my little lunch buddy,” he said. “I think he’s just more comfortable with adults, you know?”

“Did he come here very often?” I asked, looking around the small, very organized infirmary.

“Sometimes. Pretty much anywhere he could find a quiet corner. I call kids like him free agents. You go into any school at lunchtime, and I guarantee you’ll find a few in the nurse’s office, or hanging around the librarian’s desk, or in guidance. Actually, you should talk to Pam Fitzhugh over there. If you haven’t already. She knows both the Coyles as well as anyone.”

I was lucky to get a few minutes with Ms. Fitzhugh, as it turned out. She and the other guidance staff had been seeing kids for crisis counseling nonstop since the first day.

“Were Ethan or Zoe under any particular stress that you know about?” I asked her. “In the days before, weeks before?”

“No more than usual,” she said. “But that’s all relative, isn’t it? It’s not easy being the president’s children, or any celebrity’s, really, and they both put a lot of pressure on themselves. In different ways.”

“Different, how?” I asked.

“Well, let’s just say Zoe spends a lot of energy trying not to be the perfect First Daughter everyone expects her to be. And Ethan’s kind of the opposite. He gets an A-minus, and all he sees is that minus.”

She laughed softly, but in a melancholy way, as if she were remembering something one of them had done at some point. Maybe also wondering, like everyone else, if she was ever going to see Ethan and Zoe again.

“Those poor kids,” she said. “God, those poor, poor kids. I wish somebody could help them.”

Yes, so did I.

Chapter 56

Secretary of State Martin Cho’s Motorcade was running behind schedule, as usual. He’d kept the House and Senate Intelligence Committee chairs waiting most of the morning, and now he was almost an hour late for the Saudi ambassador.

“Call the office, tell them we’re on our way,” Cho said to the aide sitting across from him in the short Mercedes limo. Her name was Melissa Brandt. She was a recent Harvard grad and young for the job, but promising. Also maybe a little naïve.

“Mr. Secretary, they’ve been notified by the scheduling office already. I called them—”

“Just do it again, please, Melissa,” he said. “Make sure the ambassador knows we’re thinking of him. That’s important to them. They’re sensitive people. The ambassador has been pampered all his life.”

“Yes, sir,” the aide answered.

Crisis talks had been quietly taking place between the two countries for several days now. With the president indisposed, as he was, it was up to the secretary to put in the face time on this one. So far, it had been a dour affair. The pre-9/11 days of arm-in-arm policy making with the Kingdom seemed like a quaint bit of history now.

As Melissa Brandt pulled up the State Department on her phone, she craned her neck to see outside and check their progress up Constitution Avenue.

“Hi, Don, it’s Missy with the secretary’s office,” she said, still looking out the window. “We should be there any minute. We’re just passing by the, um—”

All at once, the young woman’s pale blue eyes flew open wide.

“Oh my God!” she said. “They’re going to hit us! Secretary Cho, look out!”

Secretary Cho turned just in time to glimpse the grill of a white pickup before it slammed full-speed into the side of their car. A black Lincoln Navigator from the motorcade raced up to ram the intruder, a fraction of a second too late. All three vehicles came to a sudden and violent stop.

The space inside the limo’s backseat seemed to fold in half. Cho felt himself thrown sideways. A searing pain tore through his chest as one of several broken ribs punctured his right lung.

“Mr. Secretary?” The head of Cho’s security detail, bleeding from the forehead, scrambled to turn around from the front seat. “Sir? Can you hear me?”

Cho could hear, but he couldn’t move. The slightest shift sent a shock wave of agony through him, as the panic rose.

Even now, his eyes were on the truck outside the car. The driver was getting out of the cab. He was young — just a boy. In his hand, there was a cylinder of some kind. Silver and red. What was that?

“Sir?” the agent tried again. “Sir, can you hear me?”

Cho’s mouth flapped open and then closed immediately. Air was supposed to fill his lungs, but it didn’t. Words were supposed to come out, but there were none. There was only the thought, screaming through his brain.

Bomb! He’s got a bomb! That boy —

Because the secretary knew enough to have recognized the thing in the boy’s hand just before he turned to run away. It was a detonator.

The blast ripped through all three vehicles when it went off. Drivers in the nearest cars saw a white-hot flash, then a much larger orange fireball, before the whole thing coalesced into a rolling cloud of charcoal gray smoke. Glass gravel peppered the area. Chunks of metal rained down onto the pavement, some of them still in flames.

It was all followed by a much softer shower, of leaves and small branches from the trees lining the avenue, before everything went oddly, eerily still once again.

Chapter 57

“Tariq, come and look! hurry in here. you have to see this.”

Hala was glued to the television. It was a ridiculous business, this nonstop diarrhea of news, but it had its advantages. Within minutes of the deadly car bombing on Constitution Avenue, she had a front-row seat at the spectacle.

There was no word on victims yet. Still, the sight of the burned-out limousine was all she needed to know that the assignment had come off flawlessly. Secretary of State Martin Cho, one of the primary architects of American foreign policy, had been taken out — right here on American soil, here in the capital city.

It was a stunning blow for justice and retribution. Tonight there would be dancing in the streets of Riyadh. And there could be much more to celebrate soon.

Tariq came in from the bedroom and stood behind the couch, watching.

“We are coming to you live from Washington, DC, where a possible terrorist attack has just taken place moments ago...”

“Where is that?” Tariq asked. “Is it close to our hotel?”

“Not far,” she said. It was tempting to walk over and have a look for herself, but that was an unnecessary risk. Police would surely be filming the crowds.

She scrubbed her hair dry with a towel as they watched. The color hadn’t changed much — a little more toward brown — but it was much shorter now. For better or worse, she was starting to look like an American.

Tariq put his hands gently on her shoulders. “You did it, Hala. You are the one responsible.”

“Not me,” she said. “The Family did this.”

She knew that it was vanity to focus on her own role. It was wrong to be seen taking too much pleasure in the accomplishment. But even so, the images on the television filled her with an indescribable sense of pride. One of the worst devils in America was dead because she alone had decided that he should go first. When Hala reached up and pulled Tariq closer, he stiffened at first. She’d forbidden any intimacy since they’d come to the States. It was a distraction, she’d told him. One they couldn’t afford.

But as they both knew, Hala was in charge in America.

“Kiss me,” she said then. “Right now. Here.”

Tariq needed no second invitation. He leaned down and kissed her neck softly — but not too softly. His hands were moving on their own now, across her face, her soft breasts. One might not have guessed it to look at him, but Hala’s husband knew exactly how to pleasure a woman.

Her heartbeat quickened as he came around the couch to face her.

“I love you, Hala,” he said. “So much. I’m so proud of you.”

“I love you, too,” she said. And she did.

He knelt down on the carpet and parted the fabric of her white hotel robe. He kissed her thigh. Hala breathed deeply, allowing the pleasure to rise up inside her.

“... what we can tell you is that this attack was on an official government motorcade, but as to who was inside those vehicles...”

When Tariq reached for the television remote, she put out her hand to stop him.

“No,” she said. “Leave it. Let it play.”

She kept her fingers in his hair and her eyes on the screen, while Tariq’s hands and mouth found somewhere else to be. And for just a little while, Hala felt more at peace than she’d ever known it was possible for a woman to feel.

Chapter 58

The minute that word of the bombing came in, a special team of Secret Service agents left their command post, officially known as W-16. From the long rectangular room, they ascended a single flight of stairs and, without knocking, entered the Oval office directly above.

“What is it now?” the president asked, standing up as they came in.

“Sir, please come with us,” the shift supervisor said. He and a second agent crossed behind the office’s famous Resolute desk and did something neither had ever done before. They laid their hands on the commander in chief to move him forcibly from the room.

The president’s secretary rose to her feet as they passed through reception. “What’s going on? What’s happened now?”

“Stay where you are,” a third agent told her, then ran ahead to clear the way. Word had already begun to circulate through the West Wing. The building was going into lockdown. Nobody was allowed in or out. Except, of course, for the president and First Lady.

“Command, Torchwood is on the move,” the agent radioed ahead.

“Tucson as well,” a voice came back. A separate protective detail was simultaneously escorting Mrs. Coyle down from the residence. “We’re proceeding to the South Lawn.”

“Would somebody please tell me what’s happening!” the president ordered anyone who would listen.

“There’s been an incident, sir. I don’t know the details. You’ll be briefed on Marine One” was all the lead agent would — or maybe could — tell him.

The tight scrum moved without stopping, back down to ground level, where they crossed into the White House and then out again, through the door obscured under the South Portico stairs.

Outside, it was obvious that the entire White House Complex had been shut down. Armed Capitol Police officers were lined up along Executive Avenue on either side, and there was no dress blue marine to meet them as the Sea King white-top helicopter descended onto the lawn.

As soon as it touched down, the chopper’s front hatchway opened. The stairs were lowered to the ground.

Only then was the president escorted the rest of the way across the grass, at the center of a fast-moving ten-man human shield.

Two passengers were already waiting on board — another breach of protocol. FBI Director Burns and the president’s counterterrorism adviser, Norma Tiefel, stood up as Coyle came into the main cabin.

Mrs. Coyle boarded with her escort just a few seconds behind the president, and they all took their seats.

Four of the Secret Service detail stayed with them. Once the hatch had closed and Marine One was on its way, they continued to the rear cabin, leaving the president with his advisers.

“Tell me what’s happened, Ron,” the president commanded Director Burns. “Tell me everything, right now.” Regina sat next to him, clutching his hand. How much were they capable of taking at this point?

“Sir, I’m sorry to tell you that Secretary Cho and three of his staff were just killed in an explosion.”

“Oh my God. Martin Cho.”

“An attack on his motorcade, to be precise,” Burns went on. “Presumably Al Ayla, but we can’t say for sure. However, it is consistent with one particular stream of intelligence we’ve received.”

“What do you mean? What kind of intelligence?” the president asked.

“An inside informant, sir. We don’t know if she’s an operative with the organization, or somewhere on the sidelines, but her intel is good, as it turns out.”

“Her?” the president asked.

Burns nodded. “Up until now, it’s been one of a thousand possibilities. We’ve had claims from Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and everything on down.”

“What about the children?” Mrs. Coyle asked. “Did this woman — this informant — say anything about Ethan and Zoe?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but no,” Burns told her. “What we received was a list of targets. Something that, quite honestly, sounded improbable until about fifteen minutes ago.”

“Go on,” Coyle told him. “What kind of targets are we talking about here?”

“All human, sir,” Burns said. “It’s a list of eighteen names. Vice President Flynn is at the top, with Secretary Ribillini from Homeland Security at number eighteen.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Coyle had heard everything he needed to know. “Tell me Martin Cho wasn’t on that list.”

“I’m afraid so. Right below the Speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate.”

“So in other words...,” the president said slowly.

“That’s right, sir,” Burns affirmed. “We’re talking about the entire line of succession to the presidency.”

Chapter 59

Norma Tiefel, the Counterterrorism Adviser, spoke next. “Everyone on that list will be receiving a full protective detail in addition to whatever security service they already have. That means dedicated intelligence agents, CAT teams on standby, also advance and transportation. Although we’re hoping to keep travel to a minimum.”

“They can’t shut down our goddamn government!” the president shouted at Tiefel. “That’s exactly what they want! And exactly why I came back to Washington. Do you know what kind of flak they gave Bush for being in the air on Nine/Eleven?”

“That wasn’t his call, sir. I’m aware it wasn’t his fault,” Tiefel said as diplomatically as she could.

“Yes, exactly. I’m sure it wasn’t his fault,” Coyle said. It was all this programmed movement he hated. The sense of traveling through the world not as one person, but as five, six, ten, and twenty at a time. That was the real weight of the presidency.

“For the time being, sir,” Tiefel said, “it is best for you to keep out of sight.”

“Again,” the president grumbled, and turned in his seat, away from all the unwanted advice. “Archie, where are we going?” he called back.

Agent Walsh, the head of the president’s protective detail, stood up in the small passageway between them and the pilot.

“Andrews, sir. Air Force One is on standby.”

“And then?”

Walsh stayed where he was but was mute, awkwardly not answering the question. It wasn’t for Burns’s or Tiefel’s ears at this point.

“Never mind, goddamnit,” the president barked. He could feel Regina’s hand on his own, gentle and firm at the same time. When he looked at her, she seemed to be holding it all together by a sheer act of will. He owed her the same self-control. Actually he owed it to his advisers as well. They were in danger now, too.

“What about Cho’s family?” he asked.

“We’ve got agents on the ground in Bethesda and Oakland,” Burns told him. “They’ll have a full security detail within the hour — Mrs. Cho, both of their sons, and Secretary Cho’s mother.”

“I’ll want to speak with Lottie directly.”

“Of course, sir. We’ll also have the Joint Chiefs in a video conference once we’re away,” Tiefel said. “And after that, the same CIA work group as before, if you care to sit in. It might be a good idea.”

“Of course it’s a good idea,” said the president.

“That’s the group with Alex Cross, isn’t it?” Mrs. Coyle asked.

“Yes, ma’am.” Burns anticipated her next question. “He won’t be asked to change focus.”

“Good,” she said. “Thank you.” It was no secret by now that the First Lady had handpicked the well-known police detective for the kidnap investigation. Nobody was going to tell her no on that one.

“The world’s watching us, Ron,” the president said. “Especially our country’s enemies. We need to get this in hand, once and for all. I want hourly reports, and I want a briefing on a full range of options. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Mr. President. Completely. We all do.”

“I mean a full range.”

“Of course, sir.”

“I’m not going to fuck around with this anymore.”

“Ed—” The First Lady slid a hand up her husband’s arm.

“Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. But this ends here. Now. Whatever it takes.”

The president sat back. Out the window, he could see one of four other identical choppers flying alongside, a standard protocol to reduce the risks from a possible ground attack. Anything seemed possible right now. Their departure from the White House had gone smoothly enough. Now the convoy headed southeast, toward Andrews, eleven miles away.

After that, Edward O. Coyle, the most powerful man in the world, had no idea what to expect. Hell, he could be dead in the next few minutes. The unthinkable was no longer unthinkable.

Chapter 60

CIA headquarters was lit up like a fluorescent box when I got there late that night. The powers that be had decided to share what they knew with our de facto advisory board. What they told us was a mindblower. An unnamed informant was claiming the entire line of succession to the presidency as Al Ayla’s new target list.

Secretary of State Cho’s murder was a testimony to how seriously we needed to take this new threat.

The symbolism of the day’s attack was devastating to all of us. Not only did Cho represent the United States to the world, but Al Ayla was clearly using this incident as their foray onto the international stage. Statements claiming responsibility had come in through Al Jazeera, indicating the organization by name for the first time. Every news outlet from Jakarta to Madison, Wisconsin, had picked up the story.

Al Ayla, it seemed, was ready for its close-up. What was worse — so far they were winning.

“Today, they got us by surprise,” Evan Stroud told the assembled two dozen people at headquarters. “That’s not going to happen again. Not to anyone on that wish list of theirs.”

“Is there any thought about leaking back that we’ve got this informant?” one of the Bureau ADs asked. “Maybe to put a wedge inside the organization? Do a little dividing and conquering?”

“I’m afraid they’re already dividing.” Andrew Fatany, the analyst based in Saudi Arabia, stood up to speak. It was Fatany who had done most of the talking so far that night, breaking down what they knew about Al Ayla from the Riyadh office.

“These newer organizations are more adaptable and flexible than anything we’ve seen before,” he told us. “It’s entirely possible — I’d say probable — that Al Ayla’s already handed off some measure of control to their Washington operatives. The faster they can create these self-directed cells, the harder it is to penetrate the larger organization. In fact, it may already be too late.”

“Too late for what?” I asked Fatany.

“To ever know who Al Ayla really is. Our best recommendation is to focus on finding the local leadership, and of course whoever they’re talking to. But we have to move carefully. If we take out an individual cell, it’s like tearing the limb off a starfish. The organization simply moves on and grows another limb.”

“Hang on a second,” Peter Lindley interjected. “Are you saying we shouldn’t bring down these people — because if they stay on the loose they might lead us up the ladder? I don’t think I can live with that. And I don’t think the president can, either.”

Fatany blinked back his frustration. He was sick and tired, just like everyone else. “I’m saying, and excuse me for stating the obvious, that you need to be aware of what you’re losing when you do bring them down.”

One of the flat-topped NSA guys grunted out his own annoyance. “I say we find the sons of bitches and interrogate the shit out of them,” he said. “Use the Patriot Act, send their asses to Egypt if we have to. Our priority should be saving American lives. It’s that simple. At least it should be.”

Fatany put his hands up. He’d made Riyadh’s opinion clear on the matter. The decision about what to do with it wasn’t up to him.

“We’ll take all of this under advisement with the president,” Stroud said, trying to cut through the tension. Not that anyone could right now. This crisis was a fire that had to be put out. Period. Anything short of that was no option at all.

Meanwhile, the fire raged on, and it almost seemed out of control.

Chapter 61

Ned Mahoney and I trudged out of CIA headquarters around two o’clock that morning. I felt like we were leaving a cocoon, which we kind of were, but not a warm and cozy one. The president had come on the line at midnight, ten hours after the bombing of Cho’s motorcade. In the morning, he’d make an emotional national address, condemning the attack and calling on America to remember the victims for everything they’d stood for against murderers exactly like these.

“I think I liked it better when I was out of the loop,” I said. It was hard not to feel overwhelmed. My intention was to be back at Branaff as soon as possible, but there were a lot of other places I felt like I could and probably should be.

Surveillance was about to make a quantum leap in DC. Government affidavits were being written through the night, and several new Title III warrants were expected to go through as early as the following afternoon. That meant listening teams in all kinds of places they hadn’t been before — more mosques, more online networks, more phone lines, all of it. The personnel demands alone were going to be unprecedented.

“Where are you going to be?” I asked Ned.

“Quantico. Unless Hostage and Rescue has to move,” he said. “But I’ll be putting in some surveillance time, too. Your phone going to be on?”

“Only at lunch and study hall,” I deadpanned.

“I’ll call you if there’s anything to tell,” he said.

“Okay. I’ll do the same.”

We hadn’t talked about it specifically, but Ned and I seemed to have fallen into an agreement. I’d have his back on this, and he’d have mine. Before we got to the parking lot, he stopped and put a hand on my shoulder.

“It’s good to be on the same side,” he said. “I know I pissed you off for a while there, but it won’t happen again. That’s a promise.”

“Is this where we cut open our thumbs and shake?” I said. “Triple-dog swear, or whatever?”

Ned didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll pass,” he said. “I don’t know where that thumb’s been.” He grinned at me before he turned and started across the lawn toward his car. “But I will return your calls from now on.”

Chapter 62

The kidnapper always carried the little tape recorder with him on these pleasant hikes through the woods. You never knew when inspiration was going to strike, and it was good to capture the details when they were fresh.

Record.

“The first mile or so is just a little hilly. I can cover that stretch fast enough. Eventually, it starts to get pretty steep, up toward the ridge. That’s where I lose a little time, but I’m getting better at the climb.

“Theoretically, I could drive in from the other side, but that’s only going to happen once. By the time you’re done reading this, you’ll understand why.

“Meanwhile, I hike in the long way. Hell, maybe I’ll even lose some weight in the bargain. You can appreciate the efficiency in that, can’t you?”

Stop.

The book was coming along well. It was practically writing itself these days. Anyone with a pulse could tell you this was a huge story. Even bigger than he’d thought it was going to be at first. Interesting times, these.

He pocketed the recorder again and traded it for the recurve bow on his shoulder. The ground was getting scrubbier. It didn’t usually take long to spook something around here. He loaded an arrow while he walked and started kicking at the bushes, watching for prey, any movement at all.

Sure enough, just past the crest of the first hill, an eastern cottontail darted out.

It came right at him, God bless its tiny little brain, but then turned and bolted off in the other direction.

He let it get a good head start. Anything less than twenty yards was just fish in a barrel.

But then he raised the bow, drew back to the corner of his mouth, and let it fly.

The cottontail stumbled hard, ass over whiskers. It came to a stop in some tall grass and was still quivering when he got there. A quick snap of the neck finished it off. It took only a minute after that to truss it up with some twine, and he was moving again.

Going faster now, he jogged down the next slope and across a small ravine.

It took another twenty minutes to climb back up to the other side, where he stopped just before a line of giant spruce growing along the ridge.

Record.

“You’d never know it to look at these trees now, but they probably marked a property line at some point. Back when this was dairy country and not woods. Now it’s just our own little home away from home. It can’t compete with the White House, of course, but lucky for me, it doesn’t have to.”

Stop.

He stood among the trees for several minutes, scanning the area down below.

After he’d satisfied himself that it was safe to move out into the open, he broke through the line of evergreens and started down into the hollow, where the old farmstead sat moldering away to nothing.

Chapter 63

The fencing was long gone. the whole back half of the old house was sagging right into itself, almost like it was taking a final bow. And the driveway — what used to be the driveway — was just a long patch of goldenrod and buckthorn, with two ruts in the ground you couldn’t even see from a distance.

The barn was still standing, though. More or less. Thick brush and vines had made the back of the place nearly impenetrable. In front, someone had torn off the big double doors a long time ago, and the flap to the hayloft above that. With a few pieces of missing siding near the peak, the whole thing looked like a face with black gaps for orifices. He always thought of the entrance as the mouth.

Just inside, he untrussed the fat little rabbit and let it roll out onto the floor, right next to the last one. From his pack, he took a plastic travel container of granular lye and a small Poland Spring bottle he’d filled from the tap at home. He sprinkled both over the animal. The lye sped up the breakdown of tissue, and the water sped up the lye. It was an old farm trick, and a half-decent little insurance policy, too. Nothing said keep walking like a goopy carcass in your path.

Not that anyone ever came back this far anymore — but just in case.

At the back of the barn, in the last stall, he moved aside the stack of rotting wooden pallets and lifted the layers of moldy cardboard away.

There was no handle on the trapdoor anymore, but just enough gap in the floorboards to get a grip. He raised the flap and let it rest against the stall wall. Then he climbed down the ladder inside.

The root cellar — if that’s what it had been — was no more than six by six in the antechamber, and then maybe twice that on the other side of the door.

There was just enough light from above to show him the sliding panel he’d installed a long time ago. He opened it now and dropped in the granola bars and the juice boxes.

Neither of the two inside spoke to him. They’d stopped trying after the first few days. But he heard one of them stir, and a soft scrabble across the floor.

Then, “Ethan? Ethan, here.”

There was the crinkle of plastic wrappers, and the sound of them gobbling down the food. If they’d figured out what was in the juice by now, they didn’t much care.

He sat crouched with his back against the door, listening. It never took too long once the juice was gone. Their breathing slowed and became regular. Within a few minutes, they were both out cold.

Record.

“Everyone’s going to want to know what I was thinking. They’re going to wonder what kind of monster could do something like this, and they’re going to make a lot of assumptions.

“But maybe — just maybe — this is all for a reason that you can’t see right now. Did that ever cross your mind?

“I know that Ethan and Zoe don’t deserve their fate, but then again, neither did I. You think I wouldn’t rather be somewhere else right now, with nothing to say? I only wish I was that lucky.

“So, here it is. If you want to know what I’m thinking while I’m doing this, I’ll tell you. The answer’s simple. I’m thinking about my son. My love.

“What are you thinking about?”

Stop.

Chapter 64

Ryan Townsend was a fidgety kid. Not that I could really blame him. He had a police detective staring him down from one side, and his parents from the other. His feet never stopped swinging, back and forth, the whole time we talked.

It had taken half a dozen phone calls, but Congressman and Mrs. Townsend had finally given me some time to speak with their son. All on their terms, of course. We met on Saturday, eight thirty a.m., at their sprawling mansard-roofed house on Thirtieth Street in Georgetown.

“This shouldn’t take too long,” I told Ryan up front. “I’ve read everything you told the FBI agents already. Most of it’s about the fight between you and Zoe on the morning of the kidnapping—”

“It wasn’t a fight,” the congressman cut me off. He and his wife were both perched on a clawfoot settee across from me. “With all due respect, Zoe hit Ryan with a book and bloodied his nose. Let’s just be clear about that.”

Ryan sank lower in his chair. His bare feet scuffed the walnut floorboards a little faster.

“Fair enough,” I said. “Ryan, what I’d really like to know is how things got so bad between you and Zoe to begin with.”

“Is that even relevant?” Mrs. Townsend asked. “Surely you’re not suggesting Ryan had anything to do with this.”

“Nothing like that,” I said. “I’m just trying to learn as much about Ethan and Zoe as I can. I think your son might have a unique perspective.”

This was why I wanted to meet with Ryan alone, but that issue had been a nonstarter with his parents. They had every right to sit in, and every intention of doing so.

“Go ahead, Ryan,” his father told him. “We’ve got nothing to hide here. You can answer the question.”

Ryan took a deep breath and puffed out his cheeks. “Zoe started it,” he said. “We were on this field trip to the Air and Space Museum last year, and I left my phone on the bus. Then she gets this stupid text from me — I mean, not from me. From my phone. And she just freaked.”

“Sweetie, don’t say ‘freaked.’” Mrs. Townsend gave me a quick self-conscious smile. Ryan rolled his eyes. The congressman checked his BlackBerry.

“Anyway, she got all in my face about it and didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t do it. So I said fine. Let her believe it. Ever since then, she’s just kind of had it in for me.”

I wasn’t convinced I was getting the whole story, but more than that, I just wanted to hear Ryan tell it. His words, his memory of the details.

“Do you know what was in that text?” I asked.

“I didn’t send it,” he said right away. “I swear!”

“That’s fine. I just need to hear what happened,” I said. “From you.”

“Ryan, answer the detective’s question. Do you know what was in the text or not?” the congressman asked.

For the first time, Ryan was looking me right in the eye. He wound the drawstring of a crimson Branaff School hoodie around one finger, then unwound it. Then he wound it up again.

Finally, he said, “Do you think they’re dead?”

“Ryan!” His mother looked horrified. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

I think he was just trying to change the subject, but I answered him anyway. “I hope not,” I said. Then I tore a page out of my notebook and slid it across the table. “How about if you write down what was in that text, and we’ll call it a morning?”

Ryan twisted around in his chair to look at his father again. The congressman nodded, and I set my pen down for him. He cupped his hand around the page while he wrote something, then turned it over and weighted it under an antique snow globe on the coffee table. For a few seconds, some glittery snow flew around the miniature Victorian house inside.

“Can I go now?” he asked.

“You can go. Thank you, Ryan. That was helpful.”

I waited for him to leave the room. Then I turned the paper over where his parents and I could see it. In a ragged, kid’s handwriting, it said, “Zoe C–I want 2 cum on yr tits.”

“Oh my God.” Mrs. Townsend looked away. “That is absolutely disgusting.”

The congressman took the paper off the table and pocketed it before there could be any question of my keeping it. “We’re going to speak with Headmaster Skillings about this — independent of anything else,” he said.

I could understand their embarrassment, but the profanity seemed like typical middle school bravado to me. Sad, but true. It was just the kind of thing a boy might write to impress his friends, sometime after the hormones started kicking in and before he really understood what it all meant. In any case, I thanked the Townsends for their time and quietly let myself out of the house.

When I got back to the car, I scribbled a single note to myself for later:

“Where is Zoe’s phone?”

Chapter 65

I spent most of that day crisscrossing the city, interviewing other Branaff students who knew either Zoe or Ethan and socialized with them. Then late in the afternoon, I drove up to Riverdale, Maryland, for one last stop. This one was unannounced.

George O’Shea lived on a corner lot in a gridded, middle-class neighborhood just off the East — West Highway.

I parked under the basketball hoop on his freshly black-topped driveway and went up to ring the bell.

He was smoking a cigar when he answered the door. At Branaff, O’Shea’s custodial uniform was always clean and pressed, but here he was wearing an old flannel shirt, open halfway down his chest. I could hear a game on the TV somewhere behind him.

“It’s Detective Cross, right?” he said, squinting at me through the fly-specked screen.

“Sorry to come by on a Saturday,” I said. “We’re working around the clock on this. Just a few follow-up questions if you don’t mind.”

For a brief second, he looked like he did mind, like he wasn’t entirely sure I was giving him the whole story. And I wasn’t.

Ever since I’d met O’Shea, my mind kept coming back to him. It wasn’t anything I could put my finger on. Just a vague sense that behind all the smiles and the interest in police work, there was something he wasn’t saying. It was only a hunch at this point, but I’ve taken action on less than that before.

“How’s it going, anyway?” he asked. “Any good leads, or whatever you call it?”

“Nothing I can really talk about,” I said.

He nodded and rocked back on his heels. “Right. I understand. Still, it must be interesting work, huh?”

I watched him through the door. What was he thinking about right now?

“Do you mind if I come in?” I asked.

“Oh — yeah. Of course,” he said, like it hadn’t occurred to him. “I was just ruining a pot of coffee. You want some?”

“No thanks. I’ll try to be quick here.”

He thumbed over his shoulder as I came in. “Let me just switch off the machine. Make yourself comfortable.”

I hung back and looked around as he headed toward the kitchen.

“Must be a real drag working on the weekend,” he called back. “That’s the one thing about my job. At least I’ve got a nice regular schedule.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, fingering through his mail. It was out on an end table, mostly bills, mostly unopened. A dusty collection of salt and pepper shakers sat in a curio cabinet on the wall. “Speaking of schedules, do you keep records of the custodial staff’s time at the school?” I asked.

O’Shea didn’t answer. An announcer on the TV hooted out his approval for a double play that had just gone down. And I knew right then that something was wrong.

“George?”

When I got to the kitchen, it was empty. No George anywhere. The back door was wide open, and I could see O’Shea out on the lawn, scrambling over his chain-link fence toward the street.

The son of a bitch was making a run for it.

Chapter 66

There is nothing that pisses me off like a footrace I don’t want. When I ran out of George O’Shea’s house a half second later, I think I bent his screen door right off the frame.

O’Shea was a big guy. The kids at Branaff called him Hagrid behind his back. But he was a lot faster than he looked. By the time I was out on the street sprinting after him, he was halfway up the block. Clearly he had a good reason to run.

“Don’t do this, George!”

A guy raking his leaves had already taken out his phone when I passed. “Call the police!” I yelled at him. I noticed he took my picture first.

Two kids on the sidewalk screamed at me and pedaled their Big Wheels like crazy, trying to keep up.

The top of the block ended in a cul-de-sac. O’Shea cut between two of the houses and kept going.

When I caught sight of him again, he was trying to scale a tall cedar fence in somebody’s backyard. He had to jump a couple times before he got a grip on the top of it and started pulling himself up.

Then the plank in his hand cracked. He slipped back down a few feet — and that’s when I caught up with him.

I got hold of his ankle before he could muscle all the way over, and I pulled him right off the top of the fence.

That brought him down fast — but he took me down with him, too.

And he wasn’t done yet.

My cuffs were out, just as O’Shea popped up onto one knee and elbowed me hard under the chin. My head snapped back. I tasted blood. In fact, it was probably the blood that helped me add a little speed and leverage to the right hook I gave him in return. That was enough to knock him back on his ass again.

This time I took out my Glock.

“Roll over, facedown! Hands on your head!” I told him.

He seemed half out of his mind. Even now, he started up at me again, but only until he saw the gun a few inches from his face.

“Don’t, George. Please — don’t,” I said.

It was like all the fight drained out of him at once. Even his face dropped, and he just melted back down to the ground.

When I put the cuffs on him, he started to cry.

“What have I done?” he kept saying over and over. “Oh God, what have I done?”

That was my question exactly.

Chapter 67

The backtracking and denials started in my car and continued over the next several hours.

O’Shea was taken directly into FBI custody. I drove him in myself, right through the sally port at the side entrance to the Washington field office.

From there, it’s a straight shot back to the interview rooms on the ground floor. Word was kept tight. There would be no announcement of the arrest yet. Not until we knew more from O’Shea.

A forensic unit was dispatched to his house in Riverdale. Another one went to his office at Branaff, to see what they could turn up. There was no question that O’Shea was hiding something. It was only a matter of finding out what it was.

Around seven o’clock, we got word back from the team out in Riverdale. A Dell laptop had been found in O’Shea’s master bedroom closet. It was loaded with pornographic images, most of them involving children. George O’Shea seemed to have a thing going for little girls, kids as young as three and four.

It was stomach-turning stuff, but as a piece of evidence, this was more than enough to hold him. By the time Peter Lindley arrived, straight from LX1 in Langley, adrenaline was running high in the observation room.

“What have we got here?” he said, taking a file from one of the assistant special agents in charge.

“George O’Shea,” the ASAC told him. “He’s the head of maintenance at the Branaff School—”

“I know who he is, for God’s sake. What have we got?” Lindley said. He seemed to be in his usual bad mood. Several other agents stepped out of the way to make a space for him at the one-way glass.

On the other side, O’Shea was sitting with the Bureau supervisor from the Child Abduction Unit, Ken Mugatande. They’d been talking for two hours straight now.

O’Shea was slumped forward, with his head resting on his clenched fists.

“He’s ready to admit the porn’s his,” I told Lindley. “But he swears up and down that he doesn’t know anything about Ethan and Zoe’s disappearance.”

“He’s begging for a polygraph,” the ASAC said.

Lindley turned and glared at the agent. “This is the guy whose office is twenty-five feet from that tunnel under the school?” Nobody answered. It was a rhetorical question. “So what the hell are we doing here? Let’s get him down to the polygraph room — now!”

Chapter 68

The field office’s polygraph room looks a lot like the other interview rooms — small table, two chairs, plain white walls, and a big one-way mirror. If anything, the observation space is smaller. A dozen of us squeezed in there to watch the interview.

“What is your name?”

“George Luther O’Shea.”

“What is your address?”

“It’s 1109 Edgewood Road, Riverdale, Maryland.”

O’Shea had asked for this, but he looked even more miserable than before. He was wired up with pneumographs around his chest and abdomen, a blood pressure cuff on his arm, and two finger clips, all feeding into a laptop on the table.

The polygrapher was Sue Pilgrim, a forensic psychologist out of the Hoover Building.

Sue sat at a right angle to O’Shea and just behind him, where he couldn’t see her during the test. Her first several questions were a standard opening battery, mostly lie-proof stuff like name and address, to establish a baseline. After that, she moved on to the meat of the interview.

“Have you ever knowingly downloaded a pornographic image of a child to your own computer?” Pilgrim asked.

“Yeah,” O’Shea said, after a shaky sigh.

“Have you ever knowingly uploaded a pornographic image of a child from your computer to the Internet?”

“No,” he said.

Both times, Agent Pilgrim nodded. As far as she and her machine were concerned, he’d just told the truth.

Then she asked, “Have you ever conspired with any group or individual from another country to commit an illegal act here in the United States?”

“What?” O’Shea swiveled on his seat to look at her. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”

She was talking about Al Ayla. This was the other possibility we had to confront. O’Shea could have had some tie to The Family, if they were in fact behind the kidnapping. Maybe he was their contact at the school. Maybe they had paid him off to be their “inside” person.

Agent Pilgrim responded to the outburst with quiet professionalism. “George, I just need you to answer the questions as simply as possible. Do you want to take a break before we go on?”

“No,” he said, turning back around to face front. “I just... I don’t understand where you’re going with this. What do you mean... contact with other countries?”

“I’ll ask again,” she said, and repeated her question verbatim. This time, O’Shea answered with a simple no, and again, Pilgrim nodded.

Next, she opened a file and set an eight-by-ten photo on the table in front of him.

It was a mug shot of Ray Pinkney, the drugged-out van driver from the morning of the kidnapping.

“Do you recognize this man?” Pilgrim asked.

I watched O’Shea’s face as he looked at the photo. There was no lateral movement in his eyes, no physical signs of evasion or lying that I could see at all.

“I’ve never seen him before in my life,” he said.

“Do you know where Zoe Coyle is right now?” Pilgrim asked.

“No,” he said.

“Do you know where Ethan Coyle is right now?”

“No!”

Every one of his answers got a nod from Agent Pilgrim. It was starting to add up.

It’s not that polygraphs are foolproof. They’re a guide, and nothing more than that. But even so, we seemed to be heading toward an unwanted conclusion here. You could feel it in the room.

George O’Shea wasn’t our guy. He didn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping.

Chapter 69

They were just finishing up with the polygraph when I got an unexpected phone call. There weren’t many people who could have pulled me out of that room just then, but here was one of them.

“Detective Cross, it’s Nina Friedman from the White House. Could you please hold for the First Lady?”

Just like that — a direct call from Regina Coyle. Sure. Happens every day. Of course I could hold for the First Lady.

I stepped out and into one of the empty interview rooms. Just as I was pulling the door closed behind me, Mrs. Coyle came on the line.

“What can I do for you, ma’am?” I asked.

“I’m wondering what you can tell me about this George O’Shea person,” she said.

The question caught me off guard. I wasn’t completely surprised that she’d already gotten word on O’Shea, but still, this put me in a tight spot.

“Excuse me for asking, Mrs. Coyle, but how much do you already know?” I said.

“I know who he is. I know that he’s been arrested. And I know the reason why. What I’d like to know is what you think of him.”

“I can tell you he just passed a polygraph test,” I told her. “But that’s not impossible to fake. I’ve seen it happen before.”

“Yes, but what do you think, Alex? You’re my eyes and ears on this. I’m not looking for absolutes,” she said. “Just... anything to give us hope.”

The more I knew Mrs. Coyle, the more I found myself relating to her, parent to parent. I probably said more than I should have.

“I don’t think he knows where Ethan and Zoe are. I’m sorry.”

“I see,” she said.

There was a long, silent moment on the phone. I could hear people out in the hall, leaving the observation room. Presumably O’Shea would be transferred to the U.S. marshals’ custody and taken to the arraignment courts from here. Then over to the central cell block after that. The pornography charge alone would put him in jail.

“Mrs. Coyle?” I said.

“I’m still here.”

“As long as I have you, I’d like to ask a question about the morning of the kidnapping. If it’s all right.”

“Of course,” she said. I think any distraction from the disappointing news was welcome at this point.

“Do you know if Zoe brought her phone to school that morning?” I asked.

“Her phone?”

“There’s been some talk among the kids about a texting incident last year. Involving Zoe. I just wondered if—”

“Zoe doesn’t have a phone,” Mrs. Coyle said. “Not as far as I know. Even if Secret Service would allow it, her father and I wouldn’t. And believe me, we’ve had our battles about this one.”

My mind started turning over everything I’d heard that day. Everything I’d learned about Ethan and Zoe from the beginning.

“Is it possible she could have gotten a phone on her own? Something she kept secret?” I asked.

“Of course. This is Zoe we’re talking about,” she said. “She knows how to get what she wants. Honestly, everyone likes to talk about how brilliant Ethan is, but if you ask me, my daughter’s the one with a future in politics.”

I liked that word right now. Future. It was a good thing to keep in mind.

“I trust you’re going to look into this,” Mrs. Coyle said.

“Absolutely,” I told her. “I already am.”

Chapter 70

At eleven fifteen that Saturday night, Ned Mahoney and a handpicked team of HRT agents set out from the MPD Third District Heliport in an unmarked FBI van. Mahoney preferred to run his ops in daylight — ultimately at dawn. But this detail was what it was and it had to happen now.

His order had come in to Quantico ninety minutes ago. The arrest plan described four suspects, all Saudi, holed up at a motel just south of Silver Spring, Maryland. Presumably they were Al Ayla, but there was nothing about that in the fax Mahoney had received.

He rode shotgun and looked over the motel diagram as they drove north, at full speed, through the city.

The motel room, number 122, was fairly straightforward: large bedroom, alcove, closet, bathroom. The only way in or out was the door at the front, accessible directly from the parking lot. The FBI entry team would be small, just four agents.

“Command, this is Red Team. We’re on Sixteenth, heading north,” Mahoney radioed over to the command center, set up at an old taxi dispatch a few blocks from the target. “What’s the visual you have on the motel?”

“Copy that, Red Team,” the unit commander came back. “We’re all go on this end. It looks like everyone’s tucked in for the night.”

Advance had already come through and quietly cleared guests out of all the adjacent rooms. SWAT had the perimeter held down, with tactical teams on three different rooftops around the motel. MPD and emergency services were both on standby.

HRT would go in first, as always.

Once the van came into range, Mahoney flipped his goggles down. He gave a thumbs-up to the three agents in back, who flashed the same sign. Samuels, Totten, and Behrenberg were all good to go. The unit was outfitted in full battle uniform — black Nomex flight suits, load-bearing vests, Kevlar helmets, and MP5s. It was heavy gear, enough to slow you down, but the adrenaline would more than compensate.

Before the vehicle even came to a stop, the doors were open and they were out. The team hit the ground running in a single-file beeline for Room 122.

“This is Red Team,” Mahoney radioed on the fly. “We’re going in!”

This had to be Al Ayla.

Chapter 71

“FBI! Open up!” Mahoney shouted.

At the same time, a forty-pound battering ram took out the motel room door in one swing. That was the extent of their “knock and announce.”

Before Mahoney was even inside, he saw the bathroom door slam closed at the far end of the otherwise empty room. He went for it, with Samuels at his back.

Totten and Behrenberg fanned out, checking the beds, the closet, the pile of luggage in the corner. A string of white laundry was suspended across the alcove. These people had been living here for a while.

Mahoney’s boot heel was all he needed to obliterate the cheap bathroom lock. The door flew open and he found them there, all four, cowering inside.

It looked a hell of a lot like a family to him. There was a mother, father, and two teenaged boys. The parents barricaded the younger two with their bodies, while the boys squatted in the tub.

All four of them had trickles of blood running down their chins. Oh, Jesus God!

“Hands! Show me your hands!” Mahoney screamed, waving his MP5 in their faces. Samuels repeated the order in Arabic, but nobody moved. They clutched at one another, watching with dark eyes that were wide, but not scared. These people were ready to die.

“Command, this is Red Team. We’ve found all four suspects in the bathroom. I can’t say for sure, but I think they just downed suicide capsules. Cyanide, probably. Requesting immediate medical assistance.”

“We need these people alive,” the unit commander came back.

No shit, Mahoney thought. The whole operation was worth only as much as the intel it uncovered. He motioned Samuels farther inside. “See if you can get some vitals.”

The mother and one of the boys started to convulse first. When Samuels tried to reach them, the other two scrambled over to get in his way. All four were wheezing badly, as if their breath was coming through the tiniest of straws.

“Where are the damn EMTs?” Mahoney radioed.

But then Totten called out from the other room.

“Hold that thought, boss,” he said. “We’ve got another problem.”

Mahoney turned around to see Totten on his stomach, looking at something under one of the beds.

“I’ve got eyeballs on some kind of gray brick,” he said. “Looks wired. I think we need to get the hell out of here pronto!”

Mahoney didn’t wait. “Totten, Behrenberg! Go — now! Samuels, grab one of these people. Whoever’s going to make it.”

Samuels reached for one of the boys. When he did, the mother put her hand in his way. She smiled, her teeth stained bright cherry red with oxygenated blood. In her shaking fist was a small cylindrical detonator.

“Oh, Jesus—”

Instinct took over. Mahoney shoved Samuels farther inside and swung the door closed behind him — just as the blast went off.

The door came right back at them, off its hinges, and knocked both of the agents down.

In the small space, they fell on top of the family in a blind tangle of bodies. Plaster shook down from the ceiling. A long crack ran down the wall, as water began shooting out from the showerhead connection.

Mahoney struggled back to his feet. The bedroom was in flames.

He couldn’t see Totten or Behrenberg anywhere.

Hopefully that meant they were already clear, and not — gone. The explosion had blown out the entire front of the room, picture window and all.

“Go, go, go!” He pulled Samuels off the floor and shoved him out the door.

A quick triage showed him that only one of the four suspects was still moving. It was the boy Samuels had been trying to extricate just a few seconds ago. His eyes were barely open, and his face was almost purple. Mahoney hooked his hands under the kid’s arms and started pulling him out.

In the bedroom, the heat was intense. He could feel his exposed skin prickling as he dragged the kid along, keeping as low as possible. It was painfully slow going.

Too slow. All at once, the boy coughed up some blood, and he spasmed hard, one last time. That was it. Before Mahoney reached the door, he knew he was dragging a dead body.